PRIMO LEVI E LA QUESTIONE DELL’ANIMALITÀ

The approach of man and animal in Levi’s work can lead to some simplifications. We could think of a naturalization operation: man is one of many animals. Or, on the contrary, we could think of a culturalization: the animal is a social being. In reality, the ontological principle on which Levi’s thinking and writing are based is that of analogy. Assuming the hypothesis of the anthropologist Philippe Descola, this essay proposes an analogical reading of Levi. Focusing on a precise story, Censura in Bitinia, I will try to discuss this interpretative hypothesis.

Ibridi in città: corpi, spazi, tecnologie

Figure di città. Spazi urbani e discorsi sociali

Questo libro dialoga con le altre discipline che nell’epoca contemporanea indagano sui problemi scottanti della metropoli e della megalopoli, dello sprawl urbano e degli slums, delle reti mediatiche e della sfera immaginaria che esse generano. E nello stesso tempo prova a individuare i momenti chiave – e i punti critici – che sono via via emersi negli studi semiotici sulla città. Lo scopo del libro è appunto quello di dissodare un campo entro cui si innestano e proliferano una serie di figure di città, immagini e segni d’ogni tipo che, nel loro intreccio, vanno a costituire lo spessore della nostra vita quotidiana. Sorvegliato da una intelaiatura teorica tanto rigorosa quanto dinamica, lo s…

I fatti di Africo

Kubrick come brand

Politiche della natura/Natura della politica

As interacoes sensiveis

Eco e la serialità. Appunti di lettura a mo' di introduzione

Gli studi semiotici hanno lavorato parecchio sulle narrazioni seriali, cercando di ricostruirne la forma a partire da generi discorsivi e tipi di linguaggio differenti – dalla letteratura al fumetto, dall’epica cavalleresca al teatro delle marionette, dal fotoromanzo al cinema sino, ovviamente, alla televisione – e seguendone le numerose trasformazioni interne che si sono manifestate nel corso delle cronache mediatiche. Oggi, poi, che i media non fanno altro che rinviarsi a vicenda, intrecciandosi e arricchendosi fra loro, la questione della serialità – un tempo considerata appannaggio della cultura di massa e del midcult che ne derivava – è divenuta tutt’uno con quella della transmedialità…

La forma dell'arancino: arte culinaria e investigazione poliziesca

Analisi di un racconto di A. Camilleri in vista di una teoria della figuralità nell'abduzione e di una strutturaizone del ricettario

Marked Semiotics: Tactics and Strategies

One of Paolo Fabbri’s most recent papers, his plenary speech at the XIV Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, held in Buenos Aires on 9th-13th September 2019, was entitled, ‘Para una semiotica marcada.’ What does this refer to? we might say that it refers to knowledge concerned with intensity. First, for its technical meaning: a term from semi otic metalanguage is used to define semiotics itself. Secondly, for its emotional and psychological meaning: practicing the science of signification as a constitutionally passionate form of life. A knowledge that is in no way ascetic or loftily detached from existence; a knowledge that holds tightly to life as it founds resea…

The Ludovico Cure. On Body and Music in "A Clockwork Orange"

A Clockwork Orange is a novel by Anthony Burgess (1961) and a movie by Stanley Kubrick (1972). Starting from these two famous works, a series of different texts have been produced: a record by Walter Carlos was drawn from the soundtrack; a theatre version and another novel by Burgess; a rich and intense critical debate on newspapers, reviews, articles and volumes; the film itself has become a cult that the web has thoroughly amplified. This debate was not concerned only with aesthetic issues regarding the value of the two works. It has involved ethic and communicative issues, as well as social and juridical ones concerning the bad influence the two works could have on the public due to the …

Estetica del Telegionale

In aeroporto. Traduzioni intratestuali in 'The terminal'

Ironie de l'espace

Principi di semio-design. Forme dell’innovazione e teoria del progetto

Trupat shoqerore

Semiotica del gusto: Linguaggi della cucina, del cibo, della tavola

Se tutto è comunicazione, anche il cibo ci parla. Ma in che cosa consiste la natura significativa dell'alimentazione, e con quali mezzi viene costruita? Gianfranco Marrone propone in questo volume un'introduzione alla semiotica del cibo e ai suoi campi di applicazione. Il cibo non è soltanto una necessità, ma è anche e soprattutto un linguaggio, e perciò un punto di osservazione privilegiato per lo studio della cultura umana e sociale. Discutendo di pietanze identitarie e ricette nazional-popolari, di strumenti da cucina e classici della gastronomia, di cibi cosiddetti naturali e vini biologici, di livelli del gusto e tavole imbandite, quel che emerge è la rigorosa proposta di una semio-lin…

The Invention of the Text

Intorno alla tavola del commissario Montalbano

Introduzione

Mangiare, viaggiare, fotografare

C’è un nesso, logico e narrativo al tempo stesso, che non si finirà mai di considerare fondamentale, nella nostra come in altre culture: è quello fra mangiare e viaggiare, gustare preziose ghiottonerie e incontrare in nuovi luoghi altre popolazioni. Certo, c’è la cucina di casa, le tradizioni gastronomiche locali, il chilometro zero. Ma sono per lo più invenzioni leggendarie, o quanto meno turistiche. E ci sono tante persone che per tutta la vita ingurgitano sempre la stessa cosa, di modo che la minima variazione di gusto le mette in crisi peggio che l’imbattersi in un idioma sconosciuto. Ma sono soggetti da guardare con allarmato sospetto, poiché sempre pronti a garantire la sedicente – e …

Le monde naturel, entre corps et culture

Pour expliquer la signification et mieux comprendre le sens des textes – disait Greimas – il faut les lire à partir de la fin. C’est ainsi pour un récit mythique bororo ou pour un conte littéraire comme « Deux amis » de Maupassant ; de même pour un livre scientifique comme les Prolégomènes de Hjelmslev. De la même manière, pour mieux comprendre Greimas, il faudrait lire ses écrits à rebours. C’est justement le cas de l’article « Conditions d’une sémiotique du monde naturel », le texte plus long et sans doute plus complexe de Du sens – dont on s’occupera spécifiquement ici. Cet essai se termine en soulignant les difficultés théoriques à établir une notation symbolique pour le langage gestuel…

Introduction. From Sociology to Semiotics, and to Sociosemiotics

In 1973, a long essay by Paolo Fabbri opened a wide-ranging debate in the social scienc es, in light of new findings in semiotics and structural anthropology, sociolinguistics and media studies. In the following years Fabbri’s essay paved the way for a socio-semiotic approach in several fields of analysis, such as advertising and the consumer society, political and journalistic discourses, urban spaces and gastronomy, design, branding, old and new media. Looking back at Fabbri’s seminal essay today appears very useful for rethinking the roots of socio-semiotics, to follow the paths it has traced, to dig up concepts and observations that had been dropped, and to re-think old assumptions in v…

Semiotica Marketing Narrazione

Brand on the run: mirada semiotica sobre Slow Food

IL discorso di marca. Modelli semiotici per il branding

“La marca, oggi, sta al posto di Dio per più motivi, e tutti di natura eminentemente semiotica”. Questa affermazione a prima vista paradossale chiude Il discorso di marca (Laterza, pagg. 368, € 28,00) di Gianfranco Marrone, noto semiologo italiano, acuto osservatore dei fenomeni sociali e mediatici più importanti degli ultimi anni, autore di libri di successo quali Estetica del telegiornale e C’era una volta il telefonino (Meltemi), Corpi sociali e La Cura Ludovico (Einaudi). Non poteva mancare dunque la marca, soggetto/segno iperpresente e ipersfuggente dell’immaginario collettivo e delle pratiche individuali contemporanei, madre-padrona che, regolando le nostre scelte d’acquisto, costitui…

Mythes d’origines et structures urbaines

Paesaggi politici: il giardino pantesco

It seems that on Pantelleria, described in tourist brochures as 'the black pearl of the Mediterranean', one finds a miniature version of paradise on earth. Compared to Lampedusa, which the honours of the news refer to - sadly - as a land where it is easy to disembark, Pantelleria has steep ridges along almost its entire perimeter. In the long windswept weeks, the obsidian merchants who frequented it for millennia must have seemed unapproachable or, if already there, impossible to leave. Seneca, the first of its illustrious visitors, spoke of it as a 'deserta loca et asperrima', and again in the 18th century the geologist Donald de Dolomieu (before he gave his name to the Alpine Dolomites) h…

Prefazione a La fiaba russa

Vladimir Jakovlevič Propp was born in St Petersburg on 17 April 1895 and died in Leningrad on 22 August 1970. As if to say that, although he always stayed in the same city, history passed him passed in front of him, and those places took on a different meaning in the course of (his) time an entirely different sense and flavour. Of course, for a folklorist like him, used to reflecting on the distance of centuries, if not not millennia, those seventy-five years of the 20th century must have been trifles. The fact remains, however, that the heavy epochal changes he witnessed - the Russian revolution and the long Soviet political and cultural regime that followed - have weighed heavily on his w…

Traduzione e soggettività. Ancora su Pasolini e il cinema

This paper reconstructs the debate raised by the thesis on cinema proposed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In particular, two basic notions are addressed: the idea of cinema as a 'written language of reality' and the role of free indirect discourse for the establishment of a 'poetry cinema'. Pasolini is put into dialogue with Gilles Deleuze, Paolo Fabbri and other semiologists.

Introduction

Introduzione alla semiotica del testo

Palinsesti televisivi, campagne pubblicitarie, piattaforme comunicative, conversazioni orali, interazioni via web, strategie di marketing, stazioni della metropolitana, edifici, intere città, momenti della vita quotidiana, esperienze politiche e universi scientifici: in ognuno di questi ambiti esprimiamo segni che la semiotica insegna a interpretare.

Le monde regarde le monde

Zoosémiotique 2.0

To semiotise the animal - to narrate it, to say it, to represent it, to think it, to make it an object of science - means to manage the politics of an unsecured threshold: that which separates it, more or less obstinately, from man. To define the animal is to define man, of course. However, it is more interesting to note that, often surreptitiously, giving the animal a place among the "kingdoms" of nature means, in parallel, adding it between the articulation of the social, between cultural institutions (kinship, affection and kinship, affection and affiliations, strategies and conflicts...). In In other words, to make the animal the object of knowledge is to propose a certain political vis…

Parlare del cibo: dalla cucina alla tavola

LA TECNICA DE LUDOVICO. SUFRIMIENTOS Y PLACERES DE UN CUERPO SOCIAL: DE LA NARANJA MECANICA DE ANTHONY BURGUESS A LA NARANJA MECANICA DE STANLEY KUBRIK.

Postfazione. Immagini in lotta, simulacri in azione

Finzioni gastronomiche e astuti ripieni: sarde a beccafico

A cercare “beccafico” su internet le prime occorrenze che vengono fuori riguardano piuttosto le sarde a beccafico, leccornia assai diffusa in Sicilia e icona indiscussa della cucina dell’Isola. La relazione fra questa pietanza interclassista e l’animaletto è sin troppo motivata nei discorsi gastronomici passati e presenti, e contribuisce in modo considerevole ad alimentare le molteplici mitologie intorno a essa – le quali a lor volta generano ulteriori invenzioni gastronomiche. Searching for "beccafico" on the internet, the first occurrences that come up are sardines a beccafico, a delicacy that is widespread in Sicily and an undisputed icon of the island's cuisine. The relationship between…

L'ora della merenda. Regimi alimentari e significazione

Vorrei provare a lavorare sulla questione dei regimi alimentari, intesi in senso lato, non immediatamente medico-salutista, i quali sono da intendere a tutti gli effetti come regimi di senso. L’idea è quella di riprendere alcune analisi socio-antropologiche praticate da Mary Douglas (1982) a proposito del sistema alimentare degli operai inglesi, che hanno circolato molto poco fra i semiologi pur essendo vere e proprie analisi semiotiche sans le savoir. Seguendo i suggerimenti impliciti nei risultati della Douglas, sceglierò come oggetto d’analisi il vasto regime dietetico-semiotico della merenda (e, vedremo, di quel suo curioso diminutivo/accrescitivo che è la merendina), ossia di quel mome…

Montalbano. Affermazioni e trasformazioni di un eroe mediatico

Incidenti ed esplosioni della ricerca semiotica in Italia

A history of Italian semiotics has not yet been written (as of semiotics in general). There are, scattered in journals and volumes of various kinds, many different reconnaissance, explorations, syntheses, chronologies, bibliographies. Nothing overall, from a historiographic point of view, or exhaustive, from a theoretical point of view. It is by no means established, moreover, that the time has come to launch such a challenge. When a discipline starts looking back to compile its own history, it is almost certainly in crisis.

La patria in tavola: arti e tecniche del risotto

Sacrificio in regime mediatico. Dal fatto al senso, e ritorno

Today we live in a society and in a historical moment that is losing the sense of sacrifice, that is the pertinent interweavings that bind - with respect to the theme of the meat diet and the preliminary killing of the animal for food - man and animals, man and other men through the animal, the animal with other animals through man, not without the necessary inclusion of the cultural context, on the one hand, and divinity and the sacred, on the other. If meaning is given - according to the dictate of semiotics - in the networks of relations that compose it (where - according to the structuralist dictate - relations are primary and related elements secondary), the loss of the sense of sacrif…

Foodporn. From Conviviality to Sharing

We are used to talking and talking about food, anywhere and anyhow, while eating peculiar quantities of it in souplesse, both in excess or symmetrical insufficiency. Likewise, we are used to talking about pornography in unsuitable tones, ranging from the ashamed to the academic, which, in any case, hardly conceal ancestral pruderies that have never been kept under sufficient control. We do use pornography in contumacy, wherever humanly possible. It can be easily said that, by crossing these two practices, which are at the same time physical and discursive, through a pertinent Engelsian dialectic, a third one emerges. And that is – as should be clear at this point – foodporn.

Pensieri selvaggi

Poetry and anthropology: what do they have to do with each other? More and more often this pairing is invoked in the cultural chronicles, and even more often it is practised in the their actual performance: by poets less so, probably, but certainly by anthropologists, ethnologists, ethnographers or whatever you want to call them. Not without irritation in the academic establishment, always ready to defend traditional disciplinary fences, it happens - with an insistence that has become a trend - that much anthropological research acquires a tone and language, and therefore evidently contents, that overflow into the poetic, or that at least recall passages, styles and sensations that poetry h…

Roland Barthes. El sentido de la moda

Roland Barthes devoted much of his intellectual interest to the phenomenon of fashion. Long before his famous Système de la Mode, he wrote numerous essays on the subject, mainly of a methodological nature, both to elaborate a coherent historiography of dress and to establish a semiology of dress itself, distinguishing –with Saussure– between costume (langue) and clothing (parole). Indeed, if dress is a heteroclite whole, like language for Saussure, the semiologist’s task is to reconstruct its functioning as a system of signs, not only in the dress described by the magazines (as he does in Système), but also in the dress actually worn. A set of essays, in short, of extreme importance for any…

Semiotica marcata: frammenti di un manifesto

Da un primo calcolo approssimativo, incrociando gli scritti raccolti nella biblioteca personale con gli elenchi presenti nel suo sito, le bibliografi e qui e là, le informazioni sparse del web, le indicazioni di amici e colleghi nonché le memorie personali, il numero degli scritti di Paolo Fabbri – fra libri, saggi, articoli, introduzioni, postfazioni, curatele, interviste e traduzioni – su pera i 500 titoli. E, portando avanti l’esplorazione, tale numero è sicuramente destinato ad aumentare. Per un presunto abbas agraphicus non c’è male: immagine romanzata di un intellettua le che tocca forse rivedere, non tanto per ragioni di quantità ma per la profondità di pensiero e la forza retorica d…

Le Commissaire Montalbano, personnage sociosémiotique

Gastromania

Semiotica della città. Corpi, spazi, tecnologie

Il brand fra classico e barocco

Introduzione al Discorso di marca

Quotidianità e virus: un diario semiotico

Beyond health issues, we know that the pandemic has changed our daily lives. Accelerating socio-cultural trends that were already present in our contemporaneity, such as functionalism, the control of bodies, the fear of others, forced hygiene, the reduction of essential freedoms, work from home ... The semiologist, constantly on the hunt of signals and symbols to be interpreted, he thus tried to intercept some of these modulations of daily life, with a kind of diary in public, sprinkled with various insights proposed to readers of various kinds. The following text is a partial collection of these notes, which, read now, may perhaps change their meaning, and interest those who, out of desper…

Luoghi comuni su Barthes

Un dilettantismo felice: ricostruzione testuale di Tvergastein

For the past few years - few compared to the long historical duration of the human species on Earth - we have been witnessing a profound cultural revolution, perhaps even an anthropological one. Cultural because, after all, this revolution concerns first and foremost knowledge - and before that, belief, and after that, everyday life, human and social experience, and widespread sensitivity. Anthropological because this knowledge is essentially ethnological, of an ethnology that, however, denies itself in order to embrace the totality of things, or, better, to allow itself a holistic look that is not only aimed at homo, in order to attribute to itself an object of study, a much broader field …

Sémiotique et pandémie : journal intime

Au lieu d’une réflexion a posteriori sur la période de la pandémie Covid-19, je présente ici quelques extraits d’un journal que j’ai tenu pendant les mois plus tragiques (jusqu’à ce moment) du confinement. L’épiphanie du virus a modifié presque tout dans notre vie quotidienne, et une bonne partie de ce « tout » concerne spécifiquement la signification. D’où l’intérêt du sémioticien. Du point de vue médiatique, l’épidémie est une aubaine. La bad news qui est une good news. La malchance foudroyante qui rapporte énormément. Une nouvelle appétissante qui attire l’attention du public blasé, qui multiplie l’audience et avance – bien davantage que son objet – par contagion immédiate : tout le mond…

L'invenzione del testo. Una nuova critica della cultura

Dopo i primi avvii della ricerca sociosemiotica internazionale – pionieristici e affascinanti -- che ha proposto nuovi metodi e nuovi modelli alle scienze umane e sociali ottenendo risultati di non poco rilievo, è subentrata una fase successiva, al tempo stesso più riflessiva e più esplorativa. Da una parte si è ragionato sugli esiti teorici di questa svolta sociosemiotica nella ricerca sui linguaggi e sulla significazione, e dunque sugli eventuali ritocchi e sui possibili ampliamenti concettuali. Dall’altra si è ulteriormente allargato lo sguardo d’azione, provando a dissodare -- al di là dei fenomeni sociosemiotici più evidenti come il giornalismo, la pubblicità, i consumi, la politica – …

Soggetti spaziali: azioni e passioni

Échapper à la surveillance. La paresse comme transgression

We assume that laziness is not an individual subject‘s psychological quality but a reaction against those (that) who (which) confine(s) us in a culture which regards activity as a paramount value, often as an end in itself. Laziness is the transgressive answer to those who force us to act, hence to expose us. Thus, in a surveillance society in which everyone is both the subject and the object of a general regime of visibility, the lazy one not only escapes from the universe of values but also exhibits this escape in subverting the meaning of surveillance which then becomes a tactics for the one who intends to rebel against the power, in modifying the value of values : the implicit belief th…

Barthes, le récit, la saisie esthétique. Petite relecture du « Sarrasine » de Balzac

Roland Barthes has written a lot about narrative. But can we say that he was really interested in it? that he grasped its profound formal articulation and its anthropological values? who perceived the theoretical interest, beyond literary narrative itself, of its methodological consequence, narrativity? The answers are not as obvious as they may seem. On the one hand, thanks also to his writings, in the paradigm of the humanities - despite the continuous epiphanies of a resurgent positivism - no one doubts that the narrative form is hermeneutic model essential to the general understanding of social and anthropological phenomena. On the other hand, Barthes' attitude towards narrative is far …

Accidents and explosions in semiotic research in Italy. Introductory notes

A history of Italian semiotics has yet to be written. This issue therefore has completely different aspirations: more than a history, or even less a geography, its intended goal is that of self-analysis of, roughly speaking, the last twenty or twenty-five years. Something like this: let us stop for a moment, let us see where we have sown our seeds, and what we have reaped, what we still need to plan, and in which direction we will proceed. The essays collected here do just that: they outline the conceptual map of semiotic research in Italy, combining research themes, methods of investigation and, when they may overlap, research centres scattered throughout the country. So, Italian semiotics…

Animismi animali

Poco tempo fa, a un pranzo domenicale, conversavo con una signora di mezz’età sulle vacanze estive appena trascorse. «Lasciamo perdere», mi dice, «oramai sono diventata la nonna dei cani». La signora mi spiega che i suoi due figli, precari, convivono con le rispettive fidanzate, ma non osano far figli sicché hanno preso, ognuno, una coppia di canòni, di non so quale pregiatissima razza, che amano alla follia e che durante le ferie e i sabato sera vengono, manco a dirlo, depositati a casa dei genitori, cioè della mia dirimpettaia di tavola, che ama immensamente i suoi ragazzi e tutto ciò che essi emanano, al punto da sacrificare le proprie meritate vacanze per accudire quei quadrupedi decisa…

Recipe Books and the Structure of Recipes

Learning to cook is no easy task. It takes time and patience, hard work and plenty of passion. Sometimes it can take years and a certain predisposition is necessary. As a result, many give up and few are truly successful. But teaching to cook is equally difficult. In the kitchen, when the teacher and their apprentices are in direct contact working together, things are relatively simple. The teacher carefully demonstrates the various steps to follow when preparing a particular dish or stock or sauce. The appren tices listen and, most importantly, play close attention. Then, slowly, tasting as they go, and - most importantly - imitating the teacher’s movements and gesture, they are able to at…

La guerra dei mondi possibili

La guerra dei mondi possibili. Ancora sul caso Montalbano

C'era una volta il telefonino. Seconda edizione

Le traitement Ludovico. Corps et musique dans Orange mécanique

C'era una volta il telefonino

Tradizione e modernità burocrazie ed efficientismo. Sull'identità visiva delle università italiane

Dilettanti, fra resistenza ed estasi

Who is the amateur? what does he do? what doesn't it do? And especially: what can he do and what can't he do? There is a very close connection between the problem of expert competence, today as yesterday, and that of dilettantism, yesterday as today. But it is not always the same link: the internal intensity of the relationship varies, the degree of certainty of those who assume it, the value of the terms involved. According to the Italian dictionary, a dilettante is someone who "shows little ability", therefore an incompetent subject, far from skilled, inexperienced, therefore narratively inconclusive. But if we insert this description in its appropriate context, i.e. in the complex of the…

Gustare con gli occhi: l’enunciazione in Masterchef

Cultura/natura, città/campagna: il caso Gnac

Verso un lessico barthesiano: prime voci

Fra discorso e narrazione

Introduction to the semiotics of the text

This books aims to demonstrate how semiotic models of textual analysis can be used to study any social reality or cultural process. In addition, it shows how semiotic models work by using examples from everyday life and social praxis, communicative processes and modes of consumption, online interactions and cross-media procedures, political experiences and scientific universes.

Gastronomie et nostalgie

Spazialità e comunicazione: Roma Termini e MIlano centrale

Aventures de la serviette. Pour une sémiotique des manières de table

Au cours de ces dernières années, la sémiotique de la nourriture a connu un grand développement. En suivant les maîtres dans ce domaine (de Jakobson à Lévi-Strauss, de Barthes à Greimas, de Fabbri à Landowski et à Boutaud3), de nombreux travaux ont été effectués concernant les recettes de cuisine et les régimes alimentaires, la structure des plats et la conception des aliments, les récits gastronomiques et les valeurs gustatives, les processus esthétiques et les extases de saveurs, les langages de dégustation et les modes médiatiques. Mais, tout en tenant compte des suggestions issues de ces recherches, on doit constater que beaucoup de travail reste encore à faire.

Idee per una riqualificazione di due spazi museali palermitani

Parallelismi e inversioni: l’impensato del semiologo

The emphasis on the search for a method identifies Semiotics among human sciences. One of the guiding principles of this search is poeticness, conceived as a core mechanism of meaning-making structures. As Jakobson, Lévis-Strauss and, finally, with its exemplar analysis of Maupassant, Greimas illustrate, looking for parallelisms and inversions between expression and content is one of the most marking traits of Semiotic methodology. In order to clarify this point, the article resumes a previous semiotic analysis of Paolo Conte’s song Pittori della domenica, a text with manifest poetic features. The objective is not to articulate further what previously found, but to illuminate the underlying…

Narrare di sé, e fare finta

Montalbano, héros médiatique

Introduzione

Introduzione: di sardine e d’altri linguaggi politici

At the market in via Drapperie, in Bologna, in mid-November 2019, sardines were sold for three euros a kilo. In more than one fish shop, the price was the same as always, no significant variation. Yet nearby, in the immense Piazza Maggiore, in those very days sixteen thousand and more sardines were playing the leading role, tight squeezes, not only producing an unexpected result against the aggressiveness of the right, the league and populist sovereignty, but inventing a new form of political expression: an ironic flash mob in the name of a world figure – the Sardinian, in fact – not particularly heroic or in any way handsome. A figure who – based on the well-known media mechanism of "conta…

La fatica di essere pigri

La storia della pigrizia ha radici antiche, incrociandosi con l’ozio e con l’accidia. L’ozio è padre di tutti i vizi, ma anche virtù del letterato che sfugge alle costrizioni del lavoro. Analogamente l’accidia è vizio capitale, meno grave però di altri comportamenti considerati riprovevoli. Intere classi sociali ne fanno il loro vanto, altre la deridono, altre vi aspirano. E molti sono i racconti che riguardano la pigrizia, facendone ora una proprietà caratterizzante certi personaggi (da Oblomov a Paperino) ora un atteggiamento di ribellione contro le società moderne (da Stevenson a Lafargue, da Russell a Barthes). In gioco, è la rivendicazione di stanchezza, il desiderio di riposo, l’esige…

Una Congiura degli Uguali: involtini & friends

Quel che fa l’involtino è la sua conformazione, o poco più. Anche se talvolta la medesima forma, investita da sostanze precise, cambia non solo nome ma anche posizione nel menu e dunque statuto. Il sistema della gastronomia, si sa, tende a riequilibrarsi di continuo, accettando nuove varianti e provando a istituzionalizzarle con una qualche motivazione, spesso posticcia. La lettura dei testi gastronomici svela a questo proposito un panorama assai complesso. What makes the roll is its conformation, or little more. Even if sometimes the same shape, invested with precise substances, changes not only its name but also its position in the menu and therefore its statute. The gastronomy system, as…

Postfazione a Barthes

There is a very significant passage in this long unpublished interview by Paolo Fabbri with Roland Barthes: if only because it clearly indicates one of the main theoretical opponents of the structural analysis of narrative. It is the moment when Barthes argues that it is necessary to get rid of certain 'false signifiers' of the narrative text, which are then the traditional categories of literary criticism.

Montalbano, héros médiatique

Gustoso e saporito. Introduzione al discorso gastronomico

Nessuno può confondere mangiare con alimentarsi e la tavola è al centro non della sola vita famigliare ma anche di quella sociale. A giudicare dall’aumento di offerta commerciale di ristorazione nelle strade delle città c’è anzi da chiedersi come facessimo ad alimentarci tutti prima. Il fatto è che oggi con il cibo non sostentiamo soltanto noi stessi, ma anche le nostre relazioni. Il cibo infatti significa: elabora valori, narra, costruisce discorsi. Inoltre il cibo comunica: presidia il campo sociale, anima dibattiti, si dispiega in eventi, genera economia. Con Gustoso e saporito Gianfranco Marrone getta le fondamenta di quella semiotica del cibo che negli ultimi anni l’ha impegnato con ri…

La nature au supermarché Sur le packaging des produits dits biologiques

Resistenza naturale

Grammatica della ricetta, retorica della cucina

Cooking is - precisely - more a practical know-how than a form of theoretical knowledge. Much like swimming, driving a car, riding a bike, talking. All things that you don't learn in books or lessons but by doing them, putting them into practice with assiduity, courage, stubbornness. As long as it is the body itself that acquires the ways, the techniques, the rules. Of course, in the kitchen scientific and technical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, history, culture, traditions also count for a lot. But when it comes to rolling out a pastry, flipping an omelette, kneading a pizza dough (to limit ourselves to very elementary preparations), what counts is manual dexterity, a clinical eye, the…

Introduzione

La Cura Ludovico. Sofferenze e beatitudini di un corpo sociale

la sémiotique entre tesxte et culture

Semiotica e pandemia: un diario

Mediatically, the epidemic is the classic bad news that is good news. Deadly bad news that makes a lot of money. A tasty piece of news that attracts the attention of the blasé public, multiplies the audience and goes on - far more than its subject - by very fast contagion: everyone wants it, everyone is looking for it. For what reason? Quickly said: because it is imprudent to deny its scope, to downplay its nature and value. Who dares to throw water on the fire when, even for a very small percentage, there could be a chain death?

Cucina politica: percorsi semiotici

On the one hand, cuisine and politics have always been considered two very different semi-spheres. On the other hand, considering the issue more in depth, cooking and politics are both strategies and tactics for governing the community. What I would like to do in this essay is to highlight the unexpected of the (multiple) relations of cooking and politics. Starting from a Latourian epistemological perspective, which considers the social collective as a whole formed by human and non-human actors, and governed by a series of management, control and enhancement processes that are similar to the world of gastronomy and that of politics strictly understood.

La congiura degli uguali: involtini & friends

The essay reconstructs the events of “involtini”, a very popular dish in Italian cuisine, in order to trace the specificities of the Sicilian recipes. In particular, a corpus of recipes is analyzed in order to identify the recurring narrative programs in the preparation of the Sicilian “involtini”, distinguishing variations and invariant forms. Particular attention is given to the conformation of the gastronomic object itself and its arrangement on the plate. By comparing other types and sizes of similar gastronomic objects, it is highlighted how cultural and political meanings can be identified in the sense of the “involtini”.

Stupidità

La stupidità vince. Bisogna farsene una ragione. Gli imbecilli ci sono sempre stati, si sa. Eppure, nell’attuale società dei media e dei consumi sono diventati una folla cianciante che dichiara bellamente la propria deficienza intellettiva e sentimentale, esibendola come un valore. Il cretino è cool, più volente che nolente: ce lo dicono la tv, la stampa, i brand, la rete; ce lo ribadiscono i colleghi d’ufficio, i vicini di casa, i compagni di merende, gli amici al bar. Ecco un’indagine semiseria sulla stupidità contemporanea, alla ricerca delle radici filosofiche, letterarie e antropologiche di quest’inquietante fenomeno del nostro tempo. Vagabondando fra le pagine dei più vari pensatori e…

Scoppiare di salute. Corpo, natura, società

Scoppiare di salute può essere un problema, quanto meno se è l’esito conclusivo di quel terribile processo di medicalizzazione che la nostra società ben cone. Meglio forse tenersi un corpo malsano e maldestro, ma comunque nostro, nel senso di mio e di tuo, ma anche di quella società in cui esso si trova a vivere, che lo ha plasmato e riplasmato di continuo, donandogli un’identità culturale al tempo stesso radicata e fragile, fisicamente fondata ma perennemente in discussione. Una riflessione sui compositi apparati e le inguaribili ideologie della pratica medica attuale permette così di accedere, per la via stretta delle corsie d’ospedale, a una visione non banale, non naturalistica della co…

Città/Brand. Esercizio di semiotica discorsiva

Principes de la sémiotique du texte

Campagne pubblicitarie, programmi televisivi, piattaforme di comunicazione, interazioni via web, strategie di marketing, conversazioni, stazioni della metropolitana, edifici, città, momenti di vita quotidiana, esperienze politiche e universi scientifici: esprimiamo testi in ognuno di questi ambienti che la semiotica insegna a interpretare . Gianfranco Marrone, semiologo che fa parte della grande tradizione della semiotica italiana iniziata da Umberto Eco e Paolo Fabbri, invita il suo lettore ad esaminare con uno sguardo nuovo la sua realtà quotidiana, con l'obiettivo di scoprire la polisemia dei linguaggi nella contemporaneità società. Campagnes publicitaires, émissions télévisuelles, plate…

Il lungomare perduto e l'isola misteriosa. Destini e destinazioni di un prato.

Forms of gastronomic camouflage: veridiction in the kitchen

In this essay, we analyse the regimes of truth and the forms of culinary camouflage inscribed in some signature dishes by several well-known Italian chefs, whose work is emblematic of the various fictional trends in gastronomy. In doing so, we will keep in mind the so-called semiotic square of veridiction that discursive semiotics has been proposing and using for some time. The analysis reveals how the gastronomic discourse of the Italian haute cousine produces effects of illusion, secrecy, falsehood and truth. The concurrence of these veridiction modes allows for an explicit model which accounts for the various styles of camouflage and thus describes current tendencies in contemporary cuis…

L'age d'or de la sémiotique littéraire, et quelques consequences théoriques

Dans cet article, je voudrais comparer trois livres fondamentaux pour l’analyse sémiotique des œuvres littéraires, parus à quelques années de distance l’un de l’autre : S/Z de Roland Barthes (1970a), Maupassant de Algirdas J. Greimas (1976) et Lector in fabula de Umberto Eco (1979). Il s’agit de trois différentes approches à la sémiotique de la littérature, parues dans la même décennie, qui, par conséquent, ont produit trois différents objets de la discipline, en causant, avec un progrès considérable dans la recherche sur la signification, des équivoques théoriques qui sont encore à résoudre.

Arti e tecniche del risotto dorato. IL caso Gadda

Cucinare senza senso. Strategie passionali e significazione spaziale in Masterchef

Semiotica della natura

Kitsch

Ogni volta che si parla del Kitsch, vengono fuori una serie di termini negativi o espressioni dispregiative come “non-arte”, “cattivo gusto”, “male”, “falsità”, come anche “pseudo”, “simili”, “contraffazione”, “maschera mento”, “succedaneo” e così via. Che si abbordi la questione in termini estetici o etici, sociali o culturali, politici o religiosi, è sempre una presa di distanza critica, un’accigliata considerazione di movenze e opere, atti e oggetti, idee e ideologie.

Tecnologie e valori dello sguardo. Occhiali e discorsività

Postfazione a La pittura di mercato

An exuberant vitality, critics say about the so-called Fugger cycle by Vincenzo Campi. A eulogy to morality, echoes Lucia Corrain echoes them in the book we have just finished, overturning the most widespread interpretation. What appears to many as a minor pictorial genre, a transient by-product of natura nature, even burlesque, here takes on, in this important essay on the semiotics of art, assumes, in this important essay on the semiotics of art, an entirely different, and much higher, historical and cultural, social and anthropological value. cultural, social and anthropological value.

Dopo la cena, allo stesso modo. Dieci anni di immaginario gastronomico

Il cibo è ormai fuori moda. La cucina non s’usa più. E la gastromania spopola nelle province low cost, invadendo i meandri della cultura più pop, per non dire trash. Così, i tinelli piccolo borghesi si riempiono di ricettari etnici, non c’è massaia che non curi l’impiattamento del polpettone di seitan, i supermercati di quartiere traboccano di biologico, si agitano calici olezzanti di rosso d’annata nei bar della piazza di paese, tremebonde televisioni locali zoomano su dettagli di pietanze raffinatissime, cupi dietologi prescrivono alimenti dignitosamente “senza”, stracchi turisti si inerpicano per sinuosi itinerari eno-gastronomici. Ma il discorso sul cibo non interessa più nessuno: gli o…

L'invenzione del testo. Appunti per una ricerca

Divergenze parallele. La nozione di testo in Greimas e Lotman

Des chaînons manquants dans une sémiotique écologique: le cas des animaux

To approach the very delicate question of the relationship between semiotics and the discourse of ecology, we should first ask the question of the four levels of the research in signification, and then to apply them to ongoing research on animality and zoosemiotics. The goal will be to reconstruct the strong theoretical and epistemological differences among a little number of semioticians.

Politiche della cucina: una prospettiva semiotica

The title of the famous 2003 film by Tassos Boulmetis uses a hyponym in Italian (A touch of ginger), as it happens in Spanish (Un toque de canela). In English it was preferred to use a hypernym (A Touch of Spices). In Portuguese (O tempero da vida) the theme of spices disappears but the idea of essentiality remains, as a gustatory metaphor (salt is taste by definition), of the detail that makes the difference. The original Greek reads Πολìτικη Κουζìνα, an expression with a double semantic value, given that we can translate it either as The kitchen of the city (understood as Istanbul, the urban center that invests the heart of the story) or, better, as Political kitchen. This plethora of tit…

L'analisi semiotica

Toxic substances, semiotic forms. Toward a socio- and textual analysis of altered senses

Among the directions of contemporary Semiotic research, two should be considered of major importance. The first, in the field of cognitive studies, concerns the research on perception and sensorial faculties and in general the role of the body in building and transforming meaning. The second, in the field of cultural studies, considers Semiotics as a social science, based on what Saussure used to call “the study of the life of signs inside the social life”. These two different directions are apparently in contradiction. Body as well as perception, in fact, can not be considered “natural” or “universal”, in a phenomenological and anthropological perspective of language and meaning. A body is…

Sulla violenza: intelligenza narrativa e sfondamento del corpo

Addio alla Natura

Viviamo in un’epoca di disarmante naturalismo. Dovunque si volga l’attenzione – religione, ricerca scientifica, pensiero filosofico, divulgazione mediatica – è tutto un rincorrere un’improbabile base naturale, materiale, ontologica dei pensieri e delle azioni, delle emozioni e dei desideri, della società e della stessa differenza etnica. Al di sotto delle apparenti opposizioni fra universalismo e relativismo, creazionisti e darwiniani, cattolici e laici – tutti egualmente impegnati in nome di una naturalità senza alcun fondamento logico e antropologico – trapela la reale sfida del pensiero attuale: quello di un recupero delle basi sociali e antropologiche, intersoggettive e storiche del cor…

Rythmes alimentaires: du fast au slow

This article aims to show, with the instruments of semiotic analysis, that Slow Food is a perfect brand. On the one hand, this brand was born as opposed to another very strong brand, the world colossus of fast food McDonald’s. On the other hand, this opposition was not originally an offer of alternative products to McDonald's, but a proposal for new values: an abstract formulation of an alternative form of life. It is only in a second step, once the brand is established (thanks to its communicative supports), that it acquires a series of commercial offers: food, wines, places of catering, publishing, companies, territories whole, even slow-moving cities. Thus, by a semiotic gesture, Slow Fo…

Marcovaldo, lune et Gnac

Dalla porta, verso la libertà

There is a cat meowing at the door: it wants to go out for a walk. The owner of the office where that door is located gets very nervous: he spends his time opening and opening and closing it because the animal is constantly coming and going and he, who is in poor health, does not tolerate draughts. The cat would like the door always open. He always closed. Hence these constant meows, on the one hand, and these constant opening and closing, on the other hand, with the associated angry and collective shrieking. What a stress.

La natura della lingua, la lingua della natura

For some years now, an idea has been imposed: the nature/culture opposition needs to be rethought deeply. Both the notion of culture and that of nature have nothing universal and necessary, least of all their relationship. Philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists of science have thus begun to deconstruct the evidence that covers the concept of nature. Examining from a semiotic point of view some dictionary entries, this article tries to go in the same direction. It turns out that nature is cultural construction, and every culture forges it differently.

Passions animales

In this article, questions concerning the relationship between semiotics and ethology will be discussed, starting from the idea of internaturality circulating in contemporary culture. After outlining the principles of a zoosemiotic 2.0, a case of animism present in the current press will be analysed, which speaks of the passions of apes as typically human passions.

Marche sportive e modelli di corpo

Il discorso animale

For semiotics, the question of the talking animal is evidence but, in other ways, it is something unthought of, a theme that still needs to be worked on and discussed in view of new models of reflection and analysis. It is an evidence because talking animals are the norm in fairy tales, in legends, myths, fiction and so on: all material that, adequately analysed, has led to the theory of narrativity, where a non-human actor can play even very complex attitudinal roles. Even very complex ones. However, this is also something unthought of because, after all, narrative grammar, in its interplay between actors and actants, has in some way humanised animals, situating itself within an epistemolo…

La luce del Sud-Ovest: abbozzo di una'michevole analisi

La cuisine en pandémie

Le travail de Jean-Jacques Boutaud sur la sémiotique de l’alimentation est un point de repère fondamental, soit pour les études sur la gastronomie, soit pour celles sur la signification. L’ouvrage Le sens gourmand a tracé des parcours de recherche sur la commensalité, le goût et les aliments qui sont encore très débattus par les savants, comme un certain nombre d’essais sur des thèmes similaires que Jean-Jacques a publié tout au long de sa brillante carrière. Les modèles et les méthodes qu’il a proposés sont essentiels pour le sémioticien intéressé à reconstruire les structures mobiles du langage de la nourriture et, en ce qui me concerne, je les utilise abondamment dans mon travail.

Brand language. Methods and models of semiotic analysis

There are several reasons why scrutinizing brands from a semiotic point of view is mandatory. Some of them are technical, and relate to the fact that brands are above all pieces of communication; others pertain to a recent and pervasive cultural phenomenon whereby brands have migrated from marketing to everyday social life. A brand is a mark, a sign that, by producing various possible meanings, generates pragmatic effects on subjects and objects: it identifies, transforms and gives them value(s). A wide roster of social phenomena are rooted in brands as signs: communication strategies, production and reception of discourses, inter-subjective dynamics, changes in a collective imaginary, iden…

Senso e forma del cibo

Corpi sociali. Processi comunicativi e semiotica del testo

Oggi viene male questo celeste. Paolo Conte e il dilettantismo

The figure of the amateur is emerging on the contemporary semiosphere, both in terms of scientific research and in the artistic domain. In this paper we discuss this phenomenon from the textual analysis of a song by Paolo Conte. We thus deal with the relations of mutual inter semiotic translation between music and image by showing how, in Conte, a musical compo sition can, at the level of utterance, become the theory of a given pictorial making and, at the level of enunciation, be transposed into a drawing that predicates it by its own expressive and semantic means. But also how, in the reverse sense, a certain form of life of the amateur visual artist can be transposed into a precise devic…

Vivre à l’aéroport. Traductions intratextuelles dans The Terminal

Epiche della competenza: alleanze e conflitti in nome dell'expertise

The debate around competence and its enemies is more alive today than ever. Very heated, a little confused. Never before has the expert, the competent, the experienced connoisseur of men and things been in the spotlight of the news, the undisputed protagonist, but also the acclaimed antagonist, of the discourse of the media, and therefore, by transitive property, of the life of all of us, both social and individual. Never before has the expert been invoked to try to understand what is happening, what has happened, and above all what could happen to us.

Ecrire la cuisine

The aim of this article is to approach the cusine recipe from a strictly semiotic point of view by first explaining the relation between food and language and then submitting the speech of the recipe to an analysis that throws light on the mechanisms of its discursive functioning. This article aims also to instrcut in a profound way the question of the many relationships, both constitutive and hidden, between culinary practices and language. Particular attention will be paid to the question of the relationship between historical and oral cooking recipes as well as to the communicative pact established by the cooking recipe.

Structure/Structuralism

The first issue of Word, the Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York, published in April 1945 by Roman Jakobson and André Martinet, both exiles living in the USA, features one of the first articles by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1958) (L’analyse structurale en linguistique et en anthropologie) and the last essay by Ernst Cassirer (2002) (Structuralism in Modern Linguistics), who died a few weeks before its publi cation. This is the official birth of structuralism, a term seemingly coined by the author of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen in his posthumous essay with its testimonial quality.

"Questo non è un trattato". Forme e generi della manualistica semiotica

Marche, significati, valori. Cultura umanistica e cultura d'azienda

Testi di cucina e discorso programatore: questioni introduttive

Livelli di senso: dal gustoso al saporito

Le arti in cucina, girotondo in sala da pranzo

Il mito della vera storia. Giuliano secondo Ignazio Buttitta

Il mito del bandito Giuliano – esito e simbolo di una cultura mafiosa e di una prassi politica a essa funzionale – trae le sue origini, dunque, non tanto da una persona empirica o da un contesto economico concreto, quanto da quella che i pubblicitari chiamerebbero un’immagine o, se si vuole, da quella che i teorici della letteratura chiamerebbero una variabile intertestuale. In un modo come nell’altro è dunque al racconto di Giuliano che occorre guardare, per spiegare e comprendere con un unico sguardo teorico il senso storico del personaggio e l’enorme potenza fabulatrice che da esso è scaturita. The myth of the bandit Giuliano – the outcome and symbol of a mafia culture and of a political…

Montalbano, eroe fra i testi

Dieci tesi per uno studio semiotico della città. Appunti, osservazioni, proposte

Studiare la città, esaminarla, interpretarla, rappresentarla, parlarne è compito e desiderio di chiunque, da sempre, dovunque: dentro e fuori le mura accademiche e le cerchie letterarie, gli studios cinematografici e i gabinetti degli assessorati, le botteghe dei pittori e i brainstorming dei pubblicitari, le officine dei filosofi e i lettini degli psicanalisti. La città s’espande e si concentra in molti modi, passando dalle sue manifestazioni più empiriche e immediate a quelle più figurate e concettuali, finendo per significare tutto e il suo contrario: la cultura o la natura; l’ordine e il disordine; la civiltà o la barbarie; la ragione o l’affetto; le buone maniere o la perdita d’educazi…

Da Croce a Vico, vita come opera

This paper is dedicated to the investigation of a particular discursive genre, that of philosophical autobiography. Although the dialogue between philosophers is not only about the doctrine they propose, but also about the genres through which they decide to communicate that doctrine, the philosophical autobiography is usually regarded as having no doctrinal value. In this genre the enunciative scene is made explicit, so that the ‘I’ who thinks coincides with the ‘I’ who writes and, in some cases, also with the ‘I’ who lives. We will investigate the enunciation procedures and, above all, the relations between enunciation and enunciatee.

Tecnologie e valori dello sguardo. Occhiali e discorsività

What is that very special object in our daily lives that is a pair of spectacles all about? It accompanies us faithfully through every moment of the day, it crouches beside us when we do without, or it is stowed away in a bag, momentarily resting on a shelf. But it is always ready to come back and ride our noses and ears in order to perform its inalienable function to the best of its ability. Function? A notion as pernicious as it is indispensable when dealing with a sure design product such as spectacles. An unfortunate, polysemic, inflated term, problematised in a thousand ways; an intrusive and unwelcome guest, with whom one never ends up coming to terms. One sends him away and finds him…

Charlie Brown, piccolino di massa. Appunti per una ricerca

Repenser la nature en sémiotique

Nature is nowadays an absolute value: in politics, in tourism, in religion, in urban thinking, in design, in consumerism, in food, in the media. Just add the adjective 'natural' to anything from a city to a snack, from a fur to a washing machine, and condescensions and smiles, convictions and credit cards immediately spring up. We have a kind of brand, or meta-brand. This absolute value has even invaded, for obviously different purposes, the field of the human sciences, today more than ever the artisans of an empiricism that has lost all salutary problematicity. The human sciences are in fact increasingly in search of the so-called biological bases of so-called human nature, particularly se…

Semantica della natura: un campo dei miracoli

La competenza esperta. Tipologie e trasmissione

Today, the crisis of expertise coincides with the role that political and scientific decisions have assumed in tackling and solving enormous community problems: from environmental pollution to immigration, from vaccines to pandemics. On the one hand, there is an urgent need for the expertise of specialists, acquired by degrees, or the tacit, embedded knowledge of 'amateurs by profession', who intercede and translate between several areas of knowledge. On the other, this knowledge and skill is opposed, and everyone feels entitled to have their say. It is a paradox.

Cura del senso e critica sociale. Ricognizione della semiotica italiana

When a discipline starts looking back to write its own history, it is certainly in crisis. This is not the case for semiotics today in Italy, where it is in a moment of strong growth, both from the point of view of research trends and from the academic and cultural point of view. Notwithstanding the resistance (corporative? ideological? political?) to the development of the paradigm of studies on texts and socio-cultural models, Italian semiotics is experiencing euphoric intellectual growth: it has reaffirmed its programmes of action and passion, it has equipped itself with the appropriate instruments of investigation, it has passed trials and counter-trials, it has achieved many results: a…