Diagrams. Mathematics, Aesthetics, and Semiotics
Editors: Francesco La Mantia & Salvatore Tedesco
The concept of the “diagram” has long occupied a central position in fertile and numerous interdisciplinary debates (see Batt 2004; La Mantia & Dondero 2021; La Mantia, Alunni, & Zalamea 2023; Boi & Lobo 2023; Dahan-Gaida 2024). This special issue of Aesthetica-Preprint seeks to offer a critical and comparative overview of the term’s specialized usages, tracing its genesis and its specific significations across the principal discursive fields that engage with it.
This objective arises from precise theoretical motivations, chief among them being the palpable difficulty of synthesizing the operative uses of the term into a unified conceptual grammar (see Batt 2004). What, for instance, do certain mathematical or semiotic definitions of the “diagram” share with the philosophical meanings that have emerged in the work of thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault? Beyond the heterogeneity of its applications, a further layer of complexity resides in the pronounced technicality of many of its formulations. A notable example is found in a well-known passage from Chaosmosis, where Félix Guattari, drawing upon Charles Sanders Peirce, characterizes the diagram as an “autopoietic machine […] that […] unfolds regimes of alterity” (Guattari 1992: 68). Such a formulation, dense with technical notions like “machine” and “autopoiesis,” is far from an isolated case in the literature (see Desclés & La Mantia 2023). It confirms the hypothesis that the term “diagram” often harbors not a single, unified notion, but rather several interwoven ideas—variously stratified “clusters of concepts.”
Of particular interest, therefore, is the possibility of understanding the diagram as a genuine “tool for thinking”: not merely as an instrument confined to one or more specific disciplinary domains, but rather as something that precedes and, in a certain sense, transcends them. The diagram can thus be conceived simultaneously as a condition of possibility for a given exercise of thought and as its “material” referent.
In this capacity, the diagram mediates between abstraction and embodiment, between conceptual invention and sensible articulation.
Conceived as both a generative matrix and a material support, the diagram exemplifies a mode of thinking that is exploratory rather than deductive, and relational rather than classificatory.
To inaugurate a systematic reconnaissance of this topic, this issue therefore aims to bring into focus the semantic richness of the diagram by investigating its specific declensions within the following fields:
- Diagrams and Mathematics
- Diagrams and Semiotics
- Diagrams and Philosophy
- Diagrams and Visual Arts
- Diagrams and Literary Criticism
- Diagrams and Architecture
References
Batt Noëlle (éditeur)
2004 Penser par le diagramme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes,
Boi Luciano, Lobo Carlos
2023 When Form Becomes Substance, Berlin, Birkhäuser.
Dahan-Gaida Laurence
2024 L’art du diagramme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes
Desclés Jean-Pierre, La Mantia Francesco
2023 Strano Anello. Metamorfosi e Polisemia di un Diagramma. Postfazione di Salvatore Tedesco, Milano, Meltemi.
Guattari Félix
1992 Chaosmosis, Bloomingont, Indiana University Press.
La Mantia Francesco, Dondero Maria Giulia (editors)
2021 Diagrammatic Gestures, Metodo, 9, 1.
La Mantia Francesco, Charles Alunni, Fernando Zalamea (editors)
2023 Diagrams and Gestures. Mathematics, Philosophy, and Linguistics. Foreword by Brian Rotman, Cham, Springer
Vercellone Federico, Tedesco Salvatore, (editors)
2020 Glossary of Morphology, Cham, Springer.
deadline: january 6, 2028
Abstracts and full papers should be sent to the following email addresses: salvatore.tedesco@unipa.it