Call for Papers
Call for papers
E|C n. 47, 2026
Forms of Contemporary Criticism.
Actors, Functions, and Spaces
edited by Martina Federico (University eCampus) e Francesco Mangiapane (Università di Palermo)
This issue examines the modalities in which contemporary criticism currently operates. It aims to elucidate its structural transformations, from the proliferation of sites of enunciation to the diversification of the textual forms it has progressively assumed. Together, these developments contribute to a reconfiguration of the genres and boundaries of paratextuality (Genette 1987), understood as the circulation of discourses surrounding a work.
The need for such an investigation appears unavoidable considering the profound transformations the field has undergone. From its traditional domains – literature, cinema, painting, music, theater, cuisine, tourism – criticism as a textual genre now opens up to a growing multiplicity of new fields where everything seems to lend itself to evaluation and – far more significantly – by anyone (see the well-known polemic on the “stupidity” of the web, sparked by a statement by Eco as summarized in Mangiapane 2015).
The explosion of Web 2.0 has, in fact, dimantled the barriers that publishing institutions linked to the world of traditional media (print, television) had erected to manage the dissemination of knowledge. This has had enormous consequences for the practice of critical discourse, plunging into crisis first and foremost the very role of the “intellectual,” as it had been defined at least since the time of the Dreyfus Affair. From a position of institutional authority, the intellectual interpreted the present and anticipated the future by means of their ability to recognize patterns and recurrences invisible at first glance (see Sedda 2025), to help shape public opinion as well as the organization of knowledge.
Today, things are different. The general feeling is that we are living in an age of commentary, and that such an infrastructural framework has ended up “democratizing” the exercise of criticism to the point of making us all intellectuals (see Marrone 2017), issuing judgments on every aspect of daily life.
Social networks certainly play a crucial role in this regard. Today, in fact, the logic of the network prevails, with its forms of agency (“the people of the web,” influencers, communities), distribution (the infamous “Algorithm,” virality), and remuneration (likes, engagement, reputation), predominantly oriented toward a sort of bottom-up validation of judgment regarding art and the arts of living. The very figure of the critic is sometimes validated in its authority even just by the number of followers.
Within this same landscape, an equally pivotal role is played by those platforms that have revolutionized the food and hospitality markets and have emerged as the cornerstones and catalysts of the so-called “sharing economy”, notably Airbnb and TripAdvisor (Ventura Bordenca 2022). These platforms connect users and providers and shape a more equal relationship, in which roles can be easily exchanged. This dynamic fosters a kind of metacognitive awareness: as a provider, I offer what I would expect as a user, and vice versa. Websites or apps that have made reviews their core, as well as a double-edged sword: at once a form of tyranny and a form of social control. Portals with a pre-structured evaluation system that dictate from within the parameters through which the judgment – and ultimately the experience itself (Eugeni 2010) – must be “conceived,” and that guide users toward forming a specific taste (an aesthetic competence regarding daily life), thereby determining the rules of sociality and living together (Peverini, Pezzini, Polidoro, eds., 2025).
We are witnessing dynamics often underpinned by the logic of algorithms or virality, which affect the circulation and visibility of content on the web in ways that are not entirely transparent, decisively influencing the choices of users who are not necessarily aware of this. In some cases, this involves textuality directly driven by the quintessential collective actor of our times, namely artificial intelligence, which produces an averaged response based on what the user wants to hear. This new actor meets their needs, configuring an object of desire shaped in the image and likeness of the user (Federico 2024). It disintegrates and reassembles itself depending on its interlocutor (Eco 1962): it is the product, as semiologists have always known (see Marrone 2007), that constructs the target, and not the other way around.
On the other hand, even the more traditional forms of criticism – literary and film criticism, above all – have undergone a realignment in the wake of the upheaval brought about by this new trend. Similarly, we have witnessed the emergence of critical experiments via Telegram, led by new literary or film critics with their own, highly followed YouTube channels (such as Fulvio Abbate’s TeleDurruti, or the late Federico Frusciante, who passed away at a very young age), where the body itself comes to the fore through acting, mimicry, prosody, intonation, and tone, and, finally, by using a syncretic language that often draws on satirical and ironic registers. We have nonetheless witnessed the proliferation of countless online critical journals that have complemented and often supplanted their print counterparts, thanks in part to the ability to accompany their pieces with audiovisual material (on the video essay, see Dusi and Spaziante, 2018). How do these new configurations engage with the old criticism that, in the mid-1970s, Francesco Casetti (1975) – focusing on cinema – defined in plural terms (“text,” “ensemble,” “norm,” “instance”)?
Almost forty years after the first original edition of a seminal work such as Seuils (Genette 1987), what tools can semiotics mobilize today as a methodology of textual and sociocultural analysis to investigate the forms of contemporary paratextuality (Federico 2017), especially when understood as operating in novel ways amid the proliferation of spaces dedicated to this (Montani, Pezzini 2024)? At this crossroads of media transformations, artificial intelligence, marketing, etc., the semiotic approach aims to investigate the cross-cutting field of action of criticism as a discursive genre in its various manifestations, seeking to gather contributions that explore these directions and account for its evolutions – including in a historical sense – without forgetting that much of semiotic activity takes place or has taken place through the practice of criticism in newspapers and magazines; one need only think of scholars such as Barthes, Eco, Fabbri, Calabrese (whose critical essays have recently been published in a collection, 2024), and the fact that seminal texts such as Apocalypse Postponed (Eco 1964), on the one hand, and Mythologies (Barthes 1957), on the other, are essentially texts of social criticism tout court.
Possible areas of research
1. Forms of life: subjectivity, authorship, delegation, forms of hybridization
This section ideally accommodates essays that investigate the forms of life emerging from the relationships surrounding the texts of contemporary criticism. In particular, attention is focused on the way in which new and old thematic roles already recognized in the media landscape – influencers, bloggers, professional critics, YouTubers, TikTokers (Marino, Surace, eds., 2023) – and their respective competencies – interact with figures of reception, as well as on the inquiry prompted by the hybrid textualities of artificial intelligence, which nonetheless possess their own distinct characteristics.
2. Circular, Genetic and Intermedial Dynamics
When criticism is understood as an intermediary between product and audience, the dynamics set in motion – for example by recommendation systems (Federico 2025; Santangelo, Botta, Ferraro 2021 – become central, as these systems intervene in structuring practices of access, orientation and valorization of content (Re 2026), following constantly shifting flows between intermedial and genetic ‘fandom’ logics (Dusi, Eugeni 2025; Dusi, Grignaffini 2021).
3. Functions (advertising vs. criticism)
If we consider the functions of criticism, it might prove useful to investigate the positioning of new forms of criticism from a comparative perspective with respect to other rhetorical forms, focusing in particular on the distinction between propaganda or promotion and review writing, and on their relationships, oppositions, and hybridizations (Perullo 2019).
4. Boundaries between criticism and semiotics, analysis and synthesis
What are the boundaries between semiotics and criticism in terms of the accuracy of an analytical framework? While texts of great depth and analytical precision, such as S/Z (Barthes 1970) or Maupassant (Greimas 1976), analyze a narrative in depth and indirectly engage in criticism, the review operates by mobilizing disciplinary critical tools without the depth, precision, and accuracy of analysis. What, then, is the distinction between semiotic analysis and critical activity (see Mangiapane 2022, 2024)? Here, artificial intelligence still plays a distinct role, if understood as an analytical tool useful for reflecting on texts through deconstruction practices, for example, by reshaping the prompt (Burgio, Manchia 2024).
Bibliographic References
Barthes R., 1970, S/Z, Paris, Seuil; eng. trans. S/Z, Maldem, Blackwell Publishing 1974.
Barthes, R., 1957, Mythologies, Paris, Seuil; eng. trans. Mythologies, New York, The Noonday Press 1972.
Burgio, V., Manchia, V., a cura, 2024, “Interfacce. Forme dell’accesso e dispositivi dell’intermediazione”, in Carte Semiotiche. Rivista internazionale di semiotica e teoria dell’immagine.
Calabrese, O., 2024, Ladri di virgolette. Interventi 1978 – 2007, Palermo, Museo Pasqualino.
Casetti, F., 1975, “Per una definizione di critica cinematografica”, in Ikon. Cinéma, Télévision, Communication and Social Communities, HCII, Brill, Leiden.
Dusi, N, Eugeni, R., a cura, 2025, Il meme della rosa. Riletture e trasposizioni del nome della rosa, Milano, La nave di Teseo.
Dusi, N., Grignaffini, G., 2020, Capire le serie tv. Generi, Stili, Pratiche, Roma, Carocci.
Dusi, N., Spaziante, L., 2018, “Editing is anything: pratiche di video essays tra semiotica ed estetica”, in Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti, 13.
Eco, U., 1962, Opera aperta, Milano, Bompiani; eng. trans. The Open Work, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Eco, U., 1964, Apocalittici e integrati, Milano, Bompiani; eng. trans. Apocalypse Posponed, Bloomington : Indiana University Press 1994.
Eugeni, R., 2010, Semiotica dei media, le forme dell’esperienza, Roma, Carocci.
Federico, M., 2017, Trailer e film. Strategie di seduzione cinematografica nel dialogo tra i due testi, Milano-Udine, Mimesis.
Federico, M., 2025, “Errore di raccomandazione. Densità del testo e ampliamento del senso: percorsi di visione all’epoca degli algoritmi”, in C. Bianchi, M. Boero e R. Ragonese, a cura, 2025, Nuove forme di testualità nella comunicazione pubblicitaria. Discorsi, pratiche e narrazioni, Ocula. Semiotic Eye on media,33
Ferraro, G., Santangelo, A., Botta, A., 2021, “Il significato di un suggerimento di visione. Riflessioni semiotiche sul sistema di raccomandazione di Netflix”, in DigitCult, 6, pp. 37-50.
Genette, G., 1987, Seuils, Paris, Seuil.
Greimas, A.J., 1976, Maupassant. La sémiotique du texte : exercises pratiques, Paris, Seuil; eng. trans. Maupassant. The Semiotics of the Text, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamin Publishing Company 1988.
Mangiapane, F., 2015, “Eco e gli imbecilli”, in Doppiozero, 26 giugno.
Mangiapane, F., 2022, “On Peppa Pig’s Method”, in Metodo e testualità. Costruzioni analitiche e modi di fare, E/C, n. 34.
Mangiapane, F., 2024, “Presentazione – Il potere inafferrabile del desiderio”, in O. Calabrese, 2024.
Marino, G., Surace, B., a cura, 2023, Tik Tok. Capire le dinamiche della comunicazione ipersocial, Milano, Hoepli.
Marrone, G., 2007, Il discorso di marca, Laterza, Roma-Bari.
Marrone, G., 2017, “Social media e comunione fàtica: verso una tipologia delle pratiche in rete”, in Versus, 125(2), 249-272.
Montani, P., Pezzini, I., a cura, 2024, Scrittura estesa. Versus, 138(1).
Perullo, N., 2019, Del giudicar veloce e vacuo. Metacritica della critica gastronomica, Roma, Edizioni estemporanee.
Peverini, P., Pezzini, I., Polidoro, P., a cura, 2025, Come vivere insieme. Semiotica dei collettivi, Milano-Udine, Mimesis.
Re, V., 2026, Che cos’è Netflix, Roma, Carocci.
Sedda, F., 2025, L’imprevedibile accade, Milano, Bompiani.
Ventura Bordenca, I., 2022. “Raccontare lo street food in viaggio: critica del giudizio turistico”, in E|C n. 36, pp. 97-110.
Deadline for submission of abstracts (max 2000 characters): 15 June 2026
Acceptance of abstracts: 25 June 2026
Deadline for submission of final essays: 5 September 2026
Publication: November 2026
Papers should have a maximum length of 40000 characters and may be submitted together with an abstract in English of a maximum of 1000 characters.
Send proposals to:
martina.federico@uniecampus.it
francesco.mangiapane@unipa.it
