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Index

2024-06-10T15:42:03+00:00

Perception and visions of battle

2024-06-10T15:42:36+00:00

Since antiquity, war, and in particular its crucial event, battle, have also been considered a spectacle: memorial and celebratory, in memory of the blood cost to one’s history/identity; one’s valor; the pride of one’s lineage. Or an illustrative-educational spectacle useful to fix the crucial moments of a past or forthcoming battle, to illustrate historical, mythological and biblical episodes, to train in the art of war and prepare future fighters and keep their readiness and courage alive. Observing the spread of genre painting on this subject confirms this, helps us to distinguish the recurring traits of a crystallization of the event, distributed in recognizable elements, of its formal grammar progressively disengaged from the actual events of arms, and characterized by a strong character of decoration and ornamentation, however alienating this may appear to our sensibility. The occasion of this essay is also useful for a broader reflection on the concept of genre in painting, sub specie semiotics.

War as a Genre. A Look into Painting

2024-06-05T12:29:17+00:00

Since antiquity, war, and in particular its crucial event, battle, have also been considered a spectacle:
memorial and celebratory, in memory of the blood cost to one’s history/identity; one’s valor; the pride of one’s
lineage. Or an illustrative-educational spectacle useful to fix the crucial moments of a past or forthcoming battle,
to illustrate historical, mythological and biblical episodes, to train in the art of war and prepare future fighters and
keep their readiness and courage alive. Observing the spread of genre painting on this subject confirms this, helps
us to distinguish the recurring traits of a crystallization of the event, distributed in recognizable elements, of its
formal grammar progressively disengaged from the actual events of arms, and characterized by a strong character
of decoration and ornamentation, however alienating this may appear to our sensibility. The occasion of this essay
is also useful for a broader reflection on the concept of genre in painting, sub specie semiotics.

Meanings, Narratives, Passions of a Cinematic Figure

2024-06-05T12:29:17+00:00

The battle can be conceived as a quintessential cinematic figure. Like other objects that have had a
metonymic function for film art – the train, for example – the battle also seems to share many distinctive features
with the cinematic language, potentially becoming a real “theoretical object”. Through the analysis of Napoléon
(1927) by Abel Gance, Alexander Nevskij (1938) by Sergej Ejzenštejn and Dunkirk (2017) by Christopher Nolan, the
essay aims to show how the battle has been used as a specific opportunity to experiment with technical and formal
leaps in cinematic language geared to represent the significant dimension of the event with ever greater
effectiveness. Analysing the representations of the battle in films seems therefore a profitable way of reassessing the
history of cinema and rethinking its relationship with the system of arts and images of its time.

Formal Categories of Excess and Narcosis

2024-06-05T12:29:17+00:00

The article is concerned with researching how the representation of battle has changed in certain
examples of contemporary art, transferring to it characteristics of expression and signification, and thus of
effectiveness, similar to those produced by the formal instruments of Baroque painting, while at the same time
provoking, from a pathemic-perceptual point of view, through this over-stimulation, the effects of narcosis
proposed by Marshall McLuhan. Wölfflin’s formal categories describing the transition to the Baroque style
emphasise the characteristics of complexity, depth, spatial openness, pictorialism and luministic effects that are
well suited to the challenge posed by the theme of battle, already indicated by Leonardo as the main one for history
painting. The effect of perceptive and emotional excess aroused by the style and content is comparable to that of
shock with consequent narcosis of the sense involved, contributing to the work’s symbolic effectiveness through
somatic remodulation of the spectator.

Narrative Structure, Perceptual Stress and Meaning Effects in the Second Sequence of Saving Private Ryan

2024-06-05T12:29:17+00:00

The purpose of this article is to analyze the second sequence of Saving Private Ryan, unanimously considered a watershed and a benchmark of contemporary war cinema. Starting from a complete breakdown of this and other relevant sequences, it aims to show how the sequence has a very complex and articulated narrative structure. On the other hand, the analysis will also cover the perceptual aspects related to the viewing of the sequence, based on a theory of textual tensions and rhythms. The goal is to highlight how the narrative and perceptual levels, rather than being in competition, cooperate in the creation of the textual effect, sometimes in a complementary manner, sometimes by reinforcing each other. In the specific case of the analyzed sequence, this interaction ensures that the physical stress due to the perceptual experience generates meaning effects that are transmitted to other levels (figurative, narrative) of the text.

The Space of Care in Times of Pandemic Emergency

2024-06-05T12:29:18+00:00

During the most serious phases of the pandemic emergency, a new narrative emerged, drawing parallels with a state of war. This narrative has spread awareness in everyone, that reside in a war situation characterized by an invisible enemy to fight, an unknown virus invading the human body. The focus of my study will be on corporeality, both individual and social, in a space reminiscent of war action, the space dedicated to medical care. This proposal aims to demonstrate changes on how different proxemics caused by somatic limitation, conditions the process of care and thus the interaction between the doctor and the patient. The cases of analysis will be both the reports of experiences of doctors and nurses, who worked during the peak contagion period, and a corpus of photographs distributed online, effective in reporting different ways of magnifying the pandemic battle.

Against the Invisible Viral Enemy

2024-06-05T12:29:18+00:00

This article studies the discursivisation of the struggle of healthcare workers against the coronavirus, with a focus on those textual constructions that were shaped by the metaphor of war and, specifically, that depict moments of battle. For this purpose, we use inputs from socio-discursive semiotics of a structuralist matrix to study a set of visual texts in which a discursive figurativisation shaped by these contents appears. In addition, as a point for comparison, the article proposes other forms that this figurativisation could have taken, such as games and sporting competitions.

Description of Fan and Ultras Practices

2024-06-05T12:29:18+00:00

The aim of the paper is to explore the complex interplay between warfare and football, particularly through the lens of football fandom and ultras culture. The pourpose is to uncover the continuities and
discontinuities between these two seemingly disparate worlds, suggesting that the dynamics of support in football, both in its more peaceful aspects and in its confrontational dimensions, can be understood within a framework that parallels the logic of warfare. The paper draws on ethnographic textual elements to explore this comparison further, positioning the stadium as a battleground where performances of identity, honour and territorial allegiance unfold in a symbolic struggle. The analysis goes beyond the mere physicality of matches to explore the symbolic warfare that fans engage in, representing their communities and ideologies in a space that transcends the physical confines of the football stadium. This exploration sheds light on the ritualistic, performative aspects of football fandom, where the stadium becomes a stage for the enactment of social, cultural and even political struggles, highlighting football’s deep rootedness in the fabric of social identity and conflict.

The Figure of the ‘Mexican Impasse’ as Micro-representation

2024-06-05T12:29:18+00:00

This paper discusses the utilisation of Mexican standoff in cinema to represent a battle at a reduced scale. We will use narrative semiotics to determine the importance of the Mexican standoff in the development of action in the narrative program. Studying the spatial dimension, we will try to understand how the battlefield within the Mexican standoff defines itself in opposition to the notion of territory. Furthermore, we will see the impact the change of scale has on the strategies and how the notions of interactions and strategies help us analyse the negotiation to resolve the problem of status quo. For this purpose, we will analyse the cinematographic representation of the sensorial dimension of the battle by the subject.

Socio-semiotic Analysis of a Bauhaus Chessboard

2024-06-05T12:29:18+00:00

This article explores the intricate relationship between the Bauhaus and the social values in which it is placed. Operating as a public school in Weimar Republic Germany, the Bauhaus faced the challenge of navigating the escalating rhetoric of conflict at the time. We aim to illustrate how the Bauhaus strategically positioned itself in a belligerent discursive political context through the expression of certain educational values. Focusing on Bauhaus’ strategy for aggressive discourses, the article analyses an intriguing example: Josef Hartwig’s iconic chessboard. Through configurational, taxic, and functional analyses, the article reveals the layers of meaning embedded in Hartwig’s chessboard and shows a transformative narrative. The chessboard, traditionally associated with conflict, becomes, with Hartwig, an educational device. A shift from destruction to construction, reflecting the entire Bauhaus ethos.

‘Behind the Back of Visible History’. Understanding, Explaining and Narrating Lepanto

2024-06-05T12:29:19+00:00

This article aims to examine the significance that an event such as battle can assume within historical discourse, focusing in particular on the relationship between historical structures and events. Analyzing a case of historical disclosure of the battle of Lepanto, we propose to verify the hypothesis that the explanation of an event depends on the different deep dimensions of history, that it is the task of the historian to rebuild and from which the ideological presuppositions of the historian can be deduced. In this way, in the analyzed text a frontier is drawn between a superficial explanation and a thorough one. Analyzing, then, the enunciative strategies used in this text, we will finally focus on possible strategies of historical dissemination, and on how certain needs of divulgation guide the construction of the historical fact.

The Trial at the Front: the Eye and the Flesh

2024-06-05T12:29:19+00:00

Fabrice, the hero of Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme, and Ferdinand, the narrator of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Guerre, bear witness to battle in the immediate proximity of the body: on one side, the wandering eye, on the other, the suffering flesh. They tell two distinct versions of Victor Hugo’s “Quid obscurum des batailles” in Les Misérables, that “obscure interval”. To paint a battle,” writes Hugo “you need powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes”, because “no narrator, however conscientious, can absolutely fix the shape of this horrible cloud called a battle”. Yet two narrators fix this moving shape, one in cognitive disorder, the other in the chaos of the wound. We seek to draw from these extreme figurative positions the semiotic lesson of hypotyposis: the preliminary condition of the battle as seen from the body, the condition for a renewal of the concept of figurativity with the support of the semiotics of enunciating instances (Coquet). The battle narrative becomes a real laboratory for the relationship between phusis and logos. It raises new issues for semiotics, because here, in a universe that is at the limit of language, the problem of “representation” to be integrated into the theory of meaning arises.

Loudun. The Body as a Field of War

2024-06-05T12:29:19+00:00

The article proposes a semiotic reading of a historical event: the (alleged) demonic possession of a group of nuns in the convent of Loudun, in France, between 1632 and 1638. Possession emblematizes one of the most radical forms, in our culture, of confrontation with the Other, and of the battle undertaken (by exorcists, doctors, politicians) to get over it. The battle against possession can be defined as a properly “semiotic” battle since it is based on a work of interpretation of the “language” of the Other, of the semiotic systems through which it expresses itself and through which it reveals itself, and on a work of symbolic production aimed at developing formulas, words, images capable of “hurting” him and making him retreat.he battlefield of this symbolic struggle, in Loudun, is the body of the possessed, which from the imposition of an absence (as religious and as women) becomes the focal center of social attention and of female awareness itself: ostentatious, observed, beaten, desired, is the body that the conflicting factions try to appropriate. The “case” is studied starting from the treatment of the events that has been proposed by historians (Michelet), scholars of mysticism (De Certeau), novelists (Dumas, Huxley, in particular), film directors (Russell, Kawalerowicz), each of whom offers particular perspectives on this battle.

‘Did I really see it, a battle?’

2024-06-05T12:29:19+00:00

The Waterloo episode in Stendhal’s La chartreuse de Parme seems to present all those traits that we might trace to a general model of the functioning of reason and passion in wartime. Indeed, the approach to the battlefield of the protagonist Fabrizio del Dongo corresponds to his progressive breakdown as a subject on the sensory, passionate, cognitive, and pragmatic levels. The paper analyzes two excerpts from the book by exploring the notions of sensoriality and figurativeness underlying the construction and prehension of meaning.

Narrative Fates of Frankenhausen, 1525

2024-06-05T12:29:19+00:00

The article discusses the Battle of Frankenhausen, 1525, which has been the subject of various artistic and literary transfigurations over the centuries. In particular, after briefly reconstructing the conflict between the interpretations of historians, the essay analyses a single literary account of the battle, from Luther Blissett’s novel Q. From here, it moves on to some general considerations on the battle, always disputed between two perspectives: a general one, which makes it a “procedural event” within the manoeuvres of war; and a particular one, which restores its character of a tangible and “instantaneous” event. As Blissett’s work shows us, in these times we need to look at conflicts from a particular perspective, from the inside, to discover the real face of battles, thus gaining the ability to understand how the world fights.

The Sacred Battle. An Iconographic Theme in Search of Its Own Figurality

2024-06-05T12:29:20+00:00

Images from a Seminar: a Dialogue with Francesco Marsciani

2024-06-05T12:29:20+00:00

Giuditta Bassano, "La balestra di Pierre. Diritto, significazione, cultura", Palermo, Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2022, (pp. 296) e Verso. Strutture semiotiche della destinazione, Roma, Studium, 2023, (pp. 211)

2024-06-10T08:28:39+00:00

Gianluca Burgio, "Della porta. Indagine su un oggetto ordinario", Milano, Meltemi, 2023 (pp. 140)

2024-06-10T08:28:59+00:00

Carlo Campailla, Gianfranco Marrone, Ilaria Ventura Bordenca, a cura, "Semiotica elementale. Materia e materiali", Palermo, Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2023 (pp. 220)

2024-06-10T08:28:08+00:00

Ruggero Eugeni, a cura, "Il primo libro di teoria dei media", Torino, Einaudi, 2023 (pp. 312)

2024-06-10T08:29:21+00:00

Jean-Marie Floch, "Tintin in Tibet. Un esercizio di semiotica del fumetto", traduzione a cura di L. Virgolin, Milano, Meltemi, 2023 (pp. 247)

2024-06-10T08:29:42+00:00

Marshall Sahlins, "Nonostante Tucidide. La storia come cultura, Milano", Eléuthera, 2023 (pp. 423)

2024-06-10T08:30:34+00:00