Studium/Punctum. The spectator’s enunciative shift

Abstract

Semiotics studied Barthes’ concepts of studium and punctum, but they still have not been integrated as tools of analysis in the semiotic methodology. Studium and punctum do not exclusively concern the code of photography, and do not arise only late along with the famous book Camera Lucida (1980), but depend on Barthes’s particular conception of the ways we read the world. Thus, it is relevant to understand how studium and punctum can be introduced into the theory of discourse, and if they can bring any development to the research on enunciation. The description of a photo by Vik Muniz from the Pictures of Magazine series (2011) will show how the spectator, as the instance of action in the processes of studium and punctum, has his turns of speech.