Scheda Articolo

Fare presente. Per una semiotica dell’archivio

in Versus n. 116, Politiche della memoria. Uno sguardo semiotico, pp.129-148

Abstract (italiano)

The archive poses a real problem from a semiotic point of view. The historical document refers to a context of production and reception that has been lost. Repurposed today, it has to do with a new encyclopaedia (Eco 1984), different form the one usually used to understand it. This constitutes what’s usually called “intelligibility gap” (Bachimont 2009). The user of the archive probably has not the cultural referents of the past needed in order to interpret it. By analysing an example of a video repurposed on a web site, we will try to understand how to manage the relation between the present and the past. Managing an intelligibility question on the one side (how to give sense to a past document) and a philological one on the other (how to preserve an historical perspective on the past).