Fisiognomica del senso. Immagini Segni Discorsi

The proliferation of physiognomic theories and practical physiognomic primers in art criticism, semiotics and linguistics, aesthetics and visual studies represents a fundamental response to the epistemic crisis of humanities’ paradigm. How learn to see and read the phenomena in our sociological, political and cultural disorientation today? How the physiognomic modes of comprehension become a vital necessity-as in the ordinary verbal communication and everyday life human interaction illustrated by Erving Goffman? As Benjamin remarks, a competent behavior-as connoisseur in visual arts, or a detective in crime story, and so on by Carlo Ginzburg’s actors of so called evidential paradigm for the humanities-is really hard to be easily legitimate in the post-aura et post-medial specificity era; But physiognomic behavior still survives and he is very much operative in finding analogies and symptoms in spite of never having become explicit theory. Such a book like this may help us to break out of the fruitless opposition between semiotics and hermeneutic, seeing and reading, picture-still or moving, or living being- and text or verbal, expression and information, and so on. Essays by Federico Albano Leoni, Marina De Palo, Sara Fortuna, Lucz Cerchiai, Filippo Fimiani, Antonella Trotta, Silvana Turzio, Vincenzo Spisso, Alfonso Amendola, Maggie Cardelùs