Filosofía del gesto:fenomenología del acto fotográfico, 1930-1950
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2021
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29-01-2021
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Abstract
This research is based on the semiotic-pragmatic analysis of the photographic gesture. Following this logic, the gestural process takes on central importance, criticizing the assumption that the image must have a dominant function in the photographic action. In this way, properties and categories that would otherwise be considered almost marginal are now seen as pivotal. For this reason, a grammar of the photographic gesture is constructed throughout the investigation in an attempt to formulate a common reading space to decipher it as a continuous and procedural action. The philosophical path is inspired by the theory of George H. Mead centered on gesture as a key social element in the construction of the Self and the Other: this relationship is fundamental for the collective realization which also finds its original principle in the relationship with the environment. The gesture, serving as a medium, becomes the starting point to focus on the emergency and relevance of the act as two founding properties for the establishment of a possible collective memory. The purely procedural determination of gesture theory, however, becomes evident through the semiotic and phenomenological analysis of the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. In particular, it is highlighted that the resumption of his semiotic investigation - in the intuitions on photography at the end of the seventies of the twentieth century, where the analysis of indexicality was central - was partial with respect to the complexity and generality of Peirce's theoretical direction. This category, within the original theorical background, is located between the icon and the symbol and has a non-static, but dynamic and continuous relationship with both of them. Accentuating this statute gives birth to a new reading of the entire Peircian logic and not only of a singular categorical aspect. Thus, a new centrality of the human side and of the relationship with the environment are the backdrop to semiotic-pragmaticist meanings such as habitat, experience, consideration of time and space, the relationship with the public. A particular study, which completes the previous assumptions, is dedicated to the theme of the meaning of the gesture. The latter experiential perspective is clarified through John Dewey's theory. Through the analysis of Dewey's theory, the aspect of instrumental experience is highlighted for an approach to photography that respects the pragmatic and phenomenological characteristics already found in Peirce. Another central aspect, within an analysis of photography in the period of the transition to modernity, is certainly represented by the approach to the technique and reproducibility of the image. For this section of investigation, some cultural parameters were first highlighted by focusing on adjacent themes between photography and painting and, subsequently, also divergent aspects between them. Following this speculative direction, once again, the semiotic and phenomenological approach helps in the belief that strengthening a strong relational continuity with the environment.