Giorgio Borrelli

Partendo da alcune categorie fondamentali delle teoria marxiana, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi ha delineato un’analisi semiotica della riproduzione sociale. In particolare, Rossi-Landi ha proposto di considerare i modi di produzione e le ideologie come “sistemi segnici”. Questa ipotesi consente di interpretare in chiave semiotica un’altra fondamentale categoria di Marx: la posizione di scopo. In questo articolo mostrerò come, nonostante alcune sovrapposizioni categoriali, Rossi-Landi sia riuscito a delineare un modello teorico coerente. Starting from certain fundamental Marxian categories, Ferruccio Rossi- Landi outlined a semiotic analysis of social reproduction. More specifically, Rossi-Landi maintained that modes of production and ideologies can be considered as “sign systems”. This hypothesis allows to read another fundamental Marxian category under a semiotic lens: i.e. the goal-setting. In this paper, I will try to illustrate how Rossi-Landi developed a coherent theoretical model, notwithstanding certain categorical overlaps.

ABSTRACTEven if a coherent Marxian theory of language does not exist, it is well known that Marx refers to the concepts of language and sign in several passages of his writings. The Italian scholar Ferruccio Rossi-Landi framed Marx's outlines into a semiotic perspective. This theoretical proposal had two purposes: on the one hand, Rossi-Landi tried to demonstrate how certain analytical instruments developed by the Marxian critique of political economy can contribute to a better understanding of semiotic processes. On the other hand, he attempted to illustrate how a semiotic methodology was present at an early stage in certain fundamental parts of Marxian theory, i.e. in the analysis of ideologies, of the commodity-form, and in the critique of political economy. In this paper, I would like to illustrate how Rossi-Landi's materialistic semiotics shares certain fundamental categories and research fields with Critical Discourse Analysis, especially in the version structured by Norman Fairclough. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these elements of convergence, I believe that the two approaches present fundamental divergences, deriving – among other things – from a different interpretation of the role of language and discourse in Marx's economic works.

In this paper, I will try to establish a parallel between Charles S. Peirce’s and Ernst Bloch’s theory of categories. Both the authors hypothesise a phenomenological foundation for their theory of categories: categories are elements of Experience and products of Praxis. Nevertheless, Bloch’s phenomenology is characterised by a peculiar aspect: according to Bloch, the gestural dimension plays a fundamental role in the Knowledge Process, positing the category of ‘Possibility’. In line with Maddalena’s analyses on the relation between ‘Complete Gesture’ and ‘Work’, I will try to illustrate that the parallel between Bloch and Peirce can be extended, by including the semiotic dimension of gesture.