Federico Montanari

Morphogenesis and individuation

Part one: Rethinking Individuation and morphogenesis.- Part two: Morphologies, culture, and spaces.- Part three: Immanence in semiotics.

Navigating Maps of Memories

The main purpose of this essay is to present and discuss a hypothesis concerning the semiotic and cultural transformation of the ideas of ‘map’ and ‘mapping’. Today, in our society, maps work more like navigation logs than traditional charts. What does this mean and what does this new dimension of mapping mean? We will try to investigate these issues not only as a theoretical hypothesis, but also through the observation of a corpus of maps drawn by a group of young students coming from a homogeneous geographical area (North Eastern Italy). We will develop this analysis using semiotic and socio-ethno-semiotic tools, taking into account the possible influence that social media and technologies, such as mobile phones, other digital media and devices (like Google maps, etc.) might have had on the authors of maps and their mapping activities. Drawing on visual cultural anthropology, and ethnography, and particularly Oliver Sack’s work on memory, the first part of this study will be devoted to a definition of the ‘map’, and of ‘mapping activity’, with particular reference to their transformation from traditional mapping to digital and locative media. In this first part reference will be made to the main literature on this subject, from Cognition studies and their connections with recent Visual Studies, to sociological methodology and STS (Science and Technology Studies, in particular Bruno Latour’s works; see also Akrich (1992) and Akrich and Latour (1992)). Finally, in last part of this essay, some analysis of maps of places of origins drawn by students will be provided.

Immanence/Imminence. Thinking about Immanence and Individuation

The aim of this article is to compare the concept of Immanence, or rather, the definition of “plane of Immanence” as described and invented by Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari) with the concept of Individuation (in Simondon, but also within a long philosophical tradition from medieval philosophy to Leibniz, as discussed also by Deleuze, as it is well known). The article will also consider the possible consequences of this investigation on semiotic research regarding: (1) the building of meaning processes; and (2) possible connections with other areas of social and human sciences (such as the Theory of Systems).

Language, culture, vision: some ideas for a critical approach

This paper would like to explore the return of a new “culturalist approach” to language, particularly in relation to visual representation and the spatial dimension. First, we will present the concepts of vision and space as recently described by cognitive linguistics (eg Lakoff, Johnson, with the idea of “embodiment”, or Talmy). Secondly, we will investigate the links between this cognitive linguistic trend and the “culturalist” point of view, especially in its recent versions (for example, Palmer). Comparisons have been proposed with some models that come from the neuro-mathematics of perception and visual cognition (these investigations are linked to a return to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology; an influence that is also relevant inside cognitive linguistics). Finally we will try to highlight some possible convergence points of these studies.