L’indice in Peirce: alcune riflessioni tra spazio ed enunciazione

Abstract

The paper aims to consider if and how Peirce's concept of index can be useful to a semiotic study of spaces, particularly to the definition of a spatial enunciation idea. After introducing the concept of index in his writings, we will confront it with two different theoretical fields, that both seem to have an unusual connection with it: the concept of enunciation and the semiotics of space. We will briefly examine the different semiotic theories of enunciation which all use some terms connected to the index (such as index, trace, mark), while the semiotics of space is often working on the semiotic nature, the possible meanings and the many uses of the traces of past events left around us. The possibility to link these three fields will allow us to understand how we can speak about a spatial enunciation, a process that appears to differ from the binary causal production of an index. In the conclusions, we will sketch a possible scale of indexicality aiming to order the complex and layered nature of space, composed by indexes, traces of the past and new structures, often mixed together.