Emilio Garroni and the political value of a semiotic approach: a critique of the notion of popularity (against Pasolini e Plebe)

Abstract

Emilio Garroni was one of the leading figures in Italian semiotics during the 1960s and 1970s. This article focuses on the political and cultural value that Garroni himself attributed to semiotic analysis, particularly in relation to artistic phenomena, and its connection to criticism of the concept of 'popularity'. According to Garroni, the re-proposal of the myth of effortless spontaneity and immediate, 'popular' and universal communication, devoid of codes and models — promoted more or less explicitly by Pasolini and Plebe in those years — favours a 'semiotic qualunquism' and, more generally, a naive (theoretically speaking) and regressive (politically speaking) cultural 'qualunquism', which hides behind anti-avant-garde rhetoric. In this sense, the semiotic approach to artistic phenomena constitutes a modern form of critical culture.