On Aniconicity

Why has semiotics focused more on iconicity and resemblance than on aniconicity and dissemblance? Can a semiotic theory of how signs, and in particular icons, turn into non-signs, be formulated? Taking as theoretical point of departure Peirce’s triadic conception of signs as consisting in the relation between a representamen and an object through an interpretant, the article explores the evanescence of iconicity and resemblance through several examples of aniconicity and dissemblance: a son who cannot recognize his own father’s picture because it is too old; a writer who cannot recognize his own city because it was turned into rubble by aerial bombing; a cubist painter who distorts the pictorial icon of an object so that viewers cannot recognize it; etc. Through these and more examples, the paper points out that semiotics should develop not only a cultural theory of how signs are created, but also a cultural theory of how they are dissolved.