Il sapere sotto nuove vesti. Il caso del fumetto

In this contribution we engage with aesthetic habits by insisting on the nexus between perception and cognition, in order to argue for a change in the traditionally “scriptist” modes of production and dissemination of academic knowledge. The text interweaves the perspectives of philosophy, semiotics, comics studies and linguistics and is divided into two parts: a more general and a more specific one. In the first part, we introduce the problem of “monomodalism”, which characterizes academic research habits that focus almost exclusively on the perceptual-cognitive affordances of the written word (§1); we then argue for a more hybrid and plural view of our habits of thought, one that is more inclusive with respect to media and subjectivities of visual thinking in particular (§2). In the second part, we take comics as one of the most interesting places to renew our aesthetic-conceptual habits, emphasizing its inherently mixed character, capable of harnessing the semantic and conceptual potential of words and images (§3), as well as the wealth of expressive resources it provides, in terms of organization, function and power (§4). Finally (§5), we claim that comics can and should be used for more than just storytelling and entertainment (graphic novel): we can also think and make arguments through them (graphic essay).