Emilio Garroni e il valore politico di un approccio semiotico: una critica della nozione di popolarità (contro Pasolini e Plebe)

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.