Floch - Zilberberg: the wölfflinian controversy

Abstract

Among Jean-Marie Floch's many theoretical innovations, his rediscovery of Wölfflin marked a milestone in the history of semiotic theory; a rediscovery of a pre-structural structuralism accompanied by a considerable theoretical development in Floch's work, enabling the 'baroque vision', opposed to the 'classical vision', to be extended far beyond the field that gave rise to it, even beyond aesthetic universes, to enter into the field of contemporary social communication (media, technology, politics, etc.). However, Claude Zilberberg's proposals (notably in "Présence de Wölfflin", n. 23-24 of Nouveaux Actes Sémiotiques, 1992) have profoundly altered the theoretical perspective on the legacy of the famous art historian, and have led to a disagreement with Floch. By examining the status of the debate within the semiotic community, illustrated here by the unspoken differences between semioticians, we analyse these two "readings" of Wölfflin, their formal differences, their respective relationships with
the sensible, and their theoretical horizons -categorical on the one hand, tensive on
the other. We then highlight two points of divergence, concerning the status of affect and the problem of depth. We show the encroachments between the two approaches and their profound convergence. But above all, we suggest a possible way out of the controversy by analysing the classical/baroque distinction on a background of
perception and in terms of 'rhythm', i.e. as a variation in tension between the accentual events of a syntagmatic series. This brings into play the question of nuance, the non-resolution of accentual syntagms, and even discordance between accentual levels. This contribution to our knowledge of an essential phenomenon in the history of forms also raises the question of how to name it. Indeed, how can we name what constitutes, across so many language materials (non-verbal and verbal), so many fields of
communication, so many historical moments and contexts, an insistent weft within Western culture, at the very heart of its 'grammar of expression', of which the 'classical/baroque' opposition is basically only an exceptional, but local, emergence?