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This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: – how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the Soviet Union in the 1930s–50s? – what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of sign? We will propose here an apparently narrow angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a ”theory of hieroglyphics” (or symbols), therefore a type of bourgeois idealist theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about E. Mach, and which was upheld for a time by Plekhanov. But thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century about the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–50s seems entirely to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

In his On the Art of Building, Renaissance humanist Leon Battista Alberti wrote that the ancient Egyptians believed that alphabetical languages would one day all be lost, but the pictorial method of writing they used could be understood easily by intellectuals everywhere and far into the future. Amidst a renewed appreciation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics found on obelisks in Italy and the discovery of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, which purported to translate the language, Renaissance humanists like Alberti developed an obsession with this ancient form of non-alphabetical writing. Additionally, a growing awareness of the lost language of their Etruscan ancestors further ignited an anxiety among Italian humanists that their own ideas might one day become unintelligible. As Egyptomania spread through the Italian peninsula, some saw an answer to their fears in the pictorial hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians, for they perceived, in Egyptian writing, the potential for a universal language. Thus, many created Renaissance hieroglyphs based on those of the Egyptians. This essay examines the successes and failures of these neo-hieroglyphs, which early modern humanists and artists created hoping that a language divorced from alphabetical text might better convey the memory of their names and contributions to posterity.

While Egyptology, as an academic field, is celebrating its bi-centenary together with that of the deciphering of hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion, it may be useful (although several syntheses already exist on parts of this subject) to propose a large panorama of how images produced by the pharaonic society have been studied by researchers for the past two centuries, and the different historiographic trends the field has seen. The relations between texts and images do, of course, make up a large part of this synthetic article, but it is also our wish to allude to more recent and less well-known avenues, especially that of the ontology of images (which has the potential to renew considerably the debate about whether or not Egyptian art is “realistic”) and that ofhe rediscovered importance of materiality in our understanding of the graphic productions of Dynastic Egypt.

The metropolis, modernity, and the capitalist economy are inseparable, and it is not possible to investigate each one in isolation. Dominated by of modernity, power and hegemony of capitalism, the metropolis has turned into an encoded space of content and meaning, with its own mysterious language, continuous influences the residents’ self-awareness. It produces a metropolitan typology in accordance with the existing urgency and complexity, and generated increasingly alienated people. It has caused a discontinuous and disintegrated experience of time and space that disrupts processes of forming image and memory of the city. From the left’s point of view, knowing the reality of cities depends on deciphering these meaningful images that require cognitive methods beyond positivist methods. To understand the metropolis is – to some extent – to understand our present age. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself. What we see on the surface, so any Marxist-inspired cultural theorist would argue, is the product of deeper underlying forces, and in order to understand these forces we need to interpret the surface level. From this point of view, reading what has never been written by re-reading the experience and understanding the image of the city can be useful in showing the neglected realities caused by the metropolis, modernity and capitalist economy. Assuming the city as a text for explaining the hieroglyphs of the modern metropolis of Tehran in representing the mysterious language of the city, quantitative and qualitative content analysis method was used in this research. For a concrete study of informal story and understanding the received messages through taxi drivers’ mindscape, and image readout was carried out. Analysing the informal stories shows that there is not any integrated policy for a purposeful representation of Tehran or there is no right tool for this purpose. According to the findings, we can claim that the language of the modern Tehran metropolis under the effect of Modernity paradigm and Capitalism is so discontinuous and disintegrated that it deteriorates any formation of memory.

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the USSR in the 1930s–1950s; and, what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of signs? We propose the following angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a “theory of hieroglyphics”, therefore a type of “bourgeois idealist” theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about Ernst Mach. Yet thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century and concerning the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–1950s seems to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/ thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

The metropolis is more than a collection of transport networks, buildings, parks, rivers and so on. It is an amalgam of cultural products imbued with content and implications, which is well beyond recognition by strictly positivistic views. A deep understanding of the modern metropolis and the roots of its social realities would require deciphering its hieroglyphics. What we see on the surface is the product of deeper underlying forces, and in order to understand these forces we need to explore these deeper levels. The task of any theorist intent on analysing the metropolis is to act like a detective, interrogating these traces and diving into their secrets. Beyond the positivistic methods, there are two alternative models of knowing the metropolis: reading and experiencing. This involves semiological and phenomenological methods. The metropolis as text can be read, meaning of its forms deciphered and its meaning understood: a problematic reading self-confessing of its multiple meanings. The city should be perceived by ontological potentials of human experience. Any city should always remain recipient of various interpretations of it, with meanings remaining multiple and contentious. In order to better understand the city one should not only keep the multiplicity of the ways in which we read the metropolis, but so too the ways in which any social class experience it. We should be aware of the impossibility of an all-encompassing picture of the reality of urban life, because the city fundamentally lacks such representation capacity.

Emblems were commonplace in the 16th and 17th centuries. They comprise allegorical engravings and poetic comments, and signify through the particular interaction of both. Widely different types, modes of composition, and aims coexisted however, and the genre therefore still resists systematisation. Even so, George Wither’s emblem book is a unique experiment in emblematic discourse, as the author testifies to its rapidly changing epistemological foundation and makes it subservient to a multi-layered rhetorical purpose by appending to his emblems a remarkable and almost unique feature: a lottery game. By examining these elements, we shall seek to demonstrate that Wither’s work epitomises the state of the emblem in the early seventeenth century, but also transcends and reimagines the genre as a new, interactive, and playful reading experience.

This article deals with Samuel Beckett’s first essay “Dante… Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” which was published in the avant-garde magazine transition in 1929 at a time when modernism was itself becoming tradition. If Beckett’s critical writing praises one of the modernist champions, James Joyce, it also feeds on other arts, such as cinema and its relation to ideographic writing, as well as on more questionable sources such as the science of the occult. By so doing, Beckett goes against the established avant-garde, whether they are they are writers or critics. I argue that Beckett borrows from the writings of Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno to shape his own literary principle, that of “identified contraries,” proposing a formula without imposing a programme. This propels him to the heart of three modernist principles: “historical modernism”, “hieroglyphic modernism” and “alchemical modernism.” This article means to explore them in the light of Beckett’s essay.