(Des)Aventuras do Índice nas Teorias da Fotografia

Abstract

The article explores some aspects of the incorporation of the semiotic category of “index” in classic theories of photography, especially in the way within which its application hurts the orthodoxy of its adoption, in the philosophical system originated in Charles S. Peirce’s writings: reduced to modes of signification implying a strictly factual contiguity between signs and objects, this incorporation of indexicality to photography resulted in a kind of conceptual alibi to establish its exclusivity in the context of a “family of images”. In response, we intend to restore the question of indexicality to a more extensive reach of semiotic categories in Peirce, as well as to principles regulating the dependence of indexical signs to other categories, in the logical system of Peirce’s semiotics - while examining the ways in which it could impact on the application of the índex to theories of photography.