Troubling signs: On the aniconic, the asignifying, and art in planetary times

Abstract

I consider how Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of signs, particularly their conception of the ‘asignifying’, can prompt new understandings of ‘aniconic’ art. Usually analysed within the context of religious imagery, ‘aniconism’ is a term traditionally used to refer to artefacts, objects and images that withdraw from the conventions of resemblance, including iconic similarity to a thing represented. Today, aniconism demands to be thought of as a transhistorical and transcultural category that can offer a compelling tool for the decolonized thought of art in planetary times. Reading aniconism alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s theorization of the asignifying invites expanded ways of addressing pertinent questions of alterity and the non-representational at the intersections of contemporary art and material culture, world art history and the critical humanities, against a backdrop of intensifying interest in phenomena and objects that exceed or trouble anthropocentric coordinates of thought and perception.