Histoire des formes entre diachronie et archéologie

This paper argues that diachrony is not an optional “add-on” to semiotic theory but a heuristic lens that forces us to rethink what a system is, because temporal change implies systemic reconfiguration and even shifts in pertinence rather than simple local substitutions.  Starting from Saussure’s cautions (against mere terminological comparativism and against panchronic laws), it shows how “time” becomes a complex operator that blurs the boundary between langue and parole, since each gives the other its “occasion” to reorganize forms.  The author then foregrounds the instability of any synchronic “state”, drawing on Coseriu and later proposals of a dynamic synchrony, where centrifugal and centripetal forces continuously reshape linguistic values.  Against reductionist versions of “internal linguistics” (often restricted to the plane of expression or to desemanticization), the paper defends a coupling model in which systemic possibilities and enunciative pressures remain mutually enabling yet mutually “blind”.  A key move is to treat signs as cultural objects: not mere resources, but a living semiotic heritage whose trajectories become readable only through retroductive reconstruction (future attestations making present tensions intelligible).  This object-status leads to a methodological articulation between diachrony (comparative tracking of transformations across states) and archaeology (restitution of the practical field of possibilities that shaped past scenes).  The “history of forms” is presented as precisely this confluence, exemplified through Saussure’s role for analogy, and through art-historical paradigms from Focillon to Kubler, where anachrony inhabits synchrony as a thickness of the present.  By bringing in Baxandall and Gombrich, the paper stresses that neither a pure logic of problems (archaeology) nor a pure logic of patterns (diachrony) suffices: explanation is hermeneutic and emerges from their intersection.  The conclusion reframes semiotic forms as “signed signs”, precipitates of enunciative turbulence that neither belong wholly to langue nor to discourse, but mediate between convention and arbitrariness, heritage and expenditure.  Overall, the essay proposes that following forms historically means tracking their transcendent identity across practices and systems, while keeping a critical hiatus between what archaeology opens and what diachrony monitors.