Antonella Anedda's La vita dei dettagli: Icon-textuality as a Relational Practice

Abstract

Visual studies have legitimized the concept of icon-text, a practice based on the principle of insubordination of the text-image relationship. This article investigates the dynamics of Antonella Anedda's The Life of Details (2009), of one of the best icon-textual examples in contemporary Italian literature. Her rejection of the traditionally subordinate role of the visual is combined with a challenge to the methods of iconology—the reader-viewers are therefore not invited to embrace the traditional practice of “attribution” of a painting but rather to focus on the relation between images and their own reality. By shifting from an author-oriented to a reader-oriented perspective, Anedda engages us in a collective exploration of loss and mourning.