Identity and Vanitas. Two Contrasting Modes of Perception = Kodikas Code 43:2020

In the following study, I outline the history of the modern era as a social construction of causality that follows this principle: rules replace rulers. I try to explain why equality, competition or technology have changed in the course of modernity from something frightening to something attractive, and why the exhaustion of this aspiration is becoming increasingly apparent. My semiotic concern is as follows: I suggest substituting the ahistorical models of 20th- century semiotics with a historical model in which the concept of sign is replaced by the concepts of model and afterimage, depending on perception. The contrast described is, in my view, a principle of perception that is learned in the civilized world like a language. Models are not tangible as such but only exist as embodiments; afterimages are tangible, but refer to something intangible.