When an image wanes in its power to point beyond itself, to summon up a compelling affective response to the original, it devolves into a sign. A symbol points toward mystery; a sign denotes a content, an “idea.” As people begin to experience the image as a content, they also suffer a progressive discrepancy between the image and the affect it was once able to evoke. In response to this progressive devolution of any image, humankind has created three forms whose purpose is to retain access to, transmit the meaning of, and bind the community to its original encounter and its communal meaning.
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