Brève histoire topologique du monde : de la muraille au réseau

The following study traces back the main steps in the topological evolution of singularity (from pre-modern circular frontiers to post-modern monads, through the polycentric and, therefore, ellipsoidal topologies of early modernity), describes the discourses that compose the rhetoric of modern singularity, detects the reasons for its structural crisis, and proposes a diagnosis, sub specie semiotica, of the sociocultural distortions deriving from it. The article ends, nevertheless, by a pars construens: what should be done to recover, in the digital semiosphere, the dignity of the singular, the élan of the collective?