This article conceptualizes the semiosis of collapse in humanities research. In the first part, I review the history of collapse in modern Western culture and its importance in various discursive spheres at the beginning of the 21st century. In the second part, I propose a definition of what a semiosis of collapse would be, its analytical potentialities and the posture it seems to require towards the text. In the third part, in order to show the potentialities of this semiosis, I analyse various collapses in Hubert Aquin's Prochain Épisode. Three analytical orientations emerge: a semiological one, on the economy of signs linked to collapse; a narratological one, on the ontological collapse of the narrator; a morphological one, on the relation between collapse and difference.