WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.820 Welcome back to the Deep Dive, where we take 00:00:01.820 --> 00:00:04.099 your stack of sources and turn them into essential 00:00:04.099 --> 00:00:06.929 knowledge. Today we are wrestling with a figure 00:00:06.929 --> 00:00:10.009 so immense, so wonderfully contradictory, that 00:00:10.009 --> 00:00:12.730 pinning him down is, well, it's a semiotic challenge 00:00:12.730 --> 00:00:16.289 in itself. We are diving into the complex labyrinthine 00:00:16.289 --> 00:00:19.230 world of Umberto Eco. Indeed, and Umberto Eco, 00:00:19.489 --> 00:00:22.949 who lived from 1932 to 2016, was so much more 00:00:22.949 --> 00:00:25.149 than the global best -selling novelist we know 00:00:25.149 --> 00:00:27.250 from The Name of the Rose. Oh, absolutely. He 00:00:27.250 --> 00:00:30.050 was first and foremost an Italian medievalist, 00:00:30.070 --> 00:00:32.990 a philosopher, a cultural critic, and really 00:00:32.990 --> 00:00:35.429 a foundational figure. in the modern study of 00:00:35.429 --> 00:00:37.549 semiotics. The science of signs and symbols. 00:00:37.649 --> 00:00:40.609 Exactly. A true modern Renaissance man working 00:00:40.609 --> 00:00:42.689 across the entire spectrum of the humanities 00:00:42.689 --> 00:00:45.149 in the 20th and 21st centuries. So our mission 00:00:45.149 --> 00:00:47.990 today... For you, the listener, is to unpack 00:00:47.990 --> 00:00:51.009 that glorious duality of his career. How did 00:00:51.009 --> 00:00:55.250 this this hyper complex academic, a man who spent 00:00:55.250 --> 00:00:57.890 his early years on the scholastic rigor of medieval 00:00:57.890 --> 00:01:00.250 philosophy. Right. And the precise architecture 00:01:00.250 --> 00:01:03.049 of language. How did he suddenly pivot and become 00:01:03.049 --> 00:01:05.409 the undisputed master of the popular historical 00:01:05.409 --> 00:01:08.819 mystery? And not just any mystery. He embedded 00:01:08.819 --> 00:01:11.640 his deepest theoretical concepts into fiction 00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:14.260 that sold millions and millions of copies worldwide. 00:01:14.739 --> 00:01:17.379 We need to argue that his academic work wasn't 00:01:17.379 --> 00:01:19.700 just related to his fiction. It was the essential 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:22.359 fuel for it. His novels weren't a side project 00:01:22.359 --> 00:01:24.640 or a distraction from his philosophy. They were 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:27.060 the ultimate application of it. The most complete 00:01:27.060 --> 00:01:29.930 application, yes. We're going to trace that timeline 00:01:29.930 --> 00:01:32.670 and show you exactly how his theories about interpretation 00:01:32.670 --> 00:01:35.750 led him straight to writing the greatest literary 00:01:35.750 --> 00:01:38.730 puzzle boxes of the late 20th century. And just 00:01:38.730 --> 00:01:41.290 to start this whole journey on a perfectly strained, 00:01:41.370 --> 00:01:44.090 perfectly fitting note, we have to talk about 00:01:44.090 --> 00:01:48.010 his name. Ah, yes. The name itself. Ico actually 00:01:48.010 --> 00:01:50.650 believed his family name was an acronym. It was 00:01:50.650 --> 00:01:53.390 supposedly given to his grandfather, who was 00:01:53.390 --> 00:01:56.209 a foundling, by a city official. The acronym 00:01:56.209 --> 00:01:59.620 was Ex Calus Oblatus. which is latin for a gift 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:01.480 from the heavens i mean you can't make it up 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:04.140 the ultimate sign already embedded in his identity 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:07.879 it's a mystery a hidden meaning and an obscure 00:02:07.879 --> 00:02:11.500 history all wrapped up in one simple word a gift 00:02:11.500 --> 00:02:14.479 from the heavens indeed let's jump into the foundations 00:02:14.479 --> 00:02:17.080 that built this man of signs from the medieval 00:02:17.080 --> 00:02:20.020 world of aquinas to the realities of fascist 00:02:20.020 --> 00:02:24.139 italy To understand the later fiercely anti -authoritarian 00:02:24.139 --> 00:02:27.680 cultural critic, you have to start in Alessandria 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:31.319 Piedmont, where Ico was born in 1932. And his 00:02:31.319 --> 00:02:33.560 childhood was just immediately and completely 00:02:33.560 --> 00:02:37.159 shaped by the pervasive influence of Italian 00:02:37.159 --> 00:02:39.840 fascism under Mussolini. The regime wasn't just 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:43.120 political. It controlled education. culture, 00:02:43.259 --> 00:02:46.620 the entire ideological fabric of daily life. 00:02:46.780 --> 00:02:49.139 Which brings us to a really crucial, maybe even 00:02:49.139 --> 00:02:52.060 unsettling, biographical detail, one that gives 00:02:52.060 --> 00:02:54.080 his later political writings so much weight. 00:02:54.460 --> 00:02:56.960 At the age of 10, Eco participated in the Ludi 00:02:56.960 --> 00:02:59.340 Juveniles. Which were these standardized nationwide 00:02:59.340 --> 00:03:01.979 youth competitions. Designed to test loyalty 00:03:01.979 --> 00:03:04.639 and ideological alignment. It was pure state 00:03:04.639 --> 00:03:06.500 programming. And this wasn't some minor local 00:03:06.500 --> 00:03:08.680 contest. These were highly formalized state -run 00:03:08.680 --> 00:03:11.259 events meant to instill compliance and nationalist 00:03:11.259 --> 00:03:15.360 fervor. The writing prompt was just starkly ideological. 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:17.659 That's right. And Eco received the first provincial 00:03:17.659 --> 00:03:19.620 award for his response. A positive response. 00:03:19.979 --> 00:03:23.280 A positive response to a deeply loaded fascist 00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:27.099 prompt. Should we die for the glory of Mussolini 00:03:27.099 --> 00:03:30.219 and the immortal destiny of Italy? A 10 -year 00:03:30.219 --> 00:03:33.199 -old child being rewarded by the state for articulating 00:03:33.199 --> 00:03:35.759 propaganda. It's a stark detail. It shows you 00:03:35.759 --> 00:03:38.780 just how total the influence of the regime was 00:03:38.780 --> 00:03:41.360 on the educational system at the time. The programming 00:03:41.360 --> 00:03:44.139 was absolute. And that compliance, even if it 00:03:44.139 --> 00:03:46.259 was just youthful and necessary for survival, 00:03:46.479 --> 00:03:50.060 it stands in such sharp contrast to his later 00:03:50.590 --> 00:03:53.250 Profound critique of fascist ideology. The work 00:03:53.250 --> 00:03:56.069 that would become our fascism. Exactly. The contrast 00:03:56.069 --> 00:03:58.669 is the key. His later work becomes this philosophical 00:03:58.669 --> 00:04:01.310 examination of the very ideological mechanisms 00:04:01.310 --> 00:04:04.469 he experienced as a boy. He understood firsthand 00:04:04.469 --> 00:04:07.009 how signs and language could be hijacked by a 00:04:07.009 --> 00:04:09.389 totalitarian system. But the war, thankfully, 00:04:09.509 --> 00:04:11.750 provided a kind of counter -education. It did. 00:04:11.889 --> 00:04:13.909 During World War II, he and his mother moved 00:04:13.909 --> 00:04:16.230 to a small village in the Piedmontese mountainside 00:04:16.230 --> 00:04:18.870 to escape the bombing. And it was there... After 00:04:18.870 --> 00:04:21.490 the liberation in 1945, that the official signs 00:04:21.490 --> 00:04:24.310 of fascism gave way to new subversive cultural 00:04:24.310 --> 00:04:26.550 signs. He was exposed to American comic books 00:04:26.550 --> 00:04:28.870 for the first time. A huge source of mass culture. 00:04:29.029 --> 00:04:31.610 And also the scattered elements of the European 00:04:31.610 --> 00:04:34.129 resistance movements and profoundly the stark 00:04:34.129 --> 00:04:36.810 reality of the Holocaust that emerged after the 00:04:36.810 --> 00:04:39.850 regime fell. So you have these elements. Mass 00:04:39.850 --> 00:04:42.779 culture. Resistance to a totalizing ideology 00:04:42.779 --> 00:04:46.040 and the recognition of manufactured evil. And 00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:48.720 those would all become absolutely central themes 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:52.399 in his life's work. His father, Giulio, an accountant 00:04:52.399 --> 00:04:55.120 and a veteran of three wars, he pushed him toward 00:04:55.120 --> 00:04:58.230 a more stable career. law, I believe. He did, 00:04:58.470 --> 00:05:01.129 which thankfully for literary and philosophical 00:05:01.129 --> 00:05:04.209 history, Eco promptly rejected. He went to the 00:05:04.209 --> 00:05:07.050 University of Turin, Unito, instead to pursue 00:05:07.050 --> 00:05:09.750 philosophy. And this is where we see the first 00:05:09.750 --> 00:05:12.470 foundation of his intellectual duality. His Laurea 00:05:12.470 --> 00:05:15.870 degree thesis, completed in 1954. It was centered 00:05:15.870 --> 00:05:18.310 entirely on the aesthetics of the medieval philosopher 00:05:18.310 --> 00:05:21.389 and theologian Thomas Aquinas. That choice is 00:05:21.389 --> 00:05:24.420 so important. Aquinas is the ultimate systematizer. 00:05:24.519 --> 00:05:26.959 He is. He sought to define things like beauty, 00:05:27.100 --> 00:05:29.639 truth, and goodness within a single, coherent, 00:05:29.939 --> 00:05:32.980 divinely ordered hierarchical system. So Eco's 00:05:32.980 --> 00:05:35.319 early work, which became his first book in 1956, 00:05:35.860 --> 00:05:39.379 The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, was just steeped 00:05:39.379 --> 00:05:42.399 in this scholastic rigor. exploring art and beauty 00:05:42.399 --> 00:05:44.819 within that rigid medieval framework he started 00:05:44.819 --> 00:05:47.220 his career in other words by studying the most 00:05:47.220 --> 00:05:51.399 closed of systems a fixed divinely ordained structure 00:05:51.399 --> 00:05:54.339 of thought he was learning how to build and maintain 00:05:54.339 --> 00:05:58.040 an intellectual order exactly then after graduation 00:05:58.040 --> 00:06:00.639 he started balancing that high culture with a 00:06:00.639 --> 00:06:03.569 new awareness of mass media He got a job. He 00:06:03.569 --> 00:06:05.730 worked for the state broadcasting station Radio 00:06:05.730 --> 00:06:09.709 Televisione Italiana, or RAI, in Milan. Producing 00:06:09.709 --> 00:06:11.610 cultural programming. But he was being exposed 00:06:11.610 --> 00:06:14.709 daily to the raw data of modern mass communication, 00:06:15.189 --> 00:06:17.709 the stuff of the real world. He also published 00:06:17.709 --> 00:06:19.750 a small collection of satirical cartoons and 00:06:19.750 --> 00:06:22.750 verse around this time. Yes. Philosophie in Libertà, 00:06:22.870 --> 00:06:24.870 or Philosophers at Liberty, under the pseudonym 00:06:24.870 --> 00:06:27.389 Daedalus. You can already see that flair for 00:06:27.389 --> 00:06:29.389 playful intellectual critique. And of course, 00:06:29.389 --> 00:06:32.009 there was real world duty. He did 18 months of... 00:06:32.009 --> 00:06:34.310 compulsory military service in the Italian army. 00:06:34.449 --> 00:06:38.009 Right. In 1958, when he got back, he solidified 00:06:38.009 --> 00:06:40.949 his academic path. He published a second major 00:06:40.949 --> 00:06:44.189 scholarly monograph in 1959, The Development 00:06:44.189 --> 00:06:46.569 of Medieval Aesthetics. Which built on his Aquinas 00:06:46.569 --> 00:06:49.750 work. It did. And this tremendous academic rigor 00:06:49.750 --> 00:06:52.589 earned him his Libera Dotenza in Aesthetics in 00:06:52.589 --> 00:06:57.889 1961. So by the early 1960s, Eco is undeniably 00:06:57.889 --> 00:07:00.709 a serious credentialed medieval aesthetician. 00:07:00.910 --> 00:07:03.769 a very specific, very highbrow academic. But 00:07:03.769 --> 00:07:05.990 all that popular culture he was exposed to at 00:07:05.990 --> 00:07:08.129 RAI must have been just screaming for intellectual 00:07:08.129 --> 00:07:11.100 attention. It's time to see how he takes that 00:07:11.100 --> 00:07:13.800 medieval structural understanding and basically 00:07:13.800 --> 00:07:16.680 weaponizes it to analyze the modern world. The 00:07:16.680 --> 00:07:19.180 physical and intellectual shift from the cloistered, 00:07:19.180 --> 00:07:21.680 fixed world of medieval manuscripts to contemporary 00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:23.899 television studios, well, that marks the crucial 00:07:23.899 --> 00:07:26.519 beginning of Ico's life as a major public intellectual. 00:07:26.839 --> 00:07:29.339 He starts pioneering this rigorous philosophical 00:07:29.339 --> 00:07:32.379 analysis of popular culture. Analyzing it not 00:07:32.379 --> 00:07:34.279 as just some ephemeral distraction, but as a 00:07:34.279 --> 00:07:36.360 system of signs that needs to be decoded. Okay, 00:07:36.420 --> 00:07:38.519 let's unpack that. The key turning point in his 00:07:38.519 --> 00:07:41.240 public profile came in 1961 with a short essay. 00:07:41.959 --> 00:07:45.240 Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno. This was a critical 00:07:45.240 --> 00:07:48.279 and frankly a pretty daring analysis of Mike 00:07:48.279 --> 00:07:50.560 Bongiorno. Who was the most popular and often 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:53.339 seen as kind of artistically unrefined quiz show 00:07:53.339 --> 00:07:56.500 host in Italy at the time. And the essay appeared 00:07:56.500 --> 00:07:59.699 in a sophisticated magazine run by the tire manufacturer 00:07:59.699 --> 00:08:02.829 Pirelli. Which shows you how he was already crossing 00:08:02.829 --> 00:08:05.449 boundaries, using a popular platform to deliver 00:08:05.449 --> 00:08:08.069 high -level critical thought. Bongiorno was the 00:08:08.069 --> 00:08:10.569 embodiment of the common man achieving massive 00:08:10.569 --> 00:08:13.889 success, but without needing specialized knowledge 00:08:13.889 --> 00:08:16.629 or exceptional talent. And that's what Iko keyed 00:08:16.629 --> 00:08:19.430 in on. What was his fundamental insight into 00:08:19.430 --> 00:08:21.889 this media figure? It was brilliant, and it's 00:08:21.889 --> 00:08:24.269 highly predictive of the dynamics we see in celebrity 00:08:24.269 --> 00:08:27.120 culture today. Igo observed that Bongiorno does 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:29.959 not provoke inferiority complexes, even though 00:08:29.959 --> 00:08:31.899 he's presenting himself as an idol of success. 00:08:32.240 --> 00:08:34.600 What's fascinating there is that Igo saw Bongiorno 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:38.019 as a mirror, not a standard to aspire to. Precisely. 00:08:38.120 --> 00:08:40.340 The observation was that the audience didn't 00:08:40.340 --> 00:08:43.080 strive to reach Bongiorno's level. They loved 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:45.899 him because they felt, fundamentally, that everyone 00:08:45.899 --> 00:08:48.259 is already at his level. So he represented a 00:08:48.259 --> 00:08:51.179 kind of manufactured mediocrity that was universally 00:08:51.179 --> 00:08:55.590 accessible. Exactly. This commentary on mass 00:08:55.590 --> 00:08:58.730 media authenticity brought eco -widespread notoriety 00:08:58.730 --> 00:09:01.289 among the general public. It proved he could 00:09:01.289 --> 00:09:03.289 write essays that had both intellectual bite 00:09:03.289 --> 00:09:06.809 and popular appeal. And that critique of manufactured 00:09:06.809 --> 00:09:09.789 mediocrity is so essential. It sets the stage 00:09:09.789 --> 00:09:12.110 for his most critical academic work. Because 00:09:12.110 --> 00:09:14.649 he saw Bongiorno's audience as passive consumers, 00:09:14.990 --> 00:09:17.809 they were accepting the sign, the host, at face 00:09:17.809 --> 00:09:20.340 value. Which is the polar opposite of the kind 00:09:20.340 --> 00:09:22.580 of active, challenging audience he was about 00:09:22.580 --> 00:09:25.200 to champion in his literary theory. Which leads 00:09:25.200 --> 00:09:28.039 us directly into what is arguably his most important 00:09:28.039 --> 00:09:30.539 academic contribution to literary theory, the 00:09:30.539 --> 00:09:33.399 concept of the open text. Published in 1962 as 00:09:33.399 --> 00:09:36.759 Opera Aperta, or The Open Work, this was a fundamental 00:09:36.759 --> 00:09:39.340 intellectual revolution against traditional literary 00:09:39.340 --> 00:09:43.019 criticism. So before Ico, how did traditional 00:09:43.019 --> 00:09:45.500 criticism, what we might call the closed text 00:09:45.500 --> 00:09:48.629 approach, view a work of art? It viewed a work 00:09:48.629 --> 00:09:52.070 as a fixed string of meaning. The author intends 00:09:52.070 --> 00:09:55.009 a single unequivocal interpretation, the message, 00:09:55.210 --> 00:09:58.210 and the reader's job is just to extract that 00:09:58.210 --> 00:10:00.990 fixed meaning. Like a piece of propaganda or 00:10:00.990 --> 00:10:04.009 even the dogmatic structure of medieval aesthetics 00:10:04.009 --> 00:10:06.629 he studied in Aquinas. Exactly. It's a one -way 00:10:06.629 --> 00:10:09.970 street. Eco flipped that script entirely. His 00:10:09.970 --> 00:10:12.009 argument was that the greatest and most alive 00:10:12.009 --> 00:10:15.320 literary texts are instead Fields of meaning. 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:18.639 Fields of meaning. Yes. They are dynamic, internally 00:10:18.639 --> 00:10:22.000 alive systems that demand a profound psychological 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:25.179 and intellectual engagement from you, the reader. 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:28.279 A closed text limits understanding. It's predictable. 00:10:28.539 --> 00:10:30.899 But the works that are most active, the open 00:10:30.899 --> 00:10:32.799 texts. Those are the ones that demand choice, 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:35.259 that present ambiguities, that invite the reader 00:10:35.259 --> 00:10:37.379 to participate in the act of creation itself. 00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:39.580 This can sound a bit abstract. Can you give us 00:10:39.580 --> 00:10:41.559 an example of what an open text looks like in 00:10:41.559 --> 00:10:43.059 practice? What kinds of works was he looking 00:10:43.059 --> 00:10:45.580 at? Certainly. He was drawing heavily on early 00:10:45.580 --> 00:10:48.159 20th century movements. Think of James Joyce's 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:50.259 Finnegan's Wake. Right, where the structure is 00:10:50.259 --> 00:10:52.419 fragmented, the language is a mix of everything 00:10:52.419 --> 00:10:55.460 and constantly shifting. Yeah. And you, the reader, 00:10:55.639 --> 00:10:58.080 have to choose from multiple possible meanings 00:10:58.080 --> 00:11:01.720 with every single paragraph. Or think of aleatoric 00:11:01.720 --> 00:11:04.860 or chance -based music from the 1950s, where 00:11:04.860 --> 00:11:07.279 the order of notes or even whole sections is 00:11:07.279 --> 00:11:09.879 left up to the performer. So the work isn't complete 00:11:09.879 --> 00:11:12.340 until the reader or the performer makes a decision. 00:11:12.700 --> 00:11:15.100 Exactly. The reader isn't a passive recipient, 00:11:15.340 --> 00:11:17.500 absorbing a message like Bongiorno's audience. 00:11:17.779 --> 00:11:20.620 The reader is an active co -creator, required 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:23.679 to continually interpret and choose among multiple 00:11:23.679 --> 00:11:26.080 potential meanings. And this wasn't just a passing 00:11:26.080 --> 00:11:28.419 idea for him. It laid the entire theoretical 00:11:28.419 --> 00:11:31.139 groundwork for his later concept of the reader's 00:11:31.139 --> 00:11:33.200 responsibility. Culminating in his compilation, 00:11:33.440 --> 00:11:36.580 The Role of the Reader, published in 1979. It 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:38.820 was there that he really cemented the idea that 00:11:38.820 --> 00:11:41.539 interpretation is an active, demanding, and structured 00:11:41.539 --> 00:11:44.700 process. And this active engagement led him formally 00:11:44.700 --> 00:11:47.840 into the study of signs into semiotics. His specific 00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:50.460 methodology is known as interpretative semiotics. 00:11:50.600 --> 00:11:52.740 Right. And that distinction is important. It 00:11:52.740 --> 00:11:55.100 implies a different focus from other semiotic 00:11:55.100 --> 00:11:57.070 models. Oh, how does it differ? Well, traditional 00:11:57.070 --> 00:11:59.909 semiotics often focus just on defining the structure 00:11:59.909 --> 00:12:03.610 of the sign itself, like Saussure's binary model 00:12:03.610 --> 00:12:06.649 of the signifier and the signified. The word 00:12:06.649 --> 00:12:09.970 and the concept it represents. Right. Eco, who 00:12:09.970 --> 00:12:12.289 drew heavily from the American philosopher Charles 00:12:12.289 --> 00:12:15.250 Sanders Pierce, focused instead on the process 00:12:15.250 --> 00:12:18.110 of interpretation, what Pierce called unlimited 00:12:18.110 --> 00:12:22.210 semiosis. Unlimited semiosis. That sounds terrifyingly 00:12:22.210 --> 00:12:24.330 close to the chaos of the Internet he later criticized. 00:12:24.590 --> 00:12:27.210 And that's the tension. It's critical. Unlimited 00:12:27.210 --> 00:12:29.549 semiosis means that one sign leads to another 00:12:29.549 --> 00:12:31.950 sign, which leads to another in a potentially 00:12:31.950 --> 00:12:34.289 infinite chain of interpretation. So meaning 00:12:34.289 --> 00:12:37.110 could just dissolve into chaos. It could. And 00:12:37.110 --> 00:12:39.549 Eco realized that. But to prevent that, you needed 00:12:39.549 --> 00:12:42.389 rules. His interpretative semiotics sought to 00:12:42.389 --> 00:12:44.629 define the limits and constraints on that interpretation. 00:12:44.990 --> 00:12:47.070 If you're interpreting a text, you can't just 00:12:47.070 --> 00:12:49.350 make up anything you want. There's still a closed 00:12:49.350 --> 00:12:53.029 aspect, the text itself, which dictates acceptable 00:12:53.029 --> 00:12:56.190 readings, even within that open field of possibilities. 00:12:56.230 --> 00:12:58.289 Exactly. He was defining the difference between 00:12:58.289 --> 00:13:01.649 legitimate, constrained interpretation and just 00:13:01.649 --> 00:13:05.419 arbitrary, self -indulgent fabrication. And he 00:13:05.419 --> 00:13:07.980 developed this complex framework in key academic 00:13:07.980 --> 00:13:11.139 texts. Yes, like La Struttura Assente, the absent 00:13:11.139 --> 00:13:14.899 structure, in 1968, and his comprehensive Magnum 00:13:14.899 --> 00:13:19.399 Opus, a theory of semiotics, in 1975. This cemented 00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:21.779 him as a global authority, not just in aesthetics, 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.679 but in the entire structure of human communication. 00:13:25.139 --> 00:13:27.500 But he wasn't just defining academic theories. 00:13:27.659 --> 00:13:29.860 He was actively applying them to contemporary 00:13:29.860 --> 00:13:32.720 culture, which brings us to one of his most colorful 00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:36.309 and, uh... Politically active concepts from the 00:13:36.309 --> 00:13:39.769 late 1960s. Semiological guerrilla warfare. A 00:13:39.769 --> 00:13:41.889 professor of visual communications in Florence 00:13:41.889 --> 00:13:44.509 using military metaphors to describe critical 00:13:44.509 --> 00:13:47.269 theory. It sounds exactly like eco. He coined 00:13:47.269 --> 00:13:49.070 the term sometimes also called communications 00:13:49.070 --> 00:13:51.789 guerrilla warfare while he was a professor at 00:13:51.789 --> 00:13:54.470 the University of Florence between 1965 and 1969. 00:13:54.990 --> 00:13:57.570 And the context was the rise of powerful centralized 00:13:57.570 --> 00:14:00.919 mass media like television. Which Eco feared 00:14:00.919 --> 00:14:03.580 was creating a closed, manipulative system of 00:14:03.580 --> 00:14:05.879 signs for passive consumption. So what did he 00:14:05.879 --> 00:14:08.899 mean by telling citizens to engage in a semiological 00:14:08.899 --> 00:14:11.720 guerrilla? It was a concept that really influenced 00:14:11.720 --> 00:14:14.960 early theories of cultural resistance. The idea 00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:18.059 was that since mass media communicates the dominant 00:14:18.059 --> 00:14:21.179 ideology through signs advertising, news framing, 00:14:21.399 --> 00:14:24.500 political rhetoric, the only way to resist total 00:14:24.500 --> 00:14:27.440 control is to intercept and subvert those signs 00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:29.720 on the ground. So instead of trying to shut down 00:14:29.720 --> 00:14:31.840 the source, the big media corporation. You attack 00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:34.179 the signs as they are being consumed by the public. 00:14:34.379 --> 00:14:36.759 You conduct a guerrilla attack on the message 00:14:36.759 --> 00:14:39.600 itself. So if an advertisement uses a sign to 00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:42.740 signify consumer desire. The semiological gorilla 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:45.779 interrupts that sign, recodes it and makes it 00:14:45.779 --> 00:14:49.019 signify resistance or political critique. This 00:14:49.019 --> 00:14:51.059 is the intellectual route of what we now call 00:14:51.059 --> 00:14:53.120 culture jamming. Was this purely theoretical 00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:55.360 or did he think this was an effective tactic 00:14:55.360 --> 00:14:58.320 for citizens fighting power structures? Eco was 00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:00.919 a realist. He wasn't advocating physical revolution, 00:15:01.100 --> 00:15:04.000 but intellectual and cultural resistance. He 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:06.399 saw it as a necessary defense mechanism to keep 00:15:06.399 --> 00:15:08.919 the mind open when the media was trying to impose 00:15:08.919 --> 00:15:11.720 a closed interpretation of reality. It's the 00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:14.080 ultimate application of the active reader concept. 00:15:14.590 --> 00:15:16.470 You have to be an active reader of the entire 00:15:16.470 --> 00:15:18.870 world around you. The essay was hugely influential, 00:15:19.169 --> 00:15:21.429 especially in Europe, and it was collected in 00:15:21.429 --> 00:15:24.009 his book Faith in Fakes. It really marks his 00:15:24.009 --> 00:15:26.470 definitive move from just analyzing how communication 00:15:26.470 --> 00:15:29.750 works to actively prescribing how you can use 00:15:29.750 --> 00:15:32.370 that knowledge to resist being consumed by media 00:15:32.370 --> 00:15:35.110 ideology. After this intense period of theoretical 00:15:35.110 --> 00:15:37.610 output, he finally settled at the University 00:15:37.610 --> 00:15:40.750 of Bologna in 1971, where he became a professor 00:15:40.750 --> 00:15:43.409 of semiotics, a position he held for most of 00:15:43.409 --> 00:15:45.870 the rest of his career. And now we arrive at 00:15:45.870 --> 00:15:48.950 the spectacular and frankly lucrative confluence 00:15:48.950 --> 00:15:51.970 of Eco's two identities. For decades, he had 00:15:51.970 --> 00:15:54.529 been doing this deep scholarly work in medievalism 00:15:54.529 --> 00:15:57.110 and semiotics. Defining how signs work, how texts 00:15:57.110 --> 00:15:58.950 are interpreted, how libraries are structured. 00:15:59.129 --> 00:16:01.570 And then in 1980, he finally sat down and wrote 00:16:01.570 --> 00:16:04.419 a novel. The Name of the Rose. His breakthrough 00:16:04.419 --> 00:16:06.700 into global pop culture. It was an immediate 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:09.559 sensation. It won Italy's most prestigious literary 00:16:09.559 --> 00:16:12.519 prize, the Striga Prize, in 1981, and then just 00:16:12.519 --> 00:16:15.220 became a massive global bestseller. And the setting 00:16:15.220 --> 00:16:18.480 alone is just pure distilled eco. A historical 00:16:18.480 --> 00:16:21.159 murder mystery set in a meticulously rendered 00:16:21.159 --> 00:16:24.820 14th century Italian monastery. The plot centers 00:16:24.820 --> 00:16:27.879 on this Franciscan friar, William of Baskerville, 00:16:27.980 --> 00:16:30.759 and his assistant, the Benedictine novice, Adso. 00:16:31.320 --> 00:16:33.179 They're investigating a series of mysterious 00:16:33.179 --> 00:16:35.799 murders in the week leading up to a major religious 00:16:35.799 --> 00:16:38.539 debate. A debate about poverty and the spiritual 00:16:38.539 --> 00:16:42.159 future of the church. So why did this novel resonate 00:16:42.159 --> 00:16:45.139 so deeply? I mean, it's dense. It has long passages 00:16:45.139 --> 00:16:47.720 of untranslated Latin. It's obsessed with arcane 00:16:47.720 --> 00:16:50.840 theology. Why did this complex academic exercise 00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:55.080 succeed as popular fiction? Because Ico masterfully 00:16:55.080 --> 00:16:57.259 married his two worlds in a way no one expected. 00:16:57.419 --> 00:16:59.519 His background as a medievalist provided the 00:16:59.519 --> 00:17:02.259 rich historical texture, the scholastic arguments, 00:17:02.600 --> 00:17:04.940 the atmosphere. But his expertise in semiotics 00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:07.440 provided the plot engine. Exactly. The entire 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:09.559 structure of The Murder Mystery is fundamentally 00:17:09.559 --> 00:17:12.460 a detective story about interpretation. It's 00:17:12.460 --> 00:17:14.799 about reading physical signs, analyzing cryptic 00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:17.119 texts, and discerning the intent behind ambiguous 00:17:17.119 --> 00:17:20.339 symbols. So William of Baskerville is a semiotician 00:17:20.339 --> 00:17:23.190 with a magnifying glass. Precisely. The murders 00:17:23.190 --> 00:17:25.529 aren't solved through brute force or typical 00:17:25.529 --> 00:17:27.890 police work. They're solved through deduction, 00:17:28.190 --> 00:17:30.589 through interpreting the signs, the arrangement 00:17:30.589 --> 00:17:33.410 of bodies, the patterns of behavior, the texts 00:17:33.410 --> 00:17:35.549 that are being read or hidden. And the medieval 00:17:35.549 --> 00:17:38.369 monastery, with its specialized texts and secret 00:17:38.369 --> 00:17:41.730 library, is the perfect metaphor for a highly 00:17:41.730 --> 00:17:44.849 constrained but ultimately solvable semiotic 00:17:44.849 --> 00:17:47.869 system. This is the so what connection for you, 00:17:47.990 --> 00:17:50.230 the listener. The medieval manuscripts and the 00:17:50.230 --> 00:17:52.150 library secrets weren't just window dressing. 00:17:52.349 --> 00:17:55.109 They were a massive, complex system of signs 00:17:55.109 --> 00:17:57.930 that needed deciphering, just like any open text 00:17:57.930 --> 00:18:00.890 in the modern world. The murderer's motive hinges 00:18:00.890 --> 00:18:03.750 on controlling the flow of information. Specifically 00:18:03.750 --> 00:18:06.170 controlling the text that can be read. And this 00:18:06.170 --> 00:18:08.289 is where the intertextual depth really shines. 00:18:08.869 --> 00:18:11.609 Eco build a labyrinth of illusions that rewards 00:18:11.609 --> 00:18:13.650 the reader who's willing to play the game of 00:18:13.650 --> 00:18:16.130 interpretation. He uses his fiction to show that 00:18:16.130 --> 00:18:18.490 no book exists in isolation. Let's start with 00:18:18.490 --> 00:18:21.329 the protagonist himself, William of Baskerville. 00:18:21.430 --> 00:18:23.809 His name is a powerful, double -coated sign. 00:18:24.069 --> 00:18:26.769 It is. First, it honors the English philosopher 00:18:26.769 --> 00:18:29.750 William of Ockham, a key figure in late medieval 00:18:29.750 --> 00:18:32.589 thought known for Ockham's razor. The principle 00:18:32.589 --> 00:18:35.789 of parsimony. Right. And second, it immediately 00:18:35.789 --> 00:18:38.549 evokes the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes 00:18:38.549 --> 00:18:40.470 through the title of the famous mystery, The 00:18:40.470 --> 00:18:42.710 Hound of the Baskervilles. And Eco makes that 00:18:42.710 --> 00:18:45.930 connection unavoidable. He does. Several passages 00:18:45.930 --> 00:18:48.369 describing William's physical appearance, his 00:18:48.369 --> 00:18:51.089 height, his aloofness, his powers of observation, 00:18:51.430 --> 00:18:54.569 they are intentionally strongly reminiscent of 00:18:54.569 --> 00:18:56.869 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's descriptions of Holmes. 00:18:57.150 --> 00:19:00.170 That's a conscious use of signs. to signal to 00:19:00.170 --> 00:19:02.410 the reader what kind of cognitive framework they 00:19:02.410 --> 00:19:04.950 need to adopt to follow the investigation. And 00:19:04.950 --> 00:19:07.910 then you have the villainous, blind monk Jorge 00:19:07.910 --> 00:19:10.450 of Burgos, who guards the dangerous secrets of 00:19:10.450 --> 00:19:12.710 the hidden library. This is a profound and moving 00:19:12.710 --> 00:19:15.130 tribute to Jorge Luis Borges. One of the two 00:19:15.130 --> 00:19:17.890 modern authors, Eco, explicitly cited as his 00:19:17.890 --> 00:19:20.109 greatest influence, the other being James Joyce. 00:19:20.349 --> 00:19:22.930 And the connections are just layered. Borges, 00:19:23.150 --> 00:19:25.630 like the character Horde, dedicated his life 00:19:25.630 --> 00:19:28.480 entirely to books. lived a celibate life and 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:31.140 famously went blind in his later years, making 00:19:31.140 --> 00:19:33.700 him the ultimate custodian of unseen knowledge. 00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:36.359 And of course, the secretive labyrinth and library 00:19:36.359 --> 00:19:38.980 itself, the setting of so much of the mystery 00:19:38.980 --> 00:19:41.220 and danger. That's a self -contained literary 00:19:41.220 --> 00:19:44.599 tribute alluding to Borge's seminal short story, 00:19:44.839 --> 00:19:48.039 The Library of Babel, where all possible knowledge 00:19:48.039 --> 00:19:50.619 exists in a dizzying, infinite and potentially 00:19:50.619 --> 00:19:53.680 dangerous arrangement. And finally, the enigmatic 00:19:53.680 --> 00:19:57.009 title. The name of the rose is famously unexplained 00:19:57.009 --> 00:19:59.190 within the body of the novel. And it closes with 00:19:59.190 --> 00:20:05.849 that dense, reflective Latin verse. The ancient 00:20:05.849 --> 00:20:09.250 rose remains only in name. We hold only the bare 00:20:09.250 --> 00:20:12.430 names. The rose, a powerful symbol that has meant 00:20:12.430 --> 00:20:15.170 everything from beauty and secrecy to mysticism 00:20:15.170 --> 00:20:17.529 throughout history, serves as an example of the 00:20:17.529 --> 00:20:19.490 fate of all remarkable things. So if the object 00:20:19.490 --> 00:20:22.339 is gone, only the sign? The word, the name remains. 00:20:22.619 --> 00:20:24.880 That is the semiotician's ultimate statement 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:27.980 embedded in the fiction. The physical world decays, 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:31.339 the divine order collapses, but the process of 00:20:31.339 --> 00:20:34.799 naming and interpreting is what endures. The 00:20:34.799 --> 00:20:37.579 novel becomes a meditation on how we use language 00:20:37.579 --> 00:20:40.740 to anchor meaning in a world of flux. So if the 00:20:40.740 --> 00:20:43.210 name of the rose was about... Decoding the fixed 00:20:43.210 --> 00:20:46.329 past, his next major novel, Foucault's Pendulum, 00:20:46.430 --> 00:20:49.410 from 1988, was about the terrifying malleability 00:20:49.410 --> 00:20:52.089 of the present through signs. Specifically, the 00:20:52.089 --> 00:20:54.730 signs of conspiracy. Absolutely. Foucault's Pendulum 00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:57.069 takes the reader far away from the rigid confines 00:20:57.069 --> 00:20:59.730 of the 14th century and plunges them into modern, 00:20:59.869 --> 00:21:02.549 cynical Milan. The premise starts simply enough. 00:21:02.849 --> 00:21:05.569 Three underemployed editors at a minor publishing 00:21:05.569 --> 00:21:07.970 house, bored with reviewing junk manuscripts 00:21:07.970 --> 00:21:10.490 about the occult, decide to invent the plan. 00:21:10.789 --> 00:21:13.970 And the plan? is what exactly it's a vast incredibly 00:21:13.970 --> 00:21:16.849 complex and totally fictitious conspiracy theory 00:21:16.849 --> 00:21:18.970 it proposes that the knights templar secretly 00:21:18.970 --> 00:21:21.130 survived their demise and are currently planning 00:21:21.130 --> 00:21:24.089 a world takeover using a global network of cryptic 00:21:24.089 --> 00:21:26.450 messages and historical signs they're essentially 00:21:26.450 --> 00:21:29.329 applying their sophisticated knowledge of semiotics 00:21:29.329 --> 00:21:32.809 history and narrative structure to create the 00:21:32.809 --> 00:21:35.329 ultimate open text a map of connections where 00:21:35.329 --> 00:21:37.759 the reader can link Anything to anything else. 00:21:37.839 --> 00:21:40.000 That's the genius of the book. The editors are 00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.460 playing an intellectual game, creating signifiers 00:21:42.460 --> 00:21:45.880 without any underlying genuine signified. They're 00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:48.059 testing the boundaries of interpretation. And 00:21:48.059 --> 00:21:50.759 the danger arises when the fictional game becomes 00:21:50.759 --> 00:21:54.119 terrifyingly real. How does that happen? Outsiders 00:21:54.119 --> 00:21:56.240 who are already obsessed with hidden histories 00:21:56.240 --> 00:21:58.680 and finding secret signs everywhere, they learn 00:21:58.680 --> 00:22:00.980 of the plan. And they believe that the editors 00:22:00.980 --> 00:22:03.839 have genuinely, accidentally discovered the secret 00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:06.700 to regaining the lost Templar treasure. So this 00:22:06.700 --> 00:22:09.579 brilliantly illustrates the danger of unconstrained 00:22:09.579 --> 00:22:12.420 interpretation. A primary concern for Eco the 00:22:12.420 --> 00:22:15.259 semiotician. If you look hard enough for patterns, 00:22:15.420 --> 00:22:17.700 if you truly believe everything is a sign, you 00:22:17.700 --> 00:22:19.519 will find them, whether they are real or not. 00:22:19.859 --> 00:22:23.059 The human mind, Eco suggests, is a conspiracy 00:22:23.059 --> 00:22:25.519 -generating engine. Which connects the academic 00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:27.799 theory perfectly to the fictional narrative. 00:22:28.140 --> 00:22:31.440 The open text requires constraint, and Foucault's 00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:34.079 pendulum shows what happens when those constraints 00:22:34.079 --> 00:22:36.859 are removed. And Eco continued exploring these 00:22:36.859 --> 00:22:39.200 dualities in his later novels, always making 00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:41.619 sure they were rich in history, language, and 00:22:41.619 --> 00:22:44.819 complexity. It was an intellectual game he continued 00:22:44.819 --> 00:22:47.140 to play with the reader. Let's touch on a few 00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:49.000 of those later novels because they each tackle 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:51.460 different aspects of this semiotic and historical 00:22:51.460 --> 00:22:54.700 uncertainty. The Island of the Day Before from 00:22:54.700 --> 00:22:58.099 1994 is often described as one of his most contemplative 00:22:58.099 --> 00:23:00.759 novels. And least action -packed. That's a fair 00:23:00.759 --> 00:23:03.240 assessment. It's set in the 17th century and 00:23:03.240 --> 00:23:05.980 features a man, Roberto, stranded on a ship near 00:23:05.980 --> 00:23:08.059 an island he believes is on the opposite side 00:23:08.059 --> 00:23:10.380 of the international beatline. And the main tension 00:23:10.380 --> 00:23:13.410 isn't about physical escape. No, it's about these 00:23:13.410 --> 00:23:16.309 complex internal and philosophical dilemmas. 00:23:16.650 --> 00:23:19.750 Roberto is paralyzed by his inability to swim. 00:23:19.890 --> 00:23:22.529 And the book largely consists of lengthy internal 00:23:22.529 --> 00:23:25.569 reflections on his life, his identity and the 00:23:25.569 --> 00:23:28.009 adventures that led him there. So it's an exploration 00:23:28.009 --> 00:23:31.589 of how time, space and personal history are constantly 00:23:31.589 --> 00:23:34.259 being reinterpreted by the self. Precisely. Then 00:23:34.259 --> 00:23:36.660 you have Bottolino in 2000, which leans heavily 00:23:36.660 --> 00:23:39.240 into the idea of the unreliable narrator and 00:23:39.240 --> 00:23:41.519 historical fabrication. The title character, 00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:44.940 Bottolino, is a polyglot scholar who boasts openly 00:23:44.940 --> 00:23:47.400 about his ability to lie and tell tall tales. 00:23:47.640 --> 00:23:49.980 He recounts his history from being a peasant 00:23:49.980 --> 00:23:53.000 lad to the adopted son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:55.539 and his mission to find Prester John's mythical 00:23:55.539 --> 00:23:58.960 realm. The entire narrative forces the historian 00:23:58.960 --> 00:24:01.819 he's confessing to, and you, the reader, to remain 00:24:01.819 --> 00:24:04.359 continually unsure of how much of his story is 00:24:04.359 --> 00:24:06.859 accurate history and how much is just pure invention. 00:24:07.279 --> 00:24:09.680 It's a grand examination of the impossibility 00:24:09.680 --> 00:24:12.319 of objective historical truth and how narrative 00:24:12.319 --> 00:24:15.000 itself structures our reality. And finally, a 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:16.859 novel that dealt directly with manufacturing. 00:24:17.640 --> 00:24:20.420 societal hatred, the Prague Cemetery from 2010. 00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.099 This one is significantly darker. Oh, yes. It 00:24:23.099 --> 00:24:25.660 tells a story of a cynical secret agent and forger 00:24:25.660 --> 00:24:28.519 who weaves these intrigues across 19th century 00:24:28.519 --> 00:24:31.619 Europe. It explicitly traces the mechanics behind 00:24:31.619 --> 00:24:34.079 the rise of modern anti -Semitism. By referencing 00:24:34.079 --> 00:24:37.220 pivotal historical events like the Dreyfus Affair. 00:24:37.279 --> 00:24:39.859 And critically, the fraudulent document known 00:24:39.859 --> 00:24:42.809 as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's 00:24:42.809 --> 00:24:45.349 a chilling fictional demonstration of how toxic 00:24:45.349 --> 00:24:48.029 signs and fabricated plots can be consciously 00:24:48.029 --> 00:24:51.490 engineered to poison society. The real -world 00:24:51.490 --> 00:24:54.009 application of the cautionary tale he wrote in 00:24:54.009 --> 00:24:56.890 Foucault's Pendulum. Exactly. It's clear that 00:24:56.890 --> 00:25:00.150 Ico saw his academic, literary, and public work 00:25:00.150 --> 00:25:03.640 as inseparable. He wasn't just writing and teaching. 00:25:03.799 --> 00:25:06.940 He was an institutional builder dedicated to 00:25:06.940 --> 00:25:09.740 expanding scholarly inquiry in Italy. Very much 00:25:09.740 --> 00:25:11.920 so. He founded the Department of Media Studies 00:25:11.920 --> 00:25:14.059 at the University of the Republic of San Marino 00:25:14.059 --> 00:25:17.009 in 1988. Then, at the University of Bologna, 00:25:17.069 --> 00:25:19.410 where he spent most of his career, he founded 00:25:19.410 --> 00:25:21.769 the Institute of Communication Disciplines and 00:25:21.769 --> 00:25:23.910 later the Higher School for the Study of the 00:25:23.910 --> 00:25:26.769 Humanities. He was actively structurally shaping 00:25:26.769 --> 00:25:29.630 the future of these academic fields, making sure 00:25:29.630 --> 00:25:31.309 they were equipped to handle the complexities 00:25:31.309 --> 00:25:33.890 of the modern media landscape. And crucially, 00:25:33.990 --> 00:25:36.569 he recognized the limitations of a purely Western 00:25:36.569 --> 00:25:39.660 European perspective in academic study. So in 00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:42.900 1988 at Bologna, he created this unique international 00:25:42.900 --> 00:25:45.420 program called the Anthropology of the West. 00:25:45.640 --> 00:25:48.839 That title alone is highly provocative. It suggests 00:25:48.839 --> 00:25:51.339 a decentering of the traditional academic focus. 00:25:51.619 --> 00:25:53.940 The goal was to view Western culture through 00:25:53.940 --> 00:25:56.579 the lens of non -Western scholars, specifically 00:25:56.579 --> 00:25:59.539 African and Chinese academics, using their own 00:25:59.539 --> 00:26:02.900 cultural and semiotic criteria. So he was actively 00:26:02.900 --> 00:26:06.200 using external cultural perspectives as a tool 00:26:06.200 --> 00:26:08.950 for critical self -reflection. He wanted to see 00:26:08.950 --> 00:26:10.829 the Western system of science from the outside 00:26:10.829 --> 00:26:14.390 to expose its inherent assumptions. This transcultural 00:26:14.390 --> 00:26:17.430 network led to major international seminars and 00:26:17.430 --> 00:26:19.210 the publication of the book The Unicorn and the 00:26:19.210 --> 00:26:21.329 Dragon, which discussed how knowledge is created 00:26:21.329 --> 00:26:23.589 in China and Europe, with scholars from both 00:26:23.589 --> 00:26:26.049 sides contributing equally. It shows his desire 00:26:26.049 --> 00:26:29.490 to find a truly universal, common, semiotic ground. 00:26:30.039 --> 00:26:32.700 And even when discussing his most abstract academic 00:26:32.700 --> 00:26:35.299 topics, Eco was remarkably grounded about their 00:26:35.299 --> 00:26:37.799 complexity. When he published Kant and the Platypus 00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:41.200 in 1997, a major theoretical work, he reportedly 00:26:41.200 --> 00:26:43.519 issued a clear public warning to his massive 00:26:43.519 --> 00:26:45.740 fan base. This is maybe his most famous piece 00:26:45.740 --> 00:26:48.859 of academic self -deprecation. It is. It highlights 00:26:48.859 --> 00:26:51.579 that duality again. He advised his popular readers, 00:26:51.819 --> 00:26:54.279 this is a hardcore book. Don't buy it if you 00:26:54.279 --> 00:26:56.599 are not Einstein. He wanted to ensure people 00:26:56.599 --> 00:27:00.140 didn't mistakenly expect a fun medieval romp 00:27:00.140 --> 00:27:03.200 or a Templar conspiracy. He was demanding that 00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:06.140 his academic work be approached with the intellectual 00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:08.380 rigor it deserved. But when we talk about his 00:27:08.380 --> 00:27:11.279 role as a cultural conscience, one essay stands 00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:13.980 out for its renewed, chilling relevance in the 00:27:13.980 --> 00:27:17.259 21st century, our fascism. Also known as eternal 00:27:17.259 --> 00:27:20.319 fascism from 1995. The renewed relevance of this 00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:23.700 essay is profound. Eco, reflecting on his childhood 00:27:23.700 --> 00:27:25.839 experience receiving that award under Mussolini, 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:28.619 realized that fascism wasn't a single monolithic 00:27:28.619 --> 00:27:31.740 ideology defined by a flag or a leader. He saw 00:27:31.740 --> 00:27:34.140 it as a constellation of cultural behaviors and 00:27:34.140 --> 00:27:36.740 psychological mechanisms. Yes, and he listed 00:27:36.740 --> 00:27:39.319 14 general properties that he believed defined 00:27:39.319 --> 00:27:42.119 fascist ideologies regardless of time or place. 00:27:42.359 --> 00:27:44.480 And these weren't political platforms. They were 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:46.599 characteristics of a mindset. What are some of 00:27:46.599 --> 00:27:49.119 the most memorable of those 14 points? Well, 00:27:49.140 --> 00:27:51.220 they include concepts like the cult of tradition, 00:27:51.500 --> 00:27:53.819 the rejection of modernism, the fear of difference 00:27:53.819 --> 00:27:56.519 or the different, and an obsession with conspiracy 00:27:56.519 --> 00:27:59.700 and external threats. And crucially, he noted 00:27:59.700 --> 00:28:01.660 that the movement has to define its audience 00:28:01.660 --> 00:28:04.599 not through objective criteria. But through a 00:28:04.599 --> 00:28:07.980 constant emphasis on frustration, the idea that 00:28:07.980 --> 00:28:10.920 the movement is the only salvation from a confusing, 00:28:11.079 --> 00:28:14.279 unjust world. That structure of constantly identifying 00:28:14.279 --> 00:28:16.799 an enemy and harnessing grievance. It sounds 00:28:16.799 --> 00:28:19.640 less like a specific historical party and more 00:28:19.640 --> 00:28:22.180 like a universal formula for authoritarian movements. 00:28:22.380 --> 00:28:25.319 It is precisely a formula. Eco made it clear 00:28:25.319 --> 00:28:27.980 that you don't need all 14 points to be present. 00:28:28.140 --> 00:28:30.779 But if even a few are operating, you need to 00:28:30.779 --> 00:28:34.059 be deeply concerned. It provided a clear, actionable 00:28:34.059 --> 00:28:36.900 checklist for identifying creeping authoritarianism. 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:39.519 A vital tool for critical thinking in any era. 00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:41.920 And this brings us to the ultimate friction point 00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:44.990 in Eco's public thought. His scathing critique 00:28:44.990 --> 00:28:47.529 of the digital age, which he was diagnosing using 00:28:47.529 --> 00:28:50.009 the very semiotic tools he himself developed. 00:28:50.230 --> 00:28:53.269 He maintained a long -running, influential, cultural 00:28:53.269 --> 00:28:56.190 commentary in his twice -monthly newspaper column, 00:28:56.390 --> 00:28:59.829 La Bustina di Minerva, or Minerva's Matchbook. 00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:02.940 Which ran from 1985 until shortly before his 00:29:02.940 --> 00:29:06.200 death in 2016. It gave him a consistent platform 00:29:06.200 --> 00:29:08.819 to apply his critical eye to current events. 00:29:09.059 --> 00:29:12.000 And it was through that platform or similar interviews 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.480 late in his career that he delivered his most 00:29:14.480 --> 00:29:17.420 memorable and perhaps most controversial critique 00:29:17.420 --> 00:29:20.779 of the digital landscape in 2015. Focusing squarely 00:29:20.779 --> 00:29:23.519 on social media. His words were direct and have 00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:26.119 become this notorious summary of information 00:29:26.119 --> 00:29:29.059 overload and the death of expertise. He said 00:29:29.059 --> 00:29:30.940 social. Social media gives legions of idiots 00:29:30.940 --> 00:29:33.240 the right to speak when they once only spoke 00:29:33.240 --> 00:29:35.579 at a bar after a glass of wine without harming 00:29:35.579 --> 00:29:37.740 the community. But now they have the same right 00:29:37.740 --> 00:29:40.140 to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion 00:29:40.140 --> 00:29:42.619 of the idiots. That quote is hard to hear without 00:29:42.619 --> 00:29:45.720 wincing, but it perfectly encapsulates his fear 00:29:45.720 --> 00:29:48.339 of uncontrolled interpretation combined with 00:29:48.339 --> 00:29:51.079 unchecked access. It seems to directly clash 00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:53.259 with his earlier championing of the open text. 00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:56.140 Why did he draw such a stark boundary here? He 00:29:56.140 --> 00:29:58.680 saw a critical difference, I think, between the 00:29:58.680 --> 00:30:01.339 structural ambiguity of an open work of art like 00:30:01.339 --> 00:30:04.079 a Joyce novel and the undifferentiated noise 00:30:04.079 --> 00:30:07.359 of the Internet. Exactly. An open literary text 00:30:07.359 --> 00:30:10.240 still operates within a defined system of language, 00:30:10.339 --> 00:30:13.579 history, and narrative convention. It still requires 00:30:13.579 --> 00:30:15.920 the reader to be competent. Whereas the internet? 00:30:16.099 --> 00:30:18.359 The internet, and particularly social media he 00:30:18.359 --> 00:30:21.440 felt, destroyed the necessary hierarchy of competence 00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:24.420 and verification. It leveled the playing field 00:30:24.420 --> 00:30:26.960 of public discourse by giving instantaneous authority 00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:29.960 to baseless opinion. He spent his life arguing 00:30:29.960 --> 00:30:32.480 that texts are open to interpretation, but he 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:35.079 drew a clear boundary when that openness became 00:30:35.079 --> 00:30:38.079 a cacophony of uneducated, unsubstantiated opinion 00:30:38.079 --> 00:30:41.480 that actively drowned out expertise and the historical 00:30:41.480 --> 00:30:44.500 record. It was the ultimate failure of constrained 00:30:44.500 --> 00:30:47.599 interpretation. Umberto Eco's legacy is fundamentally 00:30:47.599 --> 00:30:50.119 built on his ability to synthesize. He didn't 00:30:50.119 --> 00:30:52.319 just read books. He used them as foundational 00:30:52.319 --> 00:30:54.960 building blocks for new, complex narratives. 00:30:55.200 --> 00:30:57.720 Narratives that engaged in this deep intertextual 00:30:57.720 --> 00:31:00.279 conversation. As we mentioned, he cited Joyce 00:31:00.279 --> 00:31:02.859 and Borges as his two biggest modern influences. 00:31:02.940 --> 00:31:06.359 Which emphasizes his dedication to intertextuality. 00:31:06.960 --> 00:31:09.700 the idea that every literary work exists in relation 00:31:09.700 --> 00:31:12.819 to all others, constantly referencing, commenting 00:31:12.819 --> 00:31:15.799 on, and enriching the global library of stories. 00:31:16.160 --> 00:31:18.519 But his successful fusion of dense philosophy 00:31:18.519 --> 00:31:21.420 with mass market fiction led to a predictable 00:31:21.420 --> 00:31:24.819 and often divided critical reception. He often 00:31:24.819 --> 00:31:27.539 stunned critics with the sheer simultaneous complexity 00:31:27.539 --> 00:31:30.599 and popularity of his fiction. The split was 00:31:30.599 --> 00:31:33.880 quite distinct. On one side, you had the skeptics, 00:31:33.880 --> 00:31:36.519 the purists in philosophy and literary. history 00:31:36.519 --> 00:31:39.000 who found his academic style, well, sometimes 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:41.779 overly ornate or self -referential. One famous 00:31:41.779 --> 00:31:44.359 critique came from the philosopher Roger Scruton. 00:31:44.440 --> 00:31:47.519 He attacked Eco's esoteric tendencies, suggesting 00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:49.880 he sought the rhetoric of technicality, generating 00:31:49.880 --> 00:31:52.660 so much smoke for so long that the reader will 00:31:52.660 --> 00:31:54.940 begin to blame his own lack of perception. In 00:31:54.940 --> 00:31:57.099 other words, he was accused of obscuring simple 00:31:57.099 --> 00:31:59.799 ideas with complex jargon. The art historian 00:31:59.799 --> 00:32:02.339 Nicholas Penny also accused him of pandering 00:32:02.339 --> 00:32:05.400 to the academic cause of relevance when his earlier 00:32:05.400 --> 00:32:07.980 essays on mass culture appeared, suggesting a 00:32:07.980 --> 00:32:10.220 commercial or trend -following motive behind 00:32:10.220 --> 00:32:13.319 some of his theoretical pivots. So he was sometimes 00:32:13.319 --> 00:32:16.140 seen as brilliant, but perhaps unnecessarily 00:32:16.140 --> 00:32:18.940 dense or even self -indulgent. On the other side, 00:32:18.940 --> 00:32:21.829 though, his supporters lauded his levity his 00:32:21.829 --> 00:32:24.650 encyclopedic scope, and his ability to make abstruse 00:32:24.650 --> 00:32:27.529 subjects accessible to millions. Frank Kermode, 00:32:27.710 --> 00:32:30.150 reviewing The Name of the Rose, called it a wonderfully 00:32:30.150 --> 00:32:32.650 interesting book precisely because of its odd 00:32:32.650 --> 00:32:35.470 parentage of medievalism and modern semiotics. 00:32:35.730 --> 00:32:38.650 He was proving that seriousness didn't have to 00:32:38.650 --> 00:32:41.549 be dry. And his influence was undeniable in post 00:32:41.549 --> 00:32:44.069 -structuralist circles. Philosophers like Gilles 00:32:44.069 --> 00:32:46.630 Deleuze and Jacques Derrida both took inspiration 00:32:46.630 --> 00:32:49.150 from his early theoretical work, The Open Work. 00:32:49.579 --> 00:32:52.299 They used it to explore the fluid nature of language 00:32:52.299 --> 00:32:54.859 and meaning. Carlin Romano ultimately described 00:32:54.859 --> 00:32:58.140 Ico as having become over time the critical conscience 00:32:58.140 --> 00:33:00.299 at the center of Italian humanistic culture, 00:33:00.500 --> 00:33:02.859 uniting smaller worlds like no one before him. 00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:05.500 And this unifying work earned him immense recognition 00:33:05.500 --> 00:33:08.240 globally. The Striga Prize, the McLuhan Teleglobe 00:33:08.240 --> 00:33:10.599 Prize and countless honorary doctorates from 00:33:10.599 --> 00:33:13.420 institutions like Yale, Oxford and Rutgers. His 00:33:13.420 --> 00:33:15.980 lifelong dedication to knowledge, scholarship 00:33:15.980 --> 00:33:18.880 and the physical bound book was perhaps best 00:33:18.880 --> 00:33:21.259 symbolized by his personal life. He maintained 00:33:21.259 --> 00:33:24.759 not just one, but two immense private libraries. 00:33:25.019 --> 00:33:27.680 Which is just a staggering feat. of acquisition 00:33:27.680 --> 00:33:30.339 and organization. We're talking about 30 ,000 00:33:30.339 --> 00:33:32.980 volumes in his Milan apartment focused on the 00:33:32.980 --> 00:33:35.759 modern era and his current work. And another 00:33:35.759 --> 00:33:39.240 20 ,000 volumes in his vacation home near Urbino 00:33:39.240 --> 00:33:42.940 focused on his specialty, the early modern and 00:33:42.940 --> 00:33:46.359 medieval periods. That's 50 ,000 volumes in total. 00:33:46.519 --> 00:33:49.519 50 ,000 physical books meticulously cataloged 00:33:49.519 --> 00:33:51.930 and used. It's hard to imagine a more fitting 00:33:51.930 --> 00:33:54.549 monument to a man who dedicated his entire life 00:33:54.549 --> 00:33:56.930 to defining and interpreting the meaning held 00:33:56.930 --> 00:33:59.789 within pages. This monumental personal collection 00:33:59.789 --> 00:34:02.769 was in fact the subject of the 2023 documentary 00:34:02.769 --> 00:34:06.700 film Umberto Eco. a library of the world. Umberto 00:34:06.700 --> 00:34:10.099 Eco died in Milan in 2016 at the age of 84 after 00:34:10.099 --> 00:34:11.980 a two -year struggle with pancreatic cancer. 00:34:12.179 --> 00:34:14.719 He left behind a profound intellectual and literary 00:34:14.719 --> 00:34:16.780 legacy as a professor emeritus at the University 00:34:16.780 --> 00:34:19.239 of Bologna. His life's work stands as a continuous 00:34:19.239 --> 00:34:21.639 interrogation of the power and the limits of 00:34:21.639 --> 00:34:24.360 signs. So if we summarize Eco's identity for 00:34:24.360 --> 00:34:26.539 you, the listener, he was the ultimate synthesis. 00:34:27.179 --> 00:34:30.239 A medievalist who used scholasticism to understand 00:34:30.239 --> 00:34:33.400 and invent detective plots. A philosopher of 00:34:33.400 --> 00:34:35.880 language who built global conspiracies to demonstrate 00:34:35.880 --> 00:34:38.119 the dangers of unconstrained interpretation. 00:34:38.539 --> 00:34:41.079 And a cultural critic. who wielded semiotics 00:34:41.079 --> 00:34:44.579 to diagnose the flaws of mass media and eventually 00:34:44.579 --> 00:34:46.920 the digital age. He showed us that the complex 00:34:46.920 --> 00:34:49.599 academic world of signs and the popular world 00:34:49.599 --> 00:34:52.099 of stories are not separate. There are two sides 00:34:52.099 --> 00:34:54.400 of the same manuscript page. And reading either 00:34:54.400 --> 00:34:57.360 one requires intellectual rigor, historical context. 00:34:57.900 --> 00:34:59.599 and an understanding of the rules of the game. 00:34:59.719 --> 00:35:02.059 Which brings us to our final provocative thought 00:35:02.059 --> 00:35:04.179 for you to carry forward, and it sits right at 00:35:04.179 --> 00:35:07.039 the heart of Ico's glorious contradiction. We've 00:35:07.039 --> 00:35:09.440 emphasized that he warned fiercely against the 00:35:09.440 --> 00:35:12.300 invasion of the idiots via social media, the 00:35:12.300 --> 00:35:14.880 chaos of unlimited, unconstrained interpretation 00:35:14.880 --> 00:35:18.219 of signs in the digital sphere. He saw the internet 00:35:18.219 --> 00:35:21.360 as an endless, dangerous sea of noise. And yet 00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:24.500 his fundamental theoretical contribution, the 00:35:24.500 --> 00:35:27.860 open work, explicitly championed works that invited 00:35:27.860 --> 00:35:29.639 the reader's widest possible interpretation, 00:35:29.980 --> 00:35:33.360 demanding participation and ambiguity. He dedicated 00:35:33.360 --> 00:35:36.199 his life to creating works, from the labyrinthine 00:35:36.199 --> 00:35:38.760 library of the monastery to the fictional conspiracy 00:35:38.760 --> 00:35:42.019 of the Templars, that actively invited you, the 00:35:42.019 --> 00:35:45.539 reader, to engage, decode, and interpret relentlessly. 00:35:45.719 --> 00:35:48.670 So here is the paradox we leave you with. Did 00:35:48.670 --> 00:35:51.010 Ico's passionate love for The Bound Book and 00:35:51.010 --> 00:35:53.889 its contained, finite collection of signs ultimately 00:35:53.889 --> 00:35:56.230 lose the fight against the chaos of the open 00:35:56.230 --> 00:35:59.090 internet, the endless, uncontrolled library of 00:35:59.090 --> 00:36:01.570 the world? Or did his own theories about communication 00:36:01.570 --> 00:36:04.760 mean that ultimately... All texts, even a viral 00:36:04.760 --> 00:36:06.920 tweet, a YouTube video, or a baseless conspiracy 00:36:06.920 --> 00:36:10.460 posted online, must be considered an open, interpretable 00:36:10.460 --> 00:36:12.699 field of meaning. And thus require the intellectual 00:36:12.699 --> 00:36:15.039 defenses of the semiotic gorilla, for better 00:36:15.039 --> 00:36:17.119 or for worse. Something for you to mull over 00:36:17.119 --> 00:36:19.320 as you navigate your next encounter with an open 00:36:19.320 --> 00:36:22.420 text, digital or physical, and decide where the 00:36:22.420 --> 00:36:24.840 line between productive interpretation and dangerous 00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:27.179 noise truly lies. Thanks for joining us for this 00:36:27.179 --> 00:36:28.539 deep dive into Umberto Eco.