Abstract
This paper offers a re-reading of the works of Umberto Eco, be they academic, journalistic or literary, with a pseudologic tone: his desire to investigate the mechanisms of lying, and their relation with fiction, falsification, error, secrecy, and conspiracy. The study will review some of his main academic texts in the fields of semiotics, rhetoric, and aesthetics, and will make some references to his recent novels and essay compilations, as well as offer an explanation of how the evolution of his thoughts takes a pessimistic turn. The face of the lie, which initially was aesthetic consolation and consumerist delusion, and then a game of intelligence, a creative stimulus and an interpretive challenge, changes when serves the purpose of extortion, manipulation, and war. In short, it could be argued that Eco became increasingly disappointed by deceptions, and lost faith in fakes and forgeries.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Spatializing food: Signs, spaces, and the legal (dis-)composition of what we eat
- A review of the comparative study of Mo Yan and Faulkner in China
- Expounding knowledge through explanations: Generic types and rhetorical-relational patterns
- A semiosic translation of the term “Bild” in both the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and The Philosophical Investigations
- Talking green and acting green are two different things: An experimental investigation of the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes and low carbon consumer choice
- De l’explosion dans Le Transperceneige de Joon-ho Bong
- Using semantic tagging to examine the American Dream and the Chinese Dream
- Faith in fakes: Secrets, lies, and conspiracies in Umberto Eco’s writings
- The semiotics of breast cancer: Signs, symptoms, and sales
- Finite semiotics: Recovery functions, semioformation, and the hyperreal
- The urgency of engaging with oddities and ambiguities: Reciprocity and cooperation visited as semio-aesthetic notions in bridging nature and culture
- Concepts of narrative, founding violence, and multiculturalism in the Americas: Greimas, Girard, and Kymlicka
- Language mediated mentalization: A proposed model
- Immanuel Kant on the philosophy of communicology: The tropic logic of rhetoric and semiotics
- Voice and bodily deixis as manifestation of performativity in written texts
- Review Articles
- Review of The semiotics of emoji: The rise of visual language in the age of the Internet
- The semiotics of intuition, care, and esotericism in education
- Book Review
- Fiction as semiotics
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Spatializing food: Signs, spaces, and the legal (dis-)composition of what we eat
- A review of the comparative study of Mo Yan and Faulkner in China
- Expounding knowledge through explanations: Generic types and rhetorical-relational patterns
- A semiosic translation of the term “Bild” in both the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and The Philosophical Investigations
- Talking green and acting green are two different things: An experimental investigation of the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes and low carbon consumer choice
- De l’explosion dans Le Transperceneige de Joon-ho Bong
- Using semantic tagging to examine the American Dream and the Chinese Dream
- Faith in fakes: Secrets, lies, and conspiracies in Umberto Eco’s writings
- The semiotics of breast cancer: Signs, symptoms, and sales
- Finite semiotics: Recovery functions, semioformation, and the hyperreal
- The urgency of engaging with oddities and ambiguities: Reciprocity and cooperation visited as semio-aesthetic notions in bridging nature and culture
- Concepts of narrative, founding violence, and multiculturalism in the Americas: Greimas, Girard, and Kymlicka
- Language mediated mentalization: A proposed model
- Immanuel Kant on the philosophy of communicology: The tropic logic of rhetoric and semiotics
- Voice and bodily deixis as manifestation of performativity in written texts
- Review Articles
- Review of The semiotics of emoji: The rise of visual language in the age of the Internet
- The semiotics of intuition, care, and esotericism in education
- Book Review
- Fiction as semiotics