Book 89 - Umberto Eco "Faith In Fakes"
Nov. 28th, 2018 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveUmberto Eco "Faith In Fakes" (Vintage)
If you have ever read Roland Barthes book, "Mythologies", then this book may be of interest to you as it continues where that one left off, the semiology of culture that Barthes first critiqued. This is the war of the false or the reasoned chronicle of our new mythologies or what Eco calls hyperrealities. This paperback deserves some close reading, and it took me a few months to digest this one.
In our increasingly iconic age, the discipline of semiotics has much to say, and to do so must delve deeper and wider, into sociology, philosophy and psychology. In this superb selection of essays, Umberto Eco discusses topics as widely spaced as blue jeans, the film Casablanca, ancient monuments and theme parks. Throughout, he manages to communicate intensely difficult ideas with ease, making Faith In Fakes a truly enlightening read that both informs on theory and entertains via the mundane.
The reader must be prepared to go part-way into the discipline, however, especially in relation to specific authors and rarefied vocabulary. While names such as McLuhan, Foucault and Barthes might not deter most readers, words such as oneiric, corybantism, synecdoche, mytonymy, eversive and anthopophagy could prove to be stumbling blocks. There aren't many of these specialist words, however, because overall Umberto Eco's style is beautifully communicative and easy to read.
One very small downside to this text is just how dated it is, and whilst in purely philosophical terms that isn't a problem, in historical discourse it is. Clearly Eco was commenting on events fresh in the lives of late '60s, '70s Italians (Europeans) and that rather comes across like reading an old newspaper you found stuffed in the wall. The work then becomes something of a historical curiosity rather than a work of philosophy, which is a shame.
All in all `Faith in Fakes' represents a noble spoke on the wheel of postmodernist discourse and theory and without it we would, no doubt be worse off.
If you have ever read Roland Barthes book, "Mythologies", then this book may be of interest to you as it continues where that one left off, the semiology of culture that Barthes first critiqued. This is the war of the false or the reasoned chronicle of our new mythologies or what Eco calls hyperrealities. This paperback deserves some close reading, and it took me a few months to digest this one.
In our increasingly iconic age, the discipline of semiotics has much to say, and to do so must delve deeper and wider, into sociology, philosophy and psychology. In this superb selection of essays, Umberto Eco discusses topics as widely spaced as blue jeans, the film Casablanca, ancient monuments and theme parks. Throughout, he manages to communicate intensely difficult ideas with ease, making Faith In Fakes a truly enlightening read that both informs on theory and entertains via the mundane.
The reader must be prepared to go part-way into the discipline, however, especially in relation to specific authors and rarefied vocabulary. While names such as McLuhan, Foucault and Barthes might not deter most readers, words such as oneiric, corybantism, synecdoche, mytonymy, eversive and anthopophagy could prove to be stumbling blocks. There aren't many of these specialist words, however, because overall Umberto Eco's style is beautifully communicative and easy to read.
One very small downside to this text is just how dated it is, and whilst in purely philosophical terms that isn't a problem, in historical discourse it is. Clearly Eco was commenting on events fresh in the lives of late '60s, '70s Italians (Europeans) and that rather comes across like reading an old newspaper you found stuffed in the wall. The work then becomes something of a historical curiosity rather than a work of philosophy, which is a shame.
All in all `Faith in Fakes' represents a noble spoke on the wheel of postmodernist discourse and theory and without it we would, no doubt be worse off.
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