An Anti-Eco Pamphlet

At the end of the Summer of 1997 a pamphlet titled Umberto Eco's muliple name, which had been circulating for a few weeks in some intellectual milieux and newspapers' offices, eventually appeared on the Net. It immediately aroused the interest of a mixed public of Eco's fans and right-wing youth. Why? The pamphlet had an extremely conservative and anti-materialist stance, expressed in an unprecedented attack on Eco's theories and his obscure political alliances with the Italian left and Prodi's centre-left government. It aimed at disclosing the measures taken by the Left after the ruinous election of 1994, as well asits change of strategy and public image, as elaborated by a task force of semiologists and media gurus including Maurizio Costanzo, Carlo Freccero, Omar Calabrese and Roberto Grandi (the latter had been personally hired by Prodi as a press-agent and ghost-writer). The political stance may not be agreeable, but the study on Italian materialism from Gramsci to the contemporary youth "antagonistic" movements is quite impressive. The author(s) of the pamphlet put the blame on a specific cultural attitude, which they call 'neo-gnosticism', a radical brand of Postmodernism - in plain words, the cult of images and simulation, a conspiracy against such values as Truth and Identity. Eco is regarded as the champion of neo-gnosticism, the "master of deception": his passion for fanta-political fiction and media conspiracies have had its better incarnation in Luther Blissett, that may also be a creation of Eco himself. This youth movement has practically continued the narrative of Foucault's Pendulum. Is Umberto Eco aware of that? Is Blissett a result of Eco's manoeuvres or an undesired son of literary fiction? The picture is still too vague, but if we follow the pamphleteers' argument from the beginning we will not fail to find the evidence.

The Italian Scene

The pamphlet kicks off with a radiograph of the Italian scene, focusing on the figure of Eco.
Late 1980's. Eco has achieved a worldwide popularity as both a semiologist and a novelist. The Name Of The Rose and Fou