"Travels in Hyperreality"- Preface to the American Edition
An American interviewer once asked me how I managed to reconcile my work as a scholar and
university professor, author of books published by university presses, with my other work as
whatwould be called in the United States a "columnist" not to mention the fact that, once in my
life, I even wrote a novel (a negligible incident and, in any case, an activity allowed by the
constitution of every democratic nation). It is true that along with my academic job, I also
write regularly for newspapers and magazines, where, in terms less technical than in my books on
semiotics, I discuss various aspects of daily life, ranging from sport to politics and culture.
My answer was that this habit is common to all European intellectuals, in Germany,
France, Spain, and, naturally, Italy: all countries where a scholar or scientist often feels
required to speak out in the papers, to comment, if only from the point of view of his own
interests and special field, on events that concern all citizens. And I added, somewhat
maliciously, that if there was any problem with this it was not my problem as a European
intellectual. it was more a problem of American intelluctuals, who live in a country where
the division of labor between university professors and militant intellectuals is much more
strict than in our countries.
It is true that many American university professors write for cultural reviews or for
the book page of the daily papers. But many Italian scholars and literary critics also write
columns where they take a stand on political questions, and they do this not only as a natural
part of their work, but also as a duty. There is, then, a difference in "patterns of culture."
Cultural anthropologists accept cultures in which people eat dogs, monkeys, frogs, and snakes,
and even cultures where adults chew gum, so it should be all right for countries to exist where
university professors contribute to the newspapers.
The essays chosen for this book are articles that, over the years,
I wrote for daily papers and weekly magazines (or, on occasion, monthly
reviews, but not strictly academic journals). Some of them may discuss,
perhaps over a period of time, the same problems. Others are mutually
contradictory (but, again, always over a period of time). I believe
that an intelluctual should use newspapers the way private diaries
and personal letters were once used. At white heat, in the rush of
an emotion, stimulated by an event, you write your reflections, hoping
someone will read them and forget them. I don't believe there is any
gap between what I write in my "academic" books and what I write in
the papers. I cannot say precisely whether, for the papers, I try to
translate into language accesible to all and apply to the events
under consideration the ideas I later develop in my academic books,
or whether it is the opposite that happens. Probably many of the
theories expounded in my academic books grew gradually, on the basis
of the observations I wrote down as I followed current events.
At the academic level I concern myself with the problem of
language, communication, organization of the systems of signs that we
use to describe the world and to tell it to one another. The fact that
what I do is called "semiotics" should not frighten anyone. I would
still do it if it were called something else.
When my novel [The Name of the Rose, 1983] came out in the United
States, the newspapers referred to semiotics as an "arcane discipline."
I would not wnat to do anything here to dispel the arcanum and reveal
what semiotics is to those who perhaps have no need to know. I will
say only that if, in these travel notes, these thoughts about politics,
these invectives against sports, these meditations on television, I
have said that things may interest somebody, it is because I look at
the world through the eyes of a semiologist.
In these pages I try to interpret some "signs." These signs are
not only words, or images; they can also be forms of social behavior,
political arts, artificial landscapes. As Charles S. Pierce once said,
"A sign is something by knowing which we know something more."
But this is not a book of semiotics. God forbid. There already
exists too many people who present as semiotics things that are not
semiotics, all over the world; I do not want to make matters worse.
There is another reason why I write these things. I believe it is
my political duty. Here again I owe the American reader an
explaination. In the United States politics is a profession, whereas
in Europe it is a right and a duty. Perhaps we make too much of it,
and use it badly; but each of us feels a moral obligation to be
involved in some way. My way of being involved in politics consists of
telling others how I see daily life, political events, the language of
the mass media, sometimes the way I look at a movie. I believe it is
my job as a scholar and a citizen to show how we are surrounded by
"messages," products of political power, of the entertainment industry
and the revolution industry, and to say that we must know how to
analyze and criticize them.
Perhaps I have written these things, and go on writing similar
things, for other reasons. I am anxious, insecure, and always afraid
of being wrong. What is worse, I am always afraid that the person who
says I am wrong is better than I am. I need to check quickly the ideas
that come into my head. It takes years to write an "academic" book,
and then you have to wait for the reviews, and then correct your own
thinking in the later editions. It is work that demands time, peace
of mind, patience. I am capable of doing it, I believe, but in the
meanwhile I have to allay my anxiety. Insecure persons often cannot
delay for years, and it is hard for them to develop their ideas in
silence, waiting for the "truth" to be suddenly revealed to them.
That is why I like to teach, to expound still-imperfect ideas and
hear the students' reactions. That is why I like to write for the
newspapers, to reread myself the next day, and to read the reactions
of others. A difficult game, because it does not always consist of
being reassured when you meet with agreement and having doubts when
you are faced with dissent. Sometimes you have to follow the opposite
course: distrust agreement and find in dissent the confirmation of your
own intuitions. There is no rule; there is only the risk of
contradiction. But sometimes you have to speak because you feel the
moral obligation to say something, not because you have the
"scientific" certainty that you are saying it in an unassailable way.
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