Umberto Eco, the novelist, medievalist and semiotics professor whose books include The Name of The Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, gave a talk at UTM on Wednesday night. Eco spoke about the changing meanings of beauty and ugliness in Western culture. Having devoted a book to each of these subjects, he had plenty to say. Before the lecture The Varsity sat down with Eco to talk about politics, the role of universities, what beauty means right now, and whether Robarts is secretly inspirational.
The Varsity: Marcel Danesi says you wrote Name of the Rose partially in Robarts Library. Is that true?
Umberto Eco: But yes, I was thinking of Robarts too.
TV: Do you think there’s a message in mass culture that young people are more concerned with superficial things than being critical?
UE: You cannot be beautiful and critical at the same time? I don’t know, if you want to become a model for Christian Dior, it is probably better to be beautiful than critical. I never think about that. I am very beautiful and very critical.
It’s a typical idea in media and in education, but I think there is always the same percentage of people involved in serious problems and of people involved in superficial things. The superficial people are now more visible because the population has increased in size.
TV: You’re primarily a semiotician, and U of T has one of North America’s few semiotics departments. Is there a future for the field, and in what role?
UE: I have always said that semiotics is not the name of a discipline, but the name of a department. It’s hard to answer, because semiotics is not a definite science. You can ask “what’s physics?” but semiotics is a field of different interests and different methods.
I always distinguish applied semiotics—semiotics of advertising, semiotics of cinema—from the general semiotics (what I’m doing) which is a more philosophical approach.
Depending on the school and even on the country there are many different approaches. Like medicine: what is medicine? In medicine you have dietetics, surgery, anatomy–very, very, very different approaches and methods with a vague common aim: the health of the human body. Okay, that unifies all aspects of medicine, but a dietician has very little to do with a surgeon. And semiotics is a little like that, so those who pretend that there is one semiotics, one science, one discipline are fundamentalists, like the Taliban.
TV: How do you find the academic culture at U of T?
UE: Ah! I have many contacts with the University of Toronto. I’ve been here as a researcher and professor, and I think it’s going pretty well. It’s a good university, and I like also the campus life.
Next year I will receive an honorary degree from the Pontifical Institute, and since
My doctoral dissertation was on medieval aesthetics and the Pontifical Institute of Toronto—it’s considered one of the most important study centres on the Middle Ages, so I’m very, very happy for the recognition.
TV: What do you think of the idea that it’s a “European-style” campus?
UE: The expression “European campus” is wrong. There is no European campus. Except in Great Britain. That’s why Great Britain is not Europe.
The main feature of the European university—Spain, France Germany—it’s the university was born in the centre of the city. And it is still there in certain cities like Bologna, my university. The university campus is the real historical centre of the city. You have in the same place the offices of the Rector Magnificus and the Mayoral Palace.
And that makes another important difference [in North America]: the history, the life of the university in Europe has always been strictly linked to the political life of the city. That’s why, sometimes, Americans do not understand why a university professor in Italy can at the same time be in Parliament, or write political articles. In America it happens only with Chomsky, while in Europe it’s natural.
[Suburban campuses] are pseudo-campuses. Even in the smaller cities there is the fight between “town and gown.”
There has always been that separation between the academic power and the political power [in North America]. In Europe it’s totally different, which changes the life of the students.
Take a big city like Roma or Milan. The students go to follow the class, and then go home. In a city like Bologna, on the contrary, a city that’s smaller, all made of arcades so you can stay outside, pubs are open till 2 or 3 at night and the students live together. In the big cities, there is not the opportunity you get to live the three years of a B.A. all together and in strict contact with the professors.
There are students who go to class once a month, and then they presume to study […] I don’t know, tomes. University’s very different in this sense.
