Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto ... - Karen Eliot

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25[Home] [Home B] [Evolve] [Viva!] [Site Map] [Site Map A] [Site Map B] [Bulletin Board] [SPA][Child of Fortune] [Search] [ABOL]TOWARDS A SEMIOLOGICALGUERRILLA WARFAREby Umberto EcoCopyright © 1983, 1976, 1973 by Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri-Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etos S.p.A.English translation copyright © 1986 by Harcourt, Inc.Copyright © 1986, 1967 by Umberto EcoNot long ago, if you wanted to seize politicalpower in a country, you had merely to control thearmy and the police. Today it is only in the mostbackward countries that fascist generals, incarrying out a coup d'etat, still use tanks. If acountry has reached a high level ofindustrialization the whole scene changes. Thehttp://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 1 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25was translated into a tragic consequence:Liberated from the contents of communication,the addressee of the messages of the mass mediareceives only a global ideological lesson, the callto narcotic passiveness. When the mass mediatriumph, the human being dies.But Marshall McLuhan, on the contrary, settingout from the same premises, concludes that,when the mass media triumph, the Gutenbergianhuman being dies, and a new man is born,accustomed to perceive the world in anotherway. We don't know if this man will be better orworse, but we know he is new. Where theapocalyptics saw the end of the world, McLuhansees the beginning of a new phase of history.This is exactly what happens when a primvegetarian argues with a user of LSD: Theformer sees the drug as the end of reason, thelatter as the beginning of a new sensitivity. Bothagree on the chemical composition ofpsychedelics.But the communications scholar must askhimself this question: Is the chemicalcomposition of every communicative act thesame?Naturally there are educators who display asimpler optimism, derived from theEnlightenment; they have firm faith in the powerof the message's contents. They are confidentthat they can effect a transformation ofconsciousness by transforming televisionprograms, increasing the amount of truth-inadvertisingspots, the precision of the news in thehttp://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 4 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25contents according to the Emitting Source but bythe code I am using. It is the code used that givesthe light-signal a specific content. The movefrom the Gutenberg Galaxy to the New Villageof Total Communication will not prevent theeternal drama of infidelity and jealousy fromexploding for me, my girlfriend, and herhusband.And so the communication chain outlined abovewill have to be modified as follows: TheReceiver transforms the Signal into Message, butthis message is still the empty form to which theAddressee can attribute various meaningsdepending on the Code he applies to it.If I write the phrase "no more," you whointerpret it according to the English-languagecode will read it in the sense that seems mostobvious to you; but I assure you that, read by anItalian, the same words would mean "notblackberries," or else "No, I prefer blackberries";and further, if, instead of a botanical frame ofreference, my Italian reader used a legal one, hewould take the words to mean "No, respires," or,in an erotic frame of reference, as a reply: "No.brunettes" to the question "Do gentlemen preferblondes?"Naturally, in normal communication, betweenone human being and another, for purposesconnected with everyday life, suchmisunderstandings are few; the codes areestablished in advance. But there are extremecases, and first among them is that of aestheticcommunication, where the message ishttp://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 8 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25communication, where the message isdeliberately ambiguous precisely to foster the useof different codes by those who, in differenttimes and places, will encounter the work of art.If in everyday communication ambiguity isexcluded, in aesthetic communication it isdeliberate; and in mass communicationambiguity, even if ignored, is always present.We have mass communication when the Sourceis one, central, structured according to themethods of industrial organization; the Channelis a technological invention that affects the veryform of the signal; and the Addressees are thetotal number (or, anyway, a very large number)of the human beings in various parts of theglobe. American scholars have realized what aTechnicolor love movie, conceived for ladies inthe suburbs, means when it is shown in a ThirdWorld village. In countries like Italy, where theTV message is developed by a centralizedindustrial Source and reaches simultaneously anorthern industrial city and a remote rural villageof the South, social settings divided by centuriesof history, this phenomenon occurs daily.But paradoxical reflection also is enough toconvince us on this score. The Americanmagazine Eros published famous photographs ofa white woman and a black man, naked, kissing;if those images had been broadcast over apopular TV channel, I presume that thesignificance attributed to the message by thegovernor of Alabama would be different fromthat of Allen Ginsberg. For a California hippie,http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 9 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25reply: "The medium transmits those ideologieswhich the addressee receives according to codesoriginating in his social situation, in his previouseducation, and in the psychological tendencies ofthe moment." In this case the phenomenon ofmass communication would remain unchanged.There exists an extremely powerful instrumentthat none of us will ever manage to regulate;there exist means of communication that, unlikemeans of production, are not controllable eitherby private will or by the community. Inconfronting them, all of us, from the head ofCBS to the president of the United States, fromMartin Heidegger to the poorest fellah of theNile delta, all of us are the proletariat.And yet I believe it is wrong to consider thebattle of man against the technological universeof communication as a strategic affair. It is amatter of tactics.As a rule, politicians, educators, communicationsscientists believe that to control the power of themedia you must control two communicatingmoments of the chain: the Source and theChannel. In this way they believe they cancontrol the message. Alas, they control only anempty form that each addressee will till with themeanings provided by his own cultural models.The strategic solution is summed up in thesentence "We must occupy the chair of theMinister of Information" or even "We mustoccupy the chair of the publisher of The NewYork Times." I will not deny that this strategicview can produce excellent results for someonehttp://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 11 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25view can produce excellent results for someoneaiming at political and economic success, but Ibegin to fear it produces very skimpy results foranyone hoping to restore to human beings acertain freedom in the face of the totalphenomenon of Communication.So for the strategic solution it will benecessary, tomorrow, to employ a guerrillasolution. What must be occupied, in everypart of the world, is the first chair in front ofevery TV set (and naturally, the chair of thegroup leader in front of every movie screen,every transistor, every page of newspaper). Ifyou want a less paradoxical formulation, I willput it like this: The battle for the survival ofman as a responsible being in theCommunications Era is not to be won wherethe communication originates, but where itarrives. I mention guerrilla warfare because aparadoxical and difficult fate lies in store for us -- I mean for us scholars and technicians ofcommunication. Precisely when thecommunication systems envisage a singleindustrialized source and a single message thatwill reach an audience scattered all over theworld, we should be capable of imaginingsystems of complementary communication thatallow us to reach every individual human group,every individual member of the universalaudience, to discuss the arriving message in thelight of the codes at the destination, comparingthem with the codes at the source.http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 12 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25A political party that knows how to set up agrass-roots action that will reach all thegroups that follow TV and can bring them todiscuss the message they receive can changethe meaning that the Source had attributed tothis message. An educational organization thatsucceeds in making a given audience discuss themessage it is receiving could reverse themeaning of that message. Or else show that themessage can be interpreted in different ways.Mind you: I am not proposing a new and moreterrible form of control of public opinion. I amproposing an action to urge the audience tocontrol the message and its multiple possibilitiesof interpretation.The idea that we must ask the scholars andeducators of tomorrow to abandon the TVstudios or the offices of the newspapers, tofight a door-to-door guerrilla battle likeprovos of Critical Reception can befrightening, and can also seem utopian. But ifthe Communications Era proceeds in thedirection that today seems to us the mostprobable, this will be the only salvation forfree people. The methods of this culturalguerrilla have to be worked out. Probably in theinterrelation of the various communicationsmedia, one medium can be employed tocommunicate a series of opinions on anothermedium. To some extent this is what anewspaper does when it criticizes a TV program.But who can assure us that the newspaper articlewill be read in the way we wish? Will we have tohttp://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 13 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25will be read in the way we wish? Will we have tohave recourse to another medium to teach peoplehow to read the newspaper in a critical fashion?Certain phenomena of "mass dissent" (hippies,beatniks, new Bohemias, student movements)today seem to us negative replies to the industrialsociety: The society of TechnologicalCommunication is rejected in order to look foralternative forms, using the means of thetechnological society (television, press, recordcompanies ...). So there is no leaving the circle;you are trapped in it willy-nilly. Revolutions areoften resolved in more picturesque forms ofintegration.But it could be that these nonindustrial formsof communication (from the love-in to therally of students seated on the grass of thecampus) can become the forms of a futurecommunications guerrilla warfare -- amanifestation complementary to themanifestations of TechnologicalCommunication, the constant correction ofperspectives, the checking of codes, the everrenewed interpretations of mass messages.The universe of TechnologicalCommunication would then be patrolled bygroups of communications guerrillas, whowould restore a critical dimension to passivereception. The threat that "the medium is themessage" could then become, for both mediumand message, the return to individualresponsibility. To the anonymous divinity ofTechnological Communication our answer couldhttp://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 14 von 15

Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, by Umberto Eco16.08.11 19:25Technological Communication our answer couldbe: "Not Thy, but our will be done."http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.towardsemiologicalguerrilla.htmSeite 15 von 15