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Umberto Eco's Rhetoric of Communication and Signification Susan Mancino Duquesne University

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Umberto Eco's Rhetoric of Communication and Signification Susan Mancino Duquesne University Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 5-11-2018 Understanding Lists: Umberto Eco's Rhetoric of Communication and Signification Susan Mancino Duquesne University Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Part of the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Mancino, S. (2018). Understanding Lists: Umberto Eco's Rhetoric of Communication and Signification (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1445 This One-year Embargo is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNDERSTANDING LISTS: UMBERTO ECO’S RHETORIC OF COMMUNICATION AND SIGNIFICATION A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Susan Mancino May 2018 Copyright by Susan Mancino 2018 Susan Mancino “Understanding Lists: Umberto Eco’s Rhetoric of Communication and Signification” Degree: Doctor of Philosophy February 2, 2018 APPROVED ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Ronald C. Arnett, Dissertation Director Professor Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies APPROVED ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Janie M. Harden Fritz, First Reader Professor Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies APPROVED ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Craig Maier, Second Reader Assistant Professor Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies APPROVED ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Ronald C. Arnett, Chair Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies APPROVED ____________________________________________________________ Dr. James C. Swindal, Dean The McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts iii ABSTRACT UNDERSTANDING LISTS: UMBERTO ECO’S RHETORIC OF COMMUNICATION AND SIGNIFICATION By Susan Mancino May 2018 Dissertation supervised by Dr. Ronald C. Arnett This project, Understanding Lists: Umberto Eco’s Rhetoric of Communication and Signification, begins and ends with an observation and warning suggested throughout Eco’s work: lists are the origin of culture and the Internet as the Mother of All Lists threatens to end culture. To understand this warning, I turn to Eco’s work on lists, contextualized within a 2009 exhibition at the Musée du Louvre and in an illustrated collection, The Infinity of Lists. This project offers an analysis of Eco’s understanding of lists concurrent to his commentary on the social and cultural implications of the algorithmic-obsessed Internet age. To understand his argument, this project collects hints of insight through his corpus. In Eco’s cultural aesthetics, he celebrates the notion of openness that invites and encourages audience participation in the interpretation of texts with multiple possibilities. With his interpretive semiotics, Eco offers a theory of culture grounded in signification and communication. Signification consists of the iv codes of culture that make meaning and interpretive response possible. Communication is the labor of sign production and interpretation. Throughout his literary praxis, Eco implements these theoretical notions into story-form, and with his fifth novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, affirms the mutual necessity of communication and signification. Ultimately, Eco urges us to list as a response to the threats of algorithmic processing of big data that displaces and replaces the human interpreter. For Eco, listing a form of communication that requires the labor to wade through information, activate codes of signification, and interpret cultural meaning. v DEDICATION To my family. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the support and guidance of the following people and institutions. First, I thank the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, and Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit. It has been a wonderful experience to study and work where the Spirit gives life. I express my deep appreciation to my dissertation director, Ronald C. Arnett, for his seven years of guidance, support, and encouragement on this project and others, for mentoring my research and teaching, and for introducing me to the work of Umberto Eco. I am thankful for Dr. Janie Harden Fritz for all that she has done to assist my professional and personal development during my time at Duquesne University. Additionally, I am grateful for Dr. Fritz and Dr. Craig T. Maier for their helpful suggestions as committee members on this project and for fostering my learning inside and outside the classroom. I acknowledge my appreciation and admiration for Mrs. Rita McCaffrey, who has contributed to my learning and my experience at Duquesne University. I also offer my thanks to those who I have studied alongside: to Sarah DeIuliis and Hannah Karolak for their friendship and constant encouragement, to David DeIuliis for his role in constructing a social imaginary, and to Father Lazarus Langbiir and Kati Sudnick for the opportunity to work with them as a scholarly teaching team. Additionally, I offer my appreciation to Leeanne Bell McManus, Annette M. Holba, and Amanda McKendree, who are exceptional role models. I also acknowledge the patience, generosity, and friendship of Eva Tumiel-Kozak, who continually encouraged and supported my pursuit in learning the Polish language as part of the completion of this program and to the hospitality of Józef and Julita Zaprucki and support of vii Elżbieta and Zdzisław Wasik and the Erasmus Plus Program for their assistance in providing opportunities for language immersion. I am thankful for my mentors, colleagues, and friends from my undergraduate institution for their encouragement to pursue graduate education—to Dr. Elvera Berry, Dr. Paul Stewart, Robin and Steven Zwier, Lauren Smith, and Matt Dearstyne. Finally, I thank my family. In the spirit of this project, I acknowledge them through a list because words cannot describe my appreciation for their love and support: to my parents, Janet and Lawrence, my brothers, Patrick and Michael and their families Jen, Audrey, Ezra, and Callie, my grandparents, especially my grandmother Ann, my husband’s family Kim, Chuck, and Chaz, and, above all, my husband Matt. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...iv–v Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...vi Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………vii–viii Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………………1–35 Chapter 2……………………………………………………………………………………..36–68 Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………………………69–108 Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………………………..109–145 Chapter 5…………………………………………………………………………………..146–182 Chapter 6…………………………………………………………………………………..183–212 References…………………………………………………………………………………213–225 Appendix A………………………………………………………………………………..226–227 Appendix B………………………………………………………………………………..228–244 ix Mancino 1 Chapter 1: Umberto Eco and the Field of Communication: Uncovering and Preserving Human Meaning This project articulates the work of Umberto Eco, who offers a historical perspective of the practice of collecting, recognizing it as the origin of culture with poetic and pragmatic aims (Eco, Beyer, and Gorris, par. 2). However, for Eco, the collection of information on the World Wide Web becomes the “Mother of All Lists” with dangerous implications for human culture (Infinity 360). His work suggests that algorithmic processing of big data threatens to onset the end of culture by limiting human involvement in signification and communication (Bankov). For Eco, signification is human meaning making via interpretive insight, distinct from communication, which centers on the embodied transfer of information from sender to receiver (Theory). While the vernacular of the field of communication often refers to communication as encompassing both information transfer and interpretation, Eco distinguishes these tasks with signification, not communication, prompting interpretive response.1 Eco’s project emphasizes the importance of signification in securing interpretive response and cultural meaning as well as the simultaneous value of communication as the labor that activates and enriches meaning shared between and among human interpreters. Eco cautions that the algorithm governance of Internet acts as a potential inhibitor of human meaning by limiting the viability of communication and signification. This project responds to the questions: what is the role of signification and 1 This project aims to announce Eco’s relevance to the field of communication, recognizing that his use of the term communication differs from its use by professional associations, academic journals, and scholars throughout the field. While this distinction receives further attention later in the project, for clarity I use the term “communication” when referring to Eco’s theory of sign production rooted in the embodied labor of information transfer, and “field of communication” when following the presupposition that communication embraces both message transfer and engagement with meaning. 2 Mancino communication in the Internet age and how can we protect and promote human meaning in the midst of new technological trends? To answer these questions, this project
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