Faith in Fakes  

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"When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred cliches moves us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion . . . Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime." -- Umberto Eco, "Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage" (1984)

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Il costume di casa (Faith In Fakes) was originally an essay written by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco, about "America's obsession with simulacra and counterfeit reality." It was later incorporated as the centrepiece of the anthology bearing the same name, a collection of articles and essays about Italian ideologies. The anthology contains a selection of essays taken from two Italian books by Eco: Il Costume Di Casa (first published in 1973) and Sette anni di desiderio (1983). It was translated into English in 1986 as Faith In Fakes and later updated as Travels In Hyperreality in 1995.

Contents

Content

The book is a collection of articles from mainly Italian newspapers and magazines about the wider subject of human consciousness, including Eco's own subject of semiotics. The subjects of the main essay includes modern Americana such as wax museums, Superman and holography, and the other articles discuss a number of other subjects, including football, the Middle Ages, Jim Jones and the People's Temple, and tight jeans.

Semiological guerrilla

The collection included the influential 1967 article Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, first given as a lecture at conference Vision '67 in New York, and included in Eco's first work on semiotic theory, his 1968 La Struttura Assente (The Absent Structure).

The term has been influential in the theorization of guerrilla tactics against mainstream mass media culture, such as guerrilla television and culture jamming. Among the expressions used in the essay, "communications guerrilla warfare" and "cultural guerrilla."

TOC

1. TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY ....1

2. THE RETURN OF THE MIDDLE AGES ....59

3. THE GODS OF THE UNDERWORLD ....87

  • The Sacred Is Not Just a Fashion ....89
  • The Suicides of the Temple ....95
  • Whose Side Are the Orixà On? ....103
  • Striking at the Heart of the State ....113
  • Why Are They Laughing in Those Cages? ....119
  • On the Crisis of the Crisis of Reason ....125

4. REPORTS FROM THE GLOBAL VILLAGE ....133

  • Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare ....135
  • The Multiplication of the Media ....145
  • Culture as Show Business ....151
  • Sports Chatter ....159
  • The World Cup and Its Pomps ....167
  • Falsification and Consensus ....173

5. READING THINGS ....181

6. DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE ....219

  • Cogito Interruptus ....221
  • Language, Power, Force ....239
  • In Praise of St. Thomas ....257
  • The Comic and the Rule ....269

7. DE INTERPRETATIONE ....279

8. A THEORY OF EXPOSITIONS ....289

Translations

1973 Il costume di casa. Milano: Bompiani.

Translations, with parts of Dalla periferia dell'Impero and Sette anni di desiderio:

  • Pealkiri rais hüperreaaalsusse. Tallin: Wagabund 1977
  • Viagem na irrealidade cotidiana. Rio: Nova Fronteira, 1984.
  • Matka arkipaivan epatoddellisunten. Helsinki: Soderstrom, 1985.
  • De alledaagse Onwerkelijkheid. Amsterdam: Bakker, 1985.
  • Uber Gott und die Welt. München: Hanser, 1985.
  • La guerre du faux. Paris: Grasset, 1985.
  • Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt, 1986.
  • La estrategia de la illusion. Barcelona: Lumen, 1986. Bolsillo 2012.
  • Viagem na irrealidade cotidiana. Lisboa: Difel, 1986.
  • Vad kostar ett mästerverk? Stockholm: Bromberg, 1987.
  • Middelalderens genkomst. Copenhagen: Forum, 1988.
  • Günlük Yasamdan Sanata. Instambul: Adam, 199 (with other artic1icles).
  • Az új középkor. Budapest: Europa, 1992
  • Semiologia zycia codziennego. Warsawa:Czytelnic, 1966.
  • Reis Rüperreaalsusse. Tallin:Vayalun, 1997
  • Ortaçaδý Düþlemek. Istanbul: Ca Yayýinlarý, 1996.
  • Svakodnema semiotika. Beoigrad: Narodna knijga 2001.
  • Podziemni bogowie. Warszawa: Czytelnik 2007

See also




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