Philosophy of Communication and Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists: The Interplay of the Poetic and Pragmatic

ABSTRACT

This article conceptualizes the importance of Umberto Eco’s understanding of lists for philosophy of communication. Philosophy of communication is understood as the necessary and insightful interplay of the poetic and pragmatic through which meaning emerges. In The Infinity of Lists, Eco offers an essay-length interpretation of lists presented alongside a collection of art and literature that represent his theoretical work in action. Eco articulates lists as a means for cultural order and form in the attempt to convey what is otherwise beyond articulation. Although philosophers of communication have recognized the importance of Eco’s philosophical and semiotic project for human communication, his work on lists has received little attention within and outside of the field of communication. This article assumes that lists are significant to Eco’s project and to philosophy of communication, situated in the interplay of the poetic and the pragmatic.

Notes

¹ Eco (2009) offered an alternative to Belknap’s definitions of pragmatic and literary lists. For Belknap, pragmatic lists “can be extended to infinity” (in that the telephone book gets longer every year) and literary lists are “closed owing to the formal constraints of the work that constrains them (meter, rhyme, sonnet-form, and so on)” (p. 116). For Eco, however, Belknap’s argument can be “turned on its head”; for instance, with each extension of the telephone book, one produces a new and distinct list rather than a continuation of the previous list (p. 116).

² Eco (1992) conceptualized the empirical readers in contrast to the Model Readers—the reader who accepts the laws of reading implemented by the author directed toward an intended interpretation. For more information on the encyclopedia operating in this capacity, see Pisanty (2015).