Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings (2012) by the author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, is an exceptionally eclectic collection of previously published or presented essays written in a variety of styles, from scholastic to wistful, and dense to delightful.
Just as I was
in a café reading the first essay, “Inventing the Enemy” a young man with
a Planet EnemyT-shirt walked by. In Eco’s piece, from a lecture at Bologna University on
May 15, 2008, he explores the notion of the enemy – who we, collectively and
individually, regard as our historical enemies, but also our cultural enemies,
whether real or perceived or invented. For example, he cites ancient to
contemporary texts to illustrate his point, from Marcus Cicero’s 63BC Orations
against Catiline to Jean-Paul Satre’s No Exit (1944) to George Orwell’s
Nineteen Eight-Four (1949), as well as historical events (global conflicts). He
writes of people’s intolerance of other races, lower classes, and of people who
are different from “us.” “The enemy is ugly,” he states, and adds, “The need
(for an enemy) is second nature even to a mild man of peace. In his case the
image of the enemy is simply shifted from a human object to a natural or social
force that in some way threatens us and has to be defeated, whether it be
capitalistic exploitation, environmental pollution, or third-world hunger.”
Basing our
lives on “this Other” and finding “this Other intolerable because to some
degree he is not us” we “create our own hell,” Eco writes. The enemy springs
from our own fears, insecurities, intolerances, and even virtuous causes. So
when we see Planet Enemy on a T-shirt we remember our own fictional heroes and
villains, but we may also reflect on good versus evil, and them against us.
In his second
essay, “Absolute and Relative” – a lecture presented during the Milanesiana
festival on July 9, 2007, Eco explores the idea of truth, of cultural
relativism, of moral relativism, and of faith and conviction. He examines the
history of truth, what is a subjective fact, and that which may be open to
interpretation (and therefore open to dispute) according to a set of
definitions, rules of physics, or some other means, such as history,
philosophy, or divinity. Each has their own “various degrees of verifiability
or acceptability.” He ponders whether “if there were no facts but only
interpretations, then an interpretation would be an interpretation of what?”
and “if interpretation interprets each other, there would still have to have
been an object or event in the first place that has spurred us to interpret.”
Not all of Eco’s
14 essays are as esoteric as the two mentioned above. The light-hearted “Living
by Proverbs” is comical, and the “Censorship and Silence” is a thought-provoking
off-the-cuff piece, while “Thoughts on Wikileaks” is sure to evoke controversy.
“Why the Island is Never Found” talks of the fascination people have for
islands, and the creation of maps as explorers sought far off islands: islands
lost and islands found and islands that don’t exist.
Readers will
find something of interest in this heterogeneous collection. And with the
density of some essays, re-reading will bring twice the pleasure, or twice the
pain. And because one does not lead into the other, the essays can be
cherry-picked according to a reader’s moods and concentration levels. At any
level, the “occasional writings” are intellectual and influential.
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