Bezeichnenderweise Eco

Nachruf auf Umberto Eco (1932 – 2016)

Abstract

With Umberto Eco, semiotics has lost one of its most original thinkers, whose work sent a powerful signal to liberal intellectuals all around the world. Eco's analysis of contemporary cultural phenomena became very influential. He was one of the first academic scholars who took the pop culture of the late twentieth century seriously. From mystery novels to entertainment and comics: everything was put under his semiotic magnifying glass. Eco not only anaysed contemporary culture, but also influenced it with his combination of deep intellectuality and light-hearted wit. Towards the end of his life, the cunning analyst of mass culture became a worldwide pop star of science like Noam Chomsky or Richard Dawkins. This obituary for Umberto Eco recapitulates the development of his semiotics, with a focus on less well-known publications and activities. It also includes a previously unpublished cartoon drawn by Umberto Eco from the 1980s found in the Archive of Semiotics in Berlin (now in Chemnitz), which can be read as a humorous commentary on communication theories of the time.