Article

L’idéologie dans le Trattato di Semiotica Generale. Une mise en perspective / The Ideology into the Trattato di Semiotica Generale. New perspectives.

in Versus n. 121, Rileggere un classico: il Trattato di semiotica generale 40 anni dopo / Rereading a classic: Trattato di semiotica generale 40 years later, pp.71-87

Abstract (english)

Ideology has a theoretical concept, is not usually associated to the semiotic tradition, but rather to the fields of Philosophy and Socio-politics. The urge throughout the 70’s to construct the concept as a sense producing mechanism reveal two antagonistic influences: that of the post-war Marxist debate; and that of the new cultural industry of which social-sciences have for task to describe and analyse. Eco introduced the word Ideology as a concept in the third part of Trattato (TSG) in the section Teoria della Produzione Segnica within the frame of what he defined has “the superior limit of semiotics”. The fact that Ideology can be considered as a system of representation for a social class, turned into an hegemonic system of comprehension and representation – in this sense Althusser and Gramsci provide us with prime definitions – raises many questions for semioticians. Against this backdrop our reflexion will seek to contrast the different semiotic conceptions on Ideology with the originality of Eco’s approach. Then the concept dissapear in the next fifty years.