Inventing the Enemy. When Propaganda Becomes History

• Authors: Anca Andriescu Garcia
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Umberto Eco’s latest novel. The Prague Cemetery, has a complicated metatextual plot in which, as the writer himself stated, he attempts to create the most repugnant of all literary characters, in other words, some sort of “perfect loather" who detests everyone, including himself. I will discuss the various stereotypes of otherness, the way these stereotypical images interact, and how the author weaves the prejudices related to almost every European nationality, but mostly to the Jews, into the image of the “supreme enemy," an image divested of any ornament and so presumptuous that it becomes almost dense. Moreover, in relation to the image I mentioned above. I analyse the mechanisms language uses as a vehicle of deception especially when it describes what is familiar in propagandist texts. I also focus on the different fictional filters applied to real historical events (and texts) in order to entice the reader into trying to decipher a complex and factitious labyrinth in which the barrier between truth and fiction no longer matters, it is purely accidental, and has only one purpose-to generate conspiracies.

Keywords

EN

Enemy. Propaganda. Jews; Metatext

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 59-66

Dates

published

2013-07-01

online

2014-05-30

Contributors

author

Anca Andriescu Garcia

• Valdosta State University, Georgia, USA English Language Institute

References

• Badiou. Alain. 2012. The Century. Malden: Polity Press.
• Eco. Umberto. 2008. Turning Back the Clock. Hot Wars and Media Populism. Orlando: Harcourt Inc.
• -. 2012. Inventing the Enemy. (Kindle edition.) Boston. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• -. 2010. The Prague Cemetery. (Kindle edition.) Boston. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Girard. René. 1986. The Scapegoat. (Kindle edition.) Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Herf. Jeffrey. 2006. The Jewish Enemy. Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. (Kindle edition.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Schwab. Gabriele, (year not mentioned). Imaginary Ethnographies. Literature, Culture, and Subjectivity. (Kindle edition.) New York: Columbia University Press.
• Wisnicki. Adrian S. 2008. Conspiracy; Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modem Novel. (Kindle edition.) New York and London: Routledge.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/ausp-2014-0005