ABSTRACT

It is commonly said that since Opera aperta Eco has continuously and successfully developed the idea of ‘openness’;1 he starts from the negation of Crocean aesthetics, goes through the ‘open work’ - his ‘pre-semiotic’ period - and finally arrives at the construction of semiotics. This essay aims to challenge this established opinion and to oppose it on two grounds: first, the ‘pre-semiotic’ period is not a mere transition towards semiotics; second, semiotics represents a deadlock for openness in that it loses the tension with sociohistoricity. When we shed light on the ‘pre-semiotic’ elements that were alienated from his semiotics, we can confirm the necessity for a different theoretical development of openness. It is ironic that, in Opera aperta, Eco established, from the first edition, the information theory and communication theory which might appear to be the indispensable components of semiotics; however, these may not operate as the bases on which openness will transfer to semiotics, even though some theorists, including Eco himself, believe so. Rather, their function is the theoretical establishment of openness that differs completely from semiotics.