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An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget It!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Umberto Eco
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Extract

ONCE, AS A JOKE, some friends and I invented advertisements for university positions in nonexistent disciplines. We divided these disciplines into four departments: adynata, or impossibilia, containing sciences that were historically impossible, such as history of the wheel in the pre-Columbian empires, history of painting on Easter Island, Aztec horse racing; oxymoronica, containing sciences that were self-contradictory and analytically impossible, such as nomadic urban studies, institutions of deviance, binary logic of the included middle; byzantinica, containing sciences of utter uselessness, such as potiosection, or the art of cutting broth; and tetrapiloctomia, or the art of quartering a hair, containing sciences of excessive subtlety, such as microscopy of indiscernibles.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 103 , Issue 3 , May 1988 , pp. 254 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1988

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References

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