The Conspiracy of the Miscellaneous in Foucault's Pendulum

Like Name of the Rose, Foucault 's Pendulum grows out of and comments on Umberto Eco's theoretical work. Eco's decision to turn to a conspiracy, rather than a straight detective format for his second novel fits with his recent concern about how interpretative communities function in a period of divisive, diffuse critical theory. Yet Foucault's Pendulum does not merely amplify or dramatize his position; rather, it undermines it by becoming excessively involved in generating conspiracy. It is a satire in which the thing satirized proves more interesting and engaging than the satirical position. Nevertheless, Eco does raise concerns about the conspiratorial, especially the way in which it invalidates ironic detachment and solidarity at the same time, making conspirators inevitable victims of their own conspiracy. And he suggests an important extension of the relation between signs and interpretation: if the detective novel, like Name of the Rose, deals with the special referentiality of signs as clues, the conspiratorial novel, like Foucault's Pendulum, deals with the "paranoid" side of unlimited interpretation—the possibility that every sign, not arbitrarily but capriciously, can reveal an excess of design. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss2/3 The Conspiracy of the Miscellaneous in Foucault's Pendulum Ken Kirkpatrick DePauw University The recent release of 90,000 pages of secret documents from the investigation of the Kennedy assassination has contributed little to what is known about the case, except, according to one commentator, to show that this is the most investigated crime in history. No conspiracy theory was too bizarre to be ignored, not even Oswald's mother's theory that Neiman Marcus was in on it. That there could be 90,000 pages of secret documents that do little to clarify the investigation or to lend credence to one theory over another, suggests that this case is going the way of the novels it has done much to inspire: from its inception, it has tended toward sprawl. The modern conspiracy novel, ranging from Gravity's Rainbow to semi-fictional novels like Libra and Harlot's Ghost, has broken free of its parent genres, the spy or detective novel, and is characterized now by nothing so much as sprawl-the accumulation, rather than the rejection, of the miscellaneous. The telescoping of details into clues and of clues into solutions that typifies the novel of detection has become inverted in the conspiracy novel; the narrowing of focus from a group of suspects to a single perpetrator has been reversed. In the modern conspiracy novel, all may be in on it. It may, in fact, be impossible not to be in on it. Many generic features from the novel of detection remain-for instance, the themes of implication and involvement. What distinguishes the conspiracy novel may only be the matter of emphasis. In the detective novel, certain items become significant as clues, which, as the code is broken, point toward an explanation, a point of simplicity; in the conspiracy novel, the number and variety of such items becomes 1 Kirkpatrick: The Conspiracy of the Miscellaneous in Foucault's Pendulum Published by New Prairie Press 172 STCL, Volume 19, No. 2 (Summer, 1995) excessive and the protagonists risk being overwhelmed by miscellaneous significance. Instead of solution, there is theory. The detective novel emphasizes the acts of detection or ratiocination that relieve the threat of conspiracy; the conspiracy novel concentrates on implication in the conspiracy. In the detective novel, suspicion leads to solution; in the conspiracy novel to further suspicion and implication, which are not the pretext, but the end and grounds of the conspiracy novel. At the end of the conspiracy novel there is a mimicking pair of questions: Was I, too, involved? Was 1 too involved? That Umberto Eco would be led to the conspiracy novel after writing a detective novel is not surprising, given the drift of his recent theoretical work. Name of the Rose was largely concerned with interpreting signs as clues and the relation of such interpretation, loosely identified with Renaissance science, to Medieval modes of interpretation. Foucault's Pendulum is less concerned with signs as clues and more concerned with the limits of interpretation, particularly mistaken versions of unlimited semiosis, of taking clues too far, which, in The Limits of Interpretation, Eco identifies with Renaissance hermeticism and postmodern deconstruction. At the center of the conspiracy in Foucault's Pendulum is a short cryptic text brought to the attention of the young editors, Belpo and Casaubon, by a mysterious Colonel Ardenti. It holds the secret of the Templars in code, he says. Years later, Belpo, Casaubon, and their kabbalistic colleague, Diatallevi, will invent a elaborate parody conspiracy, "The Plan," based on their interpretation of Ardenti's text. Later, Casaubon's lover, Lia, will research and offer her own interpretation of the text. Far from a cryptic statement of the Templar's plan, she finds it a merchant's miscellaneous delivery list. So here we have it-either the secret plan of the Templars or a common list. A devotee of the occult might reject the commonplace interpretation out of hand as too mundane. A skeptic might accept it equally readily, for the skeptic is guided by what Eco calls "economy." Presented with a text, a "sane" interpreter searches for the context that provides for the easiest or most efficient interpretation. In most cases, economy will favor the mundane interpretation, which appears to require the least belief. The occult interpretation, however, is often more appealing psychologically, satisfying a craving for a fullness or even an excess of meaning in the world. For some, the occult may also be more economical, because excess meaning may be easier to believe than deficient meaning. 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 2 [1995], Art. 3 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss2/3 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1369