The Seventh Function of Language

The tiered seating is already mostly full; the judges preside beneath the flayed men; a vague murmur of conversation fills the room as the spectators continue to arrive. Bianca, excited, tugs at Simon’s sleeve: “Look! It’s Antonioni! Have you seen L’Avventura? It is so magnifico! Oh, he came with Monica Vitti! Che bella! And look over there, that man on the jury, the one in the middle? That’s ‘Bifo,’ the head of Radio Alice, an independent station that’s really popular in Bologna. It was his programs that sparked the civil war, three years ago, and he’s the one who introduced us to Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault. And look there! That’s Paolo Fabbri and Omar Calabrese, two of Eco’s colleagues, they’re semioticians like him, and they’re really famous too. And there! Verdiglione. Another semiotician, but he’s a psychoanalyst too. And there! That’s Romano Prodi, a former minister of industry, ditchi of course. What’s he doing here? Does he still believe in the historic compromise, quel buffone?”

Bayard says to Simon: “And there, look.” He points out Luciano, sitting on the benches with his old mother, chin resting on a crutch, smoking a cigarette. And, at the other end of the room, the three young guys in scarves who shot at him. All of them are acting as if nothing happened. The young guys don’t seem too worried. What a strange country, thinks Bayard.

It is gone midnight. The session begins: a voice rings out. It’s Bifo who speaks first, the man from Radio Alice who set Bologna ablaze in ’77. He quotes a Petrarch canzone that Machiavelli used in the conclusion of The Prince: “Vertú contra furore / prenderà l’arme, et fia ’l combatter corto: / ché l’antico valore / ne gli italici cor’ non è ancor morto.”

Virtue against fury shall advance the fight,

And it i’ th’ combat soon shall put to flight:

For the old Roman valor is not dead,

Nor in th’ Italians’ breasts extinguished.

Bianca’s eyes flame blackly. The man in gloves sticks out his chest, fists on hips. Enzo puts his arm around the waist of the young student he picked up at the Drogheria. Stefano whistles enthusiastically. The melody of a patriotic anthem rises inside the circular amphitheater. Bayard is searching the dark recesses for someone, but he doesn’t know who. Simon does not notice the man with the bag from the Drogheria amid the audience because he is absorbed by Bianca’s copper skin and the sight of her quivering breasts afforded by her low neckline.

Bifo draws the first subject, a line by Gramsci that Bianca translates for them:

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

Simon thinks about this phrase. Bayard scans the room indifferently. He observes Luciano with his crutch and his mother. He observes Antonioni and Monica Vitti. He does not see Sollers and BHL hidden in a nook. In his head, Simon problematizes: “precisely” what? His mind syllogizes: we are in crisis. We are blocked. The Giscards govern the world. Enzo kisses his student on the mouth. What to do?

The two candidates stand either side of the dissecting table, below the audience, as at the center of an arena. Standing, it is easier for them to turn around and address the whole room.

Surrounded by all the wood of the anatomical theater, the marble table glows supernaturally white.

Behind Bifo, framing the pulpit (a real pulpit, as in a church) that is usually reserved for the professor, the flayed men stand watch, guardians of an imaginary door.

The first candidate—a young man with an Apulian accent, open-shirted, big silver belt buckle—begins.

If the dominant class has lost consentement—in other words if it is no longer dirigeante but merely dominante and the only power it holds is of coercition—this signifies precisely that the great masses are detached from traditional ideologies, that they no longer believe in what they believed before …

Bifo looks around the room. His gaze lingers for a moment on Bianca.

And it is precisely this interregnum that encourages the birth of what Gramsci calls a great variety of morbid symptoms.

Bayard watches Bifo watching Bianca. In the shadows, Sollers points out Bayard to BHL. In order to pass incognito, BHL is wearing a black shirt.

The young duelist rotates slowly, declaiming to the whole room. We know exactly what morbid phenomenon Gramsci was alluding to. Don’t we? It is the same one that menaces us today. He leaves a pause. He shouts: “Fascismo!”