Abstract
A detailed analysis presents the method of arguing a contrario in Umberto Eco's paper "Does counterculture exist?" as paradigmatic of the structuralist principle of meaning constitution by semantic opposition. The paper argues that many of Eco's writings can be read as applications of the structuralist principle that only differences or opposites carry signification. Evidence of the way in which Eco's thought is under the spell of the principle of opposition and the dialectics of presence and absence is given from a general survey of Eco's writings as well as from La struttura assente and Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Furthermore, the paper reveals that Eco's thought is equally attracted by processes in which oppositions annul or dissolve themselves as well as by the poststructuralist critique of structuralist thought.
Keywords:
counterculture; structural thought; opposition; structuralism; poststructuralism