Editing the Encyclopedia: Memory Wars and the Politics of Meaning

Placing Umberto Eco's encyclopedic model at the center of its theoretical framework, this article interprets contemporary “memory wars” as semiotic conflicts about the organization of shared meaning. Drawing on Eco, it shows how meanings and comparative practices—such as those involved in controversies surrounding the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and the legitimacy of Holocaust comparisons—stabilize through processes of sedimentation and repetition, eventually entering the Average Encyclopedia as seemingly self‐evident associations. On this basis, the article identifies a limitation in Eco's model: its relative neglect of power relations and asymmetries that shape access to and control over the Encyclopedia. To address this gap, it introduces the concept of illocutionary power, understood as the socially recognized authority to perform metalinguistic acts that redefine the interpretive boundaries and conditions under which meanings can be articulated. In doing so, the article reconceptualizes the Encyclopedia as an inherently conflictual semiotic space, advancing a critical semiotics of memory that is attentive to the political dimension of language.