‘A cataclysm of truth from the crisis of falsehood’: reading Habermas on Calvino

Interest in the possibility of a Habermasian approach to literary criticism has recently been sparked by several book-length contributions from scholars working in the field of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This article seeks to clarify the conceptual stakes in the current debate, which concern whether literature makes truth claims or merely imaginatively discloses new perceptions with a truth potential, by returning to Habermas’s most extended encounter with a literary work since the 1970s. Against the background of the philosophical issues, I re-read to Calvino’s highly self-reflexive If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller to show that in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas has managed to get everything backwards. Literature here reads philosophy alright, but not in the sense of the ludic deconstruction of rational argumentation into rhetorical play that Habermas supposes. Using the notion of an ontological poetics of self-reflexive literature, and with some help from Lacanian psychoanalysis, I interpret Calvino’s novel as a sustained meditation on the connection between authentic literature and the desire to read. In this light, it not only looks like Habermas has missed his polemical target, but, also, and more significantly, it becomes clear that abandonment of the link between literature and truth is misguided.

The global crisis of capitalism and its theoretical background

Includes bibliography

The State and transnational banks: lessons from the Bolivian crisis of external public indebtedness

Includes bibliography

The crisis of capitalism and international trade

Analiza el desequilibrio estructural interno de los centros con la periferia y los problemas de la relacion comercial entre ellos. Subraya la importancia de la actual crisis ideologica de la periferia y la necesidad de superarla.

The Latin American periphery in the global crisis of capitalism

Includes bibliography

A two-front attack to overcome the payments crisis of developing countries

Includes bibliography

Crisis del desarrollo social: retos y posibilidades = Crisis of social development: challenges and possibilities

Incluye Bibliografía