La littérature à l’âge de l’anthropocène : les enjeux d’un nouveau récit de la réalité

Abstract

The questions opened by the Anthropocene require a new vision of reality, a vision that is able to go beyond the ideological opposition between nature and culture. This opposition must therefore be opposed by a realistic vision; that is, the overcoming of dualism must pass through a re-narration of the human–world relationship that considers humans no longer in anthropocentric terms, but as part of a whole without boundaries. This repositioning of the human being presupposes a new form of aesthetics; that is, a new way of feeling and representing reality. The essay questions the contribution that the arts, and literature in particular, can make to this new narrative of the relationship between man and the world, underlining how the realistic tradition of literature, from Dante to Pasolini, has always been an anti-ideological operation. It is in the Barthian theorization of this anti-ideological power of literature that the essay proposes to draw the tools to build a representation of reality able to accompany the great changes introduced by the Anthropocene.