Literature and Skepticism

Literature and Skepticism links the skeptic attitude to the conditions of possibility in (modern) literaturein particular, the narrative form and the essay. Pablo Oyarzun proposes that narrative and the essay document the relationship between literature and skepticism in different but complementary and, at the same time, complicit ways. As the narrative performance reaches the structural limit of the literaryunderstood as the domain of fictiona sort of para-discursive reflection critically accompanies this performance, discussing it, ironizing it, feigning to disbelieve it, or overtly belying it. Yet the narrative doubtfully takes distance from itself, surrendering all right to a final truth at the very moment at which truth emerges, essayistic, to the surface. The authors consideredMontaigne, Swift, Lichtenberg, Kleist, Kafka, and Borgesare eminent representatives of one and the other form, and all of the works analyzed are cases of a complex interplay between narrative and essay.