What is it about?
This study examines Antonio Tabucchi’s antiheroic war narratives and addresses two main questions: what kind of antiheroes do readers find in Tabucchi’s works? And what is their function? Tabucchi’s works offer a wide representation of political opponents, social outsiders, and cultural outcasts, which are figures of historical, existential, and symbolic opposers. That voiceless individuals and their unspoken narratives are given a voice throughout his works mirrors the writer’s view of literature as an inquiring and, at the same time, disquieting quest for the truth.
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Why is it important?
Being the first to investigate the theme of Resistance in the works of Antonio Tabucchi, this chapter interrogates the ethical value of literature when confronting, responding to and resisting hegemonic discourses. Tabucchi’s antiheroic literature identifies universal fascism, in all its occurrences, as its polemical target. This is all the more relevant in the current scenario, characterised by the resurgence of fascism and the radical right in Europe and beyond.
Perspectives
This chapter traces the itinerary of a double disquiet: that of Tabucchi, which he entrusts to his texts and characters; and that of all readers, who must navigate an abyss of questions, violence and estrangement. To encounter the pages of Antonio Tabucchi, in fact, has meant and means to always be willing to be disquieted. But also to learn that literature resists: wars, fascisms, silence and oblivion. It resists. And it asks questions, disturbs, raises critical awareness.
Veronica Frigeni
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Tabucchi and the Antihero: Figures for a Historical, Existential and Symbolic Resistance, June 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004548145_003.
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