Literature and Realism: Siding with Wu Ming

Abstract

The essay quickly dismisses the question of realism as a spurious category and unverifiable in terms of language. Moreover – assuming the Wu Ming’s perspective – the point is not represented by the facts, but the mechanisms of communication and inflation of narratives that alter, from an ideological perspective, the perception of the world. Literature takes therefore the responsibility to offer an interpretation that challenges the conformism and the one-sidedness with which reality – history, in particular – is often read, to create a new space of freedom. Wu Ming put in the center of the novel the complexity of history to highlight the ideological readings of which it is the result.