Literary consciences of the crisis: literature in times of social turbulence

Abstract

This paper suggests the notion of “literary consciences of the crisis”, i.e., forms of opposite consciences in times of capitalist crises that express themselves by means of literary works, marked by a profound negativity in relation to the present. These forms of consciences are engaged in the dual task of describing the effects of barbarism settled by the crisis and also of narrating the changes that occurred in the society and the ways of life of individuals. Furthermore, they would be charged with utopian energy, in such a way that the negation of the present world opens space to the possibility of another world. With this notion, I intend to reaffirm the specificity, in the historical present characterized by structural crisis, potentiality and relevance of literature to the construction of a radical critique of present time. I return to the works of Franz Kafka, Aldous Huxley and Samuel Beckett, aligning them with distinct historical periods: The Age of Catastrophe, the Golden Age and the Fall, respectively.