How does the ontological nature of a historical event shape its subsequent narrative representation? This article addresses this question by examining the literary transfiguration of the partisan Resistance experience in the works of Italo Calvino. Drawing on the evental philosophies of Alain Badiou and Jean Starobinski, alongside the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, the essay argues that the Resistance constitutes a radical rupture that reconfigures both historical situ…
Read moreHow does the ontological nature of a historical event shape its subsequent narrative representation? This article addresses this question by examining the literary transfiguration of the partisan Resistance experience in the works of Italo Calvino. Drawing on the evental philosophies of Alain Badiou and Jean Starobinski, alongside the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, the essay argues that the Resistance constitutes a radical rupture that reconfigures both historical situation and human subjectivity. The partisan subject, it is posited, is forged through the ethical exigency of choice and through the trauma of a personal handling of violence. Through a textual analysis of Calvino’s 1964 Preface to The Path to the Nest of Spiders and his 1974 short story Memory of a Battle, the paper explores how narration operates as a liminal practice of repair. Rather than attempting to domesticate the past through an exhaustive exposition of facts, Calvino’s prose sustains the experiential wound inflicted by the event. By deploying narrative modalities characterized by hesitation, anonymity, and the transience of memory, Calvino evades what Jean-Luc Nancy identifies as the trap of “hyper-representation.” Ultimately, the study proposes that narration enacts its highest reparative and ethical value precisely through its structural inadequacy – specifically, by interdicting any claim to total access to sense.
