ABSTRACT
Describing the characteristics of the texts by the “founders of discursivity”, Foucault further clarifies that these are texts we are always to go back to; he suggests, however, that
1 UTOPIAN DISCURSIVITY
In his book on curiosity (2015), Alberto Manguel explains what happens when we read a piece of “great literature”, the sort of book that is characterised by a “multi-layered complexity”: in spite of all our efforts, we never manage to capture its essence, and this is why we are to return to the book, over and over again, hoping, if not to reach its depths, at least to go a step further in its understanding. This, Manguel suggests, is a never-ending task: “generations of readers cannot exhaust these books”, but have instead contributed to the construction of a “palimpsest of readings that continuously re-establishes the book’s authority, always under a different guise” (7). In the end, the book is richer as a result of what Manguel calls “the art of reading”:
Further in his book, Manguel describes how he has learned to find in books “clues to [his own] identity” (49), how the words of others, being “valid instruments for inquiry”, have helped him think (83).
