ABSTRACT
I start from the premise that mapping the totality is still one of the most vital functions and ambitions of art at the present time, as it was under the very different conditions of the modern period. The totality today is surely what we call globalization, and it is therefore the problems involved in the rep re - sentation of this new and seemingly unimaginable totality which offer the most interesting challenges for the artists and writers of the post modern, as well as for its literary theorists. But postmodern philosophical positions also warn us to avoid the implication that correct or definitive “representations” of reality are possible or conceivable in the first place: so that what is wanted is an inventory of the dilemmas of representation, of what in the structure of object or subject alike makes representational accuracy or truth an impossible achievement and an ideological ambition or fantasy as well. We map the contours of globalization negatively, by way of a patient exploration of what cannot be perceived and what cannot be narrated.
