The importance of (anti)heroic writing

Abstract

This article's main purpose is to shed light on a type of writing that we call (anti)heroic because, although it can illuminate unknown areas of our experience, it does not seek to please, convince, or consolidate successful formulas, and even less so by drawing on the epic; rather, it seeks to sustain a voice of its own in the midst of a cultural and academic environment dominated by immediacy, efficiency, impact and external validation, in the hope of being recognized. Drawing on philosophical and literary examples—from Pessoa, Dickinson, and Walser to Weil and Kafka, from Thoreau, Emerson, and Cavell to Simic and Juarroz—it is argued that this writing requires both active readers and fidelity on the part of the author to an inner voice not always anticipated. The examples mentioned underscore the resistance to instituted forms of recognition, their insertion in a present marked by structural banality, and their most refined expression in certain poetic registers. Rather than offering a closed theory, the text poses a question: how can one continue writing honestly without renouncing demanding thought, in a time that seems to value only what adapts to what has already been anticipated?