Superficiality

Abstract

Superficiality corresponds to epi- in the sense of surface contact. In Calvino’s terms, superficiality is a virtue: it is what makes apparent that which is hidden in depth. Related to the “thoughtful lightness” of Calvino’s memos, it is both lightness of sensation and enlightenment of reason—as in the works of Enrique Vila-Matas. It symbolises the idea of epigraphy as surface writing in literature (and art) and that of the possible reality hidden in the depths of the present. This is demonstrated through a phantasmatic history of political fiction based, since Kafka, on the Capital K.