Antropologia e letteratura: oltre la svolta retorica. In memoria di Alberto M. Sobrero

This paper discusses the relationship between anthropology and literature, assuming as a starting point the work of Alberto M. Sobrero. In “Il cristallo e la fiamma” Sobrero sees the passage between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the end of an alliance between literature and social sciences, based on a “realist” style and on the confidence in the possibility of an objective description of the social world. The distance between the way in which Conrad and Malinowski approach the problem of cultural diversity is emblematic of the new “modernist” scenario. In this paper, first of all, I wonder if the realism / modernism dichotomy can really account for the historical development of anthropology and literature between the two centuries; and, secondly, whether these categories retain their validity today, and how the anthropology / literature relationship can be configured in the contemporary context.