Hierarchies, Details, Fetishes: On Lukács’ Narrate or Describe?

This paper aims at reading Lukács Narrate or Describe? in the light of contemporary literary, aesthetic and cultural categories. After dealing with the long lasting genealogy of Lukács’ classicist vision, which considers description as a totally subordinate element, the analysis faces some significant key concepts of contemporay culture (the rejection of hierarchies; detail; performance; visuality; the post-human; animality), chiefly coming from the stylistic revolution produced by Flaubert and negatively outlined by Lukács. The paper intentionally leaves open, if we must consider this result a proof of Lukács’s outdated and conservative attitude, unable to understand the poetics of the naturalist novel and its historical importance, or, paradoixically, as a proof of a sharp critical vision, which, even if in a polemic way, defined a fundamental turn in the history of the novel.