Literature’s Negative Function in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations II

Abstract

Literature is for Jean-Paul Sartre one of most privileged tools for revealing the world and calling for men’s creative freedom, for its significant nature changes all the being-in-the-world structure of the being-for-itself as it unfolds on the same substance of consciousness: negativity. The notion of “total literature” that the author considers in Situations II implicates a double movement of negativity and construction, exactly like the insolvable synthesis that the being-for-itself is. This paper will develop then this negative/critic function of literature following Sartre’s philosophy, emphasizing in the social function that is detached from it and showing its historical origins that culminate in the surrealist movement, which is strongly criticized by him.