Literature and the Secret of the World: 2666, Globalization, and Global War

Abstract

A CONFERENCE called "Literature and the Secret of the World." 1 The conference organizer proposed a dual point of departure for reading the title: first, Jacques Derrida's assertion that literature is "the most interesting thing in the world, maybe more interesting than the world" (Derrida 1992, 47); second, the assertion in Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 that in the serial murder of women in Santa Teresa lies hidden "the secret of the world" (Bolaño 2008, 348).My discussion of Bolaño's novel pursues the relation between literature, world, and secret, to which I add important considerations by Martin Heidegger and Carlo Galli concerning what gives with this thing called "world."In a 2003 interview conducted shortly before his death, Bolaño described Ciudad Juárez-a city he reportedly never saw firsthand-as a contemporary

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