How Real Is Reality?——a Zizekian Reading Of Calvino’s Invisible Cities

"How real is reality?"(Zizek3)----This is the first question Zizek raises in Looking Awry. While Zizek himself develops the dimension of the Lacanian real with this question. Nietzsche from a century ago. claims that we have eliminated the real world along with the world of appearance. Jean Baudrillard proposes the theory of ’integral reality." or the byperreality. He suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more. Despite the variety of the approaches to this question, they all seem to arrive at the conclusion of the impossibility of the Real.Italo Calvino, as a novelist, contributes to the discussion of the Real with works that boasts of aesthetic and imaginative elements. His world-known novel Invisible Cities, translated into English language by William Weaver, is a novel (or meditation or philosophy or intellectual quest) about reality, fantasy, desire, image, map, language, symbol, memory, ideology, and so on. The55imaginative cities narrated by Macro Polo to Kublai Khan are like55fables, inviting the readers to embark on an intellectual and philosophical journey.From the perspective of post-structuralism, this paper is concerned with the discussion of the Real, including its relation with symbolism, imagination, and simulation, as implied, shown or reflected in the novel. The thesis draws its theoretical support mainly from Zizek:s philosophy of the Real and Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreality theory.The thesis is composed of six chapters. The first is the literature review of Invisible Cities both at home and abroad, while the second introduces my research approach—Zizekian philosophy of the Real, and states why it fits. In this chapter, many of Lacanian terms of psychoanalysis are introduced, some are discussed in length, as all of these terms have provided terminology for most of Zizek’ s works. Chapter Three to Chapter Five make the main body of the analysis, with each of them focusing on the discussion of the symbolic Real, the imaginary Real, and the real Real respectively. Each of the three is then further divided into two parts:theoretical analysis and close-reading. The third chapter, entitled "Two Versions of One City: The Symbolic Real," focuses on the concept of the symbolic Real proposed and developed by Zizek,as well as its application in understanding and analyzing the novel Invisible Cities. Terms such as signification, symbols,and subjectivity are used and discussed in this chapter. The fourth chapter elaborates on the concept of the imaginary Real and its manifestation in the novel in question. Additional key words of this chapter such as mirror stage, fantasy, self-identification, subjectivity, trauma are also articulated in this chapter. In the fifth chapter, the discussion of the Zizekian real Real finds a mutual theoretical support from Baudrillard’s hyperreality theory with both of them arriving at the same conclusion that the Real is beyond the reach of human mind. This chapter also concerns itself with the discussion of the Object petit a, sublime, desire, fantasy, anxiety, and so on. Chapter Six concludes the thesis, wherein the three dimensions of the Real and their demonstration and employment in the novel are reiterated and summarized.