A barbárie da ignorância e a ética da vigilância crítica na cultura pós-moderna e na ficção de Mário de Carvalho

The fiction of Portuguese contemporary writer Mário de Carvalho addresses the specific topic of cultural ruin, i.e. cultural barbarism, as an upsetting symptom of postmodern culture. The growing ignorance about irreplaceable cultural matrices remains as a major ethical concern of this writer vis-à-vis one of the faces of contemporary cultural barbarism. This concern even surpasses his neoconservative attitude. This becomes particularly clear in some of his narratives, therefore problematizing, indirectly, the engaged function or nature of literary art as followed by several contemporary thinkers – from Adorno and Said to Steiner or Sloterdjk.