I wish to thank everyone who has provided impetus to this work and enabled me to outline its themes and contours. My gratitude goes first to Azucena González Blanco and Erika Martínez, organizers of a conference on ‘The Politics of Literature’ held in Granada in December 2014. I was able to pursue and discuss my reflections thanks to the invitations I received from various institutions: the University of California in Los Angeles and in Irvine, the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Düsseldorf, the Fondation Gulbenkian in Paris, the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, the Monokl publishing house in Istanbul, the Philosophia festival in Saint-Émilion and the National University of Valparaiso. The talk I gave at Irvine was published as ‘Fictions of Time’ in a collective volume, Rancière and Literature, edited by Grace Hellyer and Julian Murphet.
‘The Edges of Fiction’ (‘Les bords de la fiction’) was the title first given to a talk held at the Fondation Gulbenkian in February 2016 and published by that institution. A first version of the chapter titled ‘The Unimaginable’ was published, in 2014, in a special issue of the Cahier de l’Herne on Joseph Conrad, edited by Josiane Paccaud-Huguet and Claude Maisonnat.
A first version of the chapter ‘The Random Moment’ came out as ‘The Politics of Fiction’ and, together with a picture by Alfredo Jaar, comprised issue No. 3 of L’Estacio, published in Barcelona in May 2016.
All the other chapters of this book have never before been published.