Politics, Discourse, Empire: Framed Knowledge in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities

Critical engagement with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1972) is widespread. However, much of the scholarship focuses on the text's unstable position between modern and postmodern forms. This article suggests that a political reading is an equally productive-indeed, necessary-intervention in the present scholarship. Treating the text as a schematic of empire and knowledge production yields a deeper understanding of the specific articulations of power constantly issued by the logic of sovereignty. By excavating the impulses of domination implicit in empire building, this article suggests that Marco Polo's dialogues with the sovereign emperor Kublai Khan provide possibilities for resistance to the structural domination that constitutes our most recent political realities.