Invisible cities and desire

Abstract

In the text Las Ciudades Invisibles, by Italo Calvino, language is a fundamental actor that accounts for what the city is and means for men. Calvino makes its meaning sprout from the city: a metaphor of metaphors, an allegory of itself, a great sign whose signifier searches for meanings so that the city repeats itself in its signs. The city is the measure of human desires because it contains all possible desires, as it is the result of the will and passion of man. However, man only fulfills his desire to the extent that he keeps alive the city’s desire. Thus, the ideal of the city as the city of desires, in its origin and development, owes its construction and meaning to desire. Power ties the threads of the language of the man that he desires and who gets entangled in his lie, the one perpetuated by power, and that man does not know or ignore, immersed in the city’s mirage, convinced that he has power, an artifice that He has been given the city where the only possible power is cooked: the control of human desires.