André Malraux, Europa y los destinos de la cultura mundial

Abstract

Grounded in the literary, aesthetic and philosophical heritage of André Malraux, this paper offers an analysis of Malraux‘s thought on European man and the crisis of Western culture as espoused in The Temptation of the West. It also analyzes the simultaneous construction of his anti-fascist defense of culture and the free European region in The Conquerors and Man‘s Hope. Finally, the double constitution of European cultural and space in Malraux‘s multicultural conceptions are discussed using the open hermeneutics of The Imaginary Museum and The Metamorphosis of the Gods. The Anti-Memoirs (1967- 1972) and several archival documents inform our investigation of Malraux‘s concrete deeds as a thinker and as Minister of Culture. His aesthetic-philosophical thought influences contemporary cultural hermeneutics and draws attention to the responsibility of all cultural theory to counter totalizing myths.