Worlds in The Making: Social Sciences and the Ontopolitics of Knowledge

In December 1982, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, author of the now classic Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), among many other novels and short stories, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.1

In the award ceremony, Professor Lars Gyllensten, who presented the laureate and his work, emphasized the quality of the work as an exemplary case within the so-called magical-realist tradition: ‘In his novels and short stories’, Professor Gyllensen argued, ‘we are led into this peculiar place where the miraculous and the real converge. The extravagant flight of his own fantasy combines with traditional folk tales and facts, literary allusions and tangible—at times obtrusively graphic—descriptions approaching the matter-of-factness of reportage.’2