Abstract: Ambivalences of a Tour de Force: Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane as Critique and as Literature. This essay starts from hypothesizing a double dimension of Mihai Iovănel’s History: critical and literary (or, as Matei says, poetic). The idea of such an interpretation is given by Iovănel’s quoting a late text by Louis Althusser, in which the French philosopher defines the figure of an “aleatory materialist,” as opposed to a “dialectical” materialist. While critics have already discussed the critical dimension of Iovănel’s project, an aspect Matei also examines in the last part of his contribution, less has been said, he maintains, about the History as a literary project, as “writing.” Matei thus attends to the qualities and shortcomings of Iovănel’s project, which stem, he claims, from the aforementioned double dimension of the History.

Keywords: Mihai Iovănel, poetics of literary history, aleatory materialism, contemporary Romanian literature