The novel is a fundamental center of political dispute in the context of modernity, crossed by the prisms of governmentality and counter-conduct. The processes characteristic of the culture industry have accentuated the political importance of the novel, in view of the conversion of art into a product made by capitalist technique, informed by capitalist rationality, to be delivered to the mass population. The study of this literary form shows how novels are mobilized by power as a means of disseminating truths, but this government does not present itself as a totality of the literary text: the novel can also present what is ungovernable in the society that manages the most diverse fields of life, above all the conduct of its population: the fundamental object of interest of the modern state.