The following conversation took place at the 2017 Colloquium on Violence and Religion in Madrid, Spain. Cesáreo Bandera and Adam Ericksen discuss Bandera's friendship with Girard, their disagreements about mimetic theory, and hope in these apocalyptic times. This is an edited version of the transcript of a recoded interview. You can watch the video recording at The Raven Review at ravenfoundation.org.We are in your home country.Yes. In my home country. I am from the south, from Malaga. Malaga is (...) straight south from Madrid on the coast, right across the Mediterranean from Africa. I was born there but grew up in other parts of southern Spain. Like Cordoba and Sevilla where I went to the law school, to get a law... (shrink)

O Ensaio sobre a origem das línguas expõe o momento em que as línguas se enfraquecem, abrindo caminho para o cortejo da violência. O livro apresenta o lugar do discurso nos tempos antigos em oposição ao seu não-lugar nos tempos modernos, ou seja, a mudança do lugar da eloquência na antiguidade para a idade moderna. Aos olhos de Rousseau, as línguas – assim como os homens – estão profundamente atreladas ao tempo e, por conseguinte, em constantes transformações. Elas seguem as (...) vicissitudes dos costumes e se alteram ou se conservam com eles. Não por outra razão, é dito que o movimento da linguagem reproduz, a seu modo e em seu plano, o da humanidade, de sorte que é possível reconstruir uma história da liberdade e da servidão dos povos a partir da análise de suas línguas. Bem como, reconstituir história de cada língua por meio da história e das condições sociais, políticas e econômicas de cada povo. A questão que nos propomos investigar pode ser formulada nos seguintes termos: quais relações podem existir entre regimes políticos e discurso? Dois aspectos serão privilegiados: i) as características constitutivas de cada língua falada e ii) o regime de organização política do povo que a fala. (shrink)

The incredible success of quantum theory as a mathematical model makes it especially frustrating that we cannot agree on a plausible philosophical or metaphysical description of it. Some philosophers of science have noticed certain parallels between quantum theory and the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and these parallels are deepened and strengthened if the “observer” of modern physics is associated with the “intellect” of scholastic ontology. In this case we are talking about a human observer. But this type of observer has (...) a unique quality that is not considered at all by either physics or scholastic philosophy—the human observer is mimetic and therefore “interdividual.” By taking this fundamental anthropological fact into account, it turns out that the critical gaps still separating Aquinas from modern physicists can be effectively closed, reconciling the realism of Aquinas with the empirical evidence of quantum mechanics. This book explores this new bridge between the physical and the human—a bridge essentially designed by scholastic theory, clarified by mimetic theory, and built by quantum theory—and the path it opens to that metaphysical understanding for which philosophers of modern science have been striving. It is an understanding, not merely of the physical but of physics in the fuller sense of what is real and what is true. Here the reader will find a physics that describes the natural world and our place as mimetic observers within it. (shrink)

Resumo: A narrativa de Rousseau sobre a origem do Estado foi retomada nos últimos séculos por diversas tradições, fazendo-se notar no seio do iluminismo escocês e nos trabalhos de Engels. James Scott, em seu recente livro Contra o grão, de 2017, ecoa algumas teses de Rousseau. Dentre tantos pontos de convergência, três se destacam e serão analisados no decorrer deste artigo: i) de um lado, a variedade dos modos de ser e de se relacionar com a natureza dos povos sem (...) Estado, a idade de ouro dos bárbaros; de outro, a estratificação dos povos sob o Estado, o empobrecimento dos agricultores cerealistas; ii) as condições ecológicas raras e especialíssimas favoráveis à emergência do aparelho estatal, em oposição às dificuldades de se formar o Estado, em regiões de abundância naturais, donde se faz necessário estabelecer a hipótese de mudanças climáticas que alteram as condições de existência; iii) e, por fim, a importância dos grãos para o processo civilizatório, isto é, a afinidade entre economia agrária de cereais e Estado.: Rousseau’s narrative about the origin of the State was recovered in the last centuries by several traditions, being noticed in the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment and in the works of Engels. James Scott, in his recent book Against the Grain of 2017, echoes some of Rousseau’s theses. Among many points of convergence, three stand out and will be analyzed in the course of this article: i) on the one hand, the variety of ways of being and relating to the nature of stateless peoples, the golden age of the barbarians; on the other, the stratification of peoples under the State, the impoverishment of cereal farmers; ii) the rare and very special ecological conditions favorable to the emergence of the State apparatus, as opposed to the difficulties of forming a State in regions of natural abundance, which imposes the necessity to establish the hypothesis of climate changes that alters the conditions of existence; iii) and, finally, the importance of grains for the civilizing process, that is, the affinity between the agrarian economy of cereals and the State. (shrink)

Erich Auerbach’s seminal Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature was published more than sixty years ago and is deservedly considered a classic. The book brought into focus the fundamental difference that exists between the two basic approaches to the textual representation of reality in Western culture. These two “styles,” as Auerbach called them, were archetypically displayed in Homer’s poems and in the Old Testament, respectively. Auerbach’s differentiation is the starting point for Bandera’s insightful work, which expands and (...) develops on this theory in several key ways. One of the more significant differences between the two styles transcends and grounds all the others. It concerns the truth of each of the two archetypal texts, or rather, the attitude exhibited in those texts with regard to the truth of what they narrate. Auerbach, Bandera notes, is amazed at the Bible’s “passionate” concern for the truth of what it says—a concern he found absent in Homer. Bandera finds that what the prophet Isaiah called “a refuge of lies” defines Homer’s work. He draws on his own research and René Girard’s theory of the sacred to develop an enhanced perspective of the relationship between these texts. (shrink)

Leitor atento de Rousseau, embora raramente o citasse em seus textos, Clastres emprega o mesmo vocabulário que ganhou fama sob a pluma do cidadão de Genebra, tomando por vezes distância de suas reflexões: 1) alusão à vontade geral; 2) a encenação do gesto fundador da sociedade civil de cercar um terreno e o discurso possessivo que inaugura a propriedade privada e a acompanha (“isto é meu”); 3) e, por fim e mais importante, a crítica direcionada às duas frentes que compõem (...) a narrativa de Rousseau sobre a origem do Estado: de um lado, a associação entre desejo de prestígio e vontade de poder; de outro, o fundamento econômico do poder político. Se é certo afirmar que a Arqueologia da violência é contra Hobbes ou uma inversão do argumento de Hobbes – pois aí Clastres politiza a guerra –, por sua vez, a Sociedade contra o Estado é em certa medida contra Rousseau ou, ainda, uma inversão do argumento de Rousseau, visto que se coloca contra a narrativa hipotética da história ocidental: não mais da economia e do prestígio para a política, mas da política para a economia, pois aí Clastres politiza a economia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Separating the Human from the Divine Cesáreo Bandera University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill Myths are hard to die. One such myth concerns what happened with poetry in general, that is to say, imaginative literature or literary fiction, in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and beyond. Its basic outline was developed during the nineteenth century. J. E. Spingarn, for example, echoes such a myth (...) in his History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, first published in 1899, which has gone through many editions and reprintings since then. In it we read the following: The first problem of Renaissance criticism was the justification of imaginative literature. The existence and continuity of the aesthetic consciousness, and perhaps, in a less degree, of the critical faculty, throughout the Middle Ages, can hardly be denied; yet distrust of literature was keenest among the very class of men in whom the critical faculty might be presupposed, and it was as the handmaid of philosophy, and most of all as the vassal of theology, that poetry was chiefly valued.... The Renaissance was thus confronted with the necessity ofjustifying its appreciation of the vast body of literature which the Revival of Learning had recovered for the modern world. (3) Speaking of Savonarola's De Divisione ac Utilititate Omnium Scientiarum, written about 1492, he concludes as follows: In fine, as a reformer, he represents for us the religious reaction against the paganization of culture by the humanists. But the forces against him were too strong. Even the Christianization of culture effected during the next century by the Council of Trent was hardly more than temporary. Humanism, which represents 74Cesáreo Bandera the revival of ancient pagan culture, and rationalism, which represents the growth of the modem spirit in science and art, were currents too powerful to be impeded by any reformer, however great. (14) This general picture of the historical standing and the fate of literary fiction as we move from the Middle Ages into the modern era, is still very much with us, even though it is ill at ease with, or flatly contradicted by, undeniable historical facts. For example, the incredible notion of a "paganization of culture by the humanists" would have horrified somebody as profoundly Christian as Petrarch and, later on, Erasmus, who criticized the scholastics "in the name of a purer and simpler mode of piety and religious devotion" (Mazzeo 17). Or the mistaken idea that modern rationalism was much more hospitable to poetry than the old scholastic one. For from the seventeenth century on, as J. F. West has pointed out, the whole tide of [scientific] opinion was running strongly against poetry, metaphor, and poetic prose. The philosophers generally saw them as an obstacle to truth. Hobbes regarded metaphor as one of the hindrances to straight thinking. Rousseau thought that the philosophy of Descartes had 'cut the throat of poetry'; and John Locke, late in the century, openly regarded poetry as made up of 'pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy,' but basically misleading. (114) It is indeed true that in medieval scholasticism poetry occupies the lowest rank in the hierarchical structure of the arts and sciences. But it does have a place there. It would have never occurred to Thomas Aquinas, for example, to expel it from that position as something dangerous, something to be avoided. In fact, as he tells us at the beginning of the Summa Theologica, theology itself, the highest of the sciences, does not consider it below its dignity to make use of metaphor and other poetic devices propter utilitatem ac necessitatem. And yet it is precisely that kind of violent expulsion ofpoetic fiction that will be attempted during the Renaissance. In the words of Russell Fraser, "it is in the Renaissance, and not the Middle Ages that the artist is driven from the commonwealth" (39). It was then that the "war against poetry" intensified to fever pitch. It is, therefore, an error to imagine that those in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who bitterly attacked poetic fiction in general and the theater in particular as a very dangerous threat to religion and morality, were fanatic hold-overs from a medieval past... (shrink)

Resumo: O século XX viu ganhar forma um efervescente debate travado em torno do Ensaio sobre a origem das línguas de Rousseau, sobretudo quanto à sua gênese, ao período em que foi escrito e às suas possíveis relações com o Discurso sobre a origem da desigualdade. O presente artigo, ao repassar a literatura crítica sobre o tema, propõe uma cronologia consonante com a produção especializada, colocando em foco os temas que, porventura, teriam guiado Rousseau, desde a redação da versão originária (...) e inicial do texto até a versão definitiva: de um texto originalmente inscrito nas polêmicas musicais entre Rousseau e Rameau, o Ensaio foi paulatinamente enriquecido, abarcando de maneira unificada as reflexões do autor sobre as sociedades, as línguas, as linguagens e os sistemas musicais.: The twentieth century saw an effervescent debate about Rousseau’s Essay on the origin of languages, especially with regard to its genesis, the period in which it was written, and its possible relations with the Discourse on the origin of inequality. The present article reviews the critical literature on the subject and proposes a chronology consonant with this literature. We focus on the themes that perhaps would have guided Rousseau, from the writing of the initial version of the text to its definitive version. Originally part of the musical polemics between Rousseau and Rameau, the Essay was gradually enriched, eventually covering in a unified way the author’s reflections on societies, languages, and musical systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Separating the Human from the Divine Cesáreo Bandera University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill Myths are hard to die. One such myth concerns what happened with poetry in general, that is to say, imaginative literature or literary fiction, in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and beyond. Its basic outline was developed during the nineteenth century. J. E. Spingarn, for example, echoes such a myth (...) in his History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, first published in 1899, which has gone through many editions and reprintings since then. In it we read the following: The first problem of Renaissance criticism was the justification of imaginative literature. The existence and continuity of the aesthetic consciousness, and perhaps, in a less degree, of the critical faculty, throughout the Middle Ages, can hardly be denied; yet distrust of literature was keenest among the very class of men in whom the critical faculty might be presupposed, and it was as the handmaid of philosophy, and most of all as the vassal of theology, that poetry was chiefly valued.... The Renaissance was thus confronted with the necessity ofjustifying its appreciation of the vast body of literature which the Revival of Learning had recovered for the modern world. (3) Speaking of Savonarola's De Divisione ac Utilititate Omnium Scientiarum, written about 1492, he concludes as follows: In fine, as a reformer, he represents for us the religious reaction against the paganization of culture by the humanists. But the forces against him were too strong. Even the Christianization of culture effected during the next century by the Council of Trent was hardly more than temporary. Humanism, which represents 74Cesáreo Bandera the revival of ancient pagan culture, and rationalism, which represents the growth of the modem spirit in science and art, were currents too powerful to be impeded by any reformer, however great. (14) This general picture of the historical standing and the fate of literary fiction as we move from the Middle Ages into the modern era, is still very much with us, even though it is ill at ease with, or flatly contradicted by, undeniable historical facts. For example, the incredible notion of a "paganization of culture by the humanists" would have horrified somebody as profoundly Christian as Petrarch and, later on, Erasmus, who criticized the scholastics "in the name of a purer and simpler mode of piety and religious devotion" (Mazzeo 17). Or the mistaken idea that modern rationalism was much more hospitable to poetry than the old scholastic one. For from the seventeenth century on, as J. F. West has pointed out, the whole tide of [scientific] opinion was running strongly against poetry, metaphor, and poetic prose. The philosophers generally saw them as an obstacle to truth. Hobbes regarded metaphor as one of the hindrances to straight thinking. Rousseau thought that the philosophy of Descartes had 'cut the throat of poetry'; and John Locke, late in the century, openly regarded poetry as made up of 'pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy,' but basically misleading. (114) It is indeed true that in medieval scholasticism poetry occupies the lowest rank in the hierarchical structure of the arts and sciences. But it does have a place there. It would have never occurred to Thomas Aquinas, for example, to expel it from that position as something dangerous, something to be avoided. In fact, as he tells us at the beginning of the Summa Theologica, theology itself, the highest of the sciences, does not consider it below its dignity to make use of metaphor and other poetic devices propter utilitatem ac necessitatem. And yet it is precisely that kind of violent expulsion ofpoetic fiction that will be attempted during the Renaissance. In the words of Russell Fraser, "it is in the Renaissance, and not the Middle Ages that the artist is driven from the commonwealth" (39). It was then that the "war against poetry" intensified to fever pitch. It is, therefore, an error to imagine that those in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who bitterly attacked poetic fiction in general and the theater in particular as a very dangerous threat to religion and morality, were fanatic hold-overs from a medieval past... (shrink)

A diversificação física e cultural humana pode ser lida na antropologia de Rousseau a partir da ideia da degenerescência e do afastamento de uma natureza originária, mas também pode ser encarada em chave positiva como a afirmação da variedade humana, independente de uma referência a um modelo originário. Assim, o pensamento antropológico de Rousseau transita entre dois polos distintos e igualmente válidos: o julgamento histórico e o saber etnográfico. Se o primeiro apoia-se em um modelo único e originário de ser (...) humano que paulatina e historicamente se degeneraria, corrompendo-se; o último multiplica as origens de modo a afirmar positivamente as diferenças, explicando-as enquanto tais. Um se constitui em escala de medida, outro em antídoto contra o etnocentrismo. O objetivo maior deste texto consiste em apresentar sobretudo o último polo. Nele, a diversidade física e cultural se afirma enquanto tal, sem que haja a necessidade de se atribuir prêmios de preservação de uma maior pureza a esta ou aquela sociedade localizada num ponto determinado do tempo e do espaço. A diversidade indicaria não mais uma corrupção, mas sim os vários caminhos assumidos e tomados pelos grupos humanos de acordo com os tempos e as circunstâncias vivenciados. (shrink)

A história da linguagem adquire ao longo do Ensaio sobre a origem das línguas o andamento de uma queda acelerada na corrupção. Há uma língua primitiva que se degenera e se altera: um processo de formação e uma deformação. À medida que Rousseau identifica em suas reflexões – seja na origem seja na estrutura – música e linguagem, a perda de força expressiva que se verifica nas línguas acomete também a música e estas duas corrupções caminham juntas, de modo que (...) ambas se afastam da língua musicada ou da palavra cantada do início. A corrupção da música e das línguas corresponde ao apagamento de sua potência expressiva e refere-se a uma autonomização da harmonia artificial, ao aumento das consoantes, das articulações, da racionalidade, da prática da escrita, bem como ao desenvolvimento histórico, político, econômico e social. Todos estes processos devem ser levados em consideração numa análise sobre as línguas e a linguagem. Todavia, é possível isolar metodologicamente cada um deles. Dito isto, propomos neste artigo investigar o papel da escrita no processo de corrupção e degeneração das línguas. (shrink)

RESUMO Na flosofa de Rousseau expõe-se a paulatina construção de uma ideia ocidental de humanidade: a história de como o ser humano assim denominou-se ser, bem como a história do abuso dessa denominação. Trata-se, sobretudo, da crítica sobre a construção de um mito da dignidade exclusiva da natureza humana, tema que percorre as obras de diferentes flósofos, dos modernos aos contemporâneos, dos ocidentais aos não ocidentais. O presente artigo aborda, a partir de Rousseau e em diálogo com outros autores, o (...) “ciclo maldito” característico da modernidade, uma ideia que separa os humanos dos animais e segrega os humanos entre si. Começa-se por apartar o ser humano da natureza e constituí-lo como um ser à parte em um processo de monopolização progressiva do valor da existência: aparece em um primeiro momento o especismo, subsequentemente a desigualdade sociopolítica, o etnocentrismo e outras formas derivadas de exclusão. ABSTRACT In Rousseau’s philosophy, the gradual construction of a western idea of humanity is exposed: the history of how the human being naming himself being, as well as the history of the abuse of that denomination. It is, above all, a critique of the construction of the myth of the exclusive dignity of human nature, a theme that permeates the works of diferent philosophers, from the modern to contemporary ones, from western to non-western. This article discusses, based on Rousseau and in dialogue with other authors, the “cursed cycle” characteristic of modernity, an idea that separates humans from animals and segregates humans from each other. It starts with separating human being from nature and constituting him as a distinct part in a process of progressive monopolization of the value of existence: speciesism appears at frst, then sociopolitical inequality, ethnocentrism and other forms derived from exclusion. (shrink)

A exortação de Rousseau, feita dois séculos antes de Lévi-Strauss, de levar a vista ao longe, observar as diferenças entre os homens para conhecer o homem em sua especificidade e propriedade dá o tom do que se poderia chamar de antropologia rousseauísta. O conhecimento sobre o homem não é obtido ao olhar para o lado e tomar como referência um tipo qualquer imediatamente disponível. Ao contrário, é preciso de viagens bem regradas, de uma educação do olhar e da organização dos (...) dados colhidos pela observação. (shrink)

Em muitos textos, Buffon mostra-se partidário da ideia da existência de um laço conjugal natural entre homem e mulher, retomando, assim, as concepções de Locke sobre o assunto. Por sua vez, Rousseau surge como um grande crítico desta ideia. Ele imagina um estado no qual homens e mulheres viveriam em determinadas condições que não os colocariam em relação uns com os outros e, por conseguinte, não os coagiriam a obrigações e deveres recíprocos, um estado de dispersão e de isolamento absolutos (...) do homem. Buffon precisa, para fundar sua teoria, romper com Rousseau. Assim, elaborar e discutir o conteúdo desta ruptura tornam-se os objetos principais deste artigo. (shrink)

O homem-máquina de La Mettrie aparece constantemente ligado ao animal-máquina cartesiano. A partir desta relação, é possível indagar se existe verdadeiramente alguma continuidade entre a proposta cartesiana e a defendida por La Mettrie ou, ao contrário, se esta última representa de modo efetivo uma crítica e uma ruptura em relação à primeira. Nossa interpretação defende que o germe do materialismo – e La Mettrie não escapa disso – só pode desenvolver-se na condição de romper totalmente com a doutrina cartesiana. Assim, (...) longe de haver apenas um passo entre uma e outra teoria filosófica, o que existe é uma diferença radical e gigante. Não há uma continuidade teórica entre o animal-máquina cartesiano e o homem-máquina lamettriano. Diferentemente do que se passa na teoria de Descartes, particularmente, em sua concepção dualista que implica em uma descontinuidade, o Homem-máquina estabelece uma tese continuísta entre homens e animais. Para La Mettrie, a passagem da animalidade à humanidade não é uma passagem violenta, mas sim gradual. (shrink)

Soilless crops are commonly used in rooftop agriculture because they easily adapt to building constraints. However, acceptance of the produce derived from this system may be controversial. This paper evaluates consumers’ acceptance of food from RA in Mediterranean cities, focusing on the quality of the product, production system, and consumers’ motivations. We surveyed 238 respondents on the UAB university campus as potential consumers. The survey was distributed via an Internet-link that was provided along with a sample of tomatoes from RA. (...) The results showed that most people approved the quality of RA products and perceived them to be local and fresh. The respondents exhibited acceptance of soilless-produced tomatoes and considered them to be environmentally better than conventionally produced ones. Cluster analysis revealed that consumers with high income levels and a university education had a better perception of the quality and proposed a higher price for RA products, but no difference was found regarding their environmental perception of this products. Moreover, people who possessed more information about the product also had a higher perception of the quality and production system and would pay more for them. The main concerns of consumers were related to food safety and the social impact of RA. Additional research is needed to improve the sustainability of RA, and the applied measures should be communicated to potential consumers to enhance their acceptance and success. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mimetic Theory and Its Rivals:A Reply to Pablo BanderaRichard van Oort (bio)There are three ways to respond to a rival theory. You can ignore it, you can assimilate it to what you already believe, or you can assess its merits independently and then either reject it or adopt it as the better, more powerful theory. Let us briefly review these three strategies.1. Assuming you are already in possession of (...) a sufficiently powerful theory, a safe bet is simply to ignore the newcomer. Contrary to appearances, this is not a totally unreasonable strategy. Time is in short supply. Those in possession of a theory adequate to their purposes will naturally be hesitant to investigate a new one, the understanding of which may require considerable investment in time and imaginative effort. Better to let others do the risky and quite possibly foolhardy work of inventing and elaborating new theories. Chances are their attempts will fail anyway. Truly original ideas are hard to come by and, given this fact, it only makes sense to stick with what works rather than waste time on unfamiliar and unproven ideas.2. The second response is, on the surface at least, more gracious and benevolent, but this benevolence masks an intransigence quite as dogmatic [End Page 189] as the first. Thus we welcome the new theory into the fold, but with a view to assimilating it to what we already know. The new theory is not our rival but our friend. Rather than emphasize the differences, we point to the theory's similarities with our existing framework. The new theory is said to improve our understanding of one or two details, but these are held to be merely minor modifications and not at odds with what we hold to be fundamentally true. Thus the new theory is not really new at all. It is but another disciple of the old. Its claim to a place at the table is not at the head, as a rival leader and master, but alongside the other disciples whose collective task it is to disseminate the teachings of the one true master. This strategy is in fact extremely common and entirely understandable, from the viewpoint of both the adherents of the old theory and those of the new. For while the adherents of the old theory receive further confirmation of the superiority of their way of looking at the world, the adherents of the new theory receive a measure of respect by gaining access to an existing center of attention. As we all know, the mimetic attention space is by definition limited. We can't focus on everything at once, and sometimes the best strategy for a new theory is, so to speak, to follow the money. One piggybacks on the existing centers of attention. But the drawback is that the more one piggybacks, the less "new" one becomes.3. The third and final response is to take the new theory seriously as a rival center of attention. But this forces us into a genuine dilemma. For now we have to choose between theories that are accepted, for the time being at least, as equals in terms of their rivalry for our attention. But if both claim to be equally foundational, equally deserving of our attention to first things, then both cannot be equally true. One theory must come first; one must be superior to the other. But which?In a recent issue of Contagion, Pablo Bandera urges Girardians to adopt the third strategy when assessing Eric Gans's generative anthropology.1 We must recognize the theory's status as a genuine rival. Bandera believes that once the assessment has been fairly made, we must end up rejecting Gans's theory, at least insofar as it purports to be a theory of mimetic desire. The trouble is, Bandera claims, that most Girardians have adopted the second strategy, that is, they have simply assimilated Gans as a (slightly modified) version of Girard, without bothering to notice the very real differences between the two. The first strategy, complete ignorance of Gans's work, Bandera believes to be inaccurate as a description of the current situation. Indeed, he goes so... (shrink)

Este artículo trata, en un primer momento, de presentar los puntos fundamentales de la propuesta de Deleuze y Guattari en torno a la literatura menor, para pasar, en un segundo momento, a mostrar cómo, en Tirano Banderas, Del Valle-Inclán crea una literatura menor que permite al lector experimentar distintas maneras de enunciación que rompen formas tradicionales de creación literaria y expresan intensidades y rupturas en el mecanismo maquínico de ejercicio del poder en América Latina. De esta manera, Tirano Banderas, como (...) obra de arte, vuelve sensible preceptos y afectos autónomos en el marco de una metamorfización de la forma en la que se presentan los personajes, los contenidos y los acontecimientos. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta una visión general al lector sobre el tema de la educación en el pensamiento de Karl Marx, basada en cuatro obras clásicas: Tesis sobre Feuerbach, el Manifiesto del Partido Comunista de los Trabajadores y de las Instituciones Crítica Asociación del Programa de Gotha de los cuales se considera el centro de a la comprensión de la educación en el contexto actual. Tomamos nota de que en Marx, el enfoque crítico de la educación en la sociedad capitalista contribuye (...) a las banderas históricas y las luchas políticas que hasta ahora "sangrar" el posicionamiento de la realidad a nosotros mismos a una vista que no renuncia a entender "cómo la sociedad llegó a este punto", y muy menos que el reto de atreverse a vivir una praxis revolucionaria, socialista y emancipador que deseamos! (shrink)

This essay constitutes a response to Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen’s essay “A Note on Socially Engaged Art Criticism”. In particular, the essay focuses on the concept of an “exculpatory critique”. This term refers to a set of arguments in contemporary art criticism which contend that artistic practices that engage directly with processes of social or political change sacrifice their aesthetic validity while also providing an ideological justification for existing systems of domination. Kester seeks to demonstrate some of the shortcomings involved in (...) this critique by examining the underlying model of political transformation on which it is based and outlining an alternative account of art’s role in social action. (shrink)

A las puertas del segundo milenio de la era cristiana, o sea de la época que ha tomado la imagen teándrica de Jesucristo como bandera tras la que se esconden los intereses conjuntados de la economía liberal, la llamada «democracia representativa» de la sociedad de masas y la tecnociencia extendida planetariamente y cada vez más volcada a la comunicación de noticias y la industria del espectáculo, un fantasma parece recorrer este mundo desolado: el fantasma de lo sagrado. Testigos de (...) esta vuelta espectral son el auge del ocultismo, la proliferación de las sectas religiosas, la supuesta entrada en la New Age, presidida por la constelación de Acuario y, last but not least, el esfuerzo de los «eruditos», de los Religionswissenschaftler por encontrar «científicamente» una esencia unitaria de los distintos fenómenos religiosos que pueda unir a los hombres del planeta en una esperanza común. Pero, salvo el miedo al fanatismo o el hastío hacia la «ciencia de las religiones» que todos esos movimientos puedan producir, parece indudable que el agua tibia de esta zona templada en que se va convirtiendo la tierra no va a tornarse en corrientes de agua viva que dejen florecer justamente aquello que se echa en falta. (shrink)

A partir de la referencia al monumento a Salvador Allende en la plaza Constitución -que representa su sacrificio final a través de su figura envuelta en la bandera chilena. y renaciendo en el momento mismo de morir, como en el simbolismo masónico de la iniciación, o en el mito del Ave Fénix- se señala que esa representación artística no debiera alejarnos de interpretar lo que efectivamente ocurrió en La Moneda aquel 11 de septiembre. El artículo se propone responder a (...) cómo ocurrió la muerte del Presidente, si se trató de un asesinato o de un suicidio. Para ello se pregunta cuáles fueron los valores por los que éste terminaría entregando su vida. Argumenta que no se trató de una decisión tomada apresuradamente en la mañana del Golpe, sino casi un año antes, y sostiene que “lo que Allende no podía cambiar en la tragedia‚ del 11 de septiembre era la voluntad golpista de derrocar su gobierno; pero lo que sí estaba dentro de su poder era rendirse o combatir hasta el final a sus enemigos jurados. Allende eligió el combate, y cuando comprendió que ya no había más resistencia posible, se quitó la vida, privándolos así de la satisfacción sádica de humillarlo y vejarlo. Pocos actos los hay de mayor dignidad y valor”. (shrink)

Como una alternativa a los enfoques teóricos jurídicos normalmente utilizados —como los legalistas o formalistas— para el análisis de fenómenos sociales en investigaciones sociojurídicas, en este artículo se expondrán los resultados de las reflexiones metodológicas y empíricas emanadas de una investigación cualitativa previa, en la que el autor empleó como estrategia metodológica “la observación en campo”, diferenciada de la genérica “observación participante”. En dicha investigación se analizó el proceso de resistencia que lideraron tres organizaciones sociales que tienen su rango de (...) acción en la periferia de la Comuna 8 de Medellín, por la reivindicación del derecho a la ciudad y al territorio para esta población, en medio de las obras que comprendieron la ejecución de uno de los proyectos bandera de la administración municipal de Aníbal Gaviria : el Cinturón Verde Metropolitano - Jardín Circunvalar. A través de este análisis se logró evidenciar una constante tensión entre lo local y lo global, y un trabajo mancomunado entre organizaciones de base social para resistir a una concepción hegemónica de la globalización y construir un derecho “desde abajo”. (shrink)

Un factor que engrandece la desmesurada crisis económica que atravesamos es el desempleo masivo que afecta a todos los países industrializados. En una sociedad que enarbola la bandera de los derechos humanos, la falta de empleo resulta inquietante al ser fuente, no sólo de problemas económicos, sino también de tensiones, contradicciones y conflictos que se reflejan en un profundo malestar psicológico.

Este trabajo aborda el fenómeno de involución que se ha producido en los últimos años en el entendimiento de las relaciones entre libertad y seguridad en la tradición democrática. Tras el 11 de septiembre de 2001, la estrategia de guerra contra el terrorismo sustituye la lógica del Estado de Derecho por la del Estado de sitio y difunde el viejo recurso del miedo al otro y el paradójico repliegue en un nosotros cada vez más reducido, incluso en sociedades que hacen (...) bandera del universalismo. Entre el miedo a la amenaza exterior y el miedo al enemigo interno, se acrecienta el rechazo a la inmigración, construida de nuevo como un problema-obstáculo. El autor muestra, además, como la actual crisis económica se ha convertido en un factor añadido que ha multiplicado los discursos acerca de la urgencia de ofrecer respuestas adecuadas frente a la inmigración en las que se opta por una lógica jurídica de la excepcionalidad, de derogación o al menos suspensión de alguno de los principios y reglas del Estado de Derecho cuando se trata de regular el status jurídico de quienes son identificados como amenaza. (shrink)

Muchos entienden el tema de los derechos humanos y de las garantías como una conquista de las sociedades modernas, una manera de pensar ligada a la Ilustración y a los movimientos que surgieron bajo el seno de la Revolución Francesa. Por ende, se ve en las civilizaciones antiguas una especie de época no evolucionada sobre estas materias, una época en que la barbarie y la sinrazón parecieran hablar más que la cordura. Sin embargo, existieron civilizaciones antiguas que nada envidiarían a (...) sociedades modernas basadas en legislaciones que sustentan los derechos humanos como bandera de lucha y broche de distinción. Una de estas civilizaciones es la hebrea, y su legislación es la ley mosaica.El presente artículo tiene por finalidad resolver si la legislación mosaica tuvo un estatuto conveniente en materia de derechos humanos, si éstos efectivamente se consagraban y respetaban, siendo la ley no sólo prescripciones en este sentido sino además un posible régimen garantista de dichos derechos. Por consecuencia, se busca rastrear una posible constitucionalidad en el sistema mosaico y, finalmente, un régimen penal y procesal penal de garantías. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LABYRINTHINE STRATEGIES OF SACRIFICE: THE CRETANS BY EURIPIDES Giuseppe Fornari The application of René Girard's mimetic hypothesis demands drastic re-interpretation of the history of our culture. The denunciation of sacrificial violence performed first by the Hebrew Bible and then by the Gospels figures as an objective watershed in the evaluation ofcivilizations and historical periods. This new methodological and theoretical situation brings Girard's ideas into conflict with current trends toward (...) relativism. The victim is the reality at the root ofhistory, an extra-historical element that disrupts the circle of interpretation and confronts us as an absolute value demanding our commitment one way or another. The epistemological problems thus become one and the same with a frankly religious need. In an elegant and paradoxical way Girard's thought gives new, vital emphasis to the Christocentric interpretation of human history typical of patristic and medieval thought. In this light, comparison ofour Christian Western civilization with its Classical predecessor becomes crucial. For the Middle Ages Antiquity was not separate from Christianity but itsfigura (préfiguration), in a positive or negative way. Modern culture, however, starting from humanism and the Renaissance, discovered the historical dimension of Classical civilization with ever-increasing admiration until, finally, Neoclassicism set it as the great alternative to modern civilization. This tendency became openly anti-Christian first with the French revolution and then with thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger. The very identity of Western culture is determined by its varying attitudes toward Classical Antiquity and Christianity, to such an extent that the different periods in history could be subdivided accordingly. The comparison is like asking ourselves 164Giuseppe Fornari what we would be without Christianity, or who we are and what Christianity is. The radical nature of these questions and the overall development of our culture therefore confirm Girard's radical, metahistorical model. Classical civilization is the inevitable touchstone for this trans-historical question of identity. The comparison is fascinating and complex, and it cannot be dismissed simply by juxtaposing victimary awareness and blindness. Girard himself in Violence and the Sacred notes the profound investigation of mimetic violence in Greek tragedy and pre-Socratic philosophy.1 Further research of my own into these aspects of Greek civilization confirms and widens the analysis, revealing a surprisingly varied and dramatic picture.2 The most interesting discovery may be that the Greeks had already faced this question of meta-historical identity in relation to the victim. I have chosen Euripides' lost tragedy,the Cretans, to illustrate this: its highly original subject within the corpus of Greek tragedy and its symbolic richness fully justify its choice. The few remaining fragments, which are almost entirely reproduced here, provide enough material for analyses that are necessarily more limited but more complete in themselves and thus more suitable for a single essay. Besides, they possess high literary quality and do not deserve to remain the sole preserve of specialists. The tragedy of the labyrinth Euripides probably wrote the Cretans before 430 B.C. The premisses of the plot are supplied by traditional mythical material. To demonstrate to his brothers that he has a divine right to the kingdom of Crete, Minos asks Poseidon to send a white bull from the sea for sacrifice. The god satisfies his request and Minos's power is confirmed, but he decided the bull is too beautiful to sacrifice. The wrath of the god is not slow to strike the king's family. Minos's wife, Pasiphae, falls in love with the bull and copulates with it. From this bestial union comes the Minotaur, the being, half-man half-bull, which is shut up in the labyrinth. Minos's nonperformance of the sacrifice therefore causes a grave crisis on the island, 1It could be said that the exciting comparison with Classical civilization is one of the inspiring forces of Violence and the Sacred. An analogous direction, as regards Virgil and sacrifice, is followed by Bandera in The Sacred Game (13IfI). See also note 1 1. 2G. Fornari, The Esoteric Knowledge of the Greeks: From Orphism to Tragedy, A SacrificialReading (forthcoming). Labyrinthine Strategies ofSacrifice165 jeopardizing the boundaries between man and animal. The monstrousness ofthe Minotaur represents the breaking-down ofthose differences that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE ONTOLOGICAL OBSESSIONS OF RADICAL THOUGHT1 Stephen Gardner University ofTulsa Rather than make an inventory ofthis hodgepodge ofdead ideas, we should take as our starting point the passions that fueled it. François Furet (4) Any synthesis is incomplete which ends in an object or an abstract concept and not a living relationship between two individuals. René Girard (Deceit 178) Karl Marx offers two observations which I take as the (...) point of departure for a critique ofthe anti-liberal historicism in thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Marx himself. The first is that the modern project of emancipation presupposes that "man is the supreme being for man," and the second is that modern equality gives rise to its own type of relations of /«equality, indeed of "master and slave." I will not interpret these observations as Marx himself did, in economic terms. Instead, I use them as clues to uncover the kind of human relation implicit in but also hidden by the ontology of freedom on which radical historicism rests. By ontology offreedom, I mean the view that "being" is historical and grounded in radical freedom or contingency. For this theory, history is a process ofcreation ex nihilo, a power traditionally reserved for God. Such atheory is advanced in different forms by Heidegger, Nietzsche, ' I thank the Earhart Foundation and the University ofTulsa for their support for the project of which this is a part. I also thank Jim Williams and Jake Howland their comments. 2 The Ontologica! Obsessions ofRadical Thought and Marx, as the key to a radical critique of bourgeois society. Thus the ontological obsessions ofanti-bourgeois ire. I suggest that the fascination ofthe radical critique ofbourgeois society with historical "being" reflects the transformation of human relations by "equality of conditions," in the sense of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French sociologist and student ofthe democratic soul.2 As modern equality subverts the old orthodoxies, human beings tend to seek their gods in each other, as models of "freedom." And so there arises a "master-slave" psychology from the impact of equality, legitimized by romanticism and the modern cult ofEros. This, I suspect, is the effectual truth offreedom in Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Marx.3 René Girard offers a classic description of this psychology in his analysis ofthe modern novel, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, to which I am indebted throughout this paper. As regards that book, my general thesis—applicable not only to Marx but also to Heidegger and Nietzsche—may be stated as follows.4 Girard's analysis of the literary characters Don Quixote, Julien Sorel, Emma Bovary, Raskolnikov, and others is in effect a devastating if indirect critique of modem radical thought, or the pursuit ofradical freedom. Modern novels, he argues, tend to divide into two types: either "romantic" or "romanesque." The latter reveal the romantic illusions of the modern psyche, rather than merely reflect them like the former. "Romanesque" novelists such as Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Proust are great because they uncover the human relations behind romantic passions and the theories that legitimate them. The "romanesque" novel is a Socratic labor of selfknowledge in which the author emancipates himself from his own past romantic illusions. In effect, it exposes the fictions associated with the modern novel itself. The "romantic" novel, to the contrary, abandons self2 By "equality of conditions" is meant the de-legitimation of accidents of birth such as aristocratic lineage (or today race, gender, or ethnicity) as limits on one's social ambition or destiny. It is equivalent to the rise of vocational choice. 3 For a development of this theme in the context of early modern thought (Descartes to Hegel) as an indirect critique of the radical critics from Marx to Heidegger and after, see Stephen Gardner, Myths of Freedom- Equality, Modern Thought, and Philosophical Radicalism. 4 Cesareo Bandera, in The Sacred Game The Role ofthe Sacred in the Genesis ofModern Literary Fiction, also makes a "mimetic" critique of Marx, stressing his work as seeking to restore a sacrificial mythology as the bond ofsociety, an attempt at the basis oftotalitarianism (see his Appendix). The Ontologica! Obsessions ofRadical Thought3 knowledge for the platonic pursuit of "authentic being."5 It offers us "romantic... (shrink)

Este artículo caracteriza procesos identitarios sucedidos en escuelas públicas. ¿Hubo oportunidades para referencias que no fueran las moldeadas por la lógica nacional de fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX? ¿Es posible trazar una periodización que señale cambios en torno al tema? El análisis se centra en las décadas que van de 1860 a 1880, pero ofrece una perspectiva de más largo plazo integrando lo sucedido desde el período postindependiente. En ese contexto se reconstruyen experiencias ligadas al vínculo (...) entre escolarización, indígenas e inmigrantes transoceánicos. Al hacerlo se recuperan aspectos ligados a lo étnico, a la religión, a la presencia de banderas y símbolos patrios en las aulas. Un heterogéneo grupo de rasgos que, en conjunto, fundamentan la crítica que se hace al lugar común que asocia escuelas elementales y construcción de la nacionalidad. El texto se organiza en seis partes: una introducción, un recorrido por bibliografía que se ha abocado a estos asuntos, un apartado trazando rasgos sobre el tema reconocibles desde el temprano siglo XIX, un fragmento abocado al vínculo entre indígenas y escuelas, otro atiende a asuntos algo heterogéneos ligados a temáticas identitarias para, finalmente, concluir. Estos temas son tratados, fundamentalmente, a partir de fuentes generadas en escuelas públicas, mayormente para varones, de la campaña de Buenos Aires y conservadas en el fondo de la Dirección General de Escuelas del Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. (shrink)