Just to follow the trend, here are 10 books that I liked this year (no ranking, the 10 are different) followed by some special disappointment. English literature in general bore me, so I apologize for the huge amount of references to literature in English.
1. Out of sight, heart desert. Iris Garcia
Without doubt the best book of fiction published in Mexico in 2010. Master stories, relevant, spectacularly well written and a great narrative tension.
2. Orfa Perra Brava Alarcón
A book that covers an important symbolic hole in the space of the novel and does it with great bill.
3. Living in the End Times, Slavoj Zizek
A demonstration of why Zizek is being the most urgent and provocative thinker in contemporary philosophy. The section on labor problems in Marxism is undoubtedly the most brilliant philosophical reflection of the year.
4. Bring on the Books for Everybody by Jim Collins
An important reminder of the public culture of literature that in Mexico there.
5. Song of remoteness of Juan Manuel Roca
Although it was not published this year, is a book of poetry that marked me as a reader, like to hear after the Monterrey conference. Tremendous, intense, no doubt a sign of life of poetry.
6. The Possessed by Elif Batuman
A bright, beautiful love letter to literature, the rusofilia, to personal obsessions. An example of how to write a literary essay.
7. Changing my mind of Zadie Smith
Another great book of essays and another example of brilliance prosísitica.El text on contemporary narrative undoubtedly a critical reflection on the state of the novel today.
8. The Program was Mark McGurl.
A tour de force the academic criticism and a book that says both the system and its influence MFA in fiction, as in similar systems (ie the Fonca)
9. Joyce Carol Oates Sourland
In fact, my favorite author at this time and a brilliant example of and relevance of realism.
10 Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel.
Undoubtedly the most interesting poet in English today. And the disappointments
:
Freedom of Jonathan Franzen A minor disappointment. I liked the first time, but there are parts that fall out of the hands and thinking it is not as masterful as The Corrections
The Pregnant Window of Martin Amis and boring Agrio
Escape The Incredible Adam Thirlwell follow an author one of the most important essays on the literary tradition with a novel as shallow and idiotic.
Dublinesca of Enrique Vila-Matas sad when genius becomes formula. Also, Who would think to ask at this point Joyce as a means of literary renewal? After bartlebies Shandi and is more of a setback. White night Ricardo Piglia Another lead. Shows that the Argentines, but Washington Cucurto should not write about Caribbean color. Full of unfortunate racial expressions. Solar
Ian McEwan An example of how to take the most important issue of our time and use it to write a nonsense of epic proportions. Omega Point
Memorial emptying. Notes on bicentennial celebrations. Advertisers love
This paper was presented at a meeting on the centennial University of California at Irvine on 22 November. Deeply appreciate the invitation and Legros Horacio Avelar Idelber, Cecilia Méndez Alvaro Kaempfer and the opportunity to share their work.
Among the many experiences offered by the Mexican government to commemorate the bicentennial of Mexican independence, was perhaps the most peculiar in the premiere of the film Hell, a film that closes the trilogy of films scathing policy Luis Estrada. Following the logic of the two previous films, Herod's Law and A wonderful world, Estrada has a story questioning the triumphalist narrative of Mexican modernity, this time invoking the penetration of the drug has on the social fabric Mexican life. The film tells the story of Benny, a man that, after returning the United States penniless after years of illegal, joins a local drug cartel, sinking deeper into the structural corruption of the population until, by the need to protect his nephew from a vendetta, ending killed. While much could be said this film, for now I will stop only in the final climactic scene. The film puts us in the center of town, in full celebration of the bicentennial, which is headed by the local cartel kingpin, newly anointed mayor. Half ceremony cry from the audience erupts Benny with an automatic weapon and kills most of the members the podium. The violent disruption of the ceremony country has several levels of referentiality and meaning. On the one hand, Estrada literally raised the idea of \u200b\u200ba narco-state that lies in the myths and rituals of the Mexican as a form of social legitimacy. As shown by scholars like José Manuel Valenzuela, Hermann Herlinghaus and Juan Carlos Ramírez Pimienta, the drug culture has been co-opted in a broad cultural practices tied to the Mexican official, from the musical tradition of the run to the nostalgic discourse of Mexico happy. In fact, in another scene, the lord mayor launches become Benny and other gunmen a speech about the importance of moral values. Second, Estrada staged a violent outbreak of crime in Mexican narrative of modernity and tied to the bicentennial celebration. Certainly these outbreaks have been literal: in 2008, alleged members of the cartel Familia Michoacana threw a grenade into the crowd during the celebration of Independence. The reason for the escalating conflict is sustained by the cartels vendettas amongst themselves and against the government. However, in so far as the violence spreads to become a natural way of living in Mexico, the progressive teleology of the bicentennial celebrations of centuries, and is questioned in the film with a large number of brands over the failure of the various processes of modernity.
The presence of Hell released in the short list under the heading of "patriotic films" could certainly be read as a sign of cynicism latest ruling in Mexico, a deployment thereof Pierre Bourdieu called "heresy consecrated ", typical of so comprehensive a system that is able to finance even their own dissent. However, there are deeper implications of this cultural event. In what follows, I argue that the celebration of the centennial and the bicentennial are part of a broader process that, tentatively, I'll call the "hollowing celebratory", in which the rhetoric Memorial in Mexico has resulted in the de-significance of the historical and political symbols built by a century of official cultural discipline. "Movies homelands" are clearly symptomatic of this. Hell clearly based on the idea of \u200b\u200bexhaustion of the history, where communities whose modernity was at stake come the bicentennial taken by crime, corruption and despair. Accompanying this, the other two films pose radical dissections of both ancient myths. On the one hand, Hidalgo, the untold story of Antonio Serrano , which presents a revisionist biography based on the affairs of the "Father of the Nation", reduces the independence process of the volition of a figure who takes class empathy for their experiences of healing from the provinces. Furthermore, The attack takes Jorge Fons, from a novel by Alvaro Uribe, a failed assassination attempt against Porfirio Díaz. The film can be interpreted as part of a wider review within this decade, which retrieves the image of Díaz as a true source of Mexican modernity (another case is the novel my fatherland Poor Pedro Ángel Palou), with consequent argument that the Revolution was an interruption of the modern military. Although, as demonstrated by John Ochoa in his book on the subject, failure is a central theme of certain cultural narratives on the edge of Mexico's ruling party, called attention to the plurality of film productions, literary and artistic media have used the bicentennial to bring the nonsense of history in Mexico. The fact that the film financed by the state, in full celebration, narratives of failure occurs only speaks of the inability to articulate a meaningful discourse on the history in the public sphere. So we have Jorge Fons, director of the legendary film Red Dawn left in charge of a film apologetic Porfiriato or Felipe Cazals, perhaps the last director left openly in Mexican cinema, presenting a very Chicogrande failed representation of the fall of Pancho Villa. In short, this series of films funded by the State and promoted deliberately historical commemorations are a microcosm of two phenomena that invade the processes of historical significance in Mexico: on the one hand, the almost unprecedented inability of the Mexican state of articular triumphalist historical narrative and, second, the inability of cultural actors to politicize the past or to give a meaning. Therefore, what unites historical films 2010 is its emphasis on in-significant peripheral anecdotal moments of deliberately evading the political potential in the past to tell.
emptying memorial is, in my opinion, the result of three concurrent processes in Mexican culture. The first is the culmination of co-optation of the culture under the aegis of the State began in the radical centralization of culture under the shadow of Conaculta. Of course, cultural officialdom has always been organic postrevolutionary regimes, but the Conaculta meant a withdrawal of many cultural dimensions of its relevance in the public sphere. The revolutionary culture as shown by several studies over the past three years (Rick Lopez, John Mraz, Andrea Noble, intellectual Nations) is based on the ability of intellectuals to mediate between the ruling nationalist and cultural autonomy spaces generated by the Revolution, which allowed other cultural actors (directors, muralists, writers, etc.) participate actively in both teaching and in performance, according to the well-known analysis of Homi Bhabha, behind the writing of the nation. Thus, the Mexican national culture was peculiarly able to construct meanings socially consensual consensus for significant produced by different processes historical. In contrast, the broad grant to create meaning by Conaculta, from grants to creative artists of all disciplines and ages, to the re-centralization of the mechanisms of distribution and dissemination of many arts (film clubs, theaters, libraries, museums) helped to the annihilation of the traditional public articulation by providing an economic subterfuge allows creators total evasion of the hearings and, therefore, fosters a culture disconnected from public spaces. In addition, the consolidated Conaculta Mexican public space commemorative rhetoric: almost every month in Mexico is celebrated anniversaries birth or death of cultural figures (70 years Monsivais, 80 Carlos Fuentes, 50 of the death of Alfonso Reyes, etc.) intellectual conversation filled the tributes whose function is, again, hide behind any anecdotes substantial discussion of the critical legacy of these figures.
This is accompanied by a second factor, the emergence of the market as a cultural alternative to intelligentsia, which in turn resulted in what Roger Bartra called "posmexicana condition", ie a narrative of modernity that is no longer shaped by the discourses of nationalism to articulate identity strategies based on local-regional and global. In this paradigm, the creative artists and the intelligentsia in general lost ground to the emergence of new forms of media (such as television commentator and radio host) can represent more effectively this condition in urban class middle of the old privileged territories artistic class. Suffice as examples of the impact on Mexican public sphere as Denise Maerker communicators or Ciro Gómez Leyva triangulate Millennium diaries and El Universal, the radio conglomerate Grupo Televisa formula and creating de facto monopolies in the joint intellectual public sphere in the media age. Even the few intellectuals "literary" that have survived this change, as Hector Aguilar Camin and Enrique Krauze, are characterized by their mastery of these media spaces that communicators above, transfiguring the classic practice of the Mexican writer in the form of multimedia development cultural memory.
Finally, the myth of the transition to democracy, which emerged especially after the electoral victory of Vicente Fox in 2000, meant the reconfiguration of the liberal-secular quadrant of revolutionary nationalism in two precise ways . For a hand, Fox began his presidency with two acts of historical revisionism, raise the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the way in his post-election celebration, and replace the image of Benito Juarez by Francisco Madero in the office presidential. Thus, Fox appealed to precisely the idea that his presidency was a foundational act in the manner of Independence and the Revolution, based on an alleged quest for freedom narrative that displaced citizen revolutionary liberalism Juarez as the privileged political configurations Mexican historical imaginary. The rapid public disillusionment with the Fox administration created a fundamental condition for the emptying memorial since, although it was efficient in setting aside the founding narratives of PRI nationalism, a new historical narrative not had time to jell in the public mind. However, unlike the PRI, whose institutional legitimacy depended directly on the character of state realization of the revolutionary ideals, the PAN has not required a historical narrative consisting largely because its very origins in the opposition against Synarchist Cardenas Mexican right places in a fundamentally antagonistic position against both the secularism of the Reformation Juarez as against revolutionary populism. If the official history of twentieth-century Mexico, despite its failures, is primarily the story of a dissociated state of the Church and processes that sometimes even the state itself, meant the nation's symbolic incorporation of large segments of the working classes, the neoliberal and Catholic PAN has a more favorable if that legacy is devoid of any political potential.
My thesis then is that the vast and expensive apparatus celebratory bicentennial of Independence and the centenary of the Revolution, including "patriotic films, the proliferation of historical novels and essays, many of them co-edited by Conaculta, public parades and art exhibitions in almost every museum and public space in the country, are the ultimate point of convergence of these three processes in a public culture incapable of building a meaningful relationship with both the story and with the audience. This, of course, does not mean that there have been attempts by the State to create a consistent official historical narrative, but the official story seems to be deliberately constructed as an attempt to leave behind the social demands articulated to the myths of independence and Revolution in the twentieth century. The clear example is the volume history of Mexico , in which the State distinguished historians invited to lecture over different periods of history. The book had a print run of 250,000 copies and has been distributed at all points of sale of books at an affordable price suamente, 39 pesos or $ 3. The text endorses many of the points of view regarding the history Calderon of Mexico: Enrique Krauze, Mexico in charge of post-88, speaks of drugs as a "necessary war" while the period of the reform laws, which consolidates the secular state, is narrated by Andrés Lira as an arc of the emergence of a "constitutional order" to the establishment of a "liberal conservative", that cliché of Porfirio Diaz, however, well defined doctrine Christian Democrats the PAN. The Revolution, in the most symptomatic of the text, narrated by the historian appears Álvaro Matute as a succession of presidential regimes where shoes are presented as an attempt to return to "traditional community life" and ideologically villismo absent and appears only construct as part of military campaigns. What is noteworthy here, in part, is the tremendous volume irrelevance that has been in historical discussions of the celebrations. Despite their ubiquity, the book has sold very little and has not been commented on a sustained basis in any space of public debate. As an attempt to rewrite history has undoubtedly been a failure, but may be the deliberate failure of a state with little organic relation to the historical discourse.
But History of Mexico contains a meaningful text, which shows how the ruling PAN means emptying memorial of which I speak. In his presentation to the book, President Felipe Calderon raises the goal of the bicentennial, "will commemorate these dates founding festive way, as our story of struggle is a source of pride for Mexicans, but especially in a thoughtful, because we make a balance between the achievements and challenges to meet. " By centralizing the "balance" in the center of reflection, Calderón articulates a conception of history in which the past is dispensable while the ultimate goal of the commemoration is to look at future: "May the memory of such singular events and knowledge of history enshrined allows us to place them on the route of sustainable human development to which we aspire. " In a veiled but clear rhetoric of conservative Mexican Catholicism, this phrase raises two fundamental points: that the revolutionary events are unique (ie, unrepeatable) and that we read primarily as a self-help manual, whose goal is "sustainable human development "in which the discontent and conflict behind a revolutionary process are not relatable. For this is not surprising that there is no particular need of political meaning to the past, since the story only works as a strategy for individual and not as a collective memory or political articulation. After all, under the idea of \u200b\u200bplurality, lies a clear desire for a past void of meaning, able to proliferate only in the speech: "As a logical consequence of the cultural and ideological plurality that characterizes Mexico happily, the reflections will varied, including some found, what good that happens. " The corollary, of course, is that the proliferation hermeneutics of the past, the appropriation of their meanings for a precise policy formulation melts into air.
In a lucid article, "Narrating the Neoliberal Moment", Claudio Lomnitz argues that one of the impacts of neoliberalism in the culture is too much history. This article primarily concerns the emergence of Enrique Krauze as a public intellectual after the death of Octavio Paz and in the context of the transition from PRI to PAN. At this time, Lomnitz argued, "history Became the principal source of stock images in Mexico's public Discourse. It Politicians and public Intellectuals Provided with a succint and abbreviated moral vocabulary and with a set of images That Could handily stand in for long-standing arguments Entire events or doctrines. " I would argue that the bicentennial, as I have presented so far, is the ultimate point of articulation of this surplus in history, in which the proliferation of verbal and visual signifiers of the historical in the nineties resulted in the inability to produce instances cultural meanings, due in part to the organic with the hegemonic discourses of State of the images themselves in history, played incessantly on the television programs of Clio, the emergence of historical-themed soaps (like the eagle's flight, based, again, in the life of Porfirio Díaz) and the multiplication of historical reflections in newspapers and magazines. One could supplement this by saying that the complicity of the media structure of the country with the neoliberal process enabled these goods also became significant, without departing too far from the ideological correctness of the new state, contributed to the maintenance of semantic gap. Thus, one could say that the process identified by Lomnitz lies in a shift from state capture history, ranging from the traditional rule on the meaning, always maintained a certain degree of political definition, a significant ownership of the same because the images themselves become State property and the market becoming irrelevant resemantization processes at the level of significance. As a literal example of this may be the enormous amount of historical novels appeared in the last two years, returning to historical figures and events one by one, and promising "stories ever told." In all cases, from the Zapata Pedro Ángel Palou and his flirtations with homosexuality, to the Benito Juarez Eduardo Antonio Parra, novels iconisation contribute to the individual figures of history as significant, without providing a narrative that allows new interpretations their socio-political events. In this way, the icons of history becomes a constructed script, almost as cliché Derrida, in the infinite play of signifiers that never get fixed at any significance beyond the form itself.
symptomatic Another dimension of the formal ruling of Mexican history is the privilege of intellectuals and Krauze and Hector Aguilar Camin and give the institutions of contemporary Mexico narrative frame: the important thing is not the product of a political ideology or historical consistent but the control of the vehicles themselves of representation of these ideologies, the Political parties, the electoral process, historical images, etc. Institutionalism of the Mexican center-right and is based on this operation. In The invention of Mexico, the book written about the celebration, Aguilar Camin defines the Mexican Revolution as "The catalog of beliefs and institutions that fill [his] bag." He then denounced the historical memory of the Revolution as a series of "lessons of national history that drags the memory of the country," glorification of violence, election defeat, defensive nationalism, pedagogies of resentment and victimhood, founding lies " . As an antidote to this, Aguilar Camin a story advocates that instead of "glorifying" the conflict to focus on the institutional achievements of the country. As we can see from this brief example is the celebratory emptying hire a project of radical shift in the country into an era in which the revolutionary ideals are left behind to support an institutional partnership that is clearly hierarchical. To co-opt significant and produce a collective failure to bring new meaning to revolution and independence in terms of cultural and political memory, the technocratic intelligentsia of Mexico in organic relation to the discourse of democratic normality of PAN, pose a story based on the intellectual construction of the state, and the exclusion of inequality and conflict as fundamental structures of social and political life. The broad consensus that this view of Mexican history yet has found some intellectuals in counterpoints that are not identified publicly with the right and have a more positive view about the inequality. In Blame for Mexico, another book written about the commemoration, Pedro Angel Palou argues that the erasure of the indigenous past and the consolidation of liberalism formed the basis of historical processes that ultimately institutionalize after the Revolution. Palou point is however opposite to that of Aguilar Camin, the story focuses on the institutionalization is what prevents us from thinking the country in a plural and democratic. While the book does not stop Palou participate in clearing-ante celebratory excess of history is hard to write without it, "no less an attempt to give new meaning to the nineteenth century from spaces that resist co-optation of cultural signifiers neoliberal era.
until two days ago, I thought to conclude this paper with a reflection on this last point. However, before yesterday I had the opportunity to see the tape Revolution , a set of ten short films by new directors released Mexicans in Mexico this weekend as a continuation of the "patriotic film." The reason I had access to this film was due to the peculiar form of movie distribution. Produced by Canana Films, the company Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, the film was released simultaneously in the private rooms of cinema, Televisa and YouTube, in an effort to give prominence to the film last weekend and to avoid piracy. Like any collective work Revolution is rather irregular, but has some moments of brilliance that give a glimpse, albeit briefly, cultural symbolization possibilities beyond the excess of history and emptying celebratory I've spoken here. The films deliberately evade historical re-enactment from its focus on different margins of contemporary bet on the construction of new signifiers that articulate the historical memory of the exhaustion of the traditional archive. A great example is the "company store" Mariana Chenillo where, after referring to the model shop where Porfiristas estates paid in kind to employees, introduces us to a supermarket worker whose salary is paid in part with coupons. In articulating the past in an area directly connected to the urban experience of neoliberalism, playing factually existing structure of economic exploitation, Chenillo a need to repeat the revolutionary gesture in presenting the return of one of its central causes. Celebratory emptying is presented by Rodrigo Plá formally in a short film fascinating. Pla's film introduces us to a mayor who invites a grandson of Pancho Villa to the celebrations of its people. Since the first event, the people's political apparatus prevents the grandson talk, taking as a figurehead to a number of events, from a popular concert until the inauguration of a hospital. Plá has literally one of the points that I presented before -The use of history as a significant part of the state to tell parts of his brief as a series of official photographs of the mayor shaking hands with the grandson in different events. The invocation of history as advertising strategy and file of the revolution as a legitimation of the state are present. The very idea of \u200b\u200bcelebration is attacked by another director, Carlos Reygadas. In a plotless short entitled "This is my kingdom," Reygadas presents a dinner hosted by him and filmed in a documentary. The dinner takes place in a vacant lot in Tepoztlan and their assistants are members of the Mexican upper class and a group of poor farmers owners of the lot. After presenting the guests as a class set of figures radically disconnected from the poor who are in front, the party gradually becomes chaos ending in the destruction of an old car that ends become a huge bonfire. In the unlikely style symbolized Reygadas, the short allows two interpretations: as an allegory of a revolutionary institutionalization began as party elites and ended up as a mess, and as a sign of a celebration vacuum itself is unable to mean anything and ends chaos.
These three short films show us ways in which the filmmakers evade the revolutionary file images and vocabularies and allow new languages \u200b\u200bof cultural interpretation from the significant gaps left by the significant ambiguity of the neoliberal state. Despite my radical skepticism in the ability of Mexican culture to restructure the public relevance achieved in the revolutionary years, after seeing Revolution I can not conclude on a note-active. My immediate impression after seeing some of the short is that in a time when literature has become a highly commercialized production or self-referral, depending on the author, the most successful art ceased to aspire to the public dimension of murals and that the history books produced meanings nonsense, some new managers are experimenting with possible languages \u200b\u200bof political art to come. The film is a vehicle ambiguous in this respect I can that is responsible for two fundamental readjustments in national culture class. In the golden age was a vehicle of cultural democratization from its ability to appeal to the popular classes and high alike. In contrast, neoliberalism, as I try to show in a book I hope to finish soon, film radically shifted to the middle class, becoming perhaps the fastest-cultural genre is given to cultural readjustment posmexicana condition. However, since the film is likely to prosper as an industry, the process Privatization has allowed the emergence of voices like those of some directors Revolution using market resources to fund proposals that depart from the dictates of the subsidy symbolic creation in Mexico. In these terms, and with this term, the short film that impressed me most was "The priest Nicolás hanging" by Amat Escalante. The film, shot in black and white, begins in the wilderness with a boy and a girl who found a priest hanging from a tree, and burned body of his altar boy at his side. The priest speaks of an armed group hung in there and killed the acolyte burning him alive, to which children responds that the armed men burned down his village and taken to adults. So much for historical reference seems clear: the short is set in such a way that looks like a recreation of the Christ War and its characters victims of federal Calles, a narrative which, incidentally, has been recovered from the right as part of his attack to secularization. However, towards the end of the short, Escalante gives a masterful twist: the priest and the children come to a modern highway, demanding money in the street to end up eating something at a McDonalds. The subtext, of course, is that the atrocities committed against them could be committed by drug dealers or military incursions plague the contemporary Mexico. Without commenting directly on this, as would Luis Estrada, Escalante constructs a visual language that reconstructs the radical violence woven into the historical experience of Mexico. In a sense, the filmic language of Escalante, which avoids turning the film into the pulpit to denounce Luis Estrada, produces the antithesis of the institutional discourses of Aguilar Camin, an expression of the brutality that underlies the two moments of liberal modernization of Mexico : the secular Calles and neoliberalism. While the artistic language of the shorts Revolution is in the best, in the formative process of an art future, possibilities and potential that has to imagine another form of culture. Following the concept of Jacques Rancière, productions like seem announces Revolution's promise of a new distribution of sensitivity that allows the overcoming of the celebratory culture and empty today, has become the bicentennial and the centennial in a symbolic obstacle more to the necessary reinvention of Mexico.
"You have to sentence him as well. The ceasefire agreement and National Dialogue "hope and possibility for change National Accord, were betrayed, and those responsible deserve a single sentence: to be banished from the government so that a new will, the other national, patriotic and democratic - assume the task possible, here and now, to make peace "
Luis Otero Andrés Almarales
Twenty years have passed since that moment when courageous fighters vegan Company Iván Marino Ospina gave their lives and sealed with their blood "Operation Antonio Nariño for the Rights of Man." Heroically took the building in the poor Colombian democracy embodied the court power to make a claim attack: a public trial and popular Belisario Betancur, a representative of the oligarchy and defender of the interests of big capital and popular public trial who breached the ceasefire agreements and National Dialogue concluded with the April 19 Movement in August 1984, and even demanding the government's failure of agreements with other sectors of the insurgency as the EPL and the ADO.
Twenty-five years of that time a popular demand the exercise of a truly radical democracy was attacked by a reactionary regime with gas and fire, with total disregard for life, not just vegan fighters, but of all the comrades aquellxs who remained in the palace. The media was a tool to hide the true latent country: lack of commitment of the Colombian oligarchy to building peace, lack of commitment to solving the structural problems at the time, like today, afflicting a society largely subjected to hunger and exclusion.
"The blind and brutal decision Belisario Betancur and the response of the armed forces, supported by the political class the oligarchy and the owners of the mainstream press, it was not attack on our column of 42 soldiers, but an operation of mass destruction, scorched earth, total holocaust and widespread. The tanks, the indiscriminate use of rockets, grenades, gas, and arson were the only alternative to the various solutions. There was no attempt to negotiate, nor was it heard the order to cease-fire the president of the Supreme Court. Fire suppression scorched-earth assaults were the single answer to the oligarchic regime "Alvaro Fayad Delgado
Mountains Cauca, November 1985
The new generations of fighters of the Movement April 19 we are now in action and words to remind aquellxs who gave their lives in the struggle for democracy. Today as before from all corners of the country are raised fist fights thousand accusers, Andres, Alfonso, William, Patricia, of Lazarus, Ariel, José Domingos, Cesar, Claudio, .. again we raise the flags and fists by radical democracy, the real life of dignity and freedom.
commanders and fighters of the company Ivan Marino Ospina, that his example will make the word forge an echo in the combative spirit of those who fought and struggle for life and against death, and that action resets the heartbeat of a people rebel. We will continue resisting and fighting, that the M-19 is the promise will be fulfilled!
On "PUBLIC SAFETY POLICY" NOT LESS IS MORE POLICE THIEVES
NO LESS FOR MORE POLICE ARE THIEVES
several days ago and was released uproar in Cali, the new policy of "safety" an appendix over the "Democratic Security", an appendix, as we have in our bodies is useless and only serves to cause pain, in this case, the youth of our country.
found that the regime seeks to legitimize its authoritarian discourse with the traditional media management. This time under the pretext of attacking emerging bands, Santos Positive generates a policy that actually will go to suppress the youth and nonconformity (for them terrorism.) The central aspects of this policy is to increase the troop strength and modify the code of police and law with a length of sentences and the deepening of existing anti-vegan children under 18 years. This reform seeks to legitimize police code even further crackdown on dissent. On the other hand, the reform legislation that includes the extension of sentences reveals the face of repression because they prefer more time locked up by a young man in jail instead of giving opportunities to enter an institution of public education than the Seine (which as we know has been violated by the market).
all LA we know that there are fewer police for more than thieves, however there are consuming resources which could easily be directed to public education and health colombianxs vegan. But then all they offer is that we welcome into our families to these murderers who are ICETEX and EPS.
Anyway ... the only thing behind it is an offensive against a youth facility that cries out for quality public education and decent job opportunities. A Positive Santos it responds with a repressive status (if a statute like the front-nationalist era de Vargas Lleras grandfather), directed against the youth and of course to the detriment of the poorest.
continue to expose, because it happens to carry the ingredients to make our chips will be penalized by this new policy. Because even think differently is a crime and that only confirms that we live in a dictatorship.
Because the resistance is fighting continue to resist the onslaught of the regime against a dissatisfied and rebellious youth, and continue to fight against death and life.
The works carried out to celebrate a special date tend to generate a bit apprehensive as it seems that the motivations do not arise the concern of the writer faced with a problem that inhabits it, but external constraints, sometimes far from the aesthetic. In this Bicentennial year, for example, is home to the fury of the publication of works on the historical moment: recreations of Bolivar, texts on the lifting of the villagers, academic meetings around the Independence include documents, which become two hundred years ago in our history. In this tangle of proposals, it is essential to read carefully to know which of these books are part of an editorial opportunism and which delve into the issues and the human condition of those who took part in national history. The task is difficult not only by the amount of reading but also for raising blisters.
the first concern I had while reading the cover of the latest novel Flaminio Carlos Rivera, a writer from Lebanon who already has several story books on the market and three novels, the most recent one entitled Tree imagined, and presented in capital letters as a "NOVEL IN COMMEMORATION OF THE BICENTENNIAL OF INDEPENDENCE." For
irreverent voices, the novel begin badly from this announcement, not only because it anticipates that, as I said in the above lines, the motivation is not aesthetics, but because talking about independence from Colombia brings a smile full of irony. These voices speak of a commissioned work, in this landmark case, but perhaps also the commercial, which also has the gall to refer to our Independence, after two hundred years of subjugation and changes masters. In favor of the discussion will try to build my assessment of the novel.
The play recreates the time of the Botanical Expedition, a few years after the lifting of the Communards and some before 20 July. From New Granada, Don Baltazar sent a letter to his cousin Emilio in Spain, in which he claims to have found a plant that will enrich. The information is a lie and Don Emilio travels from Spain laden with hopes and with a package where unwittingly brings the Declaration of Human Rights and a series of erotic works that excite the population. Arriving in New Granada Emilio discover death and inhospitable roads, overflowing nature and towards the end of the work, the lie that has fallen. In parallel talks Mineimas Indians, ancient inhabitants of Lebanon Tolima and efforts, on several fronts, by José Celestino Mutis and Antonio Nariño, by inserting the Enlightenment in the American colonies.
The novel has a tendency to come looking for the author from works predecessors: the poetic language. In this search there are images of nature and the time travel really significant. Even the narrator leaves that, at times, whole poems which are translated author, on several occasions, it is indiscernible and, in general, refer to the richness of Colombian flora discovered by the Botanical Expedition. That
poetic tone fails to address, however, the fall in tension of the narrative account of the gradual oblivion of the main story. The creative journey from Spain argument made by Emilio with incendiary material, and in which, unbeknownst to him, is involved the destiny of a nation loses strength when added, almost tangentially, the stories and characters Mineimas as Mutis and Nariño. So, like a sturdy tree with a main trunk that little by little scattering in different branches, this novel Flaminio Rivera fails to constantly return on your wise and sometimes gets lost in details that, for purposes of force in the narrative, seem inconsequential. There
captivating moments, as told by Don Emilio in his diary about the customs of the Mineimas, meetings or insurgent in the head of Antonio Nariño, or conversations between Don Emilio and Balthazar, but those parts are not articulated efficiently with the main plot. The drive is not enough given the time, historical data and the troubles of the protagonists of our history, and perhaps much more tissue is needed to articulate all these elements. Sometimes it seems that precisely this distance between side affects deepening the characters and no risk of ambiguity, are outlined characters who we know from the official story that the novel tells us, like Antonio Nariño fighter from the press and the Enlightenment and as a botanist José Celestino Mutis sublime .
Apparently these issues are moving in favor of a poetic language that seeks the richness of the image. The title, for example, is itself a metaphor for what was the hope of independence for New Granada. The tree pictured is one that gives the shadow of freedom and the fruits of independence, the hope is never fulfilled in the plane of reality. In that pre-Columbian indigenous tree converge, ideas of the French Revolution, rare plants and attractive, the Rights of Man, rebellious and clandestine printing.
In that sense, the work itself is a memorial, as presented on the back cover but I doubt that the motivations of the author have been extra-literary (as in some mystery novels I've saved an essential piece for last: I know Flaminio Rivera was preparing the novel for some time). Perhaps not the finding of the first nor the denial of the latter are as important to me. Now I think the work is a leafy tree with many branches and the trunk barely visible at its root. Leonardo Monroy Zuluaga
Book Details:
Rivera, Carlos Flaminio. Pictured Tree. Bogotá: Codex / Library libanenses of Culture, 2010.
This is the presentation on Mexican romantic comedy presented at the Congress of LASA 2010. Thank Juana Suárez, Juan Poblete and Claudia Ferman both the invitation and for sharing la mesa.
In his brilliant and evocative book Cold Intimacies, Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz states that "the achievement of capitalism went hand in hand with the creation of a specialized intensely emotional culture, and when we focus in this dimension of capitalism could be in a position to dis-cover other order in the social organization of capitalism "(my translation). This insight brings to the table a central idea for studies on Mexican cinema, to the extent that the current configuration of its aesthetic maintains an intimate connection to the cultural development of neoliberalism in Mexico. However, the study of what Illouz called "emotional capitalism" is still a blind spot in film studies about Mexico, mainly due to ideological and theoretical inclinations of academic and journalistic practices, where they still use film around two issues: the representation of popular or subaltern subjectivities (the indigenous, the popular urban youth class) or the continuation of this notion of Mexicans who, in my opinion, was no longer relevant as a topic in the mid-nineties. In what follows, and based on a longer work I am doing on the subject will present a series of articles about the genre's most influential current commercial Mexican cinema, the romantic comedy, and how it emerged and consolidated into the heart of the consumption practices of film audiences in Mexico of neoliberalism. Although the brevity of this presentation I will leave aside several details, the central argument I will try to make is that the heyday of the romantic comedy is symptomatic of the profound changes brought neoliberalism in the field of culture, levels of production, aesthetics, public building, etc.
The romantic comedy boom in Mexican cinema can be traced in terms of three specific factors. First, as studied by authors such as Celestino Deleyto, the eighties were a golden age of Hollywood romantic comedy, because on the one hand, the success of films of John Hughes and Rob Reiner, on the other the intellectual cache granted by the work of Woody Allen. By 1989, Allen had turned to romantic comedy in a privileged language of so-called independent film, while the commercial success of When Harry Met Sally Reiner gave international audiences new forms of articulation of emotion in the context of As David Shumway calls the "marriage crisis." The first romantic comedy consideration of neoliberalism in Mexico, only with your partner (1990) by Alfonso Cuarón emerge in these terms. The film is a comedy of errors centered on Thomas Thomas, a womanizer who faces the specter of AIDS after an ex-lover changes the results of blood test to scare him. Cuaron's film has a number of features that herald the changes mean that the romantic comedy in subsequent years. The first and most important film lies in its subject. The cinema of the seventies and eighties generally focused on two types of subjects: urban popular class post-Bunuel and his counterpart in the rural classes in the work of authors such as Luis Alcoriza or Alfonso Arau, and the old middle class professional their emotional melodramas in the work of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo and Arturo Ripstein true. Instead, Thomas Thomas not only belongs to the middle class, but is a publicist, that is, someone dedicated an emerging profession of neoliberalism in Mexico, part of a creative class, as I will show other films then becomes the social ideal of the new middle classes. In fact, the entire narrative Only with your partner is completely mediated by the advertising world. The title comes from a Mexican government's campaign to raise awareness about AIDS, while Thomas is working on another campaign for an jalapeño company whose characters are a conqueror and a fighter. Although I have no time for detailed analysis of your partner just like to highlight the fact that damages the characters are fundamentally mediated by advertising and media throughout the film, showing a literal example of "emotional capital" described by Ilouz: an interaction between a middle-class urban Mexico which affective experiences are redefined from capitalist social space created by neoliberalism and a pop-cultural film begins to piece speeches to articulate the forms of subjectivity created by this new economic setting.
In 1991, only with your partner was still an exceptional film, a cinematic tradition not exceeded at all affiliations to social melodrama and film (Like Water, Red Dawn). The consolidation of the aesthetic of the romantic comedy as a privileged social discourse still required other possible conditions that would result in the displacement of movie audiences of the popular urban class, consumer of commercial cinema theatrical show of figures such as Luis de Alba, La India Maria or the stars of Televisa, to an urban middle class would begin to monopolize the film exhibition spaces in the country. The second phenomenon lies then the rapid privatization of the structures of film exhibition. By 1990, COTSA, structure display state, began a series of massive closures of theaters. In 1994, the U.S. chain Cinemark opened the first of several Cineplex, and, towards the end of the decade, the exhibition throughout the country was controlled by Cinemark and two private channels, and Organization Cinemex Ramírez. These strings had a profound impact on the formation of film audiences due to the exponential increase in the cost of inputs. From 10 to 15 pesos Mexicans go to the movies cost the state, a Cinemark or Cinemex ticket cost 40 pesos, equivalent to 125% of the daily minimum wage in Mexico. In this way, the film returned to Mexico as a privileged form cultural practice of the middle classes, something unprecedented in U.S. history. To the extent that popular urban classes were excluded from the film, the emerging commercial Mexican cinema used the exponential growth of screens and began to appeal to these new audiences. Not surprisingly, the first commercially successful film in the wake of the Multicinemas was a romantic comedy, Cilantro and parsley (1995), Rafael Montero, characterized not only by being the first co-production and Televicine Imcine, the two titans Mexican film production, but for their aesthetic standards of the middle class.
The third factor of consideration is the transformation in media consumption of the middle class brought about by the explosion of subscriptions to cable television. By the mid-nineties, the successful market entry of channels like Sony Entertainment Television and Warner Channel The media divided audiences in terms of class, providing the alternative to primetime soap opera: the situation comedies or sitcoms American television. iconic series as Mad About You , Dawson's Creek Friends and started to become joint spaces affectivities alternative media. In part, success of these series is due precisely to reflect the nation's new middle class professional class division of the soap (rich and poor) or the approach of traditional film in the popular urban classes have been ignored. The effect of this new media space was the symbolic opening of a gap between the urban middle classes and the inherited emotional speeches productions as the telenovela or the cinema of the golden age. Thus, a significant number of emerging private producers, as Zeta Films, Alameda and other forms of economic viability found by appealing to these new affections, the emotional return of the sitcom languages \u200b\u200band re-articulated to film production. Of here it comes, for example, film by Fernando Sariñana, who uses the production values \u200b\u200band visual aesthetic of American television in the construction of films that revolve around love stories starring the professional middle class (such as Love hurts ( 2002)) or sentimental education stories of middle class youth to be connected to the means of capitalist production they belong to their parents as bad on tape Girls (2007), where the protagonist, a rebellious girl daughter of a politician Right attends a school of good manners that, despite their initial resistance, it teaches you to be a proper citizen of the upper middle class.
The change in media consumption brought about by the cable television allows the transformation of cultural goods films from emerging multimedia promotional strategies tied to the rapid rise of the MTV Latin America. The foundational case is Sex, shame and tears (1998) by Antonio Serrano, whose commercial success is unprecedented in that time, largely due to the high turnover of the theme song from the movie, played by Aleks Syntek on MTV. THE cable television, in these terms, has a dual role in the development of romantic comedy in Mexico, neoliberal movies in general. On the one hand, allows entry to Mexico of languages \u200b\u200band aesthetic media that transcend those promoted historically by the duopoly formed by Televisa and TV Azteca. However, by conditioning access to these speeches to pay a monthly payment that exceeds the economic potential of large segments of the population, this opening reduces the potential audience for a specific sector that paradoxically becomes the vehicle for commercial viability new Mexican cinema to bind to the new production to consumption spaces built by private exhibitors. Moreover, the music, entertainment programs for television networks and other similar programs allow exclusive access to these audiences in ways that renew the strategies for the promotion and consumption of Mexican cinema to break the constraints inherited from both the marginalization of socially oriented Mexican cinema of the seventies and eighties as the commercial cinema popular urban look Televicine virtually monopolized by 1995. It is, in short, a radical reconfiguration parallel the affection of a class that begins to emerge as the privileged subject of a series of cultural productions after decades of invisibility in the melodramatic speech, along with the rise of new forms of consumption bundles these affections, forming what, following Ilouz, might call a new emotional economy of capitalism. It is no coincidence that the rise of cinema complexes and cable TV has been accompanied by the proliferation of shopping centers in urban areas and the success of two chains of legal sale of music records and movies, and Tower Records Mixup made remarkable success considering the parallel market piracy. However, this fact we find a clear example of the impact of this new emotional capitalism. While the middle classes produce an affective capitalism builds new structures of economic privilege, the urban popular classes, banished from his role as representational center of Mexican cinema and excluded industries culture of neoliberalism, find their place of articulation in informal economies as piracy.
In the last couple of minutes I have left, it seems important to list some critical issues that emerge from the study of this new form of capitalism Emotional
1. In terms of film studies in Mexico, I think that there is a significant gap in reading about film texts vis-à-vis the production and consumption policies. Recent criticism has tended to favor production of the "film social ", which are favored because of its political message despite its limited presence in consumption in Mexico, the film of" art "(Reygadas, Escalante, etc.) examined in their potential conceptual or internationalized Inarritu film, Cuarón and company. However, film studios rarely focus on those films strictly domestic consumption, and significant presence in the cinema as a practice. In other words, it is possible to give full account of the film industry in Mexico without a careful discussion of those productions that made national audience will see. In the holiday season 2006-2007, for example, bad girls got a ticket 7 million dollars, well above the Hollywood productions with which he competed, The Bourne Ultimatum, Evan Almighty, both with less than 6 million in revenue. The frequent production of films that get respectable results at the box office despite having no international cartel speaks of a cultural industry yet to be studied.
2. In terms of studying the cultures of neoliberalism in Mexico, the issue of the cultural sphere of the urban middle class is essential to understand the accommodations in the social and affection brought by an economic model based on the deepening social inequalities. Just for instance, calls attention the huge amount of advertisers and members of the creative class star, just from your partner, a significant amount of commercial films, appearing in Amores perros, in sex assault and tears, at Ladies Night at Tired of kissing frogs in Living kills and many other commercial run movies. This speaks to a way of conceiving the middle class based on the idealization of the forms of production generated by the economy of neoliberalism and NAFTA. The emergence of film stars like Ana Serradilla , Martha Higareda and Susana Zabaleta, all players on a number importante de roles de esta clase creativa, es sintomática de nuevas economías de género y de idealización afectiva presentes en esta cultura que podría llamarse postmelodramática. Sin dar cuenta plena de estas nuevas formas de imaginar las subjetividades de la élite creativa perdemos un elemento importante de la comprensión de las desigualdades simbólicas del proceso neoliberal.
3. Finalmente, la comedia romántica es un espacio privilegiado de articulación de la afectividad en el capitalismo avanzado. La virtual ausencia del género en la crítica cinematográfica, al grado de que autores Alberto Fuguet have claimed as their absence in the region (thanks to claudia by reference), speaks of a blind spot in the study of Latin American cinema, due to the strong presence of these productions in countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. Moreover, the persistent focus on the melodrama as a privileged mode of subjective joint Latin American film studies leaves the region out of a conversation importnate the processing of emotions in global capitalism, something that certainly is present to throughout Latin American cultural industries. As we have learned Celestino Deleyto and David Shumway in the field of romantic comedy Bret Mills in the sitcom, and Eva Ilouz, Niklas Luhmann and Eloy Fernandez Porta in the conceptualization of emotions, there is still much to be said about these reconfigurations of the paradigms of emotion in American and global culture. It seems to me that the study of Mexican romantic comedy is a cornerstone of Mexican neoliberalism theorizing come.
large mass in the babble that outrages public universities in commemoration of our commander Che Guevara. Undoubtedly, such an exemplary man is in our struggle, full of sense and history, but this time the fight was not that way. Encapucharte Platform is oriented to build autonomous policy in the streets, direkt generate action to subvert the apparent normality of a country that is dying in hunger and lack of democracy true. We live in a very elaborate social dictatorship at the national level. The biggest criminals in the country are those who occupy the chairs of governors and the U. District's model is copied almost identically: The powerful have chosen a candidate without the participation of those directly concerned (students, profs, workers , etc.) rather than an instrumental, its objetivoy his vision is to generate large fees apart from bureaucratic corruption, the perfect spot to suppress critical thought and action.
For this reason, the Platform decided to demonstrate, as a way of exercising lawlessness and a student organization estartegia deuniversidad a project and country fair.
After the campaign and the party, the PLATFORM ENCAPUCHARTE link points to present our view are the minimum to build a public university and respond tothe interests of the nation
Volume 78 of the Colombian Literature Library Publishing Black Sheep, is titled Nostalgia Tropical Boom or Faust. Subtitle makes clear only to review the curricula vitae of the author, Joseph Stevenson. The rack is summarized here from Santa Marta in 1934 and some publications as, The Years of Suffocation (1969) his first novel published in Buenos Aires. The story sounds at first something straight: the life of Simon Argote, how it became a legend Black, Latin Lover prototype having fun in Europe. Then we found the relationship with the literary tradition for Boom in Nostalgia is not free to subvert the fact the archetype of Don Juan and the Germanic legend of Faust: "(...) Then came the rumors of the black arts, that a satanic pact it was incredible attraction for women of all ages. "(p. 66) However, this rogue has no compact with the devil. He himself is a poor devil, clever, amiable, sour, sweet, generous, adventurous ... even noctívago, seaman, also knew overcome the shipwreck in stormy culture de Occidente, donde un culto icónico a los mitos y anti-héroes modernos del cine, la televisión y la literatura resumen la masa humana entre la indiferencia y la ruindad. Por eso, cuando Gastón y Nicole, esos parisinos despóticos e ilustres, salieron de la Opera, ella le preguntó: “Vamos, Lover, tú qué opinas?”. Él escuchó y tras su silencio más la intervención de otros dijo:
“Yo no soy ningún intelectual, no conozco a Goethe, pero lo que sí le puedo asegurar es que Fausto me pareció medio apendejao.¿ Tú crees que si yo soy él, me dejo engatusar por un diablo tan guevón? No hombre! Ni de vainas. Acaso es que tú crees que I'm queer? The devil has been able to make its Pilatuña. I had never seen a devil without such malice ... "(p. 73)
In this sense, Milan Kundera, from the Art of the Novel, suggests that this genus is an investigation of what human life is also a denunciation of the trap in which the world has become. Perhaps this in Nostalgia Boom mention of the decline of modern culture, which is presented as a whirlwind of dirt. This is demonstrated by descriptions of a third person narrator, outside the atmosphere of neon bleeding, Night-Club, Champagne, Tuxedo rosette in his buttonhole, Jazz delusional, bikinis, boats, Roll-Royce, hascish with Nembutal opium coca ... ad infinitum. The colorful characters
show looks skeptical. Adhering to a false condition, Platonic love is demystified. This fall in the deep cynicism that is effective in the lie. French, American, Arab, Australian, German, Colombian ... In short, an entire fauna in the labyrinthine Babel bloody twilight of the West.
The history of the twentieth century was written and underlined in red and black ink and Nostalgia Boom, explosive onomatopoeia that means crossing several fields of war, internal and external to human beings. Also mentioned are the facts that shook the provincial prudery of Santa Fe de Bogotá on April 9, 1948 when he put candle to the Palace of Justice (which Simon Argote could have returned from Europe without legal trouble in Colombia ....)
However, Nostalgia Boom reader will find not only the adventures of a man-traveler, with the withdrawal of the sordid and artificial environments of big cities or the plasticity of human nature, but with a review of world of symbols and their effectiveness from the influence of the audiovisual landscape. A narrator recalls: "Every myth is nourished by word and image (p. 105)." And Simon Argote recognizes that:
"(...) In any case I realized growing the more my public image as the great lover, as the international playboy, the more I sink I like a man. Were the rules of the game. Certainly I was a hero. For all was a celebrity, the playboy of the Western World. But deep down I suspected that I was not a hero, but that was what had always been: a rogue. So rethinking the rules. This time I went to high heaven, the bearded, but the bottom, that gentleman orejón, laughter and left foot scrub, the horns, tail, and in the sea of \u200b\u200bsulfur, said, stay image and give me back my soul! Do not think that was easy, I always had to bargain. " (P. 105) relevant Maybe now the master's words Hector Rojas Herazo, Joseph Stevenson who dedicates his work:
- Failure to me is that it has lost faith in the devil. That's it. Neither society nor the man can achieve nothing, nothing at all, without your help. Needless, therefore, any occasion pragmatism. Look at what has been achieved by him, religions, art, status, technical servitude of the masses. In short, all pride operator is in its orbit. But we have forgotten and we must pay this oversight. Suffer from the nostalgia of the devil. We have lost the magic tools that were used to communicate with him and hold him to put our service in his creative power. " (Celia rot. Page 438 to 439.)
The previous comment about the current situation of the country can be read in a symbolic sense, as in the poem A Luis Carlos López Satan: "Satan, I ask you a simple and complicated soul / like yours. A happy soul in pain. / You enjoy, and I envy you your happy laughter, / If a tiger, for example, eat a Mockingbird. " However, some may fall into the literal reading of Nostalgia Boom, which is not only absurd but imaginative atrophy and fear of freedom: to conform to metaphysical cells.
BOOK FORM: Nostalgia Tropical Boom or Faust. Stevenson, Joseph. Editorial Oveja Negra. Colombian Literature Library. No. 78. P. 106.
This text was read in honor of Bolívar Echeverría FFyL organized by the UNAM. The text comes from my article "Reading Benjamin in Mexico. Bolívar Echeverría and the tasks of Latin American Philosophy," to be published the journal Discourse within weeks. I want to dedicate the text Serur Raquel, who was generous enough to invite me to the event, and whose luminosity comes the memory of Bolivar. I want to thank Isaac Garcia Venegas, Carlos Oliva, Diana Fuentes, for his excellent work in organizing the Congress and for their hospitality.
The history of Latin American philosophy is in some way, a path marked by the development of alternative and critical Occidentalism, intersecting forms of Latin America with the folds and crevices of Western philosophy, despite his denial of the historical foundation of the continent, has provided the thinkers of the region with critical tools to overcome epistemic status of our colonial and postcolonial development of our languages. Bolívar Echeverría's philosophy is perhaps one of the most extensive and elaborate this critical task, crucial for the ever-ending task of creating a thought from America. In what follows, I present to you an excerpt from a larger item on dialogue with Walter Benjamin Bolívar Echeverría, focusing on a particular moment of development of the concept of "baroque." With this, I hope to convey, in the brevity of these minutes, not just one example of the enormous intellectual debt we have with the work of Bolivar, but also a tribute to a philosopher irreplaceable.
In a provocative headline "The angel of history and historical materialism," Echeverría proposes a reading of the most controversial figure of the angelus novus ", from Benjamin's ninth thesis on the concept of history ". Its text begins by noting that Benjamin's metaphor has little resemblance to the angel of Paul Klee: "When [...] confront [both images] find however that there is no similarity between the two: the dramatic scene, dramatically dynamic, which gives Benjamin news does not resemble the two-dimensional drawing, while charming and enigmatic angel hovering quietly presented Klee box. In my opinion, this mismatch seems to indicate that Benjamin was with the angel of Klee was not really just rename it, but much more: replaced by another, a new angel, invented by him. It could even be said that what Benjamin had before his eyes [...] was not actually in the box Klee but rather an old picture of the eighteenth century. "
Echeverría here refers to an icon extracted from the two figures of Gravelot Iconologia and Cochin, in 1791, which, according to this reading, Benjamin was familiar from their studies on the German Baroque drama . As noted by Echeverria, we see an angelic figure looking back on the image represented by a village in flames in the background, as interpreted by iconologist a joy to the destruction of empires. In this picture, the angel of history being written on the back of Saturn, who represents both the time and the death of the baroque landmark. Also, the two articles that lie ahead are specific meanings: the trumpet, a symbol of the glorious actions of the past, and the book of Thucydides, this semiotic system recognized as the founder of historiography. Beyond the explanation given by Gravelot and Cochin, Echeverria note two key points that Benjamin presumably erased from this representation: first, the distance between the angel and historical events is removed from the description of the wind Benjamin pulls the angel, and second, while the past (the angel) and time (Saturn) appear in the print as two different images, including Benjamin's angel, in a gesture that could be called Baroque both dialectical both in the same allegory.
What interests me about this reading (or misreading) of Benjamin is the way the metaphor of the Angelus Novus articulates the philosophical project of Echeverría. The first point is that Echeverria holds a key shift in the genealogy of the image. While Benjamin Klee tied to Surrealism and the avant-garde, the eighteenth-century icon puts him in a baroque system of cultural significance. Under this, Benjamin Echeverria expropriated not only for its own system of thought but also to shape a number of references directly related to the problem of Latin American modernity. In their work on the Baroque, Benjamin Echeverria subject to an operation he calls "codigofagia" the absorption of various cultural codes a system of thought. Moreover, it is important to remember the central role of the Baroque in the ontology of modernity posed by Echeverría. As we know, the modern theory of Echeverría is based on the conflict between the social-natural history of the use value and exchange value forms of capital accumulation. Within this critical context, subjectivity is constructed through a subject fomras that mediates the contradiction through four historical ethe identified by Echeverria which the Baroque is the main project. The baroque ethos in the model Echeverria, who support the greatest potential for improvement of capitalist modernity, precisely because their codigofagia allows integration of both use value and exchange value to within the same system of life without deleting or concealing its inherent contradictions. Or, to put it in the terminology developed by Deleuze Baroque from Leibniz, Baroque creates the crease where the two practices of value can be part of the same monad without obscuring their internal inconsistencies.
historiography Returning to Benjamin, this argument would mean the baroque forms of knowledge are, within the framework of modernity, we can more effectively the articulation of a practice of reading history against the grain. Echeverría's task is to understand the work of Benjamin and the development of methodologies in the cultural paradigm, but the formulation of an ontology specifically modern Latin America. By privileging the Baroque Benjamin at the expense of the surreal tone of his work, Echeverria emphasizes the uses of Benjamin's thinking on this project.
Another important issue here is the opportunity to read this part of the work as a counterpoint Echeverría the predominance of postmodern readings of Benjamin. To put it in the words of Beatriz Sarlo, Echeverria always have in mind the fact that Benjamin theorizes the historical and epistemological crisis of our times, but does not consider an apologist for this crisis. Therefore, Echeverria argues: "The theoretical transformation [Benjamin] would like to achieve with his criticism of the idea of \u200b\u200bprogress is the transformation in the theory as a field of indefinite theorems and indifferent, but the transformation of a configuration or a specific historical episode that field theory, constituted precisely by the presence of the revolutionary socialist project in the realm of theory. " In other words, to find the angel of history in the Baroque, Echeverria implicitly criticizes the appropriations made by the paradigm of cultural studies as a methodological guide to Benjamin's work. The main complaint here is that Echeverría postmodern approaches do not take into consideration the notions of dialectic Benjamin and historical materialism. Therefore, the image invoked by Echeverría Baroque introduces an element crucial to the thesis IX Klee's painting does not contain: a dialectic of de-fold (in the Deleuzian sense of baroque fold) of time and history, Benjamin, presumably re-folded (or synthesized) in allegory of the angel.
In these terms, Echeverria read another icon, the dwarf of theology, in an equally provocative: "In theology, Benjamin does not seem to understand a treatise on God, but a use of discourse which seeks an explanation sound of the happenings in the world. " This striking presentation of the notion of theology Benjamin, which leaves pending all mystical connotations of thought, points to similar reassessment of the thesis I. Early in his book The Puppet and the Dwarf, Slavoj Zizek suggests a reversal of the terms of the thesis, in which theology becomes the puppet who enlists the services of the dwarf of historical materialism. Following this line of thinking, Zizek defines modernity as "the social order in which religion is not fully integrated into and identified with a particular cultural form of life, but takes autonomy to be able to survive as a religion itself different culture. " In the language of Echeverria, the description of the modernity of Zizek implies that an element of life "social-natural" (religion) loses its value in use and folds to the value (the resulting process of "autonomy") which, in turn, enables the integration of religion sphere of life of any culture. Consider, for example, how this structure operated in the founding of the modern Catholic religion was integrated into the lifestyles of indigenous cultures in the sixteenth century. By investing the terms of the thesis I, and identifying this investment with the fact that science and rationality are esoteric speeches, while religion capture the "imagination of the masses", Zizek makes visible the same strain identified by Echeverría. When Zizek suggests that "the subversive core of Christianity is accessible only through a materialistic approach, and vice versa: to be truly dialectical materialist one must go through the Christian experience "is actually building an argument similar to the idea of \u200b\u200bemergency Echeverría natural social world. However, as the purpose of Echeverría is ontological rather than critical, rather than directly identifying the theology and religion, as Zizek does, his argument rests on a radically materialist perspective in which theology and dialectical materialism are two coexisting modes of discourse structure "techno of the means of production" and their equivalents "techno-mage," presented by the modern capitalist contradictory. In this sense, what we find in Benjamin Echeverria is no validation zizekiana subversive kernel of Christianity as a means of recovery from the social-natural DIMENSION political, but an even more radical, and more clearly Benjaminian, des-fold both discursive field of experience. Thus, Benjamin Echeverria builds a registered strongly in his own version of modernity: Baroque in allegorical language, secular and unrelentingly committed to the task of supporting the socialist utopia. Through this redefinition, Echeverria Benjamin appropriate for an understanding of modern baroque looking for a new space to the political.
As Bolívar Echeverría was his theory of modernity in the nineties, the idea of \u200b\u200b"Barroco" enabled Benjamin reconociliar his critique of capital with one of the central legacies of Latin American critical thought. In reporting the tension between use value and value, Baroque encompasses both the contradictory nature of experiential impact of the commodity in the modern and the historical legacy of Latin American thinking specifically address this contradiction. As a way of thinking the contradiction between use value and value, Baroque is a central part of the puzzle modernity because of its ability to fold the arbitrary relationship between the domain of the natural social and capitalism, if you will, a cultural monad. In one of the more precise definitions and least known of Benjamin's work with the baroque, the South African writer JM Coetzee argues:
"Under the reign of the market, the objects relate to their real value in the same arbitrary in which, for example, a head of death is related to man's subjection to time in the baroque landmark. Consequently, the emblems unexpectedly returned to the stage of history as a commodity under capitalism are not what they seem, but as Marx warned, they begin to abound in metaphysical subtleties and theological exquisitecez. Allegory, according to Benjamin, is exactly the proper way for an age of commodities. "
This commentary not only illuminates how significant is raised by Echeverría connection between the angel of history and Gravelot icon and Cochin but also, and perhaps even more significantly, why Echeverria is in the baroque epistemological perspective more appropriate to describe the more critical ethos within capitalist modernity. Its goal of building an ontology of a "Modernity actually existing, rather than prescribing a utopian landscape, contains the allegorical potential of the Baroque, allowing you to defend a teoríaa of modernity, which, following Leibniz," combines philosophical theory with the hermeneutic wisdom. " In other words, the philosophy of Echeverría realize the ontological nature of capitalism and subjectivity epistemological confrontations with capital and merchandise. In defining the "historical ethos" as "the beginning of construction of the lifeworld" and to understand the baroque as one of four possible "principles of construction" in the domain of capitalist modernity, the idea Echeverría used as Baroque aesthetic training in cultural history to negotiate together with the ontological hermeneutics. Thus, Echeverría understand the baroque as "will to form" that reconciles the critical life and aesthetic in the same gesture, to register two ways of narrating modernity (a "victorious" and "expired" as defined Echeverría from another thesis of Benjamin) in the same great shape. It is important to note here that the baroque emblems are des-fold to different forms of encounter between Benjamin Echeverria. Therefore, in thinking Echeverria Baroque form ultimately becomes the ethos with the greatest potential to transcend capitalist modernity from within in two ways. First, it preserves the natural-social dimension of use value in his allegory of the good. In addition, following the terminology used by Benjamin defeated in the argument and deliberately adopted by Echeverría here, their willingness to form allows the preservation and potential redemption of the dimensions of life and history beyond the hegemonic formations. In short, Baroque is to Echeverría, a figure that expresses ontologically contradictory nature of capitalist modernity and simultaneously provides an aesthetics of life that preserves its dimensions even more repressed for a hermeneutic encounter.
In conclusion, I echo the words of Zygmunt Bauman about Benjamin, since, in my opinion, the work described Echeverria fitness.
"Benjamin's strategy, the intellectual, not a strategy of redemption. It is, rather, a strategy to handle the territory ready for redemption, if it arrives. Contrary to many opinions, this strategy does not detract the importance of intellectual work, or deny their sense of urgency. If anything, it is the opposite. In a story without telos, without guide, without a deterministic chain crawl and maintained by its still invisible, but quite definite end, without a pragmatic program is right for what should be done to assist in their efforts to that end, in that history, every moment, every "now" is pregnant with meaning, a meaning or contrived or borrowed, a new meaning. "
In their fidelity to this position, the Echeverría Baroque represents a livelihood strategy capable of folding and display the significance of each "now." The baroque and Benjamin posture are partesde a new thinking process in Latin America shifts old assumptions about our relationship with colonialism and modernity. Ontological task given by Echeverria is an attempt to overcome an impasse, to move beyond the theories of colonialism to a world without colonialism, a history of conflict and alienation to redemption sphere of life. Although never articulated his vision Echeverría specific nature and process of this redemption, given its commitment to analysis rather than really modern utopia, his work offers the Baroque as the only open land to its potential execution. In a world and a continent emerging from the hangover of post-communist nostalgia, this path ontological may be the only way left for the articulation of the political.
