El conflicto moderno entre la voz y la escritura

ResumenEl artículo analiza la emergencia de la modernidad (siglos XVI al XVIII) en la obra de Michel de Certeau. Si esta transición de la tradición religiosa a la razón de estado ha sido explicada a partir del concepto de secularización, en el pensamiento certoliano se hace a partir de la distinción de dos prácticas escriturísticas. Por un lado, la medieval escritura simbólica (voz)- y, por otro, la moderna escritura productiva o capitalizadora. La moderna se constituye a partir de la supresión de la primera, pero ella vuelve como un fantasma a inquietar a la escritura moderna. La voz irrumpe en la escritura moderna en forma de acto fallido.AbstractThis article analizes the way modernity (XVIIth to XVIIIth centuries) emerges throughout Michel de Certaus work. The transition from Religious Tradition to Reason of State is often explained through the concept of Secularization; in Certaus work, however, it is explained through a distinction of two practices of writing. One one hand, the medieval practice symbolic writing (voice), and on the other, the modern practice productive writing. Modern writing is constituted through a suppression of medieval writing, but the latter returns as a ghost that haunts modern writing. Voice irrupts into modern writing in the form of the failed act.Key words: Writing, Voice, Orality, Desire, Freud, Michel de Certeau

Writing without presence: Metaphysics and negative theology in the thought Michel de Certeau

From the moment in which all body is hidden, and the grave is empty of all presence, has a fundamental lack in common (corpus mysticum). Therefore this lack, in regard to the Christian world, is expressed in terms of original concealment (Deus absconditus). For its part, the medieval theological and mystical tradition, heiress and interlocutor of a metaphysical tradition of the Hellenic world (particularly Neoplatonism), systematized throughout the centuries the grammar of this disappearance in terms of an inaccessibility and irreducibility of being, namely, an essential of the Logos negativity (“this or that”, “neither the one nor the other”). One could anticipate, therefore, as arrival point, than the language of the Christian mystical tradition, is not only the language of the lack of a body (the incarnation of the word), but also the search for one language enough to reconcile the universal with the autonomous unit of the language. This article proposes, therefore, rebuild the way in that historian and Jesuit theologian, Michel de Certeau, genealogically rebuilt part of a mystical tradition that, immersed in a series of variables and potential historical of enunciation, is expressed in terms of “a place without place”, originally missing whose, would lead to a relationship of alterity. This would be one of the outcomes in early Western modernity of what from the origins of Neoplatonism known as the solitude of the one, either, the absence of God

El éxtasis blanco y la escritura de la historia en Michel de Certeau

White ecstasy and the writing of history on Michel de CerteauResumenEste artículo se propone ilustrar algunos paradigmas compartidos entre la experiencia mística y la escritura de la historia a la luz del pensamiento y la obra de Michel de Certeau. El curso de la exposición nos arroja a la posibilidad de que subsista no sólo una experiencia de la escritura asociada a la alteridad desde el siglo XVI, sino, también, que el olvido, la falta, y los lugares de ausencia comprometen de lleno a la modernidad occidental y su espejo epistemológico: la escritura. La “operación historiográfica”, bajo el enfoque de Michel de Certeau, consiste en llevar a cabo un duelo por los muertos que sepulta y olvida (el pasado, el salvaje, “el otro que ya no habla”); mientras que en la experiencia mística consiste, al igual que en la historia, en la fabricación de un cuerpo inaccesible, cuyo relato, escrito a la medida del deseo, la falta, la poesía y el cuerpo, redunda en un discurso del otro. Estas páginas se encaminan a formular una exégesis del pensamiento del jesuita francés y su relación con teología mística en clave de un “éxtasis blanco”.AbstractThis article intends to illustrate some paradigms shared between the mystical experience and the writing of history in the light of thought and the work of Michel de Certeau. The course of the exhibition throws us to the possibility of that continues not only an experience of writing associated with the otherness since the 16th century, but, also, that forgetfulness, lack, and the places absence commit fully to Western modernity and its mirror epistemological: writing. “Historiographical operation”, under the approach of Michel de Certeau, consists of carrying out a mourning for the dead buried and forgotten (the past, the wild, “the other no longer speaks”); While in the mystical experience is, as in the story, in the manufacture of an inaccessible body, whose story, written to suit the desire, lack, poetry and the body, is in one discourse of the other. These pages are aimed at formulating an exegesis of the thinking of the French Jesuit and its relationship to Mystical Theology in terms of a “white ecstasy”.Key words: Historiography, Mystique, Alterity, Epistemology, Apophatic theology

The Old King Motif in Cervantes’ Persiles. Some Considerations on Maximino and Other Displaced Powerful Figures

Maximino aparece en las últimas páginas de la novela ante la basílica de San Pablo Extramuros. Ocupa poco espacio. Quizás por eso casi no ha recibido atención por parte de la crítica. Sin embargo, compone la figura del “rey” en su momento más difícil, el traspaso del poder. Apoyado en el magnífico estudio de Kantorowicz, especialmente en las analogías político-teológicas del rex-sacerdos con el Corpus Christi-Corpus mysticum, mi trabajo hilvana reyes bíblicos e históricos, citados o evocados por la novela, hasta llegar a la concepción de realeza propuesta en las primeras páginas. Así, desde el final hasta el principio, la imagen de Maximino toma “cuerpo” hasta convertirse en figura alegórica. San Pablo está en la raíz poética y teológica de esta historia centrada en el artificio.Maximino appears in the final pages of the novel, at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. This character has received almost no critical attention, perhaps due to the fact that he plays such a small part in the story. Nevertheless, he represents the figure of the “king” at the hardest of times: the transfer of power. Based on Kantorowicz’s remarkable study, especially regarding the political-theological analogies between the rex-sacerdos and the Corpus Christi-Corpus mysticum, my work interweaves biblical and historical kings cited or evoked throughout the text, to finally address the idea of royalty suggested in the first pages of the novel. Thus, from the end to the beginning, the image of Maximino gains substance, ultimately becoming an allegorical figure. St Paul is the poetic and theological cornerstone of this story centered on artifice

Gaston Bachelard y la vida de las imágenes

El conjunto de trabajos aquí reunidos explora, desde diversos ángulos, la impactante liberación dinámica temporo/espacial de la vida imaginaria desatada por el genial filósofo francés Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962). En un primer momento si obra produjo una renovación en la hermenéutica de las ciencias exactas, incorpora también su perspectiva de interpretación, especialmente para las dimensiones creativas de la imaginación espontánea y poético-artística.1. Bachelard: la poesía como intuición del instante. 2. Mito e imaginación a partir de la poética de Gaston Bachelard. 3. Poética, morada y exilio. 4. Gaston Bachelard y el topoanálisis poético. 5. Notas sobre la imagen en Gaston Bachelar

Elegies de Bierville (1943) de Carles Riba (1893-1959): Una interpretación simbólico.mística

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Departamento de Filología Española. Fecha de lectura: 02/10/201

Casas habitadas : la representación del espacio narrativo en la novela chilena postdictatorial

The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) was enforced by a number of repressive practices which seriously affected the social tissue. The boundaries between the public and private sphere blurred, as did the meanings that are traditionally related to this dichotomy. Arbitrary arrests and even executions in the streets were no exception. Raids, betrayal by neighbours and the conversion of family homes into clandestine detention centres were an integral part of the Pinochet regime. Both the home and the street turned into areas of risk. This work examines the way in which Chilean authors in the period after the dictatorship deal with the change in meaning of space. The research questions that guide the analysis are the following: What meanings do the authors assign to the home and the streets? Through which techniques do they represent theses spaces? Do they reveal or invert the basic structure, or do they fill in the spaces with loads of realistic details? How do the represented spaces function as a vehicle for dictatorial and postdictatorial subjects? I have searched an answer to these questions in Los vigilantes (1994) by Diamela Eltit, El palacio de la risa (1995) by Germán Marín, Nocturno de Chile (2000) by Roberto Bolaño, Av. 10 de julio Huamachuco (2007) by Nona Fernández, Bonsái (2006), La vida privada de los árboles (2007) and Formas de volver a casa (2011) by Alejandro Zambra, and Camanchaca (2009) by Diego Zúñiga. In all these novels, the house and/or the return home occupy a central position. The spatial focus fits in with an intent to offer an alternative for the “paradigm of memory”, the conceptual framework that dominates the on-going investigation on postdictatorial literature in the Southern Cone. Alegorías de la derrota: la ficción postdictatorial y el trabajo del duelo (2000) by Idelber Avelar is the reference par excellence. Following Avelars definition, a genuine postdictatorial fiction should be allegorical, non-mimetic, fragmented, experimental. It consists in recycling what has been lost in a logic of constant replacement, namely memory. In this way, this literature is presented as a reaction against the neoliberal context of the Southern Cone. Although the novels included in the corpus still carry out their mnemonic task, most of them differ from the model which was designed by Avelar. Especially in the most recent novels (by Zambra and Zúñiga), this model fails when confronted with a change in perspectives (from the collective to the intimate), in the conception of time (the recent novels revisit the past departing from the present), and of space. The aim of the study is to capture and define a change in the poetics of the most recent narrative, that of the so-called “generation of the children”, through an analysis of the representation of space. To that end, the novels of the corpus have been separated into two categories: melancholy and nostalgia. Besides two different ways to deal with the past, these categories also shed a light on the different reactions against a generalized sense of homelessness. The novels written by Eltit, Bolaño and Marín that are analysed in the first part of the thesis, can be considered as ‘melancholic’. According to the description of Avelar, these novels emphasize the loss of revolutionary ideas and the impossibility to represent that loss in literature. This is also visible in the spaces of the novels, in which homelessness prevails. The distinction between the interior and the exterior spaces disappears in the three novels. As a consequence, the myths of the home and the streets as places of protection and freedom respectively are unreachable. In Los vigilantes, a mother and her child cannot escape from the surveillance of neighbours, a mother-in-law and an invisible but omnipresent father, even inside their own house. The notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ turn into purely mental projections. They only function as a mirror of the melancholic soul of the protagonists. The dichotomy between inside and outside is also problematized in the novels by Marín and Bolaño, which represent a family home turned into a torture house during the dictatorship. These places are governed by the logic of the state of exception: they include what is supposed to be exceptional in society. Because of this paradoxical inclusion, they turn into miniature versions of the society that excludes. In this way, the sinister image of the house that does not offer protection functions as a metaphor for the nation in crisis. The authors of the novels included in the second part of the thesis do not develop this metaphor. Av. 10 de Julio Huamachuco, the three novels by Roberto Bolaño, and Camanchaca are built up around the motif of the return home. Since the word ‘nostalgia’ is composed of the Greek nóstos, return home, and algos, grief or longing, these novels can be considered as nostalgic. The return home implies a search for authenticity, for reclaiming space. The characters of the novels by Fernández, Zambra and Zúñiga try to achieve this by the everyday practices of living (in the sense of dwelling) and writing. The nostalgia manifests itself in the fascination for the own childhood, the importance of the ‘souvenir’, and in the critical attitude towards the Chilean neoliberal present. Nevertheless, this is an atypical nostalgia, because it also implies a critical attitude towards the past. There is a second mechanism that operates on the initial nostalgia, that of “postmemory”, the so-called memory of the second generation of children during the dictatorship. Moreover, the choice for the return to a peripheral place –a demolition area in Av. 10 de Julio Huamachuco, the suburb of Maipú in Formas de volver a casa, and the “Far North” in Camanchaca– contributes to the reinvention of nostalgia. The two aspects of this atypical nostalgia, first, the search for authenticity, and second, the critical perspective, converge in the elliptic realism by which space is represented in the novels by Fernández, Zambra and Zúñiga. On the one hand, these novels are characterized by the search for a ‘natural’ language, closely linked with everyday speech. On the other hand, Fernandez, Zambra and Zúñiga deviate from a classical realism which represents space primarily by means of detailed descriptions, reiterations and connotative elements. In contrast with the novels analysed in the first part of the thesis, however, these authors do not stress the breach between experience and representation. As a consequence, their representation of space is far more realistic (this means: recognizable, stable and apparently objective), which fits into the nostalgic mechanism of fixing, not only time, but also space. The ‘nóstos’ to which one wants to return is, in essence, a stable place in one’s memory which can be idealized. Melancholy, in contrast, deforms reality. Since space is one of the primary elements in the novel to establish a link with reality, in melancholic novels it is less stable, and even disturbing. The proximity of the familiar (family homes) and the strange (torture) makes the uncanny a key concept to understand the representation of space in the novels by Eltit, Marín and Bolaño. In Los vigilantes, melancholy transforms the interior and exterior spaces in a surreal landscape where the reader loses grip. This is also the case of the exterior spaces in Nocturno de Chile, but the interior spaces are represented in an abstract, almost cubistic way, on the basis of some architectural principles like superposition and enfilade. Marín’s novel seems to form an exception in the corpus of the first part of the thesis, because the narrator first intends to offer a realistic description of the torture house annex family home. At the end of the novel, however, this verbal restoration collapses, due to the overload of contradictory information and details. Like in Eltit’s and Bolaño’s novels, what remains is a great void, a ruin where the traces of the recent past are very difficult to find. Whereas the characters of the ‘melancholic’ novels limit themselves to contemplate perplexed this empty space, those of the ‘nostalgic’ novels try their best to make it inhabitable again. Nevertheless, emptiness still forms an essential part of the most recent literature, either as a physical phenomenon (empty neighbourhoods, empty streets, the desert) or in language itself (where it takes the form of the ellipsis

The representation of internal immigrants in Peruvian narrative and film (1980-2009): Cronwell Jara's Montacerdos, Julio Ortega's Adiós, Ayacucho, and Claudia Llosa's La teta asustada

This dissertation studies on the representation of internal immigrants in Peruvian fiction and film of the last three decades. I analyze two novels, Cronwell Jara's Montacerdos (Lima, 1981), and Julio Ortega's Adiós, Ayacucho (Lima, 1986), and the award-winning film La teta asustada (Perú-Spain, 2009) by Claudia Llosa. These works deal with the conflicting relationship between Lima, as both the site of a rational order and the locus of modernization, and the immigrant subject, and the strategies the latter uses for settling in the city and grasping its cultural codes. The first chapter examines the representation of the so-called "ciudad letrada" ("lettered city") in Cronwell Jara's Montacerdos as an obstacle for the newly-arrived illiterate internal immigrants in their fruitless efforts to become "citizens". I analyze the much debated relationship between orality and literacy as it is represented in the novel, centering on the ways in which the immigrant's narrative voice appropriates and deterritorializes the city's writing system by relocating the rural "Other" within the urban landscape. The second chapter studies Julio Ortega's Adiós, Ayacucho, one of the earliest literary works denouncing the political violence unleashed by the civil war that pitted subversive armed movements against the Peruvian state from 1980 through 1992. Given that the protagonist is a victim of forced "disappearance", I focus on the figure of the "disappeared" as well as on the development of political violence in general, and how the two subjects are fictionalized in the novel. I argue that the protagonist's dead body serves as a metaphor for the concept of memory but also for that of the Peruvian nation and its history of conquest and colonial domination. This chapter also examines the novel's critique of the role of the intellectual in representing the 'subaltern' subject. The third chapter centers on Claudia Llosa's La teta asustada and draws on psychoanalytical and film theory in order to analyze the film's depiction of violence against women during the civil war. I examine the director in her filmic account of a woman's process of adaptation to the city. This woman is emblematic of the intense drama suffered by internally displaced persons in Perú. In this chapter I take a Lacanian perspective to analyze the voice as an object of enjoyment and observe its subsequent fetishization. I argue that the voice works as a metaphor for the relationship that the main character establishes with the city, and with the economic system that governs it