This book explores the epistemic side of racial and sexual oppression. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from listening to each other.

Este artículo estudia el poder de la visualidad en la política. Entre aquello que está permitido ver y aquello que está prohibido mostrar, el régimen escópico se define por la intervención del poder institucional respecto de la mirada del espectador. Este estudio se desarrolla entre la tradición filosófica y otras aportaciones multidisciplinares que evidencian a) el control político en los regímenes escópicos de la mirada del espectador; b) la consolidación de una cultura visual que condiciona el modo de vida de (...) los individuos y las sociedades; c) el dominio del espacio social por medio de la regulación del espacio visual; y d) la manipulación de los afectos por medio de la experiencia visual. En este estudio destacamos la apertura de la consciencia crítica en la modernidad a la estetización de la política. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza la película Los olvidados, de Luis Buñuel, de acuerdo con la filosofía trágica de Clément Rosset. Mi investigación se centra en discutir el concepto de ‘crueldad’ y su conexión con lo trágico, así como desgranar los elementos que permiten leer la película como una tragedia en el sentido clásico. El trabajo sugiere cómo el retrato realista que Buñuel realiza sobre los jóvenes de los suburbios de Ciudad de México sigue el principio de crueldad acuñado por el filósofo, (...) según el cual una obra artística debe ser cruel y representar la verdad sin atenuantes, sin tomar partido por ninguna clase de moral. Se acomete un análisis de la crueldad como categoría estética clave en la consecución de la tragedia y se ponen en relación con la película términos clave del concepto de lo trágico. (shrink)

El pensamiento de Ortega y Gasset amplía la crítica vitalista de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX que superó el mito de los <>, criticándolo como encubridor de una farsa y creador del fraude humanístico de una tensión aporética entre vida y cultura. Los valores de la vida constituyen una afirmación ante el racionalismo extraviado en sus propios conceptos. La razón vital orteguiana es la comprensión lúcida del sencido antes que la explicación gris de estructuras. La metafísica (...) de la vida que presenta Ortega exige ir más allá de la visión antropológica centrada en la pregunta <>, lo cual lleva a un compromiso con la vivencia de la identidad generada por la biograf1a personal y los contenidos determinantes de la historia. La pregunta por la <> es una reflexión metafísica que supera los condicionantes del concepto << naturaleza humana>>.Ortega y Gasset broadens the vitalist's criticism of the second half of the 19th Century against << the ideals of civilization>> as a myth that cloaks the humanistic fraud of a tension between life and culture. Instead, the values of life stand before a rationalism puzzled by its own conceptions. Ortega´s << vital reason>> is the lucid understanding of meaning as compared with the dull explanation of structures. Ortega's metaphysics of life overcomes the anthropological view focused on the question <>and replaces it by the pivot question <>, which sets out a compromise with self-identity as originated in own personal life story within the frame of general history. The question for 'human condition' is a metaphysical reflection, which lies beyond the limitations of the concept of 'human nature'.  . (shrink)

Se trata de examinar el rendimiento del concepto de “ejecutividad” en la obra de Ortega y Gasset, en dos momentos clave: en 1914, cuando formula el programa de su filosofía de la razón vital en Meditaciones del Quijote y en los cursos de los años treinta, cuando inicia el despliegue de su filosofía de madurez, asumiendo las implicaciones historicistas de la razón vital. En el breve escrito “Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo” reflexiona sobre un problema del arte sumamente (...) concreto: ¿qué cosa es el objeto de la estética? La respuesta le llevará a conectar un esbozo de teoría de la metáfora con cuestiones de epistemología y de filosofía primera. Y, lo que es más importante: Ortega se sirve aquí de tres conceptos llamados a tener en el desarrollo posterior de su obra una formulación decisiva: ejecutividad, intimidad y presencia. Esta es la razón de que persigamos el despliegue de dichos conceptos en las formulaciones de la vida humana y del yo personal cuando intente la sistematización de su filosofía en los referidos cursos de los años treinta y en las publicaciones a ellos asociadas.I will examine the concept of “executivy” in Ortega’s work in two important moments: in 1914 when he formulates the program of his philosophy of vital reason in Meditaciones del Quijote and in the courses of the 1930s when he initiates the unfolding of his late philosophy which assumes the historicist implications of vital reason. In the short essay “Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo” he reflects about a problem in art that is extremely concrete: What is the object of aesthetics? The answer will take him to link an outline of a theory of metaphors with issues of epistemology and his primary philosophy. And, what is most important, Ortega uses three concepts that will have a decisive role in his later work: executivity, intimacy, and presence. This is the reason why I examine the unfolding of these concepts in the formulations of human life and of the I when he attempts the systematization of his philosophy in the said courses of the 1930s and the publications associated with them. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary epistemologies of ignorance, I analyze the American ideology of color blindness as a recalcitrant form of active ignorance that operates at a meta-level. I contend that the meta-ignorance involved in color blindness operates through distorting second-order attitudes about one's cognitive and affective attitudes, resulting in cognitive and affective numbness with respect to racial matters: ignorance of one's racial ignorance and insensitivity to one's racial insensitivity. I contend that the black/white binary that has dominated the American racial imagination (...) has contributed tremendously to establish and maintain meta-blindness about racial differences. I suggest that overcoming the black/white binary demands that we expand current conceptions of racial lucidity and that we go beyond the notions of double consciousness that critical race theorists have defended since Du Bois and Fanon. According to a more expansive social pluralism, lucidity with respect to racial differences requires a kaleidoscopic consciousness that does not reinscribe the black/white binary in one's racial imagination. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es realizar un análisis de las principales nociones que Wittgenstein elabora en este proceso de transición. La pregunta por resolver será, entonces, cómo Wittgenstein estructura su nueva visión del lenguaje. Para darle respuesta, en el inicio del artículo se trabajará una breve observación respecto al ansia de pureza cristalina, que, de algún modo, fue el plan que marcaba la pauta en la filosofía del Tractatus logico-philosophicus. A continuación, desde la discutida noción del significado como uso, (...) se abordarán los principales elementos que constituyen la nueva concepción del lenguaje del segundo Wittgenstein, a saber: el criterio definidor, los juegos de lenguaje, las formas de vida y los parecidos de familia. Por último, se analizará la relación que esta nueva concepción de lenguaje mantiene con las reglas y con el hecho de seguir una regla. (shrink)

El objetivo de este estudio es mostrar el sentir de los estudiantes de licenciatura durante la contingencia sanitaria. Se realizó un estudio cualitativo a través de la narrativa de 35 estudiantes. Los principales resultados muestran que éstos se enfrentaron a diversos sentimientos y retos en su aprendizaje a lo largo de casi dos años de confinamiento.

This essay puts in conversation some of Seyla Benhabib’s insights about exiled, stateless and migrant populations with ongoing discussions in critical race theory about the racial exclusions of indigenous populations and populations of colour not only in the foundations of Western modern states but also in their contemporary functioning today. The essay locates these exclusions not only in the failures of states but also in their proper functioning, that is, in their very design and constitutive structures, focusing for this purpose (...) on what is described as constitutive exclusions. The essay argues that the relationship between legal agency and social and political agency needs further articulation within Benhabib’s jurisgenerative politics in order to properly address constitutive exclusions. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that epistemic injustices can be understood and explained as social pathologies of recognition, and that this way of conceptualizing epistemic injustices can help us develop proper diagnostic and corrective treatments for them. I distinguish between two different kinds of recognition deficiency—quantitative recognition deficits and misrecognitions—and I ague that while the rectification of the former simply requires more recognition, the rectification of the latter calls for a shift in the mode of recognition, that is, a deep (...) transformation of the recognition dynamics so that other forms of recognition can emerge. Arguing against incremental recognitional approaches that aim only at increasing social visibility/audibility, I examine communicative dysfunctions around the phenomenon of racist violence in order to show how problems of misrecognition persist and become recalcitrant even when quantitative recognition deficits disappear. (shrink)

Two of the most influential arguments for Bayesian updating ("Conditionalization") -- Hilary Greaves' and David Wallace's Accuracy Argument and David Lewis' Diachronic Dutch Book Argument-- turn out to impose a strong and surprising limitation on rational uncertainty: that one can never be rationally uncertain of what one's evidence is. Many philosophers ("externalists") reject that claim, and now seem to face a difficult choice: either to endorse the arguments and give up Externalism, or to reject the arguments and lose some of (...) the best justifications of Bayesianism. The author argues that the key to resolving this conflict lies in recognizing that both arguments are plan-based, in that they argue for Conditionalization by first arguing that one should planto conditionalize. With this in view, we can identify the culprit common to both arguments: for an externalist, they misconceive the requirement to carry out a plan made at an earlier time. They should therefore not persuade us to reject Externalism. Furthermore, rethinking the nature of this requirement allows us to give two new arguments for Conditionalization that do not rule out rational uncertainty about one's evidence and that can thus serve as common ground in the debate between externalists and their opponents. (shrink)

A partir de la tesis de Deleuze acerca de que en las “sociedades de control” se da lugar más al “dividuo” que al individuo y de la tesis de Agamben acerca de que en la “fase extrema del capitalismo” los procesos de desubjetivación se han vuelto indistinguibles de los procesos de subjetivación y dan lugar sólo a un “sujeto larval”, analizamos la formación subjetiva que se gesta en la configuración contemporánea del poder. Análisis que realizamos sobre la base de las (...) nociones de “dividuación” (Raunig) y “servidumbre maquinica” (Lazzarato), y a partir de la plataforma conocida como “Facebook”. Lo que nos ha permitido poner de relieve la manera como ese dispositivo da lugar al “dividuo” y al “sujeto larval”, el modo como moviliza la producción deseante del “usuario”, y plantear que es un dispositivo de desubjetivación, frente a quienes lo sitúan solamente como un dispositivo subjetivante o de vigilancia. (shrink)

Hrushovski proved that the theory of difference-differential fields of characteristic zero has a model-companion, which we shall denote DCFA. Previously, the author proved that this theory is supersimple. In supersimple theories there is a notion of rank defined in analogy with Lascar U-rank for superstable theories. It is also possible to define a notion of dimension for types in DCFA based on transcendence degree of realization of the types. In this paper we compute the rank of a model of DCFA, (...) give some properties regarding rank and dimension, and give an example of a definable set with finite rank but infinite dimension. Finally we prove that for the case of definable subgroup of the additive group being finite-dimensional and having finite rank are equivalent. (shrink)

En este artículo se parte de la crítica de Feuerbach a la religión para recuperar el sentido humanista de dicha crítica, que más que una afirmación del ateísmo o una negación de la existencia de Dios es una defensa de la dignidad y de la libertad humana. A lo largo de este estudio se sitúa el pensamiento de Feuerbach más allá de la discusión entre el teísmo y el ateísmo, estableciendo un diálogo que deja a un lado las limitaciones de (...) esta dicotomía. En la Historia de la filosofía se ha insistido en la importancia del pensamiento de Feuerbach para la posterior filosofía de la sospecha, pero en este caso se recorre una vía menos explorada: su relación con el pensamiento dialógico y la religión del amor. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente papel de trabajo es el de examinar los problemas derivados de la diferenciación entre matemáticas y dialéctica en República VI-VII. Se trata de una lectura problemática de los pasajes donde se expone el método dialéctico en este diálogo, a saber, el símil de la línea (509c-511e). Todo ello lo pretendemos abordar a la luz de las implicaciones a) epistemológicas, b) ontológicas y c) metodológicas. Mostraremos las dificultades que se derivan de las tres perspectivas propuestas, en torno (...) a la relación de identidad o diferencia entre matemática y dialéctica. Palabras clave: Platón; República; Matemáticas; Dialéctica; UnidadThe aim of this paper is to examine the problems derived from differentiating between Mathematics and Dialectics in Republic VI-VII. We undertake a problematic reading of the passages where dialectic method is expounded in this dialogue, namely, the simile of the line (509c-511e). We intend to approach all of this in the light of implications of these sorts: a) epistemological, b) ontological, and c) methodological. We will show the difficulties, derived from the three perspectives proposed, regarding the relation of identity or difference between Mathematics and Dialectics. Keywords: Plato; Republic; Mathematics; Dialectics; Unity. (shrink)

In this essay I examine the contributions of the pragmatist tradition to the philosophy of ethnicity. From the pragmatist philosophies of Dewey and Locke I derive a reconstructive model for the clarification and improvement of the life experiences of ethnic groups. Addressing various problems and objections, I argue that this Deweyan and Lockean reconstructive model rejects any sharp separation between race and ethnicity and avoids the pitfalls of the biologist race paradigm and the culturalist ethnicity paradigm. I explore some of (...) the social and political implications of this reconstructive model through a discussion of José Martí's inspiring account of Hispanic identity. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of how the American criminal justice system sets unfair constraints on the epistemic agency of detained subjects and promotes unfair negative consequences on the exerc...

The concept of vital force – the immanent energy that promotes the processes of life in the body and in nature – has proved a source of endless fascination and controversy. Indeed, the question of what vitalizes the body has haunted humanity since antiquity, and became even more pressing during the Scientific Revolution and beyond. Examining the complexities and theories about vital force in Spanish modernity, Nicolás Fernández-Medina's Life Embodied offers a novel and provocative assessment of the question of (...) bodily life in Spain. Starting with Juan de Cabriada's landmark Carta filosófica, médico-chymica of 1687 and ending with Ramón Gómez de la Serna's avant-gardism of the 1910s, Fernández-Medina incorporates discussions of anatomy, philosophy, science, critical theory, history of medicine, and literary studies to argue that concepts of vital force served as powerful vehicles to interrogate the possibilities and limits of corporeality. Paying close attention to how the body's capabilities were conceived and strategically woven into critiques of modernity, Fernández-Medina engages the work of Miguel Boix y Moliner, Martín Martínez, Diego de Torres Villarroel, Sebastián Guerrero Herreros, Ignacio María Ruiz de Luzuriaga, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Pedro Mata y Fontanet, Ángela Grassi, Julián Sanz del Río, Miguel de Unamuno, and Pío Baroja, among others. Drawing on extensive research and analysis, Life Embodied breaks new ground as the first book to address the question of vital force in Spanish modernity. (shrink)

I offer a hopefully compelling defense of the view of those whom I refer to as hard-core opponents of terrorism. For hard-core opponents, terrorism is categorically wrong and, therefore, morally and legally unjustified. I view terrorism as either equivalent to murder or man slaughter in domestic law, or equivalent to crimes against humanity or war crimes in international law. If my argument is compelling, at least two important results follow from it. First, that under no circumstances is terrorism justified. And (...) second, that even if my argument were to be compelling, it will not necessarily end debates about the nature, justification, or excuse of terrorism. (shrink)

Agamben, Giorgio. Karman. Breve tratado sobre la acción, la culpa y el gesto, 1a. Edición, Trad. Mercedes Ruvituso. Adriana Hidalgo, 2018, 176 pp.

Cuba es un país insular en donde los fenómenos meteorológicos han sido elementos metafóricos importantes en la configuración de los mitos fundacionales. Será útil entonces observar los fenómenos histórico-socioculturales como fenómenos meteorológicos, pues matizarían cuestiones locales y globales, en lo referente a la identidad y diversidad cultural, estudios estéticos y literarios. La insularidad de Cuba ha pasado por distintos estadios de análisis, desde el plano ontológico hasta el plano político o literario. La inte-racción entre espacio imaginado y expresado en la (...) literatura exige un acercamiento mediado entre los referentes “reales” y meta-literarios. La utilización de la metáfora de la isla ha sido perenne en la historia cultural cubana. Las generaciones de escritores en Cuba, desde hace treinta años aproximadamente, buscan superar algunas barreras ideotemáticas y estilísticas mediante la re-expresión de sus propias sub-versiones literarias. Para ellos, la insularidad o la isla se convierten en un tópico versátil que tensa las relaciones entre las estéticas y sus categorías. Tales fenómenos literarios serían perceptibles en la narrativa de Abilio Estévez, Marilyn Bobes y Antonio José Ponte, lo cual presenta un debate interdisciplinario centrado particularmente en el posicionamiento global de la narrativa cubana y las contemporáneas subversiones literarias. (shrink)

En “Elogio de la profanación”, Giorgio Agamben sitúa la religión como aquella instancia que separa la esfera divina y la mantiene inaccesible a los hombres: lo sagrado, de este modo, se constituiría como un campo inaccesible, segregado o separado de la esfera humana. Profanar, por el contrario, consistiría en levantar las barreras que instituye la separación, tanto en sus formas religiosas como seculares. Lo que analizamos en el texto es esta tensión entre separación y profanación, con el objetivo de mostrar (...) que existe en el pensamiento de Agamben todo un gesto filosófico que tiene que ver, precisamente, con la crítica de la separación. (shrink)

In the article we carry out a reading of the dossier on Herculine Barbin, a 19th century hermaphrodite who commits suicide at the age of 29 after having been legally reassigned to the "opposite sex", which Michel Foucault recovered from the medico-legal annals of the XIX century and published in 1978. A reading that emphasizes the subjective and experiential nature of Herculine's memoirs, as well as the critical nature that Foucault attributes to them and how this allows him to question (...) the idea that there is a "true sex" and, therefore, a “legitimate sexual identity”. Based on the above, we strive to show how the memories show the violent functioning of the binary regime of sexuality and the heteronormative character of the "sex-gender continuum", which allows us to recover the relevance of the project of a "desexualization of the pleasure” that Foucault used as the radical political strategy that would allow us to arrive at a new, fuller and freer economy of the body and its pleasures. (shrink)

El artículo parte del análisis camusiano del problema del mal, en diálogo con las respuestas dadas por el Gnosticismo griego y el cristianismo. En este contexto, se habla del fracaso de las teodiceas, ejemplificaciones de lo que Camus considera la «rebeldía metafísica». A continuación, se reflexiona sobre dos categorías existenciales, que constituyen contraargumentos ante la condena de la naturaleza humana por parte de las versiones más ortodoxas del cristianismo y las filosofías racionalistas. Camus construye una antropodicea cuyo eje está en (...) una rebeldía humanista y transformadora, limitada en su praxis y aspiraciones por valores morales que ella misma genera y que confieren un sentido relativo a la existencia. El artículo finaliza con una reflexión en torno a la educación como poderoso instrumento de transformación social. (shrink)

Despite emerging study of business initiatives that attempt to support local peace and development, we still have significant knowledge gaps on their effectiveness and efficiency. This article builds theory on business engagements for peace through exploration of the Footprints for Peace (FOP) peacebuilding project by the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (FNC). FOP was a business-peace initiative that attempted to improve the lives of vulnerable populations in conflict-affected regions. Through 70 stakeholder interviews, we show how FOP operationalized local peace (...) and development in four conflict-affected departments of Colombia, and examine FNC’s motivations for and effectiveness of its peacebuilding activities. Our main finding is that FOP’s success supported several existing theories on business engagement in peace both in terms of peacebuilding by business and for local economic and societal development, providing evidence in support of development–business collaborations and local peacebuilding by business under certain targeted circumstances. We relate these findings to existing literature, highlighting where existing business-peace theory is supported, where FOP challenged assumptions, and where it illuminated new research gaps. These findings serve to take business-peace theory forward and improve our understandings of what can constitute success for business-peace initiatives in Colombia and possibly other conflict-affected regions. (shrink)

Using Iris Marion Young’s framework, this essay looks at racial violence as one of the many “faces” of racial oppression. In the light of this analysis I argue that the fight against racial violence requires much more than identifying the perpetrators of such violence and bringing them to justice; it requires, I argue, thick critical engagements with multiple publics and institutions and with society at large, engagements that are not only cognitive and argumentative but also affective, imaginal, and action-oriented. My (...) argument about the broad range of thick critical engagements needed in anti-racist-violence activism focuses especially on what I term epistemic activism, which refers to the critical activities of denouncing, contesting, and resisting the cognitive-affective attitudes and sensibilities that facilitate complicity with racial oppression and with racial violence. My analysis pays particular attention to the role that affectivity plays in complicity with racial violence and how affective attitudes can be used in epistemic activism to disrupt complicity and to mobilize people in the fight against racial violence. My analysis and argumentation are developed through a case study of epistemic activism: the activism against racial violence in the United States and the changes in public life and institutional recognition that activist organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Equal Justice Initiative have aimed to promote. (shrink)

This article explores how racist propaganda works in visual communication and how such propaganda can be resisted. The article analyzes how photography has created new possibilities for the insidious dissemination of racist messages and discusses ways of resisting these visually transmitted propagandistic messages. The two sections of the article focus on examples of racist propaganda in visual culture: in section 1, the focus is on the propagandistic use of photography in the early twentieth century by the pro‐lynching movement; and in (...) section 2, the focus is on racist subtexts in communication that is both visual and verbal in mass media in recent decades. In both sections, the paper discusses how to neutralize and counter propaganda in visual culture by means of what the author terms “epistemic activism,” which consists in practices of interrogation and resistance that unmask, disrupt, and uproot biases and insensitivity. The article discusses different instances of epistemic activism that make explicit and effectively criticize racist subtexts in visual communication. The instances of epistemic activism discussed include the pamphlets of the anti‐lynching movement, critiques of visual artists and scholars, and the critical responses of online activists. The article argues that epistemic activism can produce critical viewership by disrupting the passive reception of visual messages and triggering more active and critical modes of viewing images. The author concludes by emphasizing the urgent need for epistemic activism that promotes critical awareness of the subtexts embedded in visual communication and a sense of critical responsibility in the production, consumption, and recirculation of images. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 29, Issue 1, pp 39 - 65 Since Euclid, optics has been considered a geometrical science, which Aristotle defines as a “mixed” mathematical science. Hobbes follows this tradition and clearly places optics among physical sciences. However, modern scholars point to a confusion between geometry and physics and do not seem to agree about the way Hobbes mixes both sciences. In this paper, I return to this alleged confusion and intend to emphasize the peculiarity of Hobbes’s geometrical optics. (...) This paper suggests that Hobbes’s conception of geometrical optics, as a mixed mathematical science, greatly differs from Descartes’s one, mainly because they do not share the same “mechanical conception of nature.” I will argue that Hobbes and Descartes also have in common the quest for a different kind of geometry for their optics, different from that of the Ancients. I will show that this departure is not recent since Hobbes’s approach is already evident in 1636, when he judges the demonstrations of his contemporary friends, Claude Mydorge and Walter Warner. Finally the paper broadly suggests what is noteworthy in Hobbes’s optics, that is, the importance of the idea of force in his mechanics, although he was not able to conceptualize it in other terms than “quickness.”. (shrink)