La expansión de las actividades informales de feriantes en el conurbano bonaerense constituye una de las manifestaciones del fenómeno de la heterogeneidad no regulada del aprovisionamiento de bienes de consumo, que a su vez, emergen como intermediarios económicos que atienden a necesidades y demandas de consumidores territorialmente segregados y no articulados a los mercados formales, en su mayoría.Es en ese sentido que el presente artículo quiere rescatar y señalar los componentes centrales que asoman en un proceso que parte con el (...) supuesto de que la confianza constituye un elemento central cuando otras formas que actuarían como garante de las interacciones aparecen débiles, ausentes o no primordiales como garantía de las interacciones sociales, como es el caso de la feria de Solano. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Al final de la Crítica de la facultad de juzgar, Kant aborda el problema de las pruebas de la existencia de Dios y revisa en detalle el argumento que a él le parece el único capaz de provocar verdadero asentimiento: la prueba moral. Se revisa el camino que sigue Kant para llegar, a través de su anál..

The Chilean social outbreak that originated in October 2019 was a manifestation of the constituent power. The people, with a political sense, protested against the unworthy conditions through which life is currently structured in Chilean society. Fundamental rights seek to protect human dignity, a concept that is difficult to grasp. Dignity understood from formalism cannot explain why there are people without material conditions of existence. A material conception of dignity helps to better understand the meaning of the revolt. The current (...) constituent moment invites us to think about the convenience of applying a transformative constitutionalism, which broadens the concept of citizenship and advances in social rights. This would force to abandon the prevailing neoliberal constitutionalism. (shrink)

Uno de los problemas que se le presentan a Kant en la Crítica de la facultad de juzgar es el de la aptitud de la naturaleza en su diversidad particular para ser conformada por las leyes del entendimiento. En este contexto, Kant defi ne los conceptos de naturaleza, materia y fi nalidad de una manera que antes no había tenido cabida en su sistema, y postula la idea de una técnica o arte de la naturaleza. En este artículo se analiza (...) y discute cómo Kant aborda esto, haciendo hincapié en el papel que juega el principio de la conformidad a fi n en el marco de una naciente ciencia de los seres vivos.One of the problems for Kant in the Critique of Judgment is the suitability of nature's particular diversity to the laws of the understanding. In this context, Kant characterizes the concepts of nature, matter and purposiveness in a novel fashion, putting forward the idea of an art or technique of nature. This article considers this new Kantian approach emphasizing the role played by the principle of purposiveness in a context in which a new science of living beings is emerging. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la posible influencia del estoicismo en algunos aspectos precisos de la ética kantiana. Se intenta defender la tesis de que, aunque Kant critica muchas veces la ética estoica y en especial su eudemonismo, también adopta en su ética algunas de las posiciones estoicas y las incorpora en ciertos aspectos clave de su propia Doctrina de la virtud. En especial, se intenta mostrar cómo adopta Kant el ideal del sabio estoico y una de sus características más (...) notables: la apatía. (shrink)

En este trabajo se intenta mostrar en primer lugar que la noción de providencia que Kant presenta en obras como Sobre la paz perpetua e Idea para una historia universal en clave cosmopolita corresponde en algunos puntos centrales a la idea estoica de providencia; segundo, que es en este contexto donde puede evaluarse correctamente la noción kantiana de cosmopolitismo; y, por último, que este modo de enfrentar filosóficamente los problemas de la historia y la política responde a una exigencia de (...) sistematicidad exigida por la propia razón, según Kant, y que esta misma idea de sistema se conecta en buena medida con la filosofía de los estoicos. (shrink)

In this article I study Kant's doctrine of the power of judgement. I focus on its main function of rendering possible the transition from the lawfulness of nature to the realization of practical ends. In order to do so, I analyze the concept of “spontaneity” and the principle of “purposiveness of nature”, understood as a “principle of contingency”, according to Kant's explanation in the Critique of the Power of Judgement.

The pandemic has exposed the costs of job and income losses. Emergency cash transfers can mitigate the worst immediate effects on people who lack access to safety nets. This research note provides estimates for a potential Temporary Basic Income for poor and near-poor people across 132 developing countries, as well as the minimum cost of income support sufficient to mitigate the pandemic-induced poverty increase. The total monthly cost of the TBI ranges 0.27–0.63% of developing countries’ combined GDP, depending on the (...) choice: top-ups on each country’s average incomes up to a vulnerability threshold; transfers based on each country’s median standard of living; or uniform transfers. This note argues that some form of TBI is within reach and can inform a larger conversation about how to build comprehensive social protection systems that make the poor and near-poor more resilient to economic downturns in the future. (shrink)

El Repertorio bibliográfico sobre Martin Heidegger que se presenta a continuación, reúne la información obtenida de las más de 240 revistas de filosofía disponibles en la Hemeroteca de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. El Repertorio incluye referencias bibliográficas completas de los artículos, reseñas, estudios críticos, traducciones y otros documentos que abordan la obra del importante pensador alemán hasta el año 2010.

Based on a theoretical approach to current problems of democracy, the amplification of the public citizen action sphere, and changes generated by the transitions in democratic systems, the Venezuelan political process is analyzed since the rise to power of Hugo Chávez in 1998. The Chavez pheno..

Neste artigo, realiza-se uma discussão sobre as atividades políticas de María de Molina, regente do trono castelhano após a morte do esposo e rei Sancho IV, em 1295, durante a minoridade do filho Fernando IV, de 1295 a 1301, assim como no decurso da minoridade do neto Alfonso XI, de 1212 a 1325. Nesses quase vinte e seis anos na condução política do reino, María de Molina constitui-se o principal baluarte da resistência e das negociações dos assuntos do (...) reino diante dos interesses das principiais facções nobiliárias, que aproveitavam períodos de debilidade do poder régio para obter relevância política e dividendos. Não menos importante foi seu desempenho em relação à política externa ao celebrar diversos acordos com outros reinos e com o papado no desígnio de alcançar apoio para sequência da sua linhagem ao comando da coroa castelhana. (shrink)

Rejecting the Cut rule has been proposed as a strategy to avoid both the usual semantic paradoxes and the so-called v-Curry paradox. In this paper we consider if a Cut-free theory is capable of accurately representing its own notion of validity. We claim that the standard rules governing the validity predicate are too weak for this purpose and we show that although it is possible to strengthen these rules, the most obvious way of doing so brings with it a serious (...) problem: an internalized version of Cut can be proved for a Curry-like sentence. We also evaluate a number of possible ways of escaping this difficulty. (shrink)

State of the art paper on the problem of induction: how to justify the conclusion that ‘all Fs are Gs’ from the premise that ‘all observed Fs are Gs’. The most prominent theories of contemporary philosophical literature are discussed and analysed, such as: inductivism, reliabilism, perspective of laws of nature, rationalism, falsificationism, the material theory of induction and probabilistic approaches, according to Carnap, Reichenbach and Bayesianism. In the end, we discuss the new problem of induction of Goodman, raised by the (...) grue predicate. (shrink)

Introducción: La asignatura Metodología de la Investigación Cualitativa en Salud se imparte a los estudiantes de tercer año de la Licenciatura en Enfermería en la modalidad de clase teórico-práctica como forma organizativa de la docencia. Ello recalca la importancia del trabajo independiente. Las insuficiencias con relación a éste inciden directamente en la asimilación y apropiación de los conocimientos de la asignatura. Objetivo: Elaborar una estrategia didáctica que contribuya al desarrollo del trabajo independiente correspondiente a la asignatura Metodología de la Investigación (...) Cualitativa en Salud.Material y métodos: Se realizó una investigación de desarrollo, encaminada a perfeccionar el proceso docente educativo en la Facultad de Enfermería, de la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey, durante el curso escolar 2011-2012. Para el diagnóstico inicial se procedió al análisis de documentos: los planes de estudio y el programa de la asignatura. También se aplicaron encuestas a un grupo de estudiantes y al colectivo de profesores que imparten la asignatura. Una vez elaborada la estrategia se evaluó por criterio de expertos. Resultados y discusión: La estrategia pone a disposición de la comunidad académica un software educativo que relaciona los contenidos de la asignatura, lo que permitirá al estudiantado realizar las tareas docentes que se orientan en clases así como asimilar, consolidar y sistematizar los conocimientos con mayor facilidad. Introduction: The subject Methodology of Qualitative Research in Health is taught to the students of the third year of the Bachelor in nursing in the form of theoretical and practical lesson as organizational way of teaching. This underscores the importance of self-employment. The shortcomings in relation to this affect directly the assimilation and appropriation of knowledge in the subject. Objective: To develop a teaching strategy that contributes to the development of self-employ ment for the subject Methodology of Qualitative Research in Health. Material aids and methods: A development research was made which aims at improving the educational teaching process in the Faculty of nursing from the University of Medical Sciences in Camagüey, during the 2011-2012 course. For an initial diagnosis the analyses of documents was made: the curriculum and the program of the course. Surveys were also applied to a group of students and the staff of teachers of the subject. Once the strategy was made it was evaluated through criteria of experts. Results and discussion: Strategy makes available to the academic community educational software that relates to the contents of the course, allowing students to perform teaching tasks which are assigned in lessons as well as assimilate, consolidate and systematize the knowledge easiest. (shrink)

State of the art paper on the topic realism/anti-realism. The first part of the paper elucidates the notions of existence and independence of the metaphysical characterization of the realism/anti-realism dispute. The second part of the paper presents a critical taxonomy of the most important positions and doctrines in the contemporary literature on the domains of science and mathematics: scientific realism, scientific anti-realism, constructive empiricism, structural realism, mathematical Platonism, mathematical indispensability, mathematical empiricism, intuitionism, mathematical fictionalism and second philosophy.

State of art paper on the topic causation, around the problem of the nature of causation. Central theories of contemporary philosophical literature are discussed and analysed, namely, regularity theories of Hume and Mackie, counterfactual theories of Lewis, probabilistic theories of Reichenbach, Lewis and Menzies and causal processes theories of Salmon and Dowe.

This article argues that there are three key claims of postphenomenology: first, that there is no immediate access to a phenomena that is not always already embodied; second, that there is no science that is not determined by a technology, and that technologies are instances of certain theoretical assumptions and perspectives; third, that all technoscience is enabled and mediated by the embodied perception that takes place in and through instrumentation, which leads to the insight that all scientific evidence is manufactured (...) perception. There is critical engagement with Ihde’s take on pragmatism and it is argued that he makes too severe a distinction between embodied praxis and communicative action, between practices of embodiment and practices of communicating. The argument is that the technoscientific body is a communicative body. The article closes with the consideration of Ihde’s provocative thesis that we ought to think of philosophical systems as having expiration or obsolesce dates. The author recalls the important work of German-Jewish philosopher Günther Anders in order to think through the sense in which it is not so much our technologies that expire, but our ethical worldviews that are made discrepant and incommensurate with the challenges our technologies throw at us. It is argued that we have to make distinction between obsolesce, on the one hand, and error or failure, on the other. (shrink)

This paper deals with the ways in which jurists and law professors applied transnational systems of public law, in particular US constitutionalism and French droit administratif, in their approaches to the state building process in late nineteenth century Argentina. In covering these movements of adaptation of a nascent legal culture to changing ideological and political circumstances, this article attempts to illuminate the strong links between the process of institutionalization of certain academic disciplines or forms of social knowledge, and modern state (...) building in Latin America. (shrink)

Apresentação / Pablo Lorenzano Introdução / Os editores Princípios em cosmologia / Antonio Augusto Passos Videira Aleatoriedad vs. arbitrariedad en la mecánica estadística clásica / Eduardo H. Flichman La teoría galileana de la materia: resolutio e infinitos indivisibles / Fernando Tula Molina Ciencia y música en la obra de Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1520-1591) / Guillermo Boido & Eduardo Kastika T-invariancia, irreversibilidad, flecha del tiempo: similares pero diferentes / Olimpia Lombardi Mapa das interpretações da teoria quântica / Osvaldo (...) Pessoa Jr. Aspectos epistemológicos y geométricos de la teoría del campo unificado de Schrödinger / Victor Rodríguez & Pedro W. Lamberti. (shrink)

Análisis historiográfico del relato de las vicisitudes del alfaquí Ṭālūt, elaborado por Ibn al-Qūṭiyya y reproducido por numerosas fuentes andalusíes y orientales. De dicho análisis se desprende que la supuesta versión amplia de la crónica de Ibn al-Qūṭiyya nunca existió y que la coincidencia entre varias obras en presentar una versión extensa del relato es debida a su común dependencia de un subarquetipo que amplificó retóricamente el texto original de Ibn al- Qūṭiyya.

Gaston Bouthol founded a particular sociology known as polemology. Skeptical about the pacifism and critic of the juridical illusion of the international regulation of the peace-phenomenon, he studied the war-phenomenon without moralising prejudices. Polemology, that involves a critic of culture, is focused on the social function of war, known as the most important institution of destruction. The study of major wars enabled him to raise an hypothesis that foresees the periodicity of wars.

La tesis que deseo discutir en este trabajo es la siguiente: las ciencias humanas (ciencias del espíritu según Dilthey, ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas según Habermas) son posibles en la medida en que pueda ser epistemológicamente justificado el método que las hace posibles, a saber, la comprensión hermenéutica del sentido cuyo núcleo central lo constituye el círculo hermenéutico. Se trata, pues, de justificar epistemológicamente la hermenéutica como comprensión del sentido de las vivencias propias y ajenas, para lo cual es preciso analizar la reflexividad (...) y reciprocidad que impregna la estructura del lenguaje ordinario. En el diálogo que Habermas establece con Dilthey en Conocimiento e interés aparecen los suficientes argumentos para dicha fundamentación. Nuestro texto hará especial hincapié en los siguientes tópicos: distinción entre ciencias de la naturaleza y ciencias del espíritu, comprensión hermenéutica del sentido, lenguaje ordinario y reflexividad, especificidad del círculo hermenéutico, ciencia y contexto vital, y, finalmente, haremos un balance de la interpretación habermasiana de Dilthey a partir de las relaciones entre ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas e interés práctico del conocimiento. (shrink)

Como devemos conduzir nossas investigações morais para decidir no que acreditar sobre questões morais? Como a plausibilidade de juízos, teorias e princípios morais deve ser avaliada? Como devemos tentar remover nossas dúvidas quando estamos incertos sobre o que é certo ou errado, bom ou mau, justo ou injusto? O método do equilíbrio reflexivo, desenvolvido por John Rawls em A Theory of Justice e desde então adotado por um crescente número de filósofos, é uma tentativa de responder a questões como essas. (...) O equilíbrio reflexivo pode ser interpretado de vários modos, muitos dos quais completamente incompatíveis entre si, mas as duas visões mais representativas do método são os modelos coerentista e intuicionista. Neste artigo o meu objetivo é argumentar que nós deveríamos entender o equilíbrio reflexivo como um método intuicionista de investigação moral. Assim, eu comparo essas duas visões, como elas diferem no modo como concebem o funcionamento e os objetivos do método, para defender que a tradição coerentista de interpretação do método reduz a investigação moral a uma mera busca por coerência, com isso ignorando a função metodológica que intuições morais desempenham em nossas reflexões morais. Em contraste, a interpretação intuicionista oferece um modelo de investigação que integra intuição morais com a busca por coerência, explicando por que e como esses dois elementos funcionam em conjunto em nossas reflexões morais. A minha alegação é a de que apenas quando o equilíbrio reflexivo é interpretado de acordo com esse modelo intuicionista que ele pode ser visto em uso na prática reflexiva de filósofos morais reconhecidamente competentes, como John Rawls, Judith Jarvis Thomson e Peter Singer. (shrink)

Toulmin (2001) sostiene que la invención de las disciplinas,un cambio iniciado en el siglo XVII, involucró factores tantointelectuales como institucionales. Intelectualmente, el uso dela geometría cartesiana como modelo de conocimiento proveyólos fundamentos; institucionalmente, la división del trabajo enprofesiones y disciplinas hizo el resto. Sin embargo, este cambiose produjo lentamente y sólo alcanzó su apogeo durante el sigloXX, con la conformación de lo que Snow (2012) reconoce comolas dos culturas: las Humanidades y las Ciencias Naturales.Focalizando esta distinción, proponemos reflexionar sobre laargumentación (...) escrita en dos disciplinas (Letras y Biología)desde la perspectiva toulminiana. Al respecto, consideramosque los argumentos y los modos de escribirlos están tanprofundamente ligados a las disciplinas que resulta esencialsaber y reconocer cómo operan estos procesos a fin de entenderla lógica de dichos campos. En efecto, las particularidades decada disciplina están siempre presentes a la hora de escribir yde argumentar por escrito. Todo texto pertenece, por lo menos,a un género y a una disciplina; como tal, emplea movimientosretóricos particulares que varían de comunidad en comunidady de un tipo de discurso a otro. Este trabajo, retoma lapropuesta de Toulmin (2003, 2001) y busca dar cuenta de lasespecificidades de la argumentación escrita en dos carrerasuniversitarias argentinas (Letras y Biología). Así, después dehaber efectuado un trabajo de campo que comprendió, duranteun semestre, observación participante de clases, entrevistasa docentes y alumnos y recolección de documentos áulicos(exámenes escritos y trabajos prácticos), distinguimos cuatrorasgos que caracterizan la argumentación en los ámbitosdisciplinares de las Humanidades y de las Ciencias Naturales:(1) los grados de formalidad; (2) los grados de precisión; (3) losmodos de resolución; y (4) las metas de la argumentación. Estoscuatro rasgos permiten complejizar los elementos estables delesquema toulminiano y pensar sus usos, sus aplicaciones y susalcances en las disciplinas. (shrink)

The article re-addresses the question of the relation between Darwinism and the biological sciences, taking as its starting-point the precise chronology of the successive inquiries carried out by Darwin into the question of races, in connection with the various aspects of his theory of natural selection. It argues that the writings of Darwin do not share any uniform aim, nor do they come under a single epistemological category. Darwin adopts a number of divergent approaches, as he addresses a series of (...) issues : the debate between monogenesis and polygenesis ; the characterisation of human races, as practised since Kant ; the question of craniometrics, so important in physical anthropology in his day ; the classification of mental faculties ; the role of selection for reproductive purposes in the differences between the sexes ; the universality of the expression of emotions, and so on. What emerges from the inquiry is a more complex portrait than is customary in the controversies about the scientist’s « social Darwinism », real or imaginary. Darwin is neither the purveyor of a Hitlerian racism nor the protagonist of a natural antiracism directly stemming from this theory. (shrink)

La resistencia comunitaria noviolenta es una estrategia para transformar conflictos. Este estudio contiene el análisis de la Asamblea Municipal Constituyente (AMC) como proceso de resistencia en Mogotes, Santander, Colombia. En el desarrollo del artículo se retoma la experiencia de investigación llevada adelante en el municipio para indagar acerca de la contribución de las redes sociales en el desarrollo y mantenimiento de las políticas de identidad en el proceso de resistencia Para esto se emplearon métodos etnográficos tales como entrevistas a profundidad (...) a miembros de la asamblea, y el contenido de programas radiales de la emisora del municipio. Como conclusión se plantea que el fortalecimiento de las políticas de identidad se ve influenciado por las redes sociales que intervienen en el proceso. (shrink)

En este trabajo nos proponemos mostrar las referencias que articulan la obra de Lefort. Éste nos invita a comprender la democracia como una forma de sociedad que se instituye y se mantiene a partir de la distinción de los planos político, jurídico y epistemológico. La democracia es esa forma de sociedad que convierte en identidad la búsqueda de identidad. Nos enfrenta a la indeterminación última del ser social. Los esfuerzos de Lefort por desen­mascarar las mentiras totalitarias, en particular, las comunistas, (...) son buena prueba de una obra que lucha contra el canto de sirena de una sociedad sin división, sin opacidad, sin política. (shrink)

Knowledge and true relations represent the principal task of Theory of Knowledge. This paper argues about various solutions to the justification of knowledge, given by William James, Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. For classic Pragmatism Knowledge and Truth converge with the idea of a guideline, direction and orientation with an effective value for men. The Newpragmatism represented by Rorty tries out the way of the widest possible widening of justification contexts, taking as last referent the features of a western liberal (...) culture. Habermas pleads for a strong idealization in his discussion with Rorty up to the ideal speech situation. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 70-75. cartography of ghosts . . . And as a way to talk . . . of temporality the topography of imagination, this body whose dirty entry into the articulation of history as rapturous becoming & unbecoming, greeted with violence, i take permission to extend this grace —Akilah Oliver from “An Arriving Guard of Angels Thusly Coming To Greet” Our disappearance is already here. —Jacques Derrida, 117 I wrestled with death as a threshold, an aporia, a bandit, (...) a part of life. —Akilah Oliver Moraine in geological lingo is that which is left behind. Moraine- a euphemism for the de-stabilizing referent of the writer-ly body as a “troubled and troubling landscape marked by cultural and historical signifiers, the body as flesh memory [...] the body as transitory” (Oliver, Author Statement). Moraine— a geological metaphor of the poet as a holder of memory, as an accumulation of rocks and debris carried along the edge, terminal, dropped at the foot of language (in language). “Flesh Memory” according to Akilah Oliver is "that which my body recalls [...] everything has to do with the task of remembrance and its narrative reinvention [...] I was always translating an idea of the world as it presented itself at any given time. To write was a choice about how to be seen, how to enter the world as translator, actor, participant, in the dialogues that apparently made the real 'real'" (Levitsky). Flesh. Memory. The stuff some poems are made from. The stuff that gets abandoned, gleaned, and picked up by more flesh and memory. "My body, my life has always felt like a kaleidoscopic rip in the dominant fabric [...] has always been a dialogue with the impossible and the apparent” (Levitsky). The impossible-body or poet's body anticipates and performs (through language) an irretrievable death. IN APORIA I realized everything I must have been doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day—a holiday—and every time you turned on the radio they said something like ‘four million’ or ‘going to die’.” — Andy Warhol I’m trying on egos, [a justification for the planet’s continuance]. Oh hello transgressor, you’ve come to collect utilitarian debts, humbling narrative space. Give me condition and wheatgrass, I his body disintegrating. I his body is ossification. Death my habit radius, yeah yeah. I his body can’t refuse this summons. I can’t get out this fucking room. Tell me something different about torture dear Trickster. Tell me about the lightness my mother told me to pick the one i love the best how it signals everything I ever wish to believe true just holy on my ship. I jump all over this house. this is it [what I thought is thought only, nothing more deceptive than]: I his body keeps thinking someone will come along, touch me. As like human or lima bean. I’m cradling you to my breast, you are looking out. A little wooden lion you & Peter carve on Bluff Street is quieting across your cheekbone. Not at all like the kind of terror found in sleep, on trembling grounds. It is yesterday now. I have not had a chance to dance in this century. Tonight I shall kill someone, a condition to remember Sunday morning. To think of lives as repetitions [rather than singular serial incarnations]. To understand your death is as exacerbating as trying to figure out why as schoolchildren in mid-nineteen-sixties Southern California we performed reflexive motions: cutting out lace snowflakes, reading Dick and Jane search for their missing mittens, imagining snow. Disintegrat ing . The -ing gerund catapults from the non-finite verb into past, present, future. The -ing as a tail pinned to death, a dog spinning to bite and never fully reaching itself, always shy of the end, circumreferential; a double copulative: deathing. Possessively AO calls it “habit radius” (a virtual fetish attribute) or an inescapable death presence that “confronts us with the paradox of an unattainable object [...] through it’s being unattainable” (Agamben, 27). A flirtation or dialogue with an unknowable thing and aporia utilized as investigative instrument to engage (death) while (in Southern California) we “perform reflexive motions,” cut lace snowflakes, imagine snow, and pay rent like “yeah, yeah” what else is new. And this too, fiction. The book I wish to right. The restored fallen, heroic. Did you expect a different grace from the world? Or upon exit? I’m working on “tough.” They think I am already. All ready. Who is the dead person? Is "I'm sorry" real to a dead person? Browning grass. My hands on this table. A contentious century. A place to pay rent. Redemptive moments. Am I now the dead person? Dead person, dead person, will you partake in my persimmon feast? The body inside the body astounds, confesses sins of the funhouse. I too have admired the people of this planet. Their frilly, orderly intellects. The use they’ve made of cardamom, radiation as well. How they’ve pasteurized milk, loaned surnames to stars, captured tribes, diseases, streets, and ideas too. The living-body as archive: is it possible to experience the living-body as archive without a (kind of) death? Sifting the rubble, rummaging through hoarded debris, skin sheds, memory-napping, and re-awoken (in flesh and) on terrain. “An investigative poetics seeks to unravel staid communities of thought and grasp at what might always be just beyond reach; a poetics of inquiry that lies between language as meaning, and language as rapturous entry into the world of posited ideas and idealism”( Levitsky). Something snaps. Lights blow out prior to embarking upon an investigative poetics. It begins with a question (often a sexy aporia) that leads to openings. "Every politics of memory [...] implies an intervention of the state. It's a state that legislates and acts with regard to the nonfinite mass of materials to be stored, materials which must be collected, preserved” (Derrida & Stiegler, 62). It seems poetic investigation already contains the potentiality of an (invisible) archive if the writer is “always writing” especially when not. Here’s my stupid digital romantic inclination: the living-body (of a poet) is a self-sustaining archive of non-finite memories. But not even I really believe that. AO innovated and sculpted an investigative poetic praxis. In a conversation with poet Rachel Levitsky, poetic-voice is viewed not as a precious identifier, but as a means to think through/about form, concluding that form is linked to framing. While poetic-voice may have tendency to precede form, it also erupts as a result of framing techniques. “They are frames that hold the shape of thinking (which is also to say of imagining) [...].”7 This reminds me of my rabbit who symmetrically chewed the corners of his hutch, which makes me wonder if it’s an expression of the shape of some animal anxiety tick I won’t ever have access to. Beyond the form/frame, death is an unoriginal yet unique limit; death is a damn deathless thing. It functions as a source of poetic investigation; that thing always “just beyond reach.” And how is death not a fetish (in this case an obsessive reverence for something non-material)? “Insofar as it [death] is a presence, a fetish [...] it is in fact something concrete and tangible; but insofar as it is the presence of an absence, it is, at the same time, immaterial and intangible, because it alludes continuously beyond itself to something that can never really be possessed [...] The fetish is [...] a sign of an absence, it is not an unrepeatable unique object; on the contrary, it is something infinitely capable of substitution, without any successive incarnations ever succeeding in exhausting the nullity of which it is the symbol” (Agamben, 33). AO utilized absence (the absent body [catapulted by the death of a beloved]) as an apparatus to investigate. In the process of conversing with absence or that which is absent, the absent body is affectionately objectified, incessantly summonsed back to a place of recognition, of objects, a desire for the absent body to remain intact while exiting the structural limits of grammar and syntax by moving into chant forms “to say what cannot be said” (Levitsky). from AN ARRIVING GUARD OF ANGELS THUSLY COMING TO GREET dear oluchi- the light is blinking rapidly on the black boxy machine. your room seems bigger than before and i am still planning to read some of those robert jordan books of yours. yesterday at the used bookstore where i was browsing the mysteries to “stall reality” (they are really not mysteries at all, they just employ death as the plot mistress but are unable to grasp its mystery at all)—well the point is, things were calm down here for a while and the world was little. i want to be big like you. or i want you not vast, not dead, not gone, but human small and here. i am so selfish. that is what i really want. to see you again. to oil your scalp. to hear you walk in the door, say ma i’m home . give me a chance to say welcome home son. or when leaving, don’t forget your hat . what do you wear out there? i wish you could have taken your new shoes with you. i’m so proud of you. i’m sorry for the way you died. i miss you all the time. even before, i missed you. out there, one time, some different men said: “shake for me girl, i wanna be your backdoor man.” who dat you love. 5/18/03 A letter-poem in sixteen lines “dear oluchi-” is safe-housed in epistolary form. Poetic voice is rendered as internal thought meanderings, a not-so-much confession, private/(pillow?) talk in the desire to be heard/witnessed by the referent and reader with an intent to absolve. The diminutive “i” bears a relation to poet Fanny Howe’s “little g God” in that “One of the (many) things I like about little g God is that you can have a vodka tonic while you talk to little g God, sing along to Bowie’s “I’m Afraid Of Americans,” and hum Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” though maybe not all at the same time” (Oliver, 2009). Towards the middle of the poem AO is at a used bookstore and remarks on the funny employment of death as a ‘plot mistress’ that ‘they’ (the dubious employed mystery authors) are ‘unable to grasp’, thereby giving death a mouthpiece, a modeling job, something to do to pass the time. from THE VISIBLE UNSEEN When I first saw graffiti, I recognized in it an ugly aesthetic, a dialectics of violence, a distortion of limbs, a hieroglyph. It was only later when I read the names of the dead that I then saw the path of ghosts charted there; its narrative of loss for the visible unseen whose place in history has been fictionalized and rendered unseen under the totalizing glare of history. Inscriptions, traces, specters. Graffiti begs a public face just as ghosts require non-ghosts (humans) to sense them. The “visible unseen” is a game of hide-and-seek between public viewer and graffiti-inscriber, an ephemeral-violent aesthetic on an ephemeral-policed canvas. Graffiti-inscribers already submit to being forgotten, expect to be washed away; perhaps it’s a holy urban mandala created by gangster-type monks without Buddhism. [...] in its refusal to disappear it forces a discourse in the public imagination we are forced to see what we would rather not, to make sense of an encoded language that we cannot read on the level of meaning. it irritates, forces its agency on us, speaks outside and beyond semiotic reach. An epic font-size pervading the public’s imagination, illegible, I could just close my eyes, remain passive, drive past, abandon it beyond reach, push it further away beyond death walls. In Barcelona I watched a clean up crew wash walls with an awesome water hose but I was more intrigued by their bodies; not a distortion of limbs, not hieroglyph but also not entirely legible; the laboring body permanently erasing specters of the city, and of course they knew it was also an invitation for the ghosts to return. Graffiti is death’s little sister, is also an aporia. [...] Graffiti (fr GK -graph(os), something drawn or written, to diagram or chart) attempts to stage the impossible: to erase the essence of its own subjectivity. Graffiti is a cartography of ghosts, a mapping of elegiac rapture (the transporting of a person from one place to another, as in heaven) and rupture (the state of being broken open.) Dwelling is a fiction stasis. [...] The notion of the past as being something done with, a look-back event, inhibits the possibility of reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture. If graffiti posits history as always in the process of becoming undone. [...] Because what is the body, if not also a complex temple, an unstable site through which to negotiate subjects, materiality, economies, gods, and modes of representations? The site where we are all already belated. Graphein meaning “to write.” “Derrida says every archive makes a law, and the law of genre is its own rupture” (Bloch, 39). However, graffiti is an (non/anti)-archive of erasure due to (the politics of) washing out its subjectivity, which only adds onto (or is symptomatic of) its character. The inhibition of “reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture” is partly due to it being a “look-back” event in that it’s process involves scratching through layers to reveal previous specters underneath. Graffiti (as an ancient genre) has always been a thing of ‘becoming undone’, and therefore ‘belated and always in arrival’ (Levitsky). It’s a Dionysian activity done at night with it’s back turned toward us. "The specter [...] is of the visible, but of the invisible visible, it is the visibility of a body which is not present in flesh and blood [...] appearing for vision, to the brightness of day [...] something becomes almost visible which is visible only insofar as it is not visible in flesh and blood. It is a night visibility. As soon as there is a technology of the image, visibility brings night. It incarnates in a night body, it radiates in a night light" (Derrida & Stiegler, 115). (shrink)