Contemporary subject: human rights and democracy

The aim of this paper is to show that only in a society where human rights are honored and democracy is vigorous, the process of subjectivation be possible. It is a critical sociology research. The article is presented in two parts, the first, subject and subjectivity in contemporary times, analyze the obstacles that individuals have for subjective process, and the second, subject and human rights and subject and democracy we argue about the need for human rights and democracy for the process of subjectivation.

Reading of audiovisual productions of contemporary art in art education

This article focuses on the reading of audiovisual productions of contemporary art as a creative process, seeking to analyse which effects of meaning the articulations between the visual and sound systems produce, and the meaning that children give to then. It describes a video art, identifying the languages that compose it and the relationships that link them. Such reading exercise had as corpus of analysis the Chair video art, by Masaru Ozaki, and counted with the theoretical and methodological support of the discourse semiotics, especially with studies on assembly procedures that articulate visual and auditory languages. Also, it presents a focal study with the meanings that a group of children gave to the video art. The findings indicate the importance of including the reading of audiovisual productions of contemporary art at school through the problematization of effects of meaning produced by the interrelation between different languages. And they suggest some subsidies that allow teachers from different areas of knowledge to reflect about the visuality in their pedagogical practice; the choice of the audiovisual materials taken to the classroom and other ways of seeing these texts edited.

Alien gosd in the new epics: Noah remythologised through the ancient astronaut hypothesis in Abel's Montagut's "La gesta d'Utnoa"

Modern scientific world-view has undermined traditional myths, the functional survival of which seems to depend today in the West on a positivist justification. This would place them in the field of real History, through their study and revitalization by pseudoscientific disciplines such as the Atlantis and the ancient astronaut hypotheses. These have inspired new epic poems in (regular) verse that combine classic and/or biblical myths with a (pseudo)scientific modern world-view. For example, the critical rewriting of Noah’s myth by using the ancient astronaut hypothesis as a fictional device to produce a contemporary kind of plausibility allowed Abel Montagut to renew epic poetry, updating it also by adopting science fiction chronotopes in order to structure his fictional construction and to generate a high ethical sense for our time. Thus, his Poemo de Utnoa (1993) / La gesta d’Utnoa (1996), which has become a major classic of the literature in Esperanto thanks to its original version in this language, is a landmark of both science fiction and neo-biblical epics. This poem is written from a secular and purely literary perspective.

‘Close as a kiss’: Gyn/Affection in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad (2005) seemingly celebrates Penelope’s agency in opposition to Homer’s myth in The Odyssey. However, the twelve murdered maids steal the book to suggest the possibility of what Janice Raymond calls gyn/affection, a female bonding based on the logic of emotion that, in Atwood’s revision, verges on Kristevan abjection, the sinister and the fantastic, and serves a cathartic effect not only in the maids but also in the reader. This essay aims to question the generally accepted empowerment of Atwood’s Penelope and celebrates the murdered maids as the locus of emotion, where marginal aspects of gender and class merge to weave a powerful metaphorical tapestry of popular and traditionally feminized literary genres that, in plunging into and embracing the semiotic realm, ultimately solidify into an eclectic but compact alternative tradition of women’s writing and myth-making.

Desire, Resentment and Reprisal: Revisiting the Emotions of Myth in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

This article aims to reassess F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby (1925), taking into consideration the myth-critical hypotheses of philosopher René Girard. Specifically, this essay will analyse the concepts of mimetic desire, resentment and reprisal violence as emotional components of myth, paying close attention to how the reinterpreted mythical pattern of the novel influences the depiction of such emotions as social traits of corruption. Finally, this article will challenge interpretations that have regarded Gatsby as a successful scapegoat-figure, examining instead how the mythical meanings and structures of the text stage an emotional crisis of frustrated desire and antagonism that ultimately offers no hope of communal restoration.

Del Fichero supremo a la Biblioteca de Babel: Salaverría, precursor de Borges

A juzgar por alguna declaración más bien negativa de Borges sobre la literatura española, se podría creer que esta no influyó demasiado en él. Sin embargo, existen indicios de que pudo haberse inspirado también en determinados escritores españoles coetáneos hoy casi olvidados. Uno de ellos pudo ser José María Salaverría, entre cuyos relatos destaca “El fichero supremo” (1926), del que se ha dicho que “anticipa algunas de las preocupaciones características de un tipo de relato que Jorge Luis Borges elevará años después a la máxima categoría estética”. De hecho, recuerda a “La biblioteca de Babel” (1941) borgiana por su planteamiento hasta el punto de que podría pensarse que el maestro argentino pudo tener presente, a la hora de escribir esa obra maestra, ese cuento de Salaverría, el cual se publicó por primera vez en Caras y Caretas, una revista porteña que Borges reconoció “devorar” en su juventud. Sin embargo, el interés mayor de la comparación entre “El fichero supremo” y “La biblioteca de Babel” no radica tanto en el carácter de posible fuente del primero como en el contraste entre sus formas de presentación narrativa: desde fuera y en tercera persona en Salaverría, en un marco realista; y desde dentro y en primera persona, prácticamente sin marco, en Borges. Este parece desarrollar, en el registro propio de la “imaginación razonada” descrito por él mismo, una virtualidad presente en el relato de Salaverría, cuya comparación con “La biblioteca de Babel” puede suscitar también alguna reflexión sobre el enigma de la identidad y el carácter de la voz enunciadora de la biblioteca universal de Babel. Al menos, esta parece haber hecho realidad en cierto modo, de forma sublime, el patético sueño divino del archivero imaginado por Salaverría.

Vuelta a lo que resultó un comienzo: de géneros literarios y política en “Simbiosis”, de Rodolfo Walsh

“Simbiosis”, aparecido originalmente en 1956, constituye la instancia inicial de la serie de cuentos policiales de Rodolfo Walsh que, extendida hasta 1962, protagonizan Daniel Hernández y el comisario Laurenzi. Pero “Simbiosis” representa, además, un momento de rupturas en la trayectoria de Walsh, rupturas observables a la luz de su obra previa, y que contribuyen a definir la singular posición que el escritor procura adoptar en el campo literario de la época. En la nacionalización del género policial que propone, el cuento a la vez recupera y cuestiona el canon clásico del género, al adoptar motivos de la literatura fantástica cuya operatividad como explicaciones de un delito se asocia a su origen en el saber popular, saber al cual Laurenzi accede como comisario de pueblo. Correlativamente, la equívoca resolución del crimen, debatida entre dos matrices de género, una racional y otra sobrenatural, así como el interrogante sobre la culpabilidad que deja abierto el relato, son resonancias significativas de su contexto histórico, desatendidas aún por la crítica: se trata, en particular, de los debates sobre culpables e inocentes políticos que inició en 1955 el derrocamiento militar del gobierno peronista.

Death Aesthetization in Contemporary Artistic Practices

Starting from the famous and enigmatic quotation of the Aristotle’s Poetics, who argues that the human has a natural desire and pleasure to see corpses if mediated by art, is intended to show the relationship between the attraction for the horror and some contemporary art practices surrounding the depiction of death, particularly with regard to the ultimate use of the human corpse as an artistic resource. Avoiding any kind of ethical approach or questioning of the limits of the artistic production, is meant to highlight the phenomenon through the examples brought out by the work of some contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Eric Fischl, Damien Hirst, Von Hagens, Andres Serrano, Joel-Peter Witkin and Teresa Margolles: From those who use the corpse in and turn it in something aesthetically pleasant, to others who turn human corpses in sculptures of scientific value, and further other kind of artists who assume the morbid and dramatic life of the corpse in their art production as something structural.