Playing with picturebooks : postmodernism and the postmodernesque

This thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children’s literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts. The thesis utilises the theoretical contributions by, in particular, Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, and Fredric Jameson as well as reference to children’s literature studies. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children’s literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis. This study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts. The three analysis chapters examine twenty-two picturebooks in detail with respect to the ways in which the conventions of narrative are subverted and how dominant discourses are interrogated. Chapter 4: Subverting Narrative Processes includes analysis of narrative point of view, modes of representation, and characters and the problems of identity and subjectivity. Chapter 5: Challenging Truth, History, and Unity examines questions of ontology, the difficulties of representing history, and addresses issues of difference and ‘otherness’. The final textual analysis chapter, Chapter 6: Engaging with Postmodernity, critiques texts which engage with issues of globalisation, mass media, and consumerism. Brief discussion of a further fifteen picturebooks throughout the thesis provides additional support. Children’s texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. This thesis posits that children’s postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.

Introduction : bringing back theory

In a report in the New York Times about a public symposium on the future of theory held at University of Chicago in 2002, staff writer Emily Eakin suggests that theory appears to have taken a back seat to more pressing current affairs – the Bush Administration, Al Qaeda, Iraq. Further, she reports that the symposium’s panel of high-profile theorists and scholars, including Homi Bhabha, Stanley Fish, Fredric Jameson, seemed reticent to offer their views on what is often touted as the demise or irrelevance of theory. The symposium and other commentaries on the topic of theory have prompted the view that the ‘Golden Age of Theory’ has passed and we are now in a ‘Post-Theory Age’. Given these pronouncements, we need to ask – Does theory matter any longer? Is it time for the obituary? Or are reports of the death of theory greatly exaggerated? The question remains whether to mourn or celebrate the demise of theory, and whether the body has in fact breathed its last. The title of this Introduction – ‘Bringing back theory’ – suggests a resurrection, or perhaps a haunting, as if the funeral has passed and, like Banquo’s ghost, theory returns to unsettle or disturb the celebration. It also suggests an entreaty, or perhaps a return performance. Rather than settle on one meaning, one interpretation, we are happy for all possibilities to coexist. The coexistence of different theories, different approaches, different interpretations also reflects the state of literary and cultural studies generally and children’s literature criticism in particular. No single theory or viewpoint predominates or vies for hegemony. Yet, one further question lingers – what is theory?

Fashion, the body and technology : tracing early 20th century techno-utopian ideas, aesthetics and impulses in 21st century wearable technology

‘Wearable technology’, or the use of specialist technology in garments, is promoted by the electronics industry as the next frontier of fashion. However the story of wearable technology’s relationship with fashion begins neither with the development of miniaturised computers in the 1970s nor with sophisticated ‘smart textiles’ of the twenty-first century, despite what much of the rhetoric suggests. This study examines wearable technology against a longer history of fashion, highlighted by the influential techno-sartorial experiments of a group of early twentieth century avant-gardes including Italian Futurists Giacomo Balla and F.T. Marinetti, Russian Constructivists Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova, and Paris-based Cubist, Sonia Delaunay. Through the interdisciplinary framework of fashion studies, the thesis provides a fuller picture of wearable technology framed by the idea of utopia. Using comparative analysis, and applying the theoretical formulations of Fredric Jameson, Louis Marin and Michael Carter, the thesis traces the appearance of three techno-utopian themes from their origins in the machine age experiments of Balla, Marinetti, Stepanova, Popova and Delaunay to their twenty-first century reappearance in a dozen wearable technology projects. By exploring the central thesis that contemporary wearable technology resurrects the techno-utopian ideas and expressions of the early twentieth century, the study concludes that the abiding utopian impetus to embed technology in the aesthetics (prints, silhouettes, and fabrication) and functionality of fashion is to unify subject, society and environment under a totalising technological order.

O cinema do feitiço contra o feiticeiro. 'El cine del fetiche contra el fetichismo'.

Resumen tomado de la publicación

Fernando Nieto Cadena: la épica de lo cotidiano

Esta investigación se acerca a un corpus de poemarios que se enmarcan dentro de la épica de lo cotidiano, y pretende una aproximación a la poética de su autor, Fernando Nieto Cadena. En cuanto a esta lectura, he seguido categorías de Fredric Jameson y Terry Eagleton, en lo concerniente a ese sesgo ideológico que estos poemas demuestran. Pero me he inclinado por un marco que atienda esta poesía como fenómeno. También deseo despejar la pregunta acerca de las categorías precisas para acometer cierto movimiento en esta poesía, e inquirir sobre su caótico flujo. Quiero desentrañar la manera en que se construye esta lírica, poblada de elementos cercanos a los pobladores de la costa ecuatoriana, con mucho de influencia caribeña: son ellos quienes, al acercarse a esta poesía, podrán leer/se. A esto se añade una lectura que confirme los elementos que caracterizan el decir poético de Nieto Cadena. He hecho un recorrido a través de los títulos de Nieto para descubrir la tensión entre el elemento semántico y el fonético del texto, en pos de revisar los ritmos que este lenguaje ofrece.

Entre la memoria y el olvido: literaturas y posmodernidad latinoamericana (los casos de Leonardo Valencia y Roberto Bolaño)

El presente trabajo busca indagar en las literaturas latinoamericanas en nuestros tiempos, sobre todo cuando una tendencia posmoderna, de amplia conceptualización desde los países industrializados, instaura la nostalgia y el desencanto como características de narrativas que se observan a sí mismas frene a la realidad y a las representaciones de sujetos y espacios que se han gestado, sobre todo, durante el siglo XX. Por ello, una de las preocupaciones fundamentales del trabajo radica en observar el proceso de revisión epistemológica en la conformación de las representaciones sobre Latinoamérica, su contexto y sus sujetos. Según este marco, he querido abordar dos narrativas distantes entre sí, no tanto en tiempo, sino por su caracterización y postura frente al mundo: por un lado, he abordado las dos últimas novelas de Leonardo Valencia (Guayaquil, 1969), autor que propone la biblioteca como la patria del escritor y se distancia de la categoría de lo “latinoamericano”; y por otro lado, tres obras de Roberto Bolaño (Santiago de Chile, 1953-Barcelona, 2003), cuya obra problematiza las representaciones literarias, históricas y culturales del continente, desde la nostalgia y el desengaño contrapuestos al boom. ¿Cuáles son los resultados de estos dos mundos narrativos frente a los discursos de la historia, los referentes socio-culturales y literarios? Este trabajo es un primer paso hacia la comprensión de la heterogeneidad y de la tendencia posmoderna en nuestros contextos, que cuestiona los relatos totales. Por ello, los tres capítulos de esta tesis esbozan un contexto teórico acerca de la posmodernidad y el contexto latinoamericano, en el que he buscado dialogar con diversos autores e investigadores, como Linda Hutcheon, Fredric Jameson, Bolívar Echeverría, José María Pozuelo Yvancos, Eliseo Diego, Jorge Velasco Mckenzie, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, entre otros.

1930, a Paraíba e o inconsciente político da revolução: a narrativa como ato socialmente simbólico

This work is an attempt to show that the ideological conflict that has been developed by the hegemony of the 1930 Revolution historical events in Paraíba, conceptually turned into an insoluble social contradiction. It ocurred due to imaginary or formal resolutions of the literature that ended up by altering the epistemological rules of the relation between fiction and reality. The present work is based on The unconscious politics: a narrative as a socially symbolic act , book in which all the literary or cultural texts can and should be read as symbolic resolutions to insoluble social contradictions. From string to contemporary literature this phenomenon has been registered by the several ways of textual production turning the 1930 Revolution into one of the main elements which guides the political scene of Paraíba. The ideological groups still centered on the political resentment and committed to a political conflict forged the existence of two historical truths: one which suits the liberais , the winners, and another is of the 1930 conflict. This work argues in favour of the unconscious politics of the 1930 Revolution. This thesis considers necessarily the relation that the Paraibana society maintains with its past and how this past reaches in the present the liberation of a hidden and repressed truth through its narrativization. Beyond that, how the ideological partiality generated the political resentment through the way of thinking of the rivals under the perspective of the good and evil reveals its insoluble social contradiction. Process which comprehends varied narrative forms of the mass culture products and literary production, as in the methodological perspective pointed by Fredric Jameson that all literary or cultural texts can and shall be read as symbolic resolutions of true political and social contradictions. In the case of Paraiba we will have resolutions that search for the reasons which caused the death of João Pessoa: forgery and publicity of love letters, dispute over the official version of suicide commited by João Dantas, the man who assassinated João Pessoa

Os dias são maus : o ensino religioso cristão em dias pós-modernos o desafio de fazer crer perante a cultura da incredulidade

This paper adopts the assumption that religion continues to be a major highlight in the dimension of the contemporary world - characterized by pluralism, the ideas of tolerance and freedom. But for certain streams of Christianity, the postmodern culture seems to be characterized as a highly damaging to their doctrines and principles, since this religious matrix carries a truth claim that would support all its significance, its definition values and their dissemination effort ( evangelism ). This is not to say that Christianity is the only religion that claims to the truth, which would be a gross mistake. Now, religion has been reputed as a phenomenon doomed to disappear, according to the " ideology " of Modernity, given the idea that scientific development would lead us inevitably to the statement that religion was merely a social institution based in the superstition, in fantasy, the imaginary and therefore had nothing "real " unless its existence as an institution capable of aggregating society (give it cohesion), provide values and meaning to different ontological anxieties and doubts of humankind. In the contemporary scenario - seeded by modernity - as Christian ideas, doctrines and principles are in harmony or conflict with postmodernity? These are our starting questions and issues that we intend to stop and reflect. From the assumption that the religious phenomenon has great force in the present day, this research aims to perform central analysis of how religious education, a Protestant denomination specific, harmonizes or clashes with the ideology or ideas more general and emphatic that we can observe in the western world is presented to us from the diagnoses made by the contemporary authors who debate about postmodernism and postmodernity, notably David Harvey, Jean - François Lyotard, Bauman Zygmunt and Fredric Jameson

A lógica social da moda: apontamentos para uma teoria crítica da cultura de consumo

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Um estudo das [possíveis] contradições da cultura no capitalismo do pós-guerra: uma abordagem do teatro da vertigem

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Identidade e história: Belém do Grão-Pará como narrativa da nacionalidade

A motivação inicial desta pesquisa é a fértil discussão acerca da Identidade e das diferenças culturais entabulada especialmente pelos Estudos Culturais e Literários, especificamente a partir da categoria conceitual da nacionalidade. Norteada pelo conceito de Alegoria proposto por Fredric Jameson, para quem tal conceito se aplica principalmente à análise dos textos literários do capitalismo tardio, tentou-se desnudar as estratégias usadas na composição de Belém do Grão-Pará1 para narrar a complexidade da identidade nacional inscrita no Inconsciente Político. Admitindo que a Alegoria, para Jameson, é o próprio objeto cultural e estético cuja constituição e disposição dos elementos estruturais narra, às vezes em foro íntimo ou privado das personagens, a História das sociedades, segundo a experiência político-ideológica de suas classes. Tomados estes pressupostos, fez-se a análise do romance dalcidiano considerando-se a migração do protagonista como alegoria do cruzamento entre diferentes culturas, fato social gerador de uma hipotética diluição da identidade. Contudo, apoiado num paralelo traçado entre o contato do ribeirinho com o modus vivendi da cidade e a reação antropofágica do modernismo brasileiro frente ao modus vivendi civilizado da Europa, este trabalho nega a idéia de que o cruzamento de fronteiras culturais implique no fim da nacionalidade. Em linhas gerais tratamos de um conceito de Identidade fundado na experiência coletiva de indivíduos que, apesar de grandes diferenças de classe social, gênero ou etnia, construíram-se sob ideologias comuns. Nesta análise de Belém do Grão-Pará, cenas urbanas como ir ao cinema ou ver passar o trem são resignificadas pelo protagonista com base nas referências que trouxe de Cachoeira do Arari, seu lugar de origem, enquanto este também passa por uma revisão segundo o novo paradigma urbano que o protagonista vive em Belém.

Colagem, antropofagia e subversão em Galvez imperador do Acre, de Márcio Souza

O presente trabalho aborda o romance Galvez Imperador do Acre, publicado em 1976, pelo escritor amazonense Márcio Souza, estabelecendo as relações entre o texto literário e as propostas estéticas das vanguardas modernistas, tanto européias quanto brasileiras, propondo, assim, a investigação das relações entre modernismo e pós-modenismo, bem como as relações entre literatura, sociedade, história e cultura. Abordaremos questões como a ressignificação de textos literários ou não em Galvez imperador do Acre por meio do processo de colagem e intertextualidade, as relações entre o romance e o momento histórico que retoma e com aquele em que foi produzido, a operação de retomada do passado de forma crítica e transformadora e as possibilidades de leitura do texto literário com vista a algumas teorias pós-modernistas e pós-colonialistas. Observaremos, assim, a maneira como o mesmo retoma a Belle Époque e a extração do látex na Amazônia e sua estética fragmentária, constituída de diversas citações de autores canônicos, investigando o funcionamento da colagem e da antropofagia como principais ferramentas de denúncia e subversão ao processo cultural de importação de valores europeus vivido pelas capitais amazônicas no momento representado pelo romance e cuja crítica pode ser extrapolada para todo um processo de formação cultural no Brasil e na Amazônia. Para isso, poremos em causa as teorias de Jaques Derrida, Walter Benjamim, Claude Levi-Strauss, Fredric Jameson, Luiz Costa Lima, Antonio Candido, Aijaz Ahmad, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Canclini, Silviano Santiago, Angel Rama, Linda Hutcheon, Antoine Compagnon, entre outros, afim de, a partir do romance em análise, aprofundarmos a discussão teórica acerca das relações comparativas entre textos literários e entre os Estudos Literários e outros campos de estudo.

O cinema, o tempo social e o seu intérprete

By understanding art as a particular form of knowledge is possible to think that sociology has much to learn from it. One thesis that we share in this essay is that the art is able to perform the synthesis of the historical time for its specifi c capacity to be in the world, because, while scientifi c knowledge search universal categories, intending to reduce as much the infl uence of human and social aspects in the apprehension of phenomena, aesthetic knowledge, even if it seeks abstract referentials, can not get rid of the experience and the world around it. This premise, based on the reading of Fredric Jameson, worth as much to the art authorial as for the one performed in series, this is, the production of the cultural industry. Both one and another, in their own way, translates the social time, task that fi ts to criticism unravel.

Contradictio in terminis: dialéctica de la ambigüedad en la arquitectura contemporánea

The twentieth century brought a new sensibility characterized by the discredit of cartesian rationality and the weakening of universal truths, related with aesthetic values as order, proportion and harmony. In the middle of the century, theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Rudolf Arnheim and Anton Ehrenzweig warned about the transformation developed by the artistic field. Contemporary aesthetics seemed to have a new goal: to deny the idea of art as an organized, finished and coherent structure. The order had lost its privileged position. Disorder, probability, arbitrariness, accidentality, randomness, chaos, fragmentation, indeterminacy... Gradually new terms were coined by aesthetic criticism to explain what had been happening since the beginning of the century. The first essays on the matter sought to provide new interpretative models based on, among other arguments, the phenomenology of perception, the recent discoveries of quantum mechanics, the deeper layers of the psyche or the information theories. Overall, were worthy attempts to give theoretical content to a situation as obvious as devoid of founding charter. Finally, in 1962, Umberto Eco brought together all this efforts by proposing a single theoretical frame in his book Opera Aperta. According to his point of view, all of the aesthetic production of twentieth century had a characteristic in common: its capacity to express multiplicity. For this reason, he considered that the nature of contemporary art was, above all, ambiguous. The aim of this research is to clarify the consequences of the incorporation of ambiguity in architectural theoretical discourse. We should start making an accurate analysis of this concept. However, this task is quite difficult because ambiguity does not allow itself to be clearly defined. This concept has the disadvantage that its signifier is as imprecise as its signified. In addition, the negative connotations that ambiguity still has outside the aesthetic field, stigmatizes this term and makes its use problematic. Another problem of ambiguity is that the contemporary subject is able to locate it in all situations. This means that in addition to distinguish ambiguity in contemporary productions, so does in works belonging to remote ages and styles. For that reason, it could be said that everything is ambiguous. And that’s correct, because somehow ambiguity is present in any creation of the imperfect human being. However, as Eco, Arnheim and Ehrenzweig pointed out, there are two major differences between current and past contexts. One affects the subject and the other the object. First, it’s the contemporary subject, and no other, who has acquired the ability to value and assimilate ambiguity. Secondly, ambiguity was an unexpected aesthetic result in former periods, while in contemporary object it has been codified and is deliberately present. In any case, as Eco did, we consider appropriate the use of the term ambiguity to refer to the contemporary aesthetic field. Any other term with more specific meaning would only show partial and limited aspects of a situation quite complex and difficult to diagnose. Opposed to what normally might be expected, in this case ambiguity is the term that fits better due to its particular lack of specificity. In fact, this lack of specificity is what allows to assign a dynamic condition to the idea of ambiguity that in other terms would hardly be operative. Thus, instead of trying to define the idea of ambiguity, we will analyze how it has evolved and its consequences in architectural discipline. Instead of trying to define what it is, we will examine what its presence has supposed in each moment. We will deal with ambiguity as a constant presence that has always been latent in architectural production but whose nature has been modified over time. Eco, in the mid-twentieth century, discerned between classical ambiguity and contemporary ambiguity. Currently, half a century later, the challenge is to discern whether the idea of ambiguity has remained unchanged or have suffered a new transformation. What this research will demonstrate is that it’s possible to detect a new transformation that has much to do with the cultural and aesthetic context of last decades: the transition from modernism to postmodernism. This assumption leads us to establish two different levels of contemporary ambiguity: each one related to one these periods. The first level of ambiguity is widely well-known since many years. Its main characteristics are a codified multiplicity, an interpretative freedom and an active subject who gives conclusion to an object that is incomplete or indefinite. This level of ambiguity is related to the idea of indeterminacy, concept successfully introduced into contemporary aesthetic language. The second level of ambiguity has been almost unnoticed for architectural criticism, although it has been identified and studied in other theoretical disciplines. Much of the work of Fredric Jameson and François Lyotard shows reasonable evidences that the aesthetic production of postmodernism has transcended modern ambiguity to reach a new level in which, despite of the existence of multiplicity, the interpretative freedom and the active subject have been questioned, and at last denied. In this period ambiguity seems to have reached a new level in which it’s no longer possible to obtain a conclusive and complete interpretation of the object because it has became an unreadable device. The postmodern production offers a kind of inaccessible multiplicity and its nature is deeply contradictory. This hypothetical transformation of the idea of ambiguity has an outstanding analogy with that shown in the poetic analysis made by William Empson, published in 1936 in his Seven Types of Ambiguity. Empson established different levels of ambiguity and classified them according to their poetic effect. This layout had an ascendant logic towards incoherence. In seventh level, where ambiguity is higher, he located the contradiction between irreconcilable opposites. It could be said that contradiction, once it undermines the coherence of the object, was the better way that contemporary aesthetics found to confirm the Hegelian judgment, according to which art would ultimately reject its capacity to express truth. Much of the transformation of architecture throughout last century is related to the active involvement of ambiguity in its theoretical discourse. In modern architecture ambiguity is present afterwards, in its critical review made by theoreticians like Colin Rowe, Manfredo Tafuri and Bruno Zevi. The publication of several studies about Mannerism in the forties and fifties rescued certain virtues of an historical style that had been undervalued due to its deviation from Renacentist canon. Rowe, Tafuri and Zevi, among others, pointed out the similarities between Mannerism and certain qualities of modern architecture, both devoted to break previous dogmas. The recovery of Mannerism allowed joining ambiguity and modernity for first time in the same sentence. In postmodernism, on the other hand, ambiguity is present ex-professo, developing a prominent role in the theoretical discourse of this period. The distance between its analytical identification and its operational use quickly disappeared because of structuralism, an analytical methodology with the aspiration of becoming a modus operandi. Under its influence, architecture began to be identified and studied as a language. Thus, postmodern theoretical project discerned between the components of architectural language and developed them separately. Consequently, there is not only one, but three projects related to postmodern contradiction: semantic project, syntactic project and pragmatic project. Leading these projects are those prominent architects whose work manifested an especial interest in exploring and developing the potential of the use of contradiction in architecture. Thus, Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas were who established the main features through which architecture developed the dialectics of ambiguity, in its last and extreme level, as a theoretical project in each component of architectural language. Robert Venturi developed a new interpretation of architecture based on its semantic component, Peter Eisenman did the same with its syntactic component, and also did Rem Koolhaas with its pragmatic component. With this approach this research aims to establish a new reflection on the architectural transformation from modernity to postmodernity. Also, it can serve to light certain aspects still unaware that have shaped the architectural heritage of past decades, consequence of a fruitful relationship between architecture and ambiguity and its provocative consummation in a contradictio in terminis. Esta investigación centra su atención fundamentalmente sobre las repercusiones de la incorporación de la ambigüedad en forma de contradicción en el discurso arquitectónico postmoderno, a través de cada uno de sus tres proyectos teóricos. Está estructurada, por tanto, en torno a un capítulo principal titulado Dialéctica de la ambigüedad como proyecto teórico postmoderno, que se desglosa en tres, de títulos: Proyecto semántico. Robert Venturi; Proyecto sintáctico. Peter Eisenman; y Proyecto pragmático. Rem Koolhaas. El capítulo central se complementa con otros dos situados al inicio. El primero, titulado Dialéctica de la ambigüedad contemporánea. Una aproximación realiza un análisis cronológico de la evolución que ha experimentado la idea de la ambigüedad en la teoría estética del siglo XX, sin entrar aún en cuestiones arquitectónicas. El segundo, titulado Dialéctica de la ambigüedad como crítica del proyecto moderno se ocupa de examinar la paulatina incorporación de la ambigüedad en la revisión crítica de la modernidad, que sería de vital importancia para posibilitar su posterior introducción operativa en la postmodernidad. Un último capítulo, situado al final del texto, propone una serie de Proyecciones que, a tenor de lo analizado en los capítulos anteriores, tratan de establecer una relectura del contexto arquitectónico actual y su evolución posible, considerando, en todo momento, que la reflexión en torno a la ambigüedad todavía hoy permite vislumbrar nuevos horizontes discursivos. Cada doble página de la Tesis sintetiza la estructura tripartita del capítulo central y, a grandes rasgos, la principal herramienta metodológica utilizada en la investigación. De este modo, la triple vertiente semántica, sintáctica y pragmática con que se ha identificado al proyecto teórico postmoderno se reproduce aquí en una distribución específica de imágenes, notas a pie de página y cuerpo principal del texto. En la columna de la izquierda están colocadas las imágenes que acompañan al texto principal. Su distribución atiende a criterios estéticos y compositivos, cualificando, en la medida de lo posible, su condición semántica. A continuación, a su derecha, están colocadas las notas a pie de página. Su disposición es en columna y cada nota está colocada a la misma altura que su correspondiente llamada en el texto principal. Su distribución reglada, su valor como notación y su posible equiparación con una estructura profunda aluden a su condición sintáctica. Finalmente, el cuerpo principal del texto ocupa por completo la mitad derecha de cada doble página. Concebido como un relato continuo, sin apenas interrupciones, su papel como responsable de satisfacer las demandas discursivas que plantea una investigación doctoral está en correspondencia con su condición pragmática.

The history of theory

Do you see now why it feels so good to be a critical mind? Why critique, this most ambiguous pharmakon, has become such a potent euphoric drug? You are always right! When naïve believers are clinging forcefully to their objects ... you can turn all of those attachments into so many fetishes and humiliate all the believers by showing that it is nothing but their own projection, that you, yes you alone, can see. But as soon as naïve believers are thus inflated by some belief in their own importance, in their own projective capacity, you strike them by a second uppercut and humiliate them again, this time by showing that, whatever they think, their behavior is entirely determined by the action of powerful causalities coming from objective reality they don't see, but that you, yes you, the never sleeping critic, alone can see. Isn't this fabulous? Isn't it really worth going to graduate school to study critique?