Es gibt kein richtige Leben im falschen .
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia . (1)
... Baroque survival strategy was ... how
may not find the next "good" to "bad", but
unleash the "good" precisely in the middle of the "bad" .
Bolívar Echeverría, Back century. (2)
Raquel Serur
A revolutionary thinker
show that after the illusory stability of the real crisis lies an entire civilization, making this understandable and crisis therefore transformable contingent side show the apparent necessity of things, they were, among others, the virtues of Bolivar discursive Echeverría. Fierce critic of capitalist modernity, was unmistakably allied with the left, which did not prevent him taking it away to show the contradictions and paradoxes. Be left for him was a letterhead, but a constantly critical attitude. True to the maximum Benjamin, according to which the materialist historian's work is to pass the brush against the grain of the magnificence of history, came to the seventeenth century in Mexico and, contrary to the myth of the noble savage and the victimization of junior, showed how American Indians were also builders of their world and their history. And from a general critique of capitalist modernity, formed a theory he called the Quad ethos of modernity, to understand versions and dimensions of modernity in general, and Mexico and Latin America in particular, of its historical-political phenomena and manifestations of "cultural resistance ", as it is sometimes referred to the many expressions of what he called the baroque ethos . And while it did not intend to provide a model for an alternative to capitalism, a "socialism Baroque" as someone interpreted, since the baroque ethos has emerged with capitalism and would disappear with him, however, such expressions would seemed success stories of resistance and criticism that other ethos which he called realistic, which not only agrees, but asserts that capitalism is the best of all possible worlds. It also showed that in a time when the continuous praise to the omnipresence of the capital, fueled by the cynicism of postmodernism, been pressured to forget the idea of \u200b\u200brevolution, now more than ever this idea should be reconsidered beyond the mythical bias gave the same currency. In this sense, all his thinking seems to be directed to renew the revolutionary discourse by the criticism of existing reality, and thus arouse desire, and even more the need, taught by the historical experience of a different society, not postmodern, but post-capitalist. From there we can say emphatically Bolívar Echeverría, who was not only a critical intellectual, but a profoundly revolutionary thinker.
What is the source of conception Echeverría critical? What their contribution to critical discourse inaugurated by Marx? In this paper I propose three approaches to test a response to these issues. In the first part, Echeverría explore reading of Marx's work on critical discourse. In the second, his questioning the concept Eurocentric culture, and its problematic cultural dimension of social life. In the third and last part, I refer to his theory of quad ethos of modernity, and his concept of Baroque ethos . The central thesis is that what gives a great cohesion and unity to the diversity of their thoughts is the critical attitude.
I. Crisis and Critical
Today no one denies that we have engaged in an unprecedented crisis, not just regional (Mexico or Latin America), but global. Although to what seems to be no common agreement is what kind of crisis is it? Bolívar Echeverría answered that question in a radical way and noted that it is something more than an economic crisis, political or cultural, or a combination of all these. To him we are facing a whole civilization crisis of capitalist modernity, which he overcame and subdued the other possible currencies. In this sense, the attitude of Echeverría deal with that crisis was always critical. However, critics said in many ways. That's why the first question posed to us by reading their texts is: what is critical thinking Bolívar Echeverría? And how does your perspective with critical philosophical tradition?
writes Plato in his dialogue and Political Kritik on techne, ie, art and art criticism. In this dialogue, Plato provides a review of the politician and refers to science ( Epistemon ) it possesses. Science divides his time between practical science and cognitive science, and serves as an example the architect, which not only addresses the workers but judged on what they do. Here the proper function of criticism (Kritik ) Is the judge, to judge, discern ( krinein ). (3) From there, perhaps the general interpretation of the philosophy of ancient Greece the concept of criticism ( kritikos-κριτικός ) refers to the ability to judge things practical, but also about the beautiful, good, as fair or true.
Although it appears that it is not until the eighteenth century Europe when the concept of critical acquired its strongest features. In this century in motion a philosophical discussion about the origin of knowledge and appreciation of beauty, amid which arise aesthetics as an autonomous discipline of art history and art criticism. (4) In this century also opens the so-called critical period of philosophy, with the work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and its three major criticisms. (5) Hence, for some historians of philosophy is also possible to call this century the century of criticism. (6)
Later, in the nineteenth century, the Young Hegelians make criticism of religion and the critique of Hegel's philosophy leitmotif in his philosophical. But one of those young men named Karl Marx, wrote that although the critique of religion is the premise of all criticism, however, criticism of heaven must become critical of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics. In this regard he writes: (7)
Der hat die Kritik an der Kette who dare zerpflückt Blumen, die nicht damit der Mensch phantasielose, Kette trostlose dress, sondern damit er die Kette abwerfe lebendige und die Blumen gap. (8)
In this passage the young Marx seems to announce, programmatically, which later developed in his work: a critique of capitalist modernity and the epistemological foundations on which to build their world historical, economic and political, and thus questioned the criticism that began enlightened reason, while the radical.
Bolívar Echeverría also part of this radical questioning of Enlightenment reason, as concrete historical forming is closely linked to modernity in general and capitalist modernity in particular. And for that, a discursive strategy builds all over his work, to address a common problem, I see it, could be presented in the following terms. Convinced that we are still in the civilizing project of modernity that emerge, and despite the deep crisis that crosses still in place, perhaps the question that accompanies all your reflection is what is modernity? And not stated in terms Kantians What is Enlightenment? but post what is this that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century began to be called modernity? What are your versions and dimensions?
So Echeverría's work can be understood as a whole strategy to unravel the enigma that raises the age modern. His strategy is a rich and complex critical discourse - to use the same common name coined to refer to the works of Marx, Adorno and Benjamin - who patiently builds over his work, and offers multiple paths for understanding the complexities of modernity, its inherent contradictions, and thus its historical forfeiture.
However, when speaking of civilization crisis Echeverría, refers to capitalist modernity can not develop without turning against the foundation that made it possible, namely that human work looking through the technical treatment natural abundance goods to satisfy needs, but the modern era, despite the enormous development of productive forces, rather than a society of abundance and happiness has led to a society of scarcity and unhappiness, which to meet those needs objectifies his humanity; and enhance the natural productivity at the same time destroys it. (9) The author's thesis of a thorough analysis of Marx's work and the theoretical and practical revolution that promotes, which in turn opened up a whole strand of thought in the twentieth century, with authors such as Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Lukács , Karl Korsch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Jean Paul Sartre, to name just some of the thinkers took up throughout his work. But a careful reading of the problems it raised some authors who could be considered adverse to Marxism, as Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, as Michel Foucault or Gilles Delueze. On the other hand, a reading of anthropological structuralism and linguistics of the twentieth century. Hence the complexity of thought that establishes a critical dialogue between seemingly opposing trends, but seeks not merge them into a higher synthesis, but put them in power to think the diversity of the real and demystify, thereby, to modernity. This is one of the most important contributions to critical discourse Bolivar Echeverría.
With regard to Marxism, in his book Critical discourse Marx (10) defines discourse as fundamentally Marxist critic, also opens up a theme he explores in his later work, specifically the relationship of theory production and social reproduction of Marx, and their relationship to production and symbolic reproduction, in relation to the problem of defining culture. (11) Both reflections will serve the author of theoretical background to form his theory of quad ethos of modernity, which is central to his reflection on modernity in Latin America and its relationship with the baroque ethos - as discussed below. (12)
Echeverría The critical concept largely part of his reading of Marx's work, but unlike many writers of his generation, interpreted not as a complete and definitive, or as a doctrine contains within itself all the truths revealed, but it does affirm their fundamentally negative. This means that Marx's speech is not, nor is meant as something positive, that is, as a refinement or a bourgeois liberal reform discourse, whether in the field of political economy, in the field of culture or history, and even in the field of knowledge, but Marx's speech is necessarily negative, destructive about the liberal bourgeois ideology, and therefore, if you lose that criticality is nothing, or maybe as the automaton chess player who has been reduced to historical materialism of Marxism, social democracy and Bolshevism, he spoke of Walter Benjamin in his famous thesis on the concept history, a robot that has all the answers to the questions of opponents, but that occasionally it would make you ask some questions.
Echeverría raised against dogmatic Marxism by the need a renewal of his speech from two historical perspective. The first tells us that the twentieth century is part of one single catastrophe which is structurally inherent destructiveness of capitalist modernity. A destructive character whose most barbaric manifestation were the two world wars and the triumph of fascism in Europe, but also the triumph of state capitalism, which some stubbornly called communism and the triumph of liberalism. And if it is true that the existence of the left has given a sense, though negative, the senselessness of history in the twentieth century, to the extent that "the left has lived this story barbaric as the denial of other possible history, however, the triumph of the counterrevolution in the twentieth century also speaks of the failure of that same right. (13)
The second perspective concerns the paradox of the Communist Left in Latin America, which sees no contradiction in putting two discourses whose origins are not only different, but whose tendency and purpose are conflicting. The author refers to the liberal discourse and ordinary discourse. Are conflicting, as the communist discourse emerges as a radical questioning of the very foundations of the liberal bourgeois, and not only in the field of political economy, but also, and equally force, the same epistemological foundations upon which rests the liberal conception of the world. (14)
From this dual historical perspective, Echeverria proposed, secondly, the need to renew the Marxist theoretical discourse, and do, in my opinion, from the challenge that suggests the so-called "post-structuralism "nitzscheana and heidegeriana inspiration, particularly criticism of Michel Foucault to Marxism. (15) Such a challenge arises for Echeverría some key issues that could be formulated as follows: Is it possible to think about Marx's speech beyond the time it emerges and shaped his thinking, ie, the nineteenth century?, "beyond its scientistic pretensions or essentialist? and if so in what sense is it possible? Echeverría's response leaves no doubt that is possible, because far from being a corpus closed, finished, and petrified, the work of Marx is instead an "open work" in constant construction and renovation, as the historical development of capitalism not only more complex but is diversified, and therefore a knowledge of it is only possible if this trend continues in critical sense. Thus, we might recall the conclusion reached Foucault himself when he questions what it still links us to the picture? He answers the critical attitude. (16) Similarly Echeverría could ask what is it that we are still linked to the Marxist discourse? Your response is critical.
II. The modern nomos anomic existence
In critical discourse Marx, Bolívar Echeverría reflection on a passage from the German Ideology Marx and Engels, which is written the material domain the ruling class is also necessarily an ideological dominance, as the ideas of the ruling class are not only overwhelmingly dominant because they are imposed by the means at their disposal.
The ideological struggle and the ideological are facts - he writes - that occur first and decisive manner, in the deep area of \u200b\u200bthe language of real life, where the speech occurs, the "language itself", ie "consciousness and ideas." (17)
This passage seems to me essential reading Echeverría did the work of Marx, on the one hand, it outlines the argument that the ideological domain is a domain that traverses the entire social body, including the language of daily life, and secondly, because it opens with a whole field of research that addresses and deepen throughout their investigations into the language and culture from a materialist perspective. (18)
In definition of culture, Echeverria says the concept of culture is formed around the contradictory conviction that substance is a "spiritual" empty of content, without govern human life , however, is distinctive evidence of the human. For him, this notion is inconsistent at the core of the idea of \u200b\u200bculture in modern discourse, in which "the fullness - writing - appears as a guarantee of completeness, the abstract as an emblem of the concrete. " Thus, modernity, enemy of the magic and myths, creates its own myths, and appears as an "immense charm, a reality that is built around a magic word, the spirit .
This concept is contradictory because modernity was a "Copernican revolution" (Kant) on how to understand, explain and construct reality, a revolution whereby the human being is the foundation of knowledge, power economic and political. Hence the contradiction, said Echeverria, as this does not lead to modern discourse without the concept of spirit, but rather to strengthen it as a feature of the culture and Western civilization against the "natural peoples", devoid of spirit and culture. Hence, also, under this concept underlies an "ethnocentric" to consider the spiritual as a "thank God" given to a chosen culture: modern Christianity from the Reformation.
Echeverría takes away from this idealized concept of culture and addresses the problem of the definition of culture recalling the dispute that took place in the fifties between Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Levi-Strauss. An argument that expresses a variant the ongoing conflict between the "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" (Nietzsche), between "nomos assertion in the constitution of human life" and "anomic emergence of ek-sistence " a conflict that also Echeverría addressed from the perspective on the linguistic bifacética constitution proposed by Saussure, that is, the life of the structure, language or code, on the one hand, and the activity of speech or language use, on the other.
Echeverría addressed the problem of defining culture in the discussion around facing each other are two views critical of the notion of spirit before that, as these two conceptions into question the role mystifying that such a notion within the project meets modern secular. In addition, both claiming the presence of freedom as a fundamental inherent physical, not metaphysical, of human life.
Now when Echeverría writes about culture does not refer to a function among others, but one dimension of the set of all, the social dimension of existence, its aspects and functions, ie the pervasiveness of cultural activity as an indispensable dimension of life social.
In support of this idea, establishing a Echeverría homology between social reproduction theory of Karl Marx and the process of linguistic communication Roman Jakobson argues, because he seems the most appropriate conceptual place for the construction of a theory of culture. This homology postulates the thesis that in the process of social reproduction not only involves a semiotic point, but between the process of social reproduction and the communication process is a substantial identity, namely that human beings by producing and consuming objects signs produced and consumed. Hence, hold that the proper and dominant of human life is that in social reproduction, production and consumption practical objects, necessarily implies a semiotic point. And this production / consumption of meanings is formed, at another level, a sui generis practicality purely semiotic. In this semiotic universe of dominates the political over the animal and it is there where Echeverria is the key to the characterization of culture.
From this perspective, Bolívar Echeverría culture characterizes as "self-critical when playing a particular human group, in particular historical circumstances, its uniqueness makes particular, is the dialectical moment of growing their identity. " (19) This definition of culture as self-critical culture of identity involves three critical moments in the idealist and ethnocentric culture of modern discourse.
First, against the conception that sees culture as a backup or preservation of community identity, and identifies culture and nation state, Echeverría conceived as growing self-critical cultural dimension of identity within a same community, but especially in the contact you have with others. In this sense, the cultural dimension also implies openness towards others.
Second, compared to a currency that tends to separate more and more the realm of the ordinary, targeted to the very productive, and the scope of the extraordinary, increasingly occupied by the culture industry, writes that culture as self-critical culture identity also means the constant emergence of the extraordinary in the ordinary level, two areas that even in the more technical and automated society can be completely separate.
Third, compared with a rigidly hierarchical society as modern, not only separate the intellectual from manual labor, but also separates popular culture of the "high culture, believes that there has always been a constant interplay between popular culture and high culture, to the extent that the border between them appears to be somewhat arbitrary, since in reality one needs the other .
However, the culture as a cloistered existence manifests itself in myriad ways in daily life, and therefore are also numerous opportunities it has to be done. These forms Echeverría classifies them into three schemes: the game, the art and the party. A common feature distinguishes these three schemes, it writes:
of persecution obsessive one experience cyclical, fundamental political experience of the cancellation and restoration of the sense of the world of life, destruction and reconstruction of the "naturalness" of humanity, namely the "need-contingent" its existence. (20)
Here another contribution of Bolívar Echeverría critical discourse, a critical characterization of culture, which in the midst of the oppressive necessity of truth brings up the contingent as establishing human.
III. Culture and barbarism
Existence in itself is breaking the cultural dimension, however, is constantly being subjected to the device civilization of modern capitalism. Hence, Echeverria says there is a crisis irreversible modern Western culture, commonly called "high culture", but which no compensation has led to the strengthening of the "low culture" or "popular culture" (Benjamin), but the submission of both a "cultural industry" (Adorno and Horkheimer). For him, this appears to be facing a catastrophic event: the "death of culture" and "replace it by production and consumption of leisure and entertainment events, scheduled for a society turned into mere spectator of his own destiny ...". (21)
Here, Echeverria assumed the radical questioning of Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment , however it did not fall into pessimism and criticism raises another question from such a radical: is neo-barbarism of a cultural industry inevitable fate? Is there no evidence in everyday life that contradict this trend? For him, if the historical dynamics were only determined by the figure of capitalist modernity, effectively This target would be irreparable, because its "inherent tendency is to destroy the other and the self-destruction of humanity." (22) However, although the device dominates capitalist modernity, however, says:
Their strength is nothing other than his own creative force of society which it has when it operates according to its "natural" or reference to "use value" of the world of life-force that he can only deflect and deform. Would drown for him to suicide ... (23)
This ambivalence is, for Echeverria, the sign transient crisis we're in, that may well lead to total barbarism, but it appears the project of an alternative modernity, albeit still repressed. The crisis of culture would thus mean not only the sign of a neo-barbarism, but also the possible transit to a new beginning of civilization that is already in germ in the field of everyday life. In this regard he writes:
Looking for a redefinition of itself (culture) seems to be inserted into a circuit that connects differently with spontaneous culture that comes from everyday life, work and basic enjoyment of social life; a circuit is no longer vertical, discriminatory, as in all past history, but horizontally, "rhizomatic proliferation", inclusive. (24)
Indeed, for Echeverría modernity is not uniform or monolithic reality, but it coexist in countless different versions of herself, which certainly have been subjugated or forgotten by the existing currency but no longer present today. Hence, the theory postulates Quadruple ethos of modernity as a questioning of the belief that the existing world is the best of all possible worlds. According to this belief is a correspondence between the "spirit of capitalism" and "Protestant ethic" (Max Weber). Ie can not be a currency that is not capitalist, and therefore the only way to start the revolutionizing of the productive forces is one that outlines around the "Protestant ethic." The "Protestant ethic," writes the author, is "the individual technical self-repression and self-satisfaction productivist sublimated" own "the spirit of capitalism." The "Spirit of Capitalism, meanwhile, is a" structurally ambitious human behavior, rationalizing and progressive. "The meeting between" the spirit of capitalism "and" Protestant ethic "would, therefore, the necessary condition for the organization of life under the imperative of capital accumulation. (25)
But for Echeverria is a whole world building principle of social life, to what he calls historical ethos, that is, "a behavior that tries to make it unlivable livable, a species updating of a strategy to dissolve, and not to solve, a certain specific way of contradiction that constitutes the human condition. " (26) En otras palabras, la vida práctica en la vida moderna debe desarrollarse en un mundo cuya forma objetiva se encuentra estructurada en torno a la presencia dominante del hecho capitalista. Tal hecho alberga una contradicción, un “conflicto permanente --escribe-- entre tendencias contrapuestas de dos dinámicas simultáneas.” Se refiere a que, por una parte, la vida social es un proceso de trabajo y de disfrute, referido a “valores de uso”, por la otra, es también la reproducción de su riqueza, que bajo la forma capitalista, se expresa como un proceso de “valorización de valor abstracto”. El conflicto se da --escribe-- cuando una y otra vez, y sin cesar, “la primera es sacrificada the second and referred to it. "(27)
Now to Echeverría if it is true that capitalist reality is an inescapable historical fact, however, there are four ways of living under capitalism, each one of which involves a particular attitude to the aforesaid contradiction. These attitudes are conceptualized by him as ethos (28), ie, as forms of "internalized" capitalism in the spontaneity of everyday life. Four are, therefore, ethos of modernity: the realistic, romantic, classical and baroque.
The ethos realistic is characterized as an affirmative and militant attitude towards the process of recovery of value, and although she claims to be faithful to the way socio-natural, enhanced both quantitatively and qualitatively, in truth it does is suppress and distort it. For the realist ethos have a full identity, unitary and indivisible, including the development of productive forces and the valorization of value. This ethos is realistic , moreover, not only because it affirms the effectiveness of the existing world, but also because it says the "impossibility of an alternative world." (29)
The romantic ethos by Meanwhile, also confuses the two terms (between use value and exchange value), but in contrast to the first, it does not in favor of expanding value but use value. This is romantic ethos because for him the appreciation of the value is not just another way of carrying out the natural way.
As to classical ethos, it is perceived as something capitalist contradiction is offset by the positivity of the effective existence. The spontaneity of the capitalist reality for this ethos is seen as the result of a transcendent need. This ethos perceived negativity the course of things, but not committed against such a course, but fit so tragic comprehensive compliance world.
Finally, baroque ethos is not transcendent addition to the need of the capitalist made, but it is unacceptable and alien. In this regard Echeverría writes:
is an affirmation of the "natural" world of life that paradoxically part of the experience of that form as defeated and buried the capital devastating action.
This ethos intended to restore the specific qualities of wealth re-inventing reports or furtively as qualities of "second degree." (30)
To Echeverria, baroque ethos is like Bataille's idea of \u200b\u200beroticism is the adoption of life even in death. Thus the baroque ethos can be understood as a form that allows the destruction of the living quality by making capitalism creating another dimension of quality, challenging and imaginative. And while baroque ethos, he says, does not eliminate "the inherent contradiction in the world of life in capitalist modernity," nor denies it, but recognizes it as inevitable, however refuses to accept it. (31)
These four ethos Echeverria correspond to different successive impulses of modernity: the Nordic, the Central, Western and Mediterranean, respectively. Each of these versions of the modern form ethos of contemporary social life, although none of these four strategies can be civilizing in isolation or exclusive, but are interacting with them, but always prevail one over the other. In fact, it is realistic ethos that has come to play the dominant role over others, which organizes its combination with the other and forces to lead him to become manifest. The ethos realistic scheme corresponds to a civilization that requires and enforces the use of the "Protestant ethic" and that part of the Christian mystification to translate the demands of capitalist productivity to the level of individual self-disciplined technique, capitalist productivity and at the bank of the butcher slaughters the value in use constantly - and thus, individuals and peoples - to the benefit of the appreciation of value.
Moreover, the baroque ethos for the author, which is generated and developed in various social and historical circumstances, is an ordering principle the world of life, but not the core of any identity, but rather is the stakes that the actual life of society affirms its cultural uniqueness. This baroque ethos has had a peculiar attachment and development in Mexico and Latin America, although the author is not using this concept of folkloric noun or the "Latin" as "baroque" or "magical realist", which would mean passively accept the old descriptions of the speech of the other forms of modern ethos, which relegates the pre-modern to the baroque ethos . It is rather to understand the uniqueness of a process socio-cultural in a specific time, but on condition that, as recommended by Walter Benjamin, the critical eye turns against the historical continuity from the brush against the grain of the magnificence of history.
From this perspective, the particularity of baroque ethos Echeverría can be illustrated for the American history of Spain from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (32) First, because the baroque mode modern ethos prevailed with particular force in this society built on the almost total destruction of American civilization, on the other, because the long dominance of the Baroque ethos first open and then underground, in these societies have allowed the creation of new forms. Indeed, in the early seventeenth century, American Spain was the scene of two different historical periods in which its people were the protagonists of two plays: one in decline, the conquest and evangelization, and another beginning: civilizational and cultural miscegenation.
But it is also true that, between the Indian and English civilization - Echeverria said - there was a huge and radical amazement, he did not recognize homogeneous areas, or bridges of any kind that could unify. Hence, the coexistence of English and the Indians were a constant boycott. But the conditions of the population in the U.S. Spain opened the possibility of accepting a reciprocal relationship with the indigenous population and African.
What were the circumstances? The dream of the sixteenth century - writes Echeverría - a Europe in America had ended. Spain had lost all interest in the transatlantic area. The scheme European civilization in America could no longer meet their reproductive cycle that was organic and permanent contact with the metropolis. But not only the European civilization was fading, but also, and perhaps faster, indigenous civilizations, political and religious whose presence had been virtually annihilated by the barbarism of the conquest. These civilizations, therefore, were unable to replace the European civilization. Hence, there was the threat of the disappearance of both, leading to join both the "natural" as the English to the danger of a new barbarism.
However, Echeverría also raised that, despite the crisis was going through the scheme European civilization was the only one that allowed the organization of social life; the other, the "natural", although it had not been completely destroyed or replaced, was no longer able to challenge the supremacy, however, if he accepted the European civilization as a guarantee scheme of social life, it did not passively, but who came to his aid, was confused with him and reconstituted in order to remain current threat.
So the "fusion" of cultural forms appeared - according to Echeverría - as a strategy of "survival" as the affirmation of life after death. His stage was the city life, there where indigenous and African cohabited with the English. The strategy of survival, or resistance, passed not only by the acceptance of the construction of the world brought by the conquistadors, but by their defense, often without the cooperation of the rulers, and yet even against him.
However, it should be noted that when speaking of miscegenation Echeverría not figure refers to the chemical or biological which is often commonly associated, but rather refers to the process semiotic under which could be thought of as codigofagía :
The subcodificaciones or singular configurations specific code and the human seem to have no other way to coexist with each other than to devour one another, the striking destructively in the center symbolizing establishing the front and having appropriate and integrate itself subjecting themselves to a fundamental change, the remains are still alive to it later. (33)
In this regard, according to Echeverria, the baroque is made manifest in Latin America not only in his works of art or literary works, but especially in his use of language in the forms of politics and everyday life. Thus, citing Sarduy, we could say, baroque behavior means "threatening, try and parody the bourgeois economy, based on the administration of property stingy in its center and foundation: the space of signs, language, symbolic support of society, ensuring its operation, its communication. " (34) Indeed, baroque ethos is, according to Echeverria, the affirmation of the concrete embodiment of "use value" which ends in a reconstruction of this embodiment, is a strategy that grudgingly accepts the laws of commodity circulation, to which this embodiment is sacrificed, but does so while also disagreed with and submits them to a set of transgressions that the rework.
A final consideration. As I tried to show the rich and complex diversity of reflections of Bolívar Echeverría is common: the critical work. A critique of capitalist modernity, his idealized concept of culture and their conceptions of historical and cultural phenomena. In this sense, although it is true, as Adorno said, "there is no right living in the false", however, Echeverria shows how even amidst the false, constantly bursts of human existence, refuses to be reduced a mere object in the production process commercial transgresses and subverts, through a baroque attitude to how realistic modern ethos, and makes it through play, art and celebration, typical of the cultural dimension, but also by the critical work that Bolívar Echeverría cultivated with great skill.
NOTES
1. "There is no right living in falsehood." Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia . Aus dem Leben beschädigten reflect , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2001, p. 59.
2. Echeverría, Bolívar, Back century, Era, Mexico, 2006, p. 165.
3. Plato Political , Dialogues V , Gredos, Madrid, 2000, pp. 489-294.
4. Muzzle, Valeriano, "Origins of modern aesthetics," History of aesthetic ideas and theories of contemporary art. I. Raft of the Medusa , Visor, Madrid, 2000.
5. I refer of course to: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and criticism of the faculty of judging (Urteilskraft) (1790). It is no coincidence the noun 'Critique' as the common name of these three works.
6. See Cassirer, Ernst, Philosophy of illustration, FCE, Mexico, 1997. Especially pp. 304-393.
7. View: Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie . 1843/44. English version: For a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right , there are several editions in Castilian.
8. "Critics have defoliated the imaginary flowers from the chains, not the man wear his chains without fantasy or consolation, but to throw their chains and take the flowers alive. "Here the imaginary flowers means religious self-alienation, while the chains of alienation from the real world. (The translation is mine).
9. See Echeverría, Bolívar, "El ethos barroco" in Modernity, cultural mestizaje, baroque ethos , UNAM / The tightrope, Mexico, 1994. A reworked version of this text of the Baroque Modernity , Era, Mexico, 1997.
10. Echeverría, Bolívar, critical discourse Marx, Era, Mexico, 1986.
11. This was the subject of his course "Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture" conducted between 1981-1982 in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UNAM, to be published years later under the title Defining culture , Ithaca, Mexico, 2001. Recently reissued by the FCE.
12. This issue is exposed in the first essay, "The Baroque ethos" in Modernity, cultural mestizaje, baroque ethos. Later troubled and complex in relation to other fields of knowledge in his book The modern baroque. It is worth mentioning here that Echeverría established a very productive dialog with authors like Sarduy, Lezama Lima and Carlos Rincón, to approach the issue of the baroque from a Latin American perspective, but richer in previous investigations.
13. See Echeverría, Bolívar, "Presentation" to critical discourse Marx.
14. Cf Echeverría, Bolívar, "the materialism of the Sea" in Idem.
15. Foucault's criticism was directed more toward a certain kind of Marxism, particularly the French Communist Party, or of Soviet Marxism, that the theoretical apparatus Marx, as shown in the text What is critical? , where Foucault establishes an affinity between his theoretical discourse and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, which as is known, was attentive readers of Marx.
16. See Foucault, Michel, "What is Enlightenment?" In Main Works, Vol III, Polity Press, Madrid, 1999, pp. 335-352.
17. Echeverría, Bolívar, critical discourse Marx, p. 41.
18. "Materialism" is a critical concept, not a philosophical or political doctrine. And in this sense it expresses Echeverría in his reading of Marx that comment, in his own work and criticism of the idealistic conception of culture that does. On this concept in Marx's work see: The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach, opposed to the idealistic and materialistic. In the critical work of Echeverria, two perspectives, in addition to the critique of political economy was framed to address the problems posed by modernity: a cultural philosophy that developed in their courses on 'Problems of Philosophy of Culture', and the other historical-philosophical, which develops in his book The modernity of the baroque .
19. Echeverría, Bolívar, Definition of Culture, p. 187
20. Ibid., P. 200.
21. Echeverría, Bolívar, Back century, p. 17.
22. Idem.
23. Ibid., Pp. 17-18
24. Idem.
25. See Echeverría, Bolívar, The baroque modernity.
26. "Ethos Baroque" in Modernity, mestizaje cultural ethos Baroque, p. 19.
27. The contradiction that Marx wrote in his capital, Echeverría serves to analyze phenomena of another order, as the socio-cultural behavior of social life we \u200b\u200bare seeing.
28. The term ethos has a double meaning referred to a defense or passive, in the sense of dwelling, clothing or shelter, and a resource or asset offensive, weapon. "Joint the concept of" use, custom or automatic ortamiento comp ... with the concept of character, personality or way of being. " See Modernity, cultural mestizaje, ethos Baroque , p. 18.
29. Ibid., P. 20.
30. Ibid., P. 21 and 22.
31. Ibid., P. 21.
32. And before we can find expressions of this singularity, when, for example, Indians in Mexico in the sixteenth century, not as I thought Creole Edmundo O'Gorman, became the Catholic rite of the Virgin Mary in Guadalupe ritual. (See: "The Guadalupe and the baroque ethos in America," in whiteness and modernity , Era, Mexico, 2010. Or even earlier, in the figure of Malinche, the only interpreter of two linguistic codes different, which makes up a third, the strategy of cultural mix, to make credible the illusion of communication. (See, "Malinche, the language" in The modernity of the baroque ).
33. Echeverría, Bolívar, Modernity, cultural mestizaje, baroque ethos , p. 32.
34. Quoted in Echeverría, Bolívar, The modernity of the baroque , p. 17. Sarduy text is: Baroque , South America, Buenos Aires, 1974.
Source: Rebellion (21-02-2011)
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