Praise of the perplexity (1)
José Ignacio López Soria
intellectuals adrift
For several decades, the "intelligentsia" in Peru, but not only here, is affected by a crisis that not get out gracefully. He has slipped through his fingers the object of their professionalism, not only ideology but the theory. The thing began with criticism of the roads came, then the lack of sources, and added, finally, the opacity of the goals. I am mainly referring to socialism as a fount of theoretical and practical alternatives to think and organize human experience.
From the beginning, was in some perplexity. The crisis served them to question the foundations of their knowledge and beliefs and even the most seasoned, the suspect drove around foundation lurks a desire totalitarian. Not a few, nostalgic for the assurance that they had before they decided to put his tent on the other side and earn his bread there is usually decent, although there are examples of flagrant indignity, with the sweat of their service. There are still determined to regain some ground lost through shaving operations or, in the best case, attempts to refound often convince a few. Finally, there are those who grumble among and show friends in literary circles dismay over the lack of alternatives ethically sustainable and politically viable, but coexist peacefully with the system and not lift a finger to change it.
With regard to liberalism, the other source of alternatives, things are not much better. As we well know, liberalism was never in Peru practitioners of theoretical substance, if we exclude the trials of the first proponents of the "discourse of emancipation" and who then coded the hope of realization of the promise of Peruvian life the defense of individual freedom in the demystification of the society or the achievement of welfare. The post-creole liberalism and this, more than inspiration to imagine and organize a good society has been and remains acclimation clumsy solutions "copy and carbon copy" of prescriptions or interested obedience to orders from beyond our borders. Among
perplexed seekers assurances, submitted, grumbling and copying of recipes, I think the "perplexity" is the position in theory and practice more successful because, as the "admiration" in the origins of Western philosophy and "methodical doubt "at the beginning of modernity, it invites the creation of new categories to orient today's world and know what to expect.
Speaking Securities
We come, as I argued in more than one occasion, a world of security in the domains of culture and in the sub-rational action with respect to the end.
knew with certainty what to expect in the realm of objectivity did not meet the adequacy criterion of truth, coherence and consistency and guarantees the rightness of the method, the rational argument as rhetoric for the conviction, and all based, ultimately, evidence of a subject acculturated own and supposedly transcendent.
In the domain of legitimacy, we were taught to define good as correspondence with an equally important notion of "human nature", and put on consensus was built in an environment free of violence allegedly the source of legitimacy of power.
Finally, with regard to representation, the beauty is defined as harmony and proportionality, and art as a form of self-consciousness of humanity that can not be said to express it conceptually.
It was, therefore, to apply criteria paradigm offered by the overarching metadiscourse to reach the true, good, fair, what is ethically permissible, political correctness and beauty.
course criticism is not excluded, only that it is a procedural review that is made from the same paradigm and, consequently, aims to assess whether the procedures were correct, always leaving intact the foundations of knowledge, value and reconfiguration of the sensible, provided by the encompassing discourse.
The world of the subsystems of rational action based on securities acts: representative democracy to ensure that the macro-management (policy) will lead to the achievement of justice and freedom, the industrialization of production and reproduction of goods for ensure the optimal exploitation of natural resources and ensuring the welfare and the market as the most suitable instrument to ensure balance in the exchange and justice in distribution, the school as the most efficient and effective to produce, reproduce and transmit knowledge, values, expertise and attitudes; the regular army to ensure security and legal use of violence, etc..
Security in the case of the subsystems of action resulting from the application of procedures for an essentially teleological and instrumental rationality that is based on a precise and controlled the media in relation to the purpose. This rationale led to the end and made no disguised, its best known is the phrase "the end justifies the means."
Beyond the nation state
Although the discourse of the securities is stated as valid for the general man, however, it is reduced to a set of institutions that shape the nation-state. The construction of the nation state and its full realization constitute the horizon of expectations of the proponents of speech and of the peoples under their control or influence. It was necessary to perform an operation of detaching the discourse itself and its objectification in relation to their origins in order to present them as belonging to the human. The modern discourse of a unilinear and teleological universal history is no small responsibility en esta transformación. Pasamos así por varios siglos en los que, para saber a qué atenerse en los dominios de la cultural y de la acción humana, bastaba con apropiarse de ese discurso e institucionalizar sus formas de objetivación.
Los esfuerzos por acogerse en el Perú a las seguridades que ofrecía el modelo se expresan en dos discursos paralelos y frecuentemente opuestos. El “discurso de emancipación”, que nos viene de los ilustrados peruanos de finales del XVIII y que se propone el logro de la libertad y de la justicia, y el “discurso de civilización”, propio de ingenieros y empresarios, que se orienta a la realización del bienestar. Ambos discursos ponen en la construcción nation-state guarantee for the realization of the promise of Peruvian life. Do not know, of course, that in each there are several common-conservative, liberal, socialist, "but the differences between them, at which have focused mainly ideological struggles, do not invalidate their agreement on the fundamental objective of organizing society under the nation-state paradigm.
decay of speeches
some decades ago, with the overflow of the institutional dimensions of modernity began depletion in modern discourse, and emancipatory versions of civilization. Provided assurances that the modern project for know what to expect in the realms of culture and social action began to weaken. The weakness has affected the adequacy and criteria of coherence and consistency in the domains of knowledge. Acculturated the concept of subject is being reviewed from the perspective of an inter-culturally linked. The consensus is beginning to be seen as a non-manipulable but only suspected of domination for the benefit of a particular notion of good society. The modern idea of \u200b\u200bhuman nature reveals itself as a file to universalize the Western conception of the human. The harmony and proportion as standards of beauty and reduced to a form of art autocercioramiento unaware of the rich variety of aesthetic forms of the many diverse cultures that populate the world. The nation-state as the quintessential form of organization and macro-management is being overwhelmed in all its institutional dimensions. Taylorist production and the domestic market crumble against the onslaught of globalization. The old ideas of progress regulatory and world history become inadequate when many people decide to speak and tell their own story. In short, not only that the speech is weakened. It has also weakened, to put it in more abstract terms, the very idea of \u200b\u200bbeing and that we had inherited from the metaphysical and that modern form of metaphysics that we know as science.
And when the speeches encompassing weaken when it relaxes the world of forms, conceptual, axiological, aesthetic and practical differences are released and the world comes with a complexity that we do not manage to control either theoretical or practical.
The state of perplexity
is not uncommon in this context, the state of perplexity is the mood of our time more fruitful. The state of perplexity (per-plexus) is the most intellectually adequate answer to the world complex (com-plexus) that we are living. Plexus is the Latin term to describe to folding, the fabric, bonded, but in a texture whose components are hardly discernible and hierarchical.
From the perspective of the world of securities and languages \u200b\u200bset, the perplexity is defined as "confusion" over what is, "doubt" against the established knowledge and "indecision" or "indecision" as opposed to doing. Not hard to see in the perplexity that it is also an invitation to madness, the desire not to get caught up in the grip of environmental sanity creativity.
Perplexity invited to take our time as a time of transit, "after" securities and boldness of rationality in use and their concrete expressions in the domain of objectivity, legitimacy, representation and praxis. From the perplexity is strengthened the will of a radical search that puts into question not only the procedures but the foundations of knowledge and power, of valuing and doing. This search is not lost, however, the complexity and multiplicity of reality, not the present nor sanctifies comfortably installed in taking what he is like the horizon of being. Perplexity is not to be resigned to not to theorize, it means another daring to theorize on the meaning of the term butt: to examine and inspect exploring new dimensions and accepting the complexity and multiplicity than it is. There is, therefore, in perplexity autocercioramiento a will, knowing conduct in that complexity without impoverishment or reduce it to unity. Far, however, the state of perplexity the claim of being in an Archimedean point to move the world from outside. The awareness of partiality, of involvement in the process of theory building from the peculiarities of their own cultural and linguistic affiliation, is the mood of perplexity. Back to top
is not uncommon that intellectuals are drifting, born and brought by the waves and tempted by the sirens cozy living their caves at the edges of streams. Some know, have succumbed to temptation and to be offered as grotesque actors of the shows mounted system. Others prefer to cling to the planks from the destroyed boat dreaming of escape from the wreck. The truth is that it is not easy to know what to believe because it is not that intellectuals are drifting because they have decided to plunge into the waves but because the boats sailing in all safe, although with different paths, have been or are falling apart and they are left for those who remain will still emerge with dignity, but deal with the surge, dare to theorize.
theorizing today is, first, be in a world gone by processes that are leading to a change of time and insufficient understanding of which categories and categorical connections to inherit the modern paradigm. I will list only some of these processes:
• globalization, which requires us to make the world a frame of reference of the collection, recovery, sensitive representation of human action;
• the weakening of nation-state, with overflow their institutional objectification and the loosening of loyalties and social connections that he is;
desfisicalización • the reality, which forces us to vérnoslas with a virtuality that is not graspable or manipulable with traditional means of apprehension and handling of physical reality;
• the enormous availability of information and resources for processing.
addition to these processes, easily perceptible point on the horizon other trends, aspirations and proposals that also challenge our ability theory and practice:
• the resurgence of cultural identities that weakens national identities;
• the desuniversalización of speech universal history and the decision of the people to speak and tell their own story;
• deterritorialization of political and ethical regulations in terms of values \u200b\u200bsupranational reculturización
• the values \u200b\u200band standards and the demands for legalization of "cultural citizenship";
• interactive and transparent society as an ideal of a just society;
• recognition of the community and its cultural horizon as constituting identity, and therefore the right to cultural membership;
• consideration of the self and not just potential but as reflective experiential fabric of relationships, beliefs and backgrounds, which means that the individual is constituted dialogically and therefore, its identity is not an immutable fact but the result of an interaction, a constant negotiation with their environment;
• consideration of others, and not as the limit of my self but as a subject of interaction that is me and you is;
• the right to manage the natural environment from the lifetimes of each culture
• the reference to the responsibility and the foundation of ethics and regulations not supposed transcendent (sacred: divine order, or profane: order of being, human nature) but the diversity of ways of living to ensure an interactive dialogue;
• recognition of the irreducibility of cultural diversity and the establishment of the principle of multiculturalism demands respect for cultural definitions of life and good society;
• the paralogy as a way of approaching reality that allows the exploration of dimensions not predictable from traditional logic.
is not uncommon, again, to fester disorientation among intellectuals. Processes, trends, aspirations and proposals currently hovering not seem easily systematized. Even the idea of \u200b\u200bsystem has become suspect. So I argue that the perplexity is the most fruitful theoretical and practical because of the doubt but dares to theorize without any effort to reduce the complexity and diversity of the real.
For the specific case of Peru, say finally, the audacity to theorize from the perplexity leads us to say goodbye to the two speeches, the emancipation and civilization, they thought Peru since the nation-state paradigm. This means saying goodbye to pain, thinkers who inspired our vision of the past in our present, but whose thoughts do not serve us and to think this and know what to expect.
Notes (1) Published in: Threshold. Review of knowledge and ignorance. Lima, n ° 13, nov. 2001, p. 13-21. Included in: Soria López, José Ignacio. Goodbye Mariátegui. Thinking Peru in postmodern perspective. Lima: Fondo Editorial Congress, 2007, p. 45-56.
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