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History
of
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PROCEEDINGS
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Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on the History of Concepts
Bilbao and San Milln de la Cogolla (La Rioja), 2931 August 2013
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/conf.hcg2013.2
ORGANIZERS
Grupo de Historia Intelectual de la Poltica Moderna UPV
Universidad del Pas Vasco Euskal Herriko Univertsitatea
Cilengua Centro Internacional de Investigacin de la Lengua Espaola
Iberconceptos Proyecto y red de investigacin en historia conceptual comparada del
mundo iberoamericano
Contributions to the History of Concepts HPSCG
SPONSORS
Ayuntamiento de Bilbao
Centro de Estudios Polticos y Constitucionales Ministerio de la Presidencia
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE 16TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON THE HISTORY OF CONCEPTS
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/conf.hcg2013.2
Suggested citation:
Author (2013), Title of Paper, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on
the History of Concepts, Bilbao, pages, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/conf.hcg2013.2
3
Table of Contents
PLENARY
SESSION
I ....................................................................................................................13
History: The Name and the Concept Yesterday and Today.................................................13
PARALLEL
SESSIONS
I .................................................................................................................14
GROUP
A
Enlightenment
and
Historical
Culture .....................................................................14
Enlightenment and Freemasonry. Hypothesis for a Post-koselleckian Conceptualisation ..14
History of History at Present Time: Some Disciplinary and Professional Implications
concerning the Concept of Historical Culture .....................................................................30
Tracking the Enlightenment Across the Nineteenth Century ...........................................33
GROUP
B
Ideologies
and
Political
Concepts
in
the
20th
Century..............................................42
What is Liberalism? Definitions, Approaches, Narratives...................................................42
Begriffsgeschichte and Hermeneutics: Reflections on the Theoretical Base of Conceptual
History ..................................................................................................................................44
Fascismo y antifascismo durante la II Repblica: una aproximacin histrico-conceptual 45
Conceptual Asymmetries in Totalitarian and Democratic Discourse: Leadership Tools or
Ideological Buzzwords? .......................................................................................................46
GROUP
C
Identidades
y
grupos
tnicos
en
Amrica
Latina .....................................................48
Acerca del inventario conceptual de los hombres del orbe indiano de la poca hispnica..48
El movimiento indgena ecuatoriano y su discurso - Un anlisis de discurso centrado en los
conceptos ..............................................................................................................................55
Los yoremes de Sinaloa y su inclusin a la sociedad de la informacin..............................62
Conceptos de la modernidad poltica en guaran..................................................................63
GROUP
D
Aproximaciones
tericas .........................................................................................64
Notes from the Abyss: Rethinking Colonial and Postcolonial Historical Concepts ............64
El concepto de concepto en Quest-ce que la philosophie? de Gilles Deleuze................76
Conceptos pedaggicos en la obras de John Dewey y Anton S. Makarenko: un
acercamiento comparativo....................................................................................................82
Conceptos ms contextos. Algunos apuntes metodolgicos sobre la relacin entre memoria
e historia conceptual.............................................................................................................90
Conceptual History and the Latin American Academic World: Predicaments at Hand and
Challenges Ahead.................................................................................................................91
GROUP
E
Conceptos
de
la
vida
poltica
en
la
modernidad
hispana
e
hispanoamericana .......96
10
11
12
PLENARY
SESSION
I
History: The Name and the Concept Yesterday and Today
Franois Hartog (Francois.Hartog@ehess.fr)
CNRS-EHESS, Paris
13
PARALLEL
SESSIONS
I
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
My paper aims at formulating new working hypothesis concerning the relationship
between Enlightenment and Freemasonry, revealing some of Koselleck-type
interpretative deficiencies as well as the meanings of the two key-concepts in the light
of the 18th century intellectual history. Freemasonry is institutionally complicated, and it
seems that Koselleck did not understand the functioning mechanism of these kinds of
societies. He calls them secret, while in reality they called themselves discrete. To a
large extent, Freemason societies were supporters of the Reform during the
Enlightenment period.
Firstly, they did not substitute themselves for religion; they couldnt do that. Secondly,
their activity was based on ritual rather than on a political philosophy. And thirdly, the
lodges were joined by representatives of different social categories such as nobles,
traders, handicraftsmen (bourgeois), journalists, civil servants, writers, scientists,
statesmen. All in all, their members belonged to professional elites rather than to simply
intellectual and political elites. During the Enlightenment period, freemasons excelled
through a reformist orientation, through preoccupation for sciences and symbols,
through communication and civism, modernization and social organization.
Freemasons lodges had very much changed their ideological orientation during the
Romantic era and during the period of nationalisms, when they embraced construction
of identity mythology and insinuated themselves into the policies of the 1789
revolutions in France and of the 1848 revolution in the rest of Europe. Reinhard
14
Koselleck did not study the phenomenon either from the viewpoint of the facts, nor
from the viewpoint of the lives of the lodges, or of the symbols and of their messages,
hence the importance of the analysis and respectively of conceptualization of an
omnipresent phenomenon in the modern world which pretends itself to be evaluated
beyond numerous speculations.
TEXT/TEXTO:
Controversies concerning the concept of Enlightenment
The concept of Enlightenment refers to instruction, knowledge, progress, social
emancipation, and freedom from under the bondage of nature, rationalisation of it and
of its own actions. Alike the transformation of legend in history, separation of
philosophy from myth was fundamental not only because it promoted analysis and
reason based on science, but also because it contributed to the genesis of cultural code
of modern world. Despite the fact that the many ideological and political evolutions
were rooted in Enlightenment, when we analyse the concept, its sense has to be seen in
relation with context, philosophical orientations and principles of society which
formulated or adopted it. Enlightenment does not involve overbidding factology, or
utilitarianism, or nowadays consumership. It is exaggerated to assimilate it to the
totalitarian ideas of the 20th century, as Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno did it
under the influence of the WWII tragedies. They asserted that the Enlightenment had
always felt, even after the liberalism period, with social constraint and that it is
as totalitarian as any system can be. Its falsehood does not consist in what romanticist
enemies had always reproached to it, that is: analytical method, abridgement to
elements, destructive reflection, but the fact that for it the sense of process is determined
from the very first jump1.
Even when they propose to debate the concept, the above-mentioned
philosophers neglect unjustifiably the very era, insisting on deficiencies inherited from
past times or on those born during the Enlightenment period. They consider that through
math, engine and organisation, Enlightenment sacrificed thought which in turn takes its
revenge on people who forgot it2. As for the critics developed by the enlightened
scholars, Horkheimer and Adorno drive them into a corner. They say that the
Enlightenment instrument was and abstraction, a constraint of people to conformity,
while language was an accounting instrument etc. Even though critical analysis gained
ground during the Enlightenment period, it did not become the most important factor of
change, of transition from medieval to modern, of social and political reforms.
Following the phenomenon of time we can see that thought, be it either criticalrational, or speculative, was one of the major topics of Enlightenment scholars. Their
1
15
Reinhart Koselleck , Kritik und Krise. Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der brgerlichen Welt, (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), p. 31. Die Neutralisierung des Gewissens durch die Politik leistet der
Verweltichung der Moral Vorschub. Die Mediatisierung der kirlichen Gegenstze, die mit der
Ausprgung des absolutistischen Staates einherging, macht die schrittweise Ausweitung der auf natur
und Vernunft gegrndeten moralischen Weltsicht mglich.
16
code promoted by church. The example of the Habsburg Empire demonstrated that it
collaborated with the Church, based itself on its relationship, benefited from its cultural
heritage when, following the wars with the Ottoman Empire, expanded their domination
in Central and Southeastern Europe. The colonisations from the 18th century were done
with Catholic populations, their integration being deliberated and realized based on
religious and moral relationships developed by imperials and the Roman-Catholic
Church. The Habsburgs thought about setting-up new churches in order to subordinate
the newly subdued populations to their administration and territorial interests. It is the
case of the Greek-Catholic Church, subservient to the Vatican and grounded on mix
values, both Orthodox and Catholic. The phenomenon is happening in regions such as
Transylvania and Ukraine and it is the result of collaboration between state and Church.
The imperials were also those who spread enlightened ideas from top to the bottom,
controlling the effects. The emperor had to take into consideration the norms set out by
the churches, the natural law and international treaties and conventions. Should the
former juridical norms, organisation of religious life and social and institutional
hierarchies funded during the previous centuries not be respected, the autonomy of the
Lutheran and Calvinist communities would not have survived during the 18th century.
In other words, there are regions in Europe where renewal owed to Enlightened ideas
had to be perceived as an amalgam of discontinuities and continuities related to the
medieval structures of thought and not simply as discontinuities.
In a study dedicated to the history of the concept of Enlightenment and to the
koselleckian meaning attributed to it, Hans-Erich Boedeker says that absolutist state
was extremely problematically interpreted by historians 4 . This because the
conceptualization of Enlightenment requires an understanding based on political, social,
cultural, civic realities. Also as we know, each time, but also every region, community
and state has its particularities. Sometimes Koselleck extrapolated its own references
and knowledge related to the German Principalities to France, to more extended regions
where things were not happening in the same manner. In the 18th century, we can speak
at state level about practicing a certain ambivalence of the Enlightenment, about
preservation of customs and renewal rather thorough literacy, emancipation and reform
than about a dialectics between morals and politics.
The quest of the institutions of that time is also a complex one. Not all regions in
Europe went through a breakage from the pre-modern period as Reinhart Koselleck
appreciated. Often, a reform of the state from within had happened. One cannot state
that it was about radical, revolutionary orientations all over the old continent, however
one can observe that the will of modernization was visible among many communities
and that could become reality only through the intervention of an organizing power.
Consequently, based on this reason the intelligentsia had proved to be often cooperative
with absolutist state structures, hoping to put into practice reformist programmes
concerning justice, economy and politics. On the other hand, the kings and emperors
mercantilism was deeply influenced by the enlightened policies, turning away from
4
Hans Erich Bdeker, Aufklrung ber Aufklrung? Reinhart Kosellecks Interpretation der Aufklrung,
in: Carsten Dutt, Reinhard Laube (Hg.) Zwischen Sprache und Geschichte. Zum Werk Reinhart
Kosellecks, Gttingen Wallstein Verlag 2013, S. 128 -174.
17
Victor Neumann, The Temptation of Homo Europaeus, (New York: Columbia University Press,
1993), p.149-211.
6
Reinhart Koselleck, Begriffgeschichten. Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und
sozialen Sprache, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006), p. 344. For the interpretation of
Koselleck, see the whole chapter Aufklrung und die Grenzen ihrer Toleranz, 340-362. See also
Victor Neumann, Studiu introductiv la Reinhart Koselleck [Introductory Study to Reinhart
Koselleck], Conceptul de istorie [The Concept of History], Translation by Victor Neumann and
Patrick Lavrits, (Iai, 2005).
18
questioned, as the relationship between cause and effect needs to be examined in any
circumstance. Progress in Enlightenment sense cannot be seen only through the means
of critics or through the prejudice that the 18th century was everywhere the time of
grand clashes with the past. Enlightened intellectual creation has to be seen also in
relation with mentalities, with the structure of thinking of the social segments that had
no access to the high-end culture but which represented a majority during the 18th
century. They participated in different ways to the renewal of thought which does not
result from the intellectual preoccupations of the time and often nor from the exegesis
dedicated to it.
Without underestimating the role of the literates, philosophers, in general of the
thinkers that promoted changes, it is important to grant a similar attention to problems
that confronted the politics of states, the relationships among intellectuals, religion,
church, individual and community. Their weight must have been more significant than
the one resulted from Kosellecks interpretation of Enlightenment. The concept of
Enlightenment claims that it has to be seen according to the diversity of geographical
contexts, religious affections, forms of social-cultural existence, encounters and
converges among people, ideas and beliefs. That is, by accepting its ambivalent senses.
I am going to invoke an example from the intellectual history that is connected with
Enlightenment thought and that has as support the following questions: what was the
dialogue of the Christian and Mosaic religions in the 18th century? What are its
consequences from the viewpoint of the Enlightenment movement? The answer is more
complicated as it seems at a first look.
I think that the novelty does not exclude limits, and the transfer of the stress to
the ambiguity of the concept facilitates the finding of its universal connotations. At least
in the case of the German concept of Aufklrung there is a teleological origin. I
identified the first explanation of the ambivalent epistemology of this concept in Moses
Mendelssohns work, Bestimmung des Menschen [The Destiny of Mankind].
Mendelssohn is the Aufklrer who gave attention to the teleological sense of the concept
referring to Mishna, the Judaic treaty that directed him to the understanding of the
phenomenology of impurity. Mendelssohn had been seduced by preoccupation for the
initiation of the intellectuals from the Berlin circle, by the diversity of the ideas
circulated by them and by the sophistication of the current. In that milieu had taken
place the plead for Spinozas rehabilitation, and that was the place of preoccupation for
the essential truth of the defaulted system of harmony7. The circle of Berlinische
Monatschrift was accompanied by that of the Jewsih publication, Ha Meassef, and
proved that Judaism was compatible with modern world, the emancipation in its
German form being unconceivable without Moses Mendelssohns contribution. As
Dominique Bourel put it, one of the exegetes of his work, Mendelssohn is the
exceptional man, the man of double faithfulness, both as for the German culture as
well as for the Jewish spiritual legacy, the one who understood and applied the
Dominique Bourel, Dix-Huitieme Sicle. Quest ce que les lumires? (Paris, 1978), p. 13.
19
principles of the Judaic Haskala, identifying their compatibility with those of the
Prussian Auflklrung-ului8.
Top representative of the religious and philosophical thought of the 18th
century, the founding father of an impressive social segment of the German world from
which aristocrats, bankers, industrialists, jurists, officers, political figures, academics,
theologians and a famous composer - Moses Mendelssohn -, contributed to the
explanation of the senses of the notion of Enlightenment through the Auflklrung
reading. Comparing his idea with that of his generations, we discover what were the
interrogations concerning religion, culture, morality consisting of, what role had the
Christian-Judaic conceptual interferences had in the 18th century. Regarded in the
context of the Prussian and European Enlightenment, of the Jewish Haskala movement,
Moses Mendelssohns contributions facilitated the evaluation of the Auflkrung. They
open the way for shades, for new explanations concerning the understanding of the
current. His work alleges to be seen in the context of intellectual movement in his
country, Prussia, not only in relation with Judaism. It invites to compare Aufklrung and
Haskalah, a similar Jewish movement of the Auflkrung, a way of translating
Auflkrung and Enlightenment9. Mendelssohn had been convinced by reconciliation
between belief and reason and by the fact that this was not compatible with philosophy.
He was attached to the idea of human universal fraternity, opposed to the physic and
spiritual ghetto, a reason for which he became the spokesman of the German-largelyspread Jewish symbiosis, in the 1800 until after the First World War10.
Why is it useful to include Moses Mendelssohn in this discussion? Firstly
because of the precision and clarifications he brought in his text ber die Frage: Was
heisst aufklren?11, where verb, action and illumination are examined. In the case of the
three key notions, Auflklrung, Bildung, Kultur, Mendelssohn claims for their
thoroughness. The words Aufklrung, Kultur and Bildung he writes are quite new
in German and the middle class man understands them only partly. Aufklrung dates
back to the beginning of the 18th century, Kultur is a copy from the Latin, while
Bildung is a derivate from the ancient verb bilden (to build, to cultivate, to instruct). It
can be stated that Bildung and Kultur expressed a German specificity, a semantic
<Sonderweg> (exceptive). In Mendelssohns meaning, the three terms indicate
changes in social life, the results of industry and the peoples efforts to improve their
social status. In conclusion, culture can be decomposed into civilisations and lights,
8
Idem, Moses Mendelssohn. La naissance du Judaisme moderne, (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p.460.
Dominique Bourels monography is the result of an ample and systematic research, benefitting of
both German sources as well as from Hebrew ones, by a vast bliography that brings the topic to
day. He describes and analyses Moses Mendelssohns work from many angles, bringing a first
rank contribution to both knowing Mendelssohn, as well as to the enriching the interpretations of
the Auflkrung-ului. See also a detailed analysis in Simon Schwarzfuchss analysis, Dominique
Bourel, Moses Mendelssohn. La naissance du judasme moderne in Revue de lhistoire des
religions, 4/2006, 498-501.
9
See Dominique Bourel, op.cit., p. 458.
10
Whenever we talk about the Prussian Aufklrung, its analysis involves the identification of not only
similar senses but also of different ones in relation to the French les Lumires. The proper illuminist
aspirations and ideologies and enigmatic indetity-ethnonational policies promoted by the trend Sturm und
Drang are contradicting themselves. Hence the multiple conceptual confusions.
11
Cf. Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol.3, 1843, p.400.
20
while man had to become measure and aim of all aspirations to which they required to
be oriented our insights if we wish not to loose ourselves...; The lights are for
civilisation what in general theory is for practice, knowledge for morality, critics for
virtuosity 12 . It remains fundamental the reflection according to which the
Enlightenment is universal as soon as it takes an interest in man as a man, without any
condition, while mans Enlightenment considered citizen change according to condition
and profession. Contrary to Lessing, Mendelssohn did not pay a special attention to
educate people; he was advancing more cautiously in the field of conceptualization of
the changing phenomena, a reason for which a topic that hovered such as cultural
identity associated with the theme of politics was approached with a unique grace of
thinking13. The access to revelation, the preoccupation for the immortality of the soul,
the apology of the uniqueness of Judaism and the critics against atheism and
superstitions guided his reflections, which emerge from his books: Phdon oder ber
die Unsterblichkeit der Seele in drey Gesprechen, Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen
ber das Daseyn Gottes, Jerusalem oder ber Religisse Macht und Judenthum.
Philosophical and theoretical alike, they tempt to account for a part of the most
important debates of the time. As for Was heisst aufklren, it is the text with a special
reference to the senses attributed to Enlightenment, being an interpretative alternative to
that of Immanuel Kants in Was ist Aufklrung? The originality of Mendelssohns
article comes from the fact that he grasped the possibility and necessity of cultural mix
and the genesis of the European melting pot. The integration of Mendelssohns works in
the analysis dedicated to Enlightenment is compulsory not only to define the concept,
but particularly to evaluate the capacity and nature of intellectual predictability in the
18th century14.
Freemasonry during the Enlightenment period. Reinhart Kosellecks perspective
In Kritik und Krise, Reinhart Koselleck attaches extensive importance to the
genesis of modern Freemasonry, as well as to the secrets of its lodges. In the historians
view, Enlightenment across the continent had an immediate link and was marked by
two of the social structures: The Republic of the Letters and the Masonic lodges. This
from his viewpoint meant that intellectual elites were responsible both for the illuminist
creation as well as for its secret. The comparison of the two relatively independent
systems will generate a salient parallelism. In their language, understanding and
behaviour they develop a determinant style, the community of structure suggesting,
despite all differences a movement oriented against the absolutist system15. According
12
Ibidem.
See a compendious description of the meaning given by Mendelssohn to the vord Aufklrung in
Werner Conze, Otto Brunner, Reinhart Koselleck (Eds), Geschichtliche Grundbergriffe.
Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, Klett-Cotta, (Stuttgart, 2004),
vol. I, p. 272-274.
14
See also the conclusion of the extended analysis of Mendelssohns work in Dominique Bourel,
op.cit., p. 450-462.
15
Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise... p.49: Zwei gesellschaftliche Formationen haben auf dem
Kontinent das Zeitalter der Aufklrung entscheidend geprgt: die Rpublique des Lettres und die Logen
der Freimaurerei. Aufklrung und Geheimnis treten von Anbeginn auf als ein geistliches Zwillingspaar.
Ein Vergleich beider voneinander relationsunabhngiger Formationen wird von der erstaunlicher
13
21
to Koselleck, the two groups were represented by persons with very different origins
nobles and bourgeoisie -, whose great discontent was related to confinement of political
decision. Although nobility was in a continuous opposition towards the monopoly of
royal power, its elimination from the public scene in 1789 indicate the fact that it was
not really independent16.
Built up from merchants, bankers, farmers and business men, bourgeoisie
represented a social category that gained influence through relationships, chance and
notoriety. The two groups were joined by Protestants, the victims of the absolutist
politics after the Edict of Nantes in 168517. At Rain-Bow Coffee-House, the meeting
point of the freemasonry in London, the Protestants founded an information centre to
spread in Europe the English spirit, philosophy and Constitution. All these were made
through the Netherlands, the place of interchange of the renewing ideas in the absolutist
Europe. Koselleck will see a rapprochement between the philosophers of the
Enlightenment and Protestant refugees in England which will be reflected in the
creations of some of them. Called also militant philosophers, they were seconded by the
bourgeoisie magistrates, beneficiaries of their own organization system, free from the
absolutist authority. Equally true is that brilliant scholars, progressist theologians, highrank militaries and experienced magistrates used to meet in London clubs. Not all of
them were freemasons, but all had an intellectual background and wished to be free
from constraints. Many of them had a bend for arts and the sciences, but not all of them
manifested their interest for mysteries or linked their own intellectual creation to the
mysteries of political life.
Koselleck formulates hypothesis according to which the only civil institution
that would have considered the lords rights, but which in the meantime did everything
to be free from the sovereign was freemasonry. Its lodges asserts the historian
represented the typical formation of an indirect power in the absolutist state, a power
practiced by the bourgeoisie. They surrounded themselves with silence, discretion,
attachment, for secrecy. An inner, spiritual secret, that was outside from State18. Though
they were ingrained by an almost religious pathos and by a rigor of worship, mystery
distinguished them from the great majority of the religious communities19. The secret
was an apparently contrary element to Enlightenment that pretends to be clarified
because this would lead to the centre of dialectics of the morals and politics. Koselleck
asserts that the Masonic mystery has to be seen in relation to the doctrinarian
orientations. Their diversity depends on time, social conditions and national
particularities20. The historian associated freemasonry to civil society and to group
identity, respectively to the national one, but he did it in relation with a period of time
Parallelitt zeugen, die zwischen ihren geherrscht hat. Beide Gruppen entwickeln in Sprache und
Verhalten einen bestimmten Stil, und gerade ihre strukturelle Gemeinsamkeit verweist bei allen
Unterschieden darauf, dass es sich um eine spezifische Antwort auf das System des Absolutismus
gehandelt hat.
16
Ibidem, p.49-50.
Ibidem, p.50-51.
18
Ibidem, p.55.
19
Ibidem, p.56.
20
Ibidem.
17
22
when linguistic communities had not defined their particularities, and political nations
were not yet born. The period consolidated itself under the augury of universal, of
interferences and of combination between tradition and modernity. Koselleck
considered that civil society was not simply a product of freemasonry. Theologians
developed a movement where the secret became a fundamental doctrinarian component.
Even though it was not identical with the mysteries of the church and secret policies of
the states, the secret of the lodges settled in their proximity.21 Under the protection of
the secret civil liberty was born, or, in other words liberty in secret becomes the secret
of liberty. It seems that concern to discover a hidden world in an old world was not
forgotten by Koselleck22. The theme is somehow more complex and complicated. The
evolution of the Masonic secret, as well as of the relationship between the moral and
political dialectics, assume not only an extensive documentation, interpretative angles
free from ideological constraints, but also an integration of speculative freemasonry and
of their orders into the intellectual movements of the 18th century.
Where does this attention for secret societies come from and to what extent the
historical-philosophical research of freemasonry contribute to conceptualising
Enlightenment? Is Kosellecks interest justified for a fraternal union in an inner
community? What about imagining autonomous hierarchies engaging a superior
knowledge or allowing for the genesis of a social hierarchy? It is beyond doubt that the
historian has caught that the topic is of a particular importance in unveiling intellectual
history and the history of Enlightenment ideas. Curiosity, intuition and the unknown
features prompted the scientist to put allot of questions and to look for the desired
answers. In Kritik und Krise, Koselleck speaks, on the one hand about the apparent
rejection of politics, while on the other by the formation of political consciousness
through the mediation of the lodges. As in the case of religions which cannot be
mistaken with churches, the same is the case of the lodges, they do not always concord
with the creed, the rites, or philosophies specific to freemasonry.
In order to be more specific, let us proceed from Lessings Ernst und Falk.
Gesprch fr Freimaurer, [Ernst and Falk. The Dialogue for a freemason], one of the
reference texts considered by Koselleck23. From the dialogue imagined by Lessing
through questions and answers it results the type of relations that developed between
Enlightenment and freemasonry. Lessing asserts that freemasonry is more than a
representation of the civil society; it is an ideal, religion making possible the
cohabitation of persons coming from many communities, to which extent it created a
moral cosmopolitan universe. He also put an ideal in Falks mouth stating that the sum
of peoples happiness means the happiness of the state... Any other form of happiness of
the state in which people should suffer means tyranny24. Lessings problem, as well as
21
Ibidem.
Ibidem, p. 60-61. Because we are reunited (gathered) we become brothers, the rest of the
universe is alien to us. Prince and Subject, Gentleman and Artisan, Rich and Poor are mistaken,
nothing can distinguish them, nothing can separate them>>. The secret separates brothers from the
rest of the world. Cf. Ibidem, p.62.
23
Gotthold Ephraim Lessings, Ernst und Falk. Gesprch fr Freimaurer.Historisch-kritisch
erlutert von Dr. J.F. L. Ch. Merzdorf, Hanover, 1855 (first edition, Wolfenbttel, 1778).
24
Ibidem, p. 20.
22
23
of many of other thinkers of the time, was the progress in knowledge, tolerance and
renewal of reflexes, rather that one regarding subjecting mankind to occult principles.
The dialogue between Ernst and Falk reveals the interest for mankinds fate, realisation
of the general good, cultivation of the communitarian feelings and of compatible spirits.
Hence the observation that secret refers to wisdom, respectively to affinity with
attendants to the temple (priests) and freemasons 25 which does not encourage
unreasoned speculations 26 . According to Lessing, freemasonrys activity does not
consist in political actions. It does not dispose of words, signs and customs through
which it truly can present itself27. Answering to Ernsts challenge that as soon as there
is a concept it can be expressed by words, Falk says: not always happens as such and
often it happens that the others do not understand the concept through the words
expressed28. Freemasons acts are numerous and broad, says Falk, so that centuries
might pass until all their authors would be unveiled. Freemasons are those who
achieved and will achieve goodness in the whole world, which sounds like the 18th
century universal paradigm. Lessing suggests that wisdom is the only one that can guide
mankinds destiny. Consequently the meaning given to freemasonry is not related to the
idea of domineering the world, an idea which the author of Kritik und Krise wanted to
emphasize29.
Freemasonsys actions are not always highlighted from the will of genuine
cognition of the fenomenon. From Kritik und Krise results such an overbid which can
be explained through an expedite coverage of the topic. Giving credit to Wieland,
Koselleck considers that the new intellectual elites The Republic of Letters and the
freemasonic lodges became independent from the state, and could push forward their
moral decision under political aspect. The historian attaches this attitude to the influence
of the great revolution in France in 1789, as well as to the grand debate in the German
principalities (particularly in Bavaria) brought by the disappearance of the Illuminati
order. He associates political events in France and the literary ones in the German
speaking territories and concludes that both should have been symptoms of politics that
concluded the 18th century30, a context in which he considers Illuminati a representative
organisation for the preparation of the revolutionary transformations such like the
French ones. It is about the society funded by the Jesuit scholar, Adam Weishaupt -, a
secret society of that time, as many others were but not a freemasonic one. Created in
Bavaria in 1776, Illuminati was an attempt of response to freemasonry, revealing the
discontents towards it. Its existence was short, being dissolved in 1784 through the
order of Prince Karl Theodor of Bavaria. In the presentation and reflections about
freemasonry and Illuminati, Koselleck seems to be influenced by their opponents,
especially by Augustin Barruel and by Adolf Rossberg. For example, Barruel is known
especially for Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism [Memories Illustrating
25
Ibidem, p.43.
See Koselleck, Kritik und Krise, p.69.
27
Lessing, op.cit., p.13.
28
Ibidem, p.14.
29
Koselleck, op.cit., p. 69.
30
Ibidem, p. 81.
26
24
The book was published in four volumes, translation by Robert Clifford, (Hudson & Goodwin,
1798-1799).
32
(Berlin: Nordland Publishing, 1942).
33
W. Daniel Wilson, Shades of the Illuminati Conspiracy: Koselleck on Enlightenment and
Revolution" in: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara/Becker-Cantarino, Barbara (ed.): The Enlightenment and Its
Legacy: Studies in German Literature in Honor of Helga Slessarev. (Bonn: Bouvier, 1991), p. 1525. My gratitude to Reinhard Markner for the information given and for his suggestions.
34
Moshe Idel, Perfeciuni care absorb. Cabala i interpretare, (Iai, 2004), p. 509.
35
Ioan Petru Culianu, Eros i Magie n Renatere. 1484 [Eros and Magic], translation by Dan
Petrescu. Foreword by Mircea Eliade. Afterword by Sorin Antohi, (Bucharest, 1994), p. 27.
25
26
1641, in a lodge in Edinburgh. The second one is related to Elias Ashmoles initiation in
1646, the one that it is supposed to be familiar with Rosicrucian manifestations40.
Morey deeply interested in alchemy and chemistry supported more that anybody
else the foundation of the Royal Society of London and convinced King Charles II of
Stuart to sponsor it. In a reference of 1750, it is shown that the English freemasons had
copied a few ceremonies from the Rosicrucians and recognized that they are claimed
from them. In mid 18th century France the new grades and rites were named by Rosa
Croce. Their mysticism was a Christian one.
There are numerous information concerning the connections between
Rosicrucians and freemasonry41. The associations to which historians of freemasonry
invite to acknowledge suggest transfers of ideas and practices from one part of Europe
to another. It is possible that on the road between Bohemia, the Netherlands and
England through John Dees or Robert Fludds intellectual efforts a transfer of ideas
and lessons happened from medieval Europe to the modern one. What we know today is
that enlightened freemasonry was prepared by a pre-Masonic movement, where the
sciences were nurtured from the Egyptian and Hebrew mystics and especially resulted
from the intellectual accumulations of the Renaissance. Freemasonry embraced a
religious conception including science, and this thing has a direct relationship with
thinkers during the previous periods42.
I have invoked these aspects, condensing them willingly in order to call the
attention that freemasonry cannot be condensed to immediate interests of the society
and politics nor it is aimed at substituting itself to religions. Secondly, in its lodges
representatives of different social categories entered such as nobles, merchants,
craftsmen (bourgeoisie), journalists, servants, writers, scientists, politicians, therefore,
elites in the broad sense of the word. The activity was based on ritual rather than on a
political philosophy. Thirdly, freemasons of the Enlightenment period remarked
themselves through a reformist orientation, through preoccupation for sciences,
communication and civics, modernization and social reorganization. Last but not least,
what could be seldom seen, freemasons explored world sanctuaries, researching the
secrets of the spirit. They cultivated science and this for assimilating an ars
combinatoria by the means of which they could read as signs the mysterious numbers
and letters, words and texts, being aware of the value of revelation.
Along with the genesis of speculative freemasonry of the 18th century,
illumination is happening at individual level, being linked to the personal lifestyle
which reunited in a unique formula reason and emotions. Koselleck was rightfully
remarked that, along with his theological sense the concept of spirit gained also a
secularized sense. Spirit comprises nature and history alike, art and society, recovering
Gods transcendence in the most rough style routine. The unique, natural given of a
person, with his emotional life and his rationality can develop through spirit,
participating to its accomplishment in the world43. Freemasonry proposed to capitalize
40
Ibidem, p.267.
Ibidem, p.269, p275.
42
Ibidem, p.283-285.
43
Reinhart Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten..., p. 157.
41
27
the renewing hypostases, the spiritual one and the cultural one, managing sometimes to
neutralize conflicts between the religious and social-political ones. Eighteen century
freemasonry had a religious component, consequently when it is about the condition and
role of this institution, it cannot be dissociated from the illuminist ideas. It is the very
reason for which Koselleck was closely preoccupied by its deciphering. The two
concepts, Auflklrung and freemasonry are affined through the aspirations of the 18th
century people, through the reformist orientation, through ambivalences and
controversies that released them. They are fundamental because they refer to religious
and political beliefs, to social strata and diverse institutions and because their read-in
contributes to observing the time of change the genesis of the new structures of thinking
and behavioural cultures of mankind and modern society.
REFERENCES:
Antohi, Sorin, afterwords to Ioan Petru Culianu, Eros i Magie n Renatere1484 [Eros
and Magic in the Renaissance1484e ].
Bourel, Dominique, Dix-Huitieme Sicle. Quest ce que les lumires? (Paris, 1978).
Bourel, Dominique, Moses Mendelssohn. La naissance du Judaisme moderne, (Paris:
Gallimard, 2004).
Conze, Werner; Brunner, Otto, Koselleck, Reinhart (Eds), Geschichtliche
Grundbergriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland,
Klett-Cotta, (Stuttgart, 2004), vol. I.
Culianu, Ioan Petru, Eros i Magie n Renatere. 1484 [Eros and Magic], translation by
Dan Petrescu. Foreword by Mircea Eliade. Afterword by Sorin Antohi, (Bucharest,
1994).
Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W: Dialectica Luminilor. Fragmente filozofice
[The Dialectics of the Lights], Translation and afterwords by Andrei Corbea, (Iai:
Polirom, 2012).
Idel, Moshe, Perfeciuni care absorb. Cabala i interpretare, (Iai, 2004).
Koselleck, Reinhart: Kritik und Krise. Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der brgerlichen
Welt, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973).
Koselleck, Reinhart, Begriffgeschichten. Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der
politischen und sozialen Sprache, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006
Lessing, Ephraim Gotthold, Ernst und Falk. Gesprch fr Freimaurer. Historischkritisch erlutert von Dr. J.F. L. Ch. Merzdorf, Hanover, 1855 (first edition,
Wolfenbttel, 1778).
Mendelssohn, Moses, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol.3, 1843.
Neumann, Victor, The Temptation of Homo Europaeus, (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993).
Neumann, Victor: Studiu introductiv la Reinhart Koselleck [Introductory Study to
Reinhart Koselleck], Conceptul de istorie [The Concept of History], Translation by
Victor Neumann and Patrick Lavrits, (Iai, 2005).
28
Quincey, Thomas De, Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origins of the Rosicrucians
and the Freemasons, originally published in London Magazine, 1824; reprinted in
Collected Writings, ed. David Masson, Edinburgh, 1890, XIII, apud Frances A. Yates,
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, (London, 1972).
Schwarzfuchs, Simon, Dominique Bourel, Moses Mendelssohn. La naissance du
judasme moderne in Revue de lhistoire des religions, 4/2006.
Wilson, W. Daniel, Shades of the Illuminati Conspiracy: Koselleck on Enlightenment
and Revolution" in: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara/Becker-Cantarino, Barbara (ed.): The
Enlightenment and Its Legacy: Studies in German Literature in Honor of Helga
Slessarev. (Bonn: Bouvier, 1991).
Yates, Frances A., The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, (London, 1972).
29
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
On several occasions Reinhart Koselleck pointed out modalities of relationships
between concepts and historical experiences in a theoretical and methodological effort
in which the history of concepts has never been detached from other domains of
historiography. From this perspective, the appearance of neologisms or the formulation
of new concepts would be key elements for the understanding of certain historical
dynamics and contexts because these linguistic formulations would pave previously
nonexistent possibilities of interpretation and action over reality. The very emergence of
the modern concept of history was one of his most important themes. Based on this
reference I will attempt to think about the concept of historical culture, the origins of
which are in Bernard Guenes book, Histoire et culture historique dans lOccident
mdival, published in 1980. Since them, historical culture as a concept has increasingly
occupied academic spaces by giving rise to post-graduate programs, journals, scientific
meetings, being used, appropriated and developed by historians of different
nationalities.
First, I will analyze the context of "crisis of historiography" and "abuses of memory" in
which the concept was formulated, developing the main topics of the debate around the
"crisis" and how the concept would be seen as providing answers or solutions to the
issues and challenges faced by historians. For this purpose I will use the works of Jorn
Rsen, Maria Grever, Franois Hartog and Fernando Sanchez Marcos, among others.
Secondly, I will discuss the concept, by confronting it with the unavoidable
rapprochement between history and memory upon which it is based and with other
concepts and notions that interacts or competes with it, such as: "public uses of the
past", "public history", "historical consciousness", "historical memory" and "history
education", whose experiences, meanings and practices overlap to a greater or lesser
extent with those that historical culture seeks to account for.
Finally, considering the effects and risks of the uses of historical culture as a central
concept in contemporary historiography, due to its broadly encompassing character and
to its inevitable consequences to the historiographical field, I intend to frame the
discussion within the boundaries of disciplinary and professional identities and the
demands of a role that historians are expected to fulfill in their societies.
30
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper seeks to establish a dialogue between two areas of research that rarely speak
to each other. The first is recent scholarship that critically tackles the old notion of a
monolithic eighteenth-century Enlightenment; today the eighteenth century teems with
sentimental empiricists, republican hacks, defenders of enlightened kingship, and
Anglican Newtonians some scholars even speak of rival Enlightenments. In the
second field, some studies have begun to view afresh the varieties of European
liberalism in the nineteenth century beyond the binary opposition between a laissezfaire agenda and republican model predicated on either political participation, civic
virtue, or both.
The Enlightenment was many before it became one. Its eighteenth-century varieties and
rival strands were eclipsed in the early nineteenth century when the Enlightenment
became historical. By becoming historical the Enlightenment acquired several firmly
emblazoned traits: it was rationalist, bent on natural law, deist, and revolutionary. Other
vocabularies, be they voluntarist, empiricist, historicist or sentimentalist were factored
out. The textbook-suited Enlightenment was born in the heat of post-revolutionary
polemic. Recent attempts to resurrect a radical Enlightenment as the sole legitimate
contender to that title, a movement described as democratic, materialist, and feminist,
succumb to the stereotypical view of the Enlightenment shaped around 1800.
My paper will show what the bifurcation between liberal and conservative
thought in the early nineteenth century meant for the making of the Enlightenment past.
Liberals laid claim to the Enlightenment heritage and this implied the belittlement of
collateral heirs to that bequest. The newly enshrined account of the Enlightenment past
became so forceful because it rested on two mutually reinforcing trends. In the 1830s
and 1840s the liberal remaking of the Enlightenment was supported by conservative
authors for one key reason: the past liberals invoked exactly matched the heritage
conservatives disclaimed. Conservatives were happy to leave the Enlightenment to their
liberal adversaries.
In the paper I will discuss some key procedures of conceptual refurbishment and
realignment which transformed the Enlightenment into a legacy to be embraced or
rejected. It is important to note that the emerging Enlightenment past was no arbitrary
31
32
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper has both substantive and methodological concerns:
Substantively, it is concerned with changes in the treatment of the concept
"enlightenment" over the course of the nineteenth century. Its goal is to track the
transmission, translation, and appropriation of German discussions on the nature, ends,
and implications of Aufklrung into English. Its particular focus lies with the way in
which a group of pejoratives associated with the concept in these German discussions
(e.g., "falsche Aufklrung," "flache Aufklrung," "Aufklrerei") made their way into
English and how, over the course of the nineteenth century, they were gradually
abandoned. The result was the emergence, around 1910, of an understanding of "the
Enlightenment" as a distinct historical period.
Methodologically, it is interested in exploring some of the ways in which recently
developed text analysis and visualization programs (specifically, nGrams and
Bookworm) can aid in tracking the movement of terms over time, across languages
(German to English), and across disciplines.
It will argue that, in addition to their ability to survey a large corpus of texts far more
readily than previously possible, such programs open up lines of inquiry that require
historians of concepts to focus on the particular rhetorical force of certain modifiers (in
this case, pejorative adjectives) that come to be associated with certain concepts but
which, over time, can also become detached from them. The ability to track the
movement of such terms prompts reflection on the advisability of attempting to enforce
an overly rigorous demarcation between the "history of concepts" and the "history of
words."
A presentation of some of the research on which this paper is based, along with a
preliminary discussion of its implications is available on Persistent Enlightenment, the
author's research blog: see the posts for March 17, 2013 and March 24, 2013.
This paper draws on the my earlier discussion of problems with the (now revised) entry
Enlightenment in the Oxford English Dictionary (Inventing the Enlightenment: Anti-Jacobins,
British Hegelians, and the Oxford English Dictionary, Journal of the History of Ideas 64:3
(2003): 421443) and material that previously appeared on my research blog Persistent
Enlightenment (http://persistentenlightenment.wordpress.com).
33
TEXTO/TEXT:
Oddly enough, the first English translations of the responses of Immanuel Kant and
Moses Mendelssohn to the question Was ist Aufklrung did not translate the word
Aufklrung as enlightenment. John Richardsons 1798-1799 translation of Kants
essays and treatises used enlightening, while the anonymous 1800 translation of
Mendelssohns essay in the German Museum employed enlightening the mind.
Something more is at stake here than the difficulty English translators faced in making
sense of German philosophical works. These translations remind us how Aufklrung
was used at the close of the eighteenth century: it designated a process in which
individuals were engaged, rather than a philosophical movement or historical period to
which individuals might belong. It was only in the wake of Hegels Berlin lectures on
the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy that die Aufklrung came to
designate a discrete historical period, rather than an open-ended process.
But the adoption of this convention in English (where, because of the emerging
practices involving the capitalization of nouns and the use of definite articles, its
appropriation can easily be traced) was surprisingly late:
the phrase the
Enlightenment does not appear with any regularity in the corpus of English texts
scanned by Google until the final decade of the nineteenth century.
Figure 1
Of course, the absence of the phrase the Enlightenment does not necessarily
mean that Anglophone writers lacked the concept these words designate. But it does
raise questions about the relationship of words and concepts and about the implications
of recent developments in the digital humanities for historians of concepts. This paper
seeks to shed some light on the former by making use of some of the resources provided
by the latter.
Words and Concepts
In the opening pages of The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1910) the first
book in English to employ the term the Enlightenment in its title the Princeton
philosopher John Grier Hibben surveyed the variety of words available to designate
what would soon come to be known as the Enlightenment. Within the space of two
34
pages he referred to the object of his study as the Enlightenment, or Aufklrung, the
philosophical century, the age of illumination, or enlightenment, and the age of
reason. 2 Hibben may well have assumed that the menagerie of words that he
assembled pointed to the same concept. But, as Quentin Skinner once argued:
The surest sign that a group or society has entered into the self-conscious
possession of a new concept is that a corresponding vocabulary has been
developed, a vocabulary that can then be used to pick out and discuss the
concept in question with consistency.3
Skinners claim suggests a corollary: the lack of such a vocabulary may be
evidence that a group or society has not yet taken self-conscious possession of this
new concept.
The translation of texts from one language into another reveals much about the
difficulties that plague the passage of concepts from one intellectual tradition to another.
For much of the nineteenth century, English translators appear to have had reservations
about the German word that we now routinely translate as enlightenment. For
example, in her 1841 collection of German texts, Sarah Austin translated the title of
Kants essay as What is Enlightenment? but immediately added a footnote informing
the reader that it was impossible, without greater deviation from the original than I feel
justified in making to avoid the use of this very awkward word, which is the exact
translation of Aufklrung. She went on to suggest that a more significant title for the
essay would be A plea for the liberty of philosophizing.4 At the close of the century,
J. Frederick Smith opted to translate the occurrence of Aufklrung in the opening
sentence of Kants essay as Free Thought explaining,
Any translation of this terminus technicus may mislead. From Kant's
authoritative definition of the thing, it appears that our English "Free-thinking"
substantially represents.5
Others, including the English Hegelian James Hutchison Stirling, simply left
Aufklrung untranslated.
Stirling defended this practice on the ground that, in contrast to the English tendency to
praise or damn isolated aspects of eighteenth-century philosophy,
The Germans have coolly turned upon it, lifted it, looked at it, and examined
it piecemeal, till now, having at length fairly filled and satisfied themselves with
what of instruction, negative or positive, they could extract from it, they have
long since packed it up, and laid it on the shelf, labeled Aufklrung.6
2
John Grier Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (New York: C. Scribners sons, 1910)
3-4.
3
Quentin Skinner, The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon, in Regarding Method (Cambridge, UK; New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 160.
4
Sarah Austin, trans., Fragments from German Prose Writers (New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1841) 228.
5
Otto Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology in Germany Since Kant, trans. by J. Frederick
Smith (London: MacMillan & Co. 1890) 3.
6
Stirling, Lord Macaulay, in Stirling, Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay with Other Critical
Essays (Edinburg: Edmonston and Douglas, 1868) 120-121.
35
36
Figure 2
Over the course of the nineteenth century it would appear that the concept of
Enlightenment underwent two transformations. First, a term that, for most of the
eighteenth century, had been used to designate a process, came to be used as a
designation for a historical period. Figure 1 offers compelling evidence of the delay in
the English acquisition of a crucial part of the vocabulary needed to consolidate that
transformation. Figure 2 offers a hint of a second transformation that was intertwined
with the first: a shift in the terms contested.
Contesting (the) Enlightenment
Among the misunderstandings that follow from juxtaposing the CounterEnlightenment to the Enlightenment is a tendency to overlook the extent to which
enlightenment remained, for longer than we sometimes realize, a contested concept.
As Werner Schneider noted long ago, the thinkers most often recruited to fill the ranks
of the Counter-Enlightenment saw themselves as defending a true enlightenment
from a variety of impostors.9 Reflecting on the ambiguities inherent in invocations of
the counter-Enlightenment, J. G. A. Pocock has pointed out that the term somes refers
to one brand of Enlightenment in opposition to another and, at other times, to a fixed
antipathy to Enlightenment in some final sense of the term10 The most important
feature of late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century arguments about enlightenment
is that the contestants are far from possessing a final sense of what enlightenment
involves.
Because these contests are marked by a flurry of contrasting adjectives (e.g.,
wahre and falsche) and peculiar neologisms (e.g., Aufklrerei), a crude (but, perhaps,
not misleading) way of tracing their history would be to compare the persistence of
8
To avoid inflating occurrences of the Illumination with uses of the term in scientific or
technical literature on urban or solar illumination, occurrences of the Illumination of are
removed from the search. The same is true for the Enlightenment of, which screens out a few
cases where the term was used to refer to the process of enlightenment (e.g., the Enlightenment of
the understanding), rather than the period.
9
Werner Schneiders, Die Wahre Aufklrung: Zum Selbstverstndnis der Deutschen Aufklrung
(Freiburg,: K. Alber, 1974)
10
J.G.A. Pocock, Enlightenment and counter-enlightenment, revolution and counter-revolution;
a eurosceptical enquiry, History of Political Thought XX, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 132.
37
these pejoratives over time. As an example, consider the following survey of usages of
falsche Aufklrung, flache Aufklrung, and Aufklrerei:
Figure 3
What is perhaps most immediately striking is the steady decline in usage of all
three pejoratives between 1840 and 1880 (occurrences of these terms after 1880 are,
more often than not, quotations from or republications of texts that date from the end of
the eighteenth or the first half of the nineteenth centuries) and the more sudden fall in
the usage of falsche Aufklrung.11 One possible conjecture about the reason for this
decline would be that, by 1880, something approximating a final sense of the general
characteristics of the historical period known as die Aufklrung was secured. After that
point, it was still possible to dispute the merits of the period, but attempts to vindicate
the claims of the true conception of enlightenment as opposed to the false one ceased to
be viable. The defenders of true enlightenment broke off their attempt to salvage an
alternative conception of what enlightenment might involve. For better of worse, the
false enlightenment was the only enlightenment: the particular conception of
enlightenment that defined what now came to be seen as the most historically important
tendencies in eighteenth-century thought had, as Stirling would have it, been deposited
on the shelf labeled Aufklrung.
There is a striking example of this process at the start of Paul Leopold Haffners
Die deutsche Aufklrung, a text dating from 1864. Haffner, a Catholic clergyman would
go on to become Archbishop of Mainz, began by feigning confusion as to what it meant
to write a history of enlightenment:
Enlightenment is a sublime word, if one goes back to its meaning; it means
illumination of the spirit through truth, liberation from the shadows of error, or
uncertainty, of doubt. Enlightenment is, in its deepest meaning, the
transfiguration [Verklrung] of reason.12
11
What would appear to be an absence of uses of the term prior to 1790 is simply an artifact of
Googles scanning practices: very few eighteenth-century books reside on open shelves in
libraries.
12
P. L. Haffner, Die deutsche Aufklrung. Eine historische Skizze (Mainz: Franz Kirchheim,
1864) 1
38
But he quickly dropped this pretense and conceded that he was too much a
child of the nineteenth century to pursue a history that diverged so violently from
established convention of usage. So he resigned himself to speaking the degraded
language of his day, which exchanges the meaning of light and darkness, which
produces a literature that regards the light of Christian centuries as dark gloom, and
which greets the shadows of doubt and the progress of religious barbarity as light. It
is obvious that Haffner rejected this enlightenment: it was grounded in a concept of
reason that was purely negative, destructive, empty; it has no positive content and no
productive principle. But it is equally obvious that he has abandoned any illusions that
Aufklrung might mean anything better.
As might be expected, the discussion in English differs. While the French
pejorative philosophisme was appropriated by English Anti-Jacobins, English critics of
enlightenment never created a neologism that performed the same function as the
German Aufklrerei. As a result, the work was done adjectives such as false and
shallow (and, at a later point and to a much lesser extent, by narrow):
13
Figure 4
13
39
Figure 5
There are few, if any, occurrences of false Enlightenment until the twentieth
century. As had been the case in the German discussion, the adjectives true and
false refer to a process, rather than a period: the arrival of a term designating the
historical period in which a particular understanding of what the process known as
enlightenment involved comes only after disputes about the truth or falsity of the this
particular concept have ceased. This parallel to German discussions should not be
entirely surprising. Indeed, the early appearances of false enlightenment are simply a
continuation of the German discussion: the spike on the Ngram at 1835 is driven by
editions of James Burton Robertsons translation of Schlegels Philosophy of History.14
Some Implications
What implications substantive and methodological might be drawn from
this somewhat hectic survey of the vicissitudes of the concept of enlightenment over the
course of the nineteenth century?
First, it would appear that, as both Skinner and Stirling (that oddest of odd
couples) suggest, words matter: illumination, claircissement, enlightenment, and
Aufklrung do not designate the same concept. They carry different implications and
these implications were clear to at least some of those who used them. Indeed, an
enhanced sensitivity to the particular nuances of words may well be a defining feature
of periods of conceptual contestation.
Second, capitalization or, more precisely, the post-1800 conventions of
capitalization in English also matter. These conventions make the study of the
emergence of the idea that there was such a thing as a discrete historical period called
the Enlightenment easier to track in English than it is in German. Conversely, they
make the job of English translators of German texts somewhat more difficult: there is
no reason to assume that die Aufklrung should routinely be translated as the
Enlightenment.
Finally, the resources available for tracking occurrences of words and phrases
has significant implications for the work of historians of concepts. Though this attempt
14
Friedrich von Schlegel, The Philosophy of History in a Course of Lectures, Delivered at Vienna,
trans. James Burton Robertson (London: Saunders and Otley, 1835).
40
15
On the virtues of the Ngram Viewer for intellectual historians, see Benjamin M. Schmidt,
Words Alone: Dismantling Topic Models in the Humanities, Journal of the Digital Humanities
2:1 (Winter 2012).
41
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Liberalism has not only long been a key concept in political debate in the Western
World, but also a central occupation in historical and political scholarship. The research
in liberalism is vast and flourishing, and scholars are continually adding new themes
and approaches to the study of this particular political ideology. In terms of approach,
much of the new research does not view liberalism as something with a fixed essence
and core, but as a phenomenon composed by a set of changeable concepts and patterns
of thought that has been constantly defined and redefined in changing contexts by a
variety of historical actors. While sharing many theoretical assumptions and
methodological tools, the proponents of this new research nevertheless tell distinctly
different narratives of liberalism in their work. In addition, the more classic history of
ideas approach to and understanding of liberalism as a definite ideological conception
with a unitary tradition and solid values still plays a significant role in (and arguably
also outside of) scholarly research.
What, more exactly, is liberalism, how can it be studied, and how can its history be
narrated? This article explores these questions with a focus on three distinguished
scholars that have all theorized and written extensively on the topic. These scholars are
the philosopher John Gray and the historians Michael Freeden and Jrn Leonhard, who
represents three different, but in some ways also related approaches to and
interpretations of liberalism. In addition, the article also illuminates the work of the
historian Quentin Skinner. Although Skinners writings are not focused on liberalism as
such, they embody an approach to the study of political ideology and a master narrative
about liberalism that supplements and diverges from those of Gray, Freeden and
Leonhard. Offering respectively a classic (Gray), morphological (Freeden), conceptual
historical (Leonhard) and rhetorical and contextual (Skinner) approach these scholars
arguably cover most of the analytical terrain when it comes to defining, studying and
narrating liberalism.
The ambition of the article is to illuminate the approaches to liberalism practiced by
the mentioned scholars as a way to point out similarities and differences as well as
advantages and limitations of these approaches. The aim is to arrive at a nuanced
42
43
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
44
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Quiz por quedar fuera de la Sattelzeit definida por Koselleck, el fascismo ha sido poco
estudiado como concepto histrico: sabemos mucho ms sobre su naturaleza poltica y
sus bases sociales que sobre su evolucin semntica a lo largo del periodo de
entreguerras. Sin embargo, autores como R. de Felice, Ph. Burrin o R. Paxton han
subrayado la radical historicidad del fascismo, las transformaciones sustanciales que
experimentaron su doctrina y su prctica a lo largo de su historia y la atraccin que
ejerci sobre personalidades y regmenes contemporneos. Esta perspectiva diacrnica
permite comprender mejor tanto la gradual constitucin de un fascismo trasnacional (F.
Finchelstein, A. Bauerkamper) como la deriva simultnea de una parte importante de la
izquierda mundial hacia el antifascismo (E. Hobsbawm, G.R. Horn, E. Traverso). No se
puede entender la bipolarizacin de la poltica internacional en la edad de los extremos
sin tener en cuenta los sucesivos significados que tuvieron los conceptos de fascismo y
antifascismo para los distintos actores polticos, y el modo en que estos determinaron
las identidades y estrategias de cada uno.
Esta comunicacin pretende aproximarse al tema reconstruyendo la evolucin
semntica de ambos trminos en el discurso poltico y meditico espaol durante la
Segunda Repblica. Se centra en el campo del antifascismo entendido en sentido
amplio, de acuerdo con la historiografa ms reciente (G. Vergnon, N. Copsey y A.
Olechnowitz, F. Gallego), que en el caso de la Repblica se extenda desde el
liberalismo de Unamuno y Chaves Nogales hasta el anarquismo de Montseny y el
comunismo de Maurn. En ella se analizan las alusiones al y anlisis del fascismo de
estos y otros lderes de opinin publicados en la prensa o el Diario de Sesiones de
Cortes, prestando especial atencin a los siguientes aspectos: la polisemia del concepto
y la competencia poltica entre los actores para imponer sus respectivas nociones del (y
por tanto sus propuestas ante el) fascismo; los trminos que los distintos actores
asociaban al fascismo (absolutismo, bonapartismo, clericalismo, comunismo); el
papel de la experiencia y las transferencias culturales de otros pases (Alemania,
Austria, Francia) en la definicin del fascismo; y las distintas expectativas asociadas al
movimiento y a la posibilidad de su implantacin en Espaa a lo largo del periodo.
45
Deutsch 1966, 99; Watzlawick, Beavin Bavelas & Jackson 1967, 46; Edelman 1978,
90), and it were strange indeed if the actual totalitarian governance resembled its own
illusions of grandeur and defied rather obvious rules of social interaction.
I try to deal with these (and some other) issue by examining asymmetrical concepts in
the public speeches of one democratic and two totalitarian politicians (Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler) politicians before (early to mid- 1920s) and after
(1936) their ascent to power. Approximately 2000 sentences have been analysed for
each speaker (1000 for each person). These results are projected upon the similar data
collected in the language of newspapers in 1922 and 1936: the latter include various
extreme (Rote Fahne, Vlkischer Beobachter, Pravda) and mainstream (Izvestija,
Berliner Tageblatt, Klnische Zeitung) media outlets; for the USA, where views
extreme bz local standards had - back then - negligible media presence, the
corresponding differentiation was between the papers favourable to the Democratic
party in general and FDR in particular (New York Times) and all others (Washington
Post, Chicago Tribune). Again, 2000 sentences for each newspaper have been analysed
(1000 for each period).
References:
Edelman 1978 - Murray Edelman. Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago, 1988.
Koselleck [1975] 1989 Reinhard Koselleck. Zur historisch-politischen Semantik
asymmetrischer Gegenbegriffe - Reinhard Koselleck.Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik
geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt am Main, 1989, S. 211-259.
Postoutenko 2010 Kirill Postoutenko. Prolegomena to the Study of Totalitarian
Communication. - (Kirill Postoutenko, ed.). Totalitarian Communication: Hierarchies,
Codes and Messages. Bielefeld, 2010, p. 11-42.
Postoutenko 2011 Kirill Postoutenko. Asymmetrical Concepts and Political
Asymmetries: A Comparative Glance at 20th Centuries Democracies and
Totalitarianisms from a Discursive Standpoint. In: (K. Junge, K. Postoutenko, eds.)
Asymmetrical Concepts after Reinhart Koselleck: Historical Semantics and Beyond.
Bielefeld, 2011, pp. 81-114.
Watzlawick, Beavin Bavelas & Jackson 1967 - Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas,
Don D. Jackson. Pragmatics of Human Communication. New York, 1967.
47
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Desde el mismo primer arribo de los europeos a tierras americanas y el hallazgo all de
seres humanos habitadores de ellas, empezaron a surgir conceptos para referirse a stos.
Indios se les empez a llamar, al entender que eran precisamente naturales de las
Indias (es decir, de Asia). Luego fue aumentando el nmero de tipos humanos de los
hombres y mujeres all presentes y actuantes, y a cada cual se le otorg un nombre
que lo tipificaba segn su origen, situacin, calidad, raza, tiempo de permanencia, etc.
El inventario de conceptos en este sentido fue enorme, prcticamente infinito. Su
etimologa es mltiple, su evolucin a veces extraa y muchos de ellos sobreviven an.
Varios de ellos han tenido gran influencia y trascendencia en la historia americana,
definiendo en algn caso hasta el sentido de la evolucin de las diferentes entidades
nacionales desarrolladas en el continente.
Se trata, as, de palabras plenas de sentido histrico, sin las cuales es inentendible lo que
la vida americana ha sido a travs del tiempo. Ser entendido alguien como criollo o
gachupn, indio o mestizo, mulato o negro bozal, por ejemplo, marcaba una situacin
ineludible y una vocacin que exiga la adopcin de posturas definidas. As, llamar a
alguien chapetn en Amrica era suponer que nunca podra entender lo local, y a un
perulero en Espaa no le quedaba ms que mostrarse esplndido derrochador de oro en
todo momento, y a pesar de eso su apreciacin nunca pasara de la de ser un rudo
nuevo rico.
La ponencia que se propone se abocar a describir, situar y explicar cada uno de los
grupos humanos aludidos por aquellos vocablos e intentar una definicin del mapa
social en el que ellos se presentaron.
48
TEXTO/TEXT:
Desde el mismo primer arribo de los europeos a tierras americanas y el hallazgo all de
seres humanos habitadores de ellas, empezaron a surgir conceptos para referirse a stos.
Indios se les empez a llamar, al entender que eran precisamente naturales otra
palabra con la que tambin se refiri a ellos- de las Indias (es decir, de Asia). Y luego,
cuando fue aumentando el nmero de tipos de los hombres y mujeres all presentes y
actuantes, a cada cual se le otorg un nombre que lo tipificaba segn su origen,
situacin, calidad, raza, tiempo de permanencia, actividad, etctera.
El inventario de conceptos en este sentido fue enorme, prcticamente infinito. Su
etimologa es mltiple, su evolucin a veces extraa y muchos de ellos sobreviven an.
Varios de ellos han tenido gran influencia y trascendencia en la historia americana,
definiendo en algn caso hasta el sentido de la evolucin de las diferentes identidades
nacionales desarrolladas en el continente. Son alusiones, en principio, a cualidades
personales y sociales, pero luego se convirtieron en categoras y convenciones.
Se trata, as, de palabras plenas de sentido histrico, sin las cuales es
inentendible lo que la vida americana ha sido a travs del tiempo., Ser entendido alguien
como criollo, gachupn, indio o mestizo, mulato o negreo bozal, por ejemplo, marcaba
una situacin ineludible y una vocacin que exiga la adopcin de posturas definidas.
As, llamar a alguien chapetn o gachupn en Amrica era suponer que nunca podra
entender lo local, y a un indiano o perulero en Espaa no le quedaba ms que mostrarse
esplndido derrochador de oro en todo momento, y a pesar de eso su apreciacin nunca
pasara de la de ser un rudo nuevo rico.
Esta ponencia se propone ser un avance en la descripcin, situacin y
explicacin de algunos de los grupos humanos aludidos por aquellos vocablos, en
contribucin a la definicin del mapa social en el que ellos se presentaron.
Son pues muchos los conceptos referidos a tipos humanos surgidos a raz del
descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacin de Amrica y en los tiempos posteriores.
Aparecidos para definir personajes y situaciones concretas propias de los diversos
lugares y los especficos momentos, devinieron luego en estereotipos, y como tales
llegaron a servir para prejuzgar individuos y grupos sociales y para justificar conductas
y actitudes. Su mera enunciacin significa para el estudioso contemporneo un punto de
partida para el adecuado conocimiento de las sociedades americanas y en buena
medida tambin de las europeas, en ntima relacin con aqullas- surgidas despus de la
aparicin de Amrica, con grande influencia hasta la actualidad.
All estn los casos de conceptos generalizadores de los hombres y mujeres
originariamente pobladores del recin aparecido continente: indios o naturales,
clasificados segn situaciones particulares como ms o menos de razn o salvajes
recogidos o levantados, de paz o de guerra, los de ms o menos facilidades
para hacerse cristianos, o por el contrario chichimecas, palenques, cimarrones,
huidos, caribes o andaques. Y las diversas castas derivadas de la infinita
posibilidad de mezcla de razas y calidades: mestizos, castizos, zambos
49
coloreaban los chapetes de los recin llegados al continente rubios europeos, que
todava no haban tenido tiempo de tostarse bajo el ardiente sol del trpico, y los cuales
adems con mucha frecuencia sufran de fuertes fiebres y calenturas durante los
primeros tiempos de su estancia en las malsanas costas americanas.
La figura del baquiano, segn puede advertirse en la lectura de la mayora de las
obras de fines del siglo XVI o principios del XVII relativas a temas americanos, lleg a
convertirse en pieza fundamental para la vida del nuevo mundo. Era l quien de veras
conoca las interioridades de la tierra, quien comprenda el por qu y el cmo de lo all
existente, quien se saba al dedillo la historia de cada provincia, los rasgos peculiares de
las diversas tribus de aborgenes, los secretos de la flora y de la fauna locales.
Resultaba, as, el ms adecuado consejero para las autoridades recin nombradas y el
natural gua para las expediciones que iban a ponerse en marcha por el corazn del
continente. Sus mritos personales para la consolidacin del dominio hispano saltaban a
la vista de todos y l era consciente de ello; siendo as, era lgico que la confianza en la
importancia de su persona lo envaneciera y le hiciera despreciar a sus compatriotas
ltimamente llegados. Su orgullo y su soberbia, su autosuficiencia y consecuente poca
disposicin para acatar los dictados de quienes supona que saban menos que l sobre
los asuntos indianos, hicieron de la suya una presencia que lleg a resultar bastante
incmodas para los gobernantes nombrados desde la pennsula. Para stos, era
imposible prescindir de sus servicios para el cabal aprovechamiento de las riquezas
americanas y para la pacfica conservacin de los pases conquistados; empero, no
podan ni queran, tampoco, satisfacerlo en todas sus insaciables pretensiones de
predominio social como insustituible patricio de la tierra.
As, pues, el capitn Vargas Machuca fue un verdadero baquiano, en toda la
extensin de la palabra, entendindose por tal lo que se ha dicho en los prrafos
anteriores. l mismo, segn se desprende de diversas y constantes expresiones propias
que aparecen en sus textos, quiso hacer continuamente gala de esa condicin suya, la
cual por supuesto que confera una enorme autoridad a lo que escribiera tocante a las
materias indianas. A esto era a lo que se refera, por ejemplo, cuando se consideraba a s
mismo como con una gran experiencia acerca de las guerras americanas, o cuando
afirmaba la autoridad con la que poda hablar en pro de las acciones militares de Juan
Lpez de Sequeira en cumplimiento de una encomienda de la Audiencia de Panam, o
de la manera de sujetar a los araucanos en un escrito dirigido al Consejo de Indias. Para
l, nunca resultara ocioso que el veterano de Indias tratara de transmitir sus
conocimientos a los jvenes conquistadores; el buen caudillo, apuntaba nuestro autor,
siempre habra de saber aprovecharse de la prctica ajena, pues ella sola es suficiente a
hacer arte y a causar conocimiento de las cosas universales.
REFERENCIAS:
Alberro, Solange, Del gachupn al criollo, o de cmo los espaoles de Mxico dejaron
de serlo, 1. reimpr., Mxico, El Colegio de Mxico, 1997.
53
Brading, David, Orbe indiano. De la monarqua catlica a la repblica criolla, 14921867, 3. reimpr., Mxico, Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 2003.
Corominas, Joan, Diccionario crtico etimolgico castellano e hispnico, 5 tt., Madrid,
Gredos, 1980-1983.
Durand, Jos, La transformacin social del conquistador, 2 vv., Mxico, Porra y
Obregn, 1953.
Flores Hernndez, Benjamn, La vida como emblema. Bernardo de Vargas Machuca; el
baquiano del como gustis, Aguascalientes, Universidad Autnoma de
Aguascalientes, 2012.
Manrique, Jorge Alberto, Del barroco a la ilustracin, en Daniel Coso Villegas,
coord., Historia general de Mxico, 4 vv., 1. reimpr., Mxico, El Colegio de Mxico.
Centro de Estudios Histricos, 1980, v. 2.
Moliner, Mara, Diccionario del uso del espaol, Madrid, Gredos, 1966-1967.
OGorman, Edmundo, La invencin de Amrica. El americanismo de la cultura de
Occidente, Mxico, Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1958.
Real Academia Espaola, Diccionario de autoridades, ed. facsmil, 3 vv., Madrid.
Gredos, 1963.
Real Academia Espaola, Diccionario de la lengua espaola, 22. Ed., Madrid, EspasaCalpe, 2001.
Vargas Machuca, Bernardo de, Milicia y descripcin de las Indias, ed. y est. prel. de
Mariano Cuesta Domingo y Fernando Lpez-Ros Fernndez, Valladolid, Seminario
Iberoamericanos de Descubrimientos y Cartografa del Instituto Interuniversitario de
Estudios de Iberoamrica y Portugal, Universidad de Valladolid, 2003,
Vargas Machuca, Bernardo de, Apologas y discursos de las conquistas occidentales,
ed. y est. prel. de Mara Luisa Martnez de Salinas Alonso, vila, Junta de Castilla y
Len. Consejera de Cultura y Turismo, 1993.
54
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
A partir de mediados de los ao 1970, el movimiento indgena en el Ecuador desarrolla
un nuevo discurso original que intenta combinar aspectos clasistas y socialistas -hasta
este momento hegemoniales en el movimiento- con aspectos tnicos e identitarios. Este
proceso se expresa en la adaptacin o renovacin de ciertos conceptos que adquieren
centralidad en el nuevo discurso. As, el movimiento indgena empieza a entender a los
indgenas como nacionalidades con derecho a autonoma y auto-determinacin. Poco
ms tarde, a mediados de los 1980, este concepto se ve completado con otro concepto
que corresponde a una propuesta de reforma de estado. En lugar del viejo estado en
manos de la lite econmica y mestiza, el movimiento indgena quiere instalar un estado
plurinacional que permite un rgimen de autonomas y la participacin de todos grupos
sociales. Esta poca puede ser considerada como Sattelzeit en el sentido de Koselleck.
Es recin en 1995 que otra organizacin indgena desarrolla un contraconcepto (aqu no
en el sentido de Koselleck) a la propuesta de plurinacionalidad: la interculturalidad que
tiene contenidos semejantes pero enfoca ms la relacin entre las diferentes grupos
sociales y tnicos en la sociedad que la plurinacionalidad. Algunos aos ms tarde
aparece otro contraconcepto, el del Buen Vivir o Sumak Kawsay. Esta vez no es
manejado por una organizacin ms pequea del movimiento indgena, sino por grupos
con un enfoque ms bien tnico que lo utilizan para mover el discurso del movimiento
indgena ms hacia esta perspectiva.
Mediante una metodologa que tentativamente se puede llamar anlisis de discurso
centrado en conceptos -una combinacin entre anlisis de discurso y historia de
conceptos- se va a analizar el desarrollo del discurso del movimiento indgena
ecuatoriano a travs del anlisis del desarrollo de sus conceptos. El desarrollo de ciertos
conceptos y las luchas sobre la hegemona definitoria acerca de ellos no slo refleja,
sino en algunos casos determina el desarrollo del movimiento social como tal. Aqu, el
movimiento indgena ecuatoriano servir como ejemplo para explicitar la metodologa
que puede servir para el anlisis de discursos de otros movimientos sociales.
55
TEXTO/TEXT:
El movimiento indgena ecuatoriano sorprendi a la sociedad nacional e internacional
cuando en el Inti Raymi en junio de 1990 ocup las principales carreteras y plazas de
Quito demandando igualdad y diferencia a la vez. Este hecho marc el principio de lo
que puede ser considerado una dcada indgena en el pas: hasta su participacin en el
gobierno de Lucio Gutirrez en 2002/2003, el movimiento indgena era sin duda alguna
el movimiento social y poltico ms importante del pas. Para afirmarlo no es necesario
analizar la destitucin de dos presidentes bajo el liderazgo del movimiento indgena o su
creciente participacin en estructuras estatales. De mayor importancia ser aqu el
impacto discursivo de este movimiento, expresado -por ejemplo- en las dos
constituciones desde el Inti Raymi 1990.
La base de esta fuerza del movimiento indgena ecuatoriano a partir de 1990 se
encuentra en una fase de renovacin discursiva o Sattelzeit que va de mediados de los
aos 1970 a mediados de los aos 1980. En esta poca, la demanda de una reforma
agraria en una perspectiva de revolucin socialista perdi espacio a favor de contenidos
tnicos e identitarios. Especialmente la Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas del
Ecuador (CONAIE) se destac por intentar de integrar estos dos discursos diferentes
para entender la dimensin doble (Becker 2008: 168) de la situacin de los indgenas.
Esta innovacin discursiva es una de las mayores razones de la posicin central del
movimiento indgena y de la CONAIE como su actor central en la sociedad civil y el
discurso poltico del pas y -hasta cierto grado- del continente.
Para poder analizar de forma adecuada este cambio discursivo y las opciones
polticas que trajo consigo, un anlisis de discurso centrado en los conceptos puede
ayudar en detectar con detalle los cambios exactos que se dieron en este discurso. Esto
significa que se har una combinacin entre un anlisis de discursos y los mtodos de la
historia conceptual, tanto de su escuela alemana como de las propuestas de
Iberconceptos. Esta investigacin busca encontrar los conceptos sociopolticos e
identitarios bsicos (Fernndez Sebastin 2007: 167) en el discurso del movimiento
indgena. Estos conceptos polticos son definidos aqu como conceptos que a. son
abstractos, b. tienen una posicin central en el discurso del movimiento, c. tienen una
historia dentro del movimiento, d. son parte de conflictos dentro y fuera del
movimiento, y, e. implican demandas y reivindicaciones. Como en otros casos, el
desarrollo de los conceptos que caben en este panorama implica cambios de identidades
y colectivos y as acompaa a la emergencia de nuevos actores (Fernndez Sebastin
2007: 169). Siguiendo a la Begriffsgeschichte alemana, se trata en realidad de preconcepciones, definidas por ser orientadas hacia un futuro nuevo y diferente
(Koselleck 1996: 60-61) y no basadas en experiencias. Esta abstraccin hace ms
notoria que los conceptos polticos se prestan a una gran variedad de usos e
interpretaciones en situaciones dadas y por agentes determinados y, por tanto, a una
fuerte ideologizacin. (Fernndez Sebastin 2007: 169) El anlisis de los conceptos
aqu se orienta en el cuestionario de Iberconceptos (Fernndez Sebastin 2007: 17256
este nuevo concepto significa (CONAIE 1997: 12). Tambin las otras organizaciones
indgenas adaptaron este concepto, aprovechando su poca definicin para darle
diferentes contenidos, dependiendo de la lnea general de cada organizacin.
El siguiente ataque conceptual vino desde el interior de la CONAIE. En 2003,
una organizacin local de Sarayaku denuncia la explotacin de recursos naturales en su
territorio como agresin contra el Buen Vivir, el Sumak Kawsay, la vida en plenitud.
(Sarayaku 2003: 10). No obstante, siguen identificados con la plurinacionalidad
(Sarayaku 2003: 1). Aunque en este caso la integracin del nuevo concepto en el
discurso de la CONAIE y las otras organizaciones indgenas tom ms tiempo, en el
entorno de la asamblea constituyente de 2007/2008 ya form parte del ideario del
movimiento indgena. As queda demostrada la alta capacidad de innovacin discursiva
del movimiento indgena una de las fuentes de su fuerza.
Conclusin
El desarrollo del discurso actual del movimiento indgena en el Ecuador pasa por
cuatro etapas. El propio cambio discursivo de un movimiento clasista hacia uno que
integra ideas clasistas con ideas identitarias se da entre mediados de los aos 1970 hasta
mediados de los aos 1980. Es all donde aparecen los conceptos de nacionalidad
indgena y multi- o plurinacionalidad. El subsiguiente perodo de consolidacin
discursiva va de mediados de los aos 1980 hasta la publicacin del proyecto poltico de
la CONAIE en 1994. Esta consolidacin es definida por la integracin de los nuevos
conceptos en un discurso coherente con una serie de demandas concretas. Slo un ao
ms tarde, en 1995, se puede observar la tercera etapa, el primer ataque conceptual
contra este discurso integrado. Aparece en el discurso de otra organizacin indgena, la
FENOCIN, -o sea desde afuera- el contraconcepto de interculturalidad que pone en
cuestin a la plurinacionalidad y las nacionalidades indgenas en cuanto unidades
esencialistas. Este contraconcepto es rpidamente integrado en el discurso de la
CONAIE tomando un lugar al lado de la plurinacionalidad, complementndola.
Algunos aos ms tarde se puede observar la cuarta etapa, la introduccin del
contraconcepto de Sumak Kawsay o Buen Vivir que apunta hacia un fortalecimiento de
los aspectos identitarios dentro del discurso del movimiento indgena. Aunque no rompe
con la plurinacionalidad -a diferencia de la interculturalidad de la FENOCIN y por esto
considerado como ataque desde adentro- intenta moverla hacia determinados
contenidos. Puede llamar la atencin que ambos contraconceptos, interculturalidad y
Buen Vivir, fueron integrados de inmediato en el discurso de todas las organizaciones
indgenas, cada vez con una definicin diferente mientras que la plurinacionalidad
sigue en su posicin nica, siendo el concepto clave de la CONAIE.
REFERENCIAS:
Almeida, Ileana (1979): Consideraciones sobre la nacionalidad kechua, en: Instituto
Otavaleo de Antropologa (Ed.): Lengua y Cultura en el Ecuador, Otavalo: Instituto
Otavaleo de Antropologa, p. 11-48.
60
Becker, Marc (2008): Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador's Modern Indian
Movements, Durham/London: Duke University Press.
Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo (1977): Sobre la liberacin del Indio, en: Nueva Antropologa
8, p. 95-101.
CEAI (Comisin Especial de Asuntos Indgenas) (1988): Proyecto de Ley de
Nacionalidades Indgenas, Quito: Congreso Nacional.
CONAIE (1994): Proyecto Poltico de la CONAIE, Quito: CONAIE.
CONAIE (1997): Proyecto Poltico de la CONAIE, Quito: CONAIE.
Federacin de Centros Shuar (1976): Solucin original a un problema actual, Suca:
Federacin Shuar.
FENOCIN (1999): Hacia el nuevo Milenio, s.l.: FENOCIN.
Fernndez Sebastin, Javier (2007): Iberconceptos. Hacia una historia transnacional de
los conceptos polticos en el mundo iberoamericano, en: Isegora 37, p. 165-176.
Koselleck, Reinhart (1996): A Response to Comments on the Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe, en: Lehmann, Hartmut/Richter, Melvin (Eds.): The Meaning of
Historical Terms and Concepts, Washington: German Historical Institute, p. 59-70.
Len, Jorge (1983): Estado, nacionalidades y etnias, en: Cuadernos de Nueva 7, p. 6-10.
Pacari, Nina (1984): Las culturas nacionales en el estado multinacional ecuatoriano, en:
Cultura. Revista del Banco Central VI (18a), p. 113-123.
Sarayaku (Territorio Autnomo de la Nacin Originaria del Pueblo Kichwa de
Sarayaku) (2003): Sarayaku Sumak Kawsayta awpakma Katina Killka/ El libro de
la
vida
de
Sarayaku
para
defender
nuestro
futuro,
http://www.latautonomy.org/sarayaku.pdf (18.7.2013).
Zald, Mayer (1979): Macro Issues in the Theory of social movements, CRSO Working
Paper 204.
Zald, Mayer/McCarthy, John (1979): Social Movement Industries: Competition and
Cooperation among Movement Organizations, CRSO Working Paper 201.
61
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT
Se analiza desde un punto de vista sociointercultural la yuxtaposicin de la etnorregin
yoreme con la sociedad de la informacin. De las innumerables dimensiones de la
retrica de la informacin al menos tres de ellas describen no slo las asimetras, sino
las asincronas que al considerar el tiempo se presentan entre la realidad del pueblo
yoreme mayo de Sinaloa y las aspiraciones globales. Estas dimensiones son: 1) los
derechos lingsticos de las comunidades indgenas en el nuevo contexto de aceptacin
de la diversidad tnica y cultural, 2) el impulso de las nuevas polticas de acceso a la
informacin pblica y 3) las aspiraciones globales de conformar una sociedad de la
informacin y del conocimiento con el uso de las Nuevas Tecnologas de la Informacin
y la Comunicacin (NTIC). Se plantea en esta ponencia que la interaccin de estas tres
dimensiones resulta en una enorme distancia con los objetivos planteados por los
principales organismos nacionales y mundiales que han apostado el futuro intercultural
de la humanidad y de la sociedad de la informacin.
62
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En la poca colonial tarda (1752-1810), autoridades indgenas (cabildo y caciques) de
las misiones jesuitas (1609-1768), se comunicaban por escrito en guaran o en
castellano con las autoridades coloniales (gobernadores, comandantes). Las cartas en
guaran eran traducidas al castellano por intrpretes oficiales o por autoridades
eclesisticas. El corpus por ahora reunido y en proceso de anlisis (unas 80 cartas en
guaran) permite vislumbrar tanto la retrica como el vocabulario poltico colonial en
guaran elaborado en las interacciones entre jesuitas y guaranes, con sus traduccines al
castellano de la poca. Ni autctono , ni no autctono , este vocabulario poltico
en guaran puede ser comprendido como un middle ground lingstico atravesado
por relaciones de dominacin y de negociaciones. Ahora bien, recin entre 1810 y 1813
se invierten el emisor y el proceso de traduccin : un conjunto de cartas y un decreto
son emitidos por la Junta de Buenos Aires en castellano con una traduccin al guaran.
Proponemos analizar estos mltiples procesos de traduccin para seguir el proceso de
resemantizacin del vocabulario poltico guaran/castellano en los aos 1810-1813.
63
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Si la historia consiste en nombrar sujetos en un salto al vaco, (Rancire) qu quiere
decir hacer cuestin expresa de la historia de la historia? (OGorman) Y qu ocurre
cuando ese salto se da y se cuestiona desde y para una historia de la historia de perfil
colonial y poscolonial? De acuerdo con la tarea pendiente de (re)escribir la historia de
la historia desde el ms all de Europa, en este paper vuelvo sobre un salto al vaco
llamado Per. Apoyndome en conceptos de OGorman, Rancire, de Certeau y
Badiou entre otros, propongo que Per --entendido como sujeto y necesidad
hermenutica de la escritura histricanos puede ayudar a reimaginar las Indias y las
Americas como lugares de enunciacin de la historia moderna.
TEXTO/TEXT:
La tarea verdadera consiste, ante todo, en examinar los orgenes, los perjuicios y
los procesos de las verdades recibidas. En una palabra, hacer cuestin expresa de
la historia de la historia.
Edmundo OGorman
En ltima instancia, la historia es susceptible de un nico tipo de arquitectura,
siempre la misma: una serie de acontecimientos ocurre a tal o cual sujeto Pero
no podemos evitar confrontarnos al salto al vaco, para el cual los rigores
disciplinarios no ofrecen garanta alguna: debemos nombrar sujetos . . .
Jacques Rancire
Si la historia consiste en nombrar sujetos en un salto al vaco, qu quiere decir hacer cuestin expresa de la historia de la historia? Y qu ocurre cuando ese salto
64
Giorgio Agamben (2002) rastrea esta nocin del sujeto como vaco a travs de las tradiciones de
la filosofa negativa (Hegel y Heidegger) y de la teologa negativa hasta su origen en Aristteles.
67
llamaba. El indio, por los ademanes y meneas que con manos y rostro le hacan (como a
un mudo), entenda que le preguntaban mas no entenda lo que le preguntaban y a lo que
entendi qu era el preguntarle, respondi a prisa (antes que le hiciesen algn mal) y
nombr su propio nombre, diciendo Ber, y aadi otro y dijo Pel. Quiso decir: Si me
preguntis cmo me llamo, yo me digo Ber, y si me preguntis dnde estaba, digo que
estaba en el ro []. Los cristianos entendieron conforme a su deseo, imaginando que
el indio les haba entendido y respondido a propsito, como si l y ellos hubieran
hablado en castellano, y desde aquel tiempo, que fue el ao de mil y quinientos y quince
o diez y seis, llamaron Per aquel riqusimo y grande Imperio, corrompiendo ambos
nombres, como corrompen los espaoles casi todos los vocablos que toman del lenguaje
de los indios de aquella tierra [] llamaron despus Per a todo lo que hay desde all
[] que fue lo ms principal que ellos seorearon []. Este es el principio y origen del
nombre Per, tan famoso en el mundo, y con razn famoso, pues a todo l ha llenado de
oro y plata, de perlas y piedras preciosas. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1609: lib. 1, caps. IV y
V)
En sntesis, Per fue, en primera instancia, la conjuncin vnemential de la
enunciacin de las palabras Ber y Pel en la boca de Ber (el brbaro), ocurrida
en la boca de Pel (la boca del ro en el mar) en los caprichosos odos de barqueros
espaoles. Esta coyuntura o acontecimiento de nominacin fue inventado y confirmado
retrospectivamente por el segundo y tercer acontecimiento. Como hemos visto, el
segundo acontecimiento fue la recepcin entusiasta del nombre en Europa; y el
acontecimiento tercero o terciario, la prueba exegtica, ofrecida por el Inca Garcilaso,
de que el nombre tena sentido en trminos histricos y lingsticos. Fue este literario e
imaginario acontecimiento terciario el que fundara la historia peruana. El nombre
del asombrado indio del Inca Garcilaso, sorprendido pescando en el ro en el cabo del
mundo, se mezclara armoniosamente en las corrientes de la imaginacin histrica
renacentista. Pero gracias a las habilidades exegticas del Inca Garcilaso, el sujeto
epnimo Ber ha permanecido, bajo el peso de los topoi de descubrimiento y
conquista, como una huella extraa y reveladora al mismo tiempo. De hecho, la
conjuncin mitohistrica de Ber y Pel en Per satisfizo el requisito narrativo
de la historia de que su sujeto deba tener un nombre propio con un futuro entre una
comunidad de lectores. Lo hizo recurriendo la tradicin mitopotica de bautizar al
descubrir, aqu influenciada por la antigua costumbre segn la cual los ros y los reyes
podan escribir sus nombres en la tierra. Como nos hace saber el Inca Garcilaso, las
bocas de los grandes ros y las de los indios haban resonado en la imaginacin
espaola renacentista conforme a su deseo. Volver a historiar este deseo y
performance nos lleva a indagar con nuevos ojos acerca de otros nombres claves de la
historia colonial.
La verdad histrica de Indias
Est claro que el deseo de nombrar los cabos del mundo moderno no era
una seal de la proverbial ignorancia de los primeros pilotos. En realidad, la fuente de la
ignorancia sobre la verdad histrica data de nuestros tiempos, no de los de Coln. Desde
eruditos acadmicos y diccionarios prestigiosos hasta los indigenistas vanguardistas y
69
los turistas New Age, nos han querido hacer pensar que los nombres Indias e indio
son errados trminos de la ignorancia, que rpidamente se convirtieron en eptetos
prejuiciosos bajo el dominio colonial espaol. El problema con esa interpretacin es que
ambos nombres se convirtieron en seales de error y prejuicio solo en tiempos recientes;
y, por tanto, corresponden a formas contemporneos de re-conocimiento histrico.
Pero como nombre apelativo de la historia moderna, Indias era tan verdadero como el
antiguo y moderno India. Como explicaba el padre Acosta (2003 [1590]: 92-93) en su
erudita Historia natural y moral de las Indias:
Y as los espaoles igualmente llamamos Indias al Per, y a Mxico, y a la
China, y a Malaca, y al Brasil: y de cualquier parte de estas que vengan cartas, decimos
que son cartas de las Indias, siendo las dichas tierras y Reinos de inmensa distancia y
diversidad entre s. Aunque tampoco se puede negar, que el nombre de Indias se tome
de la India oriental; y porque cerca de los Antiguos esa India se celebraba por tierra
remotsima, de ah viene, que esta otra tierra tan remota, cuando se descubri, la
llamaron tambin India, por ser tan apartada, como tenida por el cabo del mundo; y as
llaman Indios los que moran en el cabo del mundo.
Las palabras del padre Acosta revelan que, para l y sus contemporneos, el
nombre propio clsico de India se haba devenido en el moderno nombre apelativo de
Indias. El nombre del cabo del mundo ahora era plural, genrico, repetido, de
escala global pes los adelantados de Carlos V haban empujado los lmites del imperio
mediterrneo ms all de las columnas de Hrcules hasta los confines indios del
nuevo orbe. El que los habitantes del Per, Mxico o China fueran llamados
indios de ninguna manera se debi a la repeticin mecnica de un trmino
equivocado acuado por un caprichoso piloto llamado Coln. Por el contrario, la
dispersin del apelativo indias marcaba el repetido horizonte moderno de un abismo
fundador. La huella de ese abismo fue la figura sinecdquica del sujeto indio. Y ese
indio que se repite por doquier, es asimismo legible hoy como la huella fundadora de
una historia de alcance global.
La performance inaugural del Inca Garcilaso convirti ese sujeto indio de la
modernidad colonial en el padre nombrador de la historia peruana. En realidad, la
exgesis de Garcilaso y su sutil giro de palabras sobre la escena primaria del contacto
devuelvan la autora del nombre del Per a una conjuncin de papel entre el nombre
propio imaginado de un bien intencionado pero mal hablado y mal entendido indio
brbaro, y el nombre en lengua yunga del lugar probable al que llegaron los primeros
espaoles. As, el epnimo brbaro es el testigo ocular original del acontecimiento
abismal. El lugar universal del suceso es el oracular ro en comn, situado en el cabo
del mundo, que ahora era el repetido horizonte colonial de la historia universal, llamado
Indias. Ahora, esta conjuncin en el cabo del mundo indio era propiamente
escuchada y escrita por el historiador cosmocolonial. Como receptor de la
enunciacin de Ber y como escritor comentarista de la historial imperial espaola, la
voz, el odo y los ojos del Inca Garcilaso se movan entre el tiempo de la enunciacin de
Ber y el tiempo de su propio discurso. Al enlazar ambos tiempos por medio de shifters,
hizo que el nombre del Per fuera verosmil en el lenguaje de la historia universal
renacentista, as como en el del propio Imperio peruano, que ahora era reclamado
70
retrospectivamente para una futura historia peruana, como la verdadera patria del
historiador mestizo en el destierro. Consecuentemente, el eclipse del nombre
Tawantinsuyu fue una prdida facilitadora para el Inca Garcilaso. Su historia aceler
la muerte de ese nombre, transfiriendo esa prdida al nuevo y universal sujeto de
historia llamado Per (pace el argumento en MacCormack 2006: 193). La historia
peruana naci en ese doble labor de muerte y labor contra la muerte. Y como anota
De Certeau (1988: 45-47), toda labor contra la muerte siempre deja una huella
permanente de un inicio que es imposible recuperar, tanto como olvidar.
Si toda historia est fundada y refundada en la doble ausencia de las cosas en las
palabras y de los muertos entre los vivos, entonces Ber es la huella de ese abismo
de la historia que dio luz no solo a Per, sino al mundo moderno que hizo de este
indio un sujeto universal de la historia. Y si toda escritura de la historia presupone un
cierto exilio del presente, as como una cierta ausencia de las cosas del pasado en el
presente, entonces la condicin de exilio y ausencia que hizo posible escribir la historia
del Per fue, a la vez, colonial y cosmopolitita, y por eso he acunado la palabra
cosmocolonial para nombrar esa posibilidad. Dicha posibilidad cosmocolonial dej
su huella en todas las historias y filosofas del Per posteriores, incluyendo el
historicismo finalista de Jorge Basadre, cuya visin integral de la historia sigue
dominando la imaginacin histrica peruana hasta el da de hoy.
Palabras finales
Quiero redondear mis comentarios con unas breves palabras sobre la tarea de
escribir historia de la historia cuando lo que entendemos por historia es una serie de
apuestas sobre los nombres o abismos de la historia, y cuando estos nombres o abismos
son coloniales y poscoloniales.
Dipesh Chakrabarty ha sugerido que, en el mundo colonial, la historia
configuraba sus sujetos en narrativas desarrollistas o evolucionistas que trazaban una
trayectoria gradual hacia la unificacin y la modernidad, modelada en la historia
europea. La historia de la India (o la historia de cualquier otro sujeto colonial que
deviene en nacin poscolonial) poda empezar con un pasado antiguo y glorioso, pero se
desarrollaba y mova a travs de edades oscuras y un renacimiento, a paso seguro
hacia una futura plenitud nacional, aunque a travs de lo que Chatterjee (1993: 75-115)
llama el presente miserable, caracterizado por la falta y el retraso. El referente de
todas esas historias, sostiene Chakrabarty, ha sido y es una Europa hiperreal. Y esto es
as porque en la imaginacin histrica moderna Europa se configur como
coextendida con la razn, la modernidad y (desde Marx) con el capital, entendido como
categoras histricas universales que explican todo, en todas partes, en todas las pocas.
Como consecuencia, para Chakrabarty el historicismo es un discurso colonial que niega
la contemporaneidad y heterogeneidad radical del sujeto histrico extra-europeo. Sin
embargo, en mi libro El Nombre del Abismo, creo haber demostrado que estas
observaciones crticas de Chakrabarty difcilmente pueden ser aplicadas a la escritura de
la historia y al historicismo peruano. Aunque el historicismo de Basadre muchas veces
reciclaba temas y lenguajes dialcticos y desarrollistas que de hecho se remontan a
discursos historicistas europeos, su nocin y entramado de lo histrico no es
71
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2009 Theory of the Subject. Traduccin del original francs de Bruno Bosteels. Nueva
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1958 La promesa de la vida peruana y otros ensayos. Lima: Meja Baca.
1965 En torno a la teora de la historia. En Historia y Cultura 1.
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1968b Nota preliminar a la quinta edicin. En Basadre 1968a.
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1975 La vida y la historia. Lima: Industrial Grfica.
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74
75
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Este estudio se propone indagar sobre la problematizacin en torno a la nocin de
concepto presente en la obra de G. Deleuze y F. Guattari, intitulada Quest-ce que la
Philosophie? (1991). Se trata de identificar los lazos existentes entre los elementos que
atraviesan la singular delimitacin que el filsofo opera sobre el concepto de concepto
y su relacin con la filosofa, como tambin sealar relaciones y diferencias especficas
con lo que G. Deleuze entiende por ciencia y funcin.
TEXTO/TEXT:
I.
Obra escrita en colaboracin con Flix Guattari. Si bien la obra de 1991 posee doble autora, la
nocin de concepto pertenece a Deleuze y es desarrollada por primera vez en Empirisme et
subjectivit (1953). A lo largo de la exposicin, y a medida que la terminologa tcnica lo requiera,
introduciremos en pie de pgina las definiciones necesarias para la comprensin global del tema elaboradas por el equipo redactor del Vocabulaire de Gilles Deleuze (2003)-. Dada la brevedad de
este estudio, nos limitaremos a sealarlas e utilizarlas, pero no las explicaremos. Por otra parte,
utilizaremos el texto en su idioma y paginacin originales (1991 [2005]). Traduccin de Thomas
Kauf para la edicin espaola (1991 [2001]).
76
Le chaos reste la condition de possibilit infinie de toute dtermination finie, un champ virtuel qui
subsiste la surface des choses et qu'aucune effectivit ne pourra jamais puiser [y ms arriba] le lieu
d'un devenir plastique et dynamique, d'o jaillissent sans cesse des dterminations qui s'bauchent et
s'vanouissent vitesse infinie. (Villani-Sasso, 2003: p.55)
3
Fonction (Deleuze-Guattari, 1991): Rsultat d'un ralentissement du mouvement infini de la pense qui
procure aux sciences leur objet spcifique, par agencement de fonctifs l'intrieur de systmes
discursifs. (Ibid.: p.154)
77
II.
Para Deleuze, el concepto necesita de un personaje conceptual4 que ayuda a
definirlo y de un plano de inmanencia5 en el que se ubica6 . Deleuze delimita las
caractersticas fundamentales de lo que entiende por concepto7, de la siguiente manera:
El concepto expresa el acontecimiento, no la esencia o la cosa. Es un
Acontecimiento puro8, una hecceidad9 () se define por la inseparabilidad de
un nmero finito de componentes [o rasgos intensivos 10 ] heterogneos
recorridos por un punto en sobrevuelo absoluto, a velocidad infinita.11 () es
absoluto y relativo a la vez: relativo respecto de sus propios componentes, de los
dems conceptos, del plano sobre el que se delimita, de los problema12 que
supuestamente debe resolver, pero absoluto por la condensacin que lleva a cabo
[de sus componentes], por el lugar que ocupa sobre el plano, por las condiciones
que asigna al problema. Es absoluto como totalidad, pero relativo en tanto que
fragmentario. Es infinito por su sobrevuelo o su velocidad, pero finito por su
movimiento que delimita el permetro de los componentes (2005: p.26).
El concepto, para Deleuze, es siempre acontecimiento y lo expresa (si bien no
todo acontecimiento conforma un concepto). No es esencia, puesto que no es fijo, ni
tampoco siempre definido del mismo modo. Se encuentra compuesto y subdividido por
mltiples acontecimientos interiores que advienen constantemente -conformando asi la
heterognesis del concepto, u ordenacin de sus componentes por zonas de
4
Personnnage conceptuel: (...) n'est pas le reprsentant du philosophe, c'est mme l'inverse: le
philosophe est seulement l'enveloppe de son principal personnage conceptuel et de tous les autres, qui
sont les intercesseurs. les vritables sujets de sa philosophie (QPh. p.62) () [ils] ont pour fonction
d'oprer les mouvements qui dcrivent le plan d'immanence de l'auteur, et d'intervenir dans la cration
mme de ses concepts (ibid. p.62). (Villani-Sasso: p.356)
5
Plan dimmanence (Deleuze, 1969): Distinct du plan de rfrence, qui caractrise la science, est form
d'actuels et renonce l'infini, et du plan de consistance, qui caractrise l'art, est form d'affects et de
percepts, et cre du fini qui redonne l'infini, le plan d'immanence caractrise la philosophie, est form de
concepts et sauve l'infini. (Ibid.: p.272)
6
Por razones de extensin no ahondaremos en estos aspectos fundamentales de la filosofa de
Deleuze, slo nos limitaremos a sealarlos y nombrarlos.
7
Concept (Deleuze, 1953): Violence faite il la pense, le concept, ds le moment qu'il a accueilli en lui
l'Infini, devient le mouvement mme des singularits sur le plan d'Immanence, le mouvement mme des
choses il l'tat libre et sauvage. Il se dfinit alors comme un tout fragmentaire, dcoupant de faon
consistante et irrgulire une multiplicit finie de composantes htrognes, et les condensant dans une
vibration intensive. (Ibid.: p.57)
8
Evnment (pur) (Deleuze, 1969): () la part ternelle et ineffectuable de tout ce qui arrive, entit
impassible toujours dj advenue, aussi bien qu'encore venir, se subdivisant sans cesse en de multiples
vnements singuliers, et les runissant en un seul et meme vnement. (Ibid.: p.138)
9
Heccit (Deleuze, 1972): () mode d'individuation, qui ne se rduit ni la substance, ni l'objet, ni
au sujet mais concerne cependant des individualits parfaites, condition qu'elles soient saisies sur le plan
de consistance ou d'immanence que permet la logique des multiplicits, au lieu d'tre rapportes un plan
de transcendance. (Ibid.: p.171)
10
Intensit (Deleuze, [1964] 1968): Dynamisme, exemplairement li la sensation et prsent jusque
dans le concept. Des processus diffrentiels constituant l'tre comme Diffrence pure. (Ibid.: p.203)
11
Vitesse (Deleuze, 1977): Caractre Intensif et imprdictible du mouvement () d'un vnement
Incorporel la surface des choses, rythme de la dterritorialisatlon ou des devenirs. (Ibid.: p.337)
12
Problme (Deleuze, 1953): () s'impose devant un fait pour lequel nous ne disposons d'aucune
formule capable de nous guider dans sa description, ncessairement dmembr par un ensemble de
singularits qui ne saccordent pas sous l'autorit d'un fil directeur, sachant que leurs voisinages ne
peuvent s'agencer que de manire htrogne. (Ibid.: p.289)
78
proximidad (2005: p.26)-. Tampoco es la cosa: puesto que, en tanto que singular y
auto-puesto, el concepto es independiente y distinto de ella como tambin del individio
que lo piensa-, y no conforma tampoco su representacin, sino una entidad cuyo rango
de realidad se corresponde con el de la cosa.
En tanto que compuesto, el concepto es heterogneo y fragmentario. Dado que
posee una cifra determinada de componentes, no los posee todos (sino, el concepto sera
indiferenciable del caos). En tanto que su contorno se encuentra delimitado por la cifra
de sus componentes, opera un recorte en la realidad (recorte que al mismo tiempo
explica al concepto: el concepto no explica un estado de cosas, l mismo debe ser
explicado). El concepto es compuesto y mltiple. En este sentido, en tanto que todo
fragmentario, el concepto es relativo y absoluto a la vez:
La relatividad y la absolutidad del concepto son como su pedagoga y su
ontologa, su creacin y su autoposicin, su idealidad y su realidad. Real sin ser
actual, ideal sin ser abstracto... El concepto se define por su consistencia,
endoconsistencia y exoconsistencia, pero carece de referencia: es
autorreferencial, se [pone] a s mismo y plantea su objeto al mismo tiempo que
es creado (2005: p.27).
El concepto es concepto entre conceptos, al mismo tiempo que sus componentes
conforman, ellos mismos, conceptos diferentes e independientes interrelacionados. Los
conceptos son un todo fragmentario: en tanto que todo es absoluto, endo-consistente (en
razn de la inseparabilidad establecida entre los componentes heterogneos dentro del
concepto) y exo-consistente (en razn de la consistencia entre el concepto y sus
componentes, con otros conceptos de un plano y sus respectivos componentes). De este
modo, se relaciona con otros conceptos del plano en que se ubica sin dejar de ser unidad
independiente. En tanto que fragmentario, sus componentes se relacionan de manera
independiente con otros conceptos o componentes de planos inmanentes.
Ahora bien, en relacin con la multiplicidad de planos en los cuales se ubican
los conceptos, todo concepto reenva a un problema puesto que la necesidad de crear
nuevos conceptos surge: ya sea en razn de la identificacin de un problema que se
encuentra mal planteado; o bien, cuya resolucin no nos satisface; y ms an, ante la
identificacin de un problema no antes planteado (pedagoga del concepto). En tanto
que el concepto reenva siempre a un problema, debe poseer consistencia: endoconsistencia y exo-consistencia. Por su parte, la endo-consistencia se relaciona con la
condensacin de los componentes del concepto, los cuales deben ser comprendidos en
tanto que singularidades en el sentido dado por la diferencia- particularizadas o
generalizadas segn se le asignen valores variables o una funcin constante. Esta es una
de las diferencias que se establecen entre filosofa y ciencia, como tambin entre
concepto y funcin:
Las relaciones en el concepto no son de comprensin ni de extensin, sino slo
de ordenacin, y los componentes del concepto no son constantes ni variables,
sino meras variaciones ordenadas en funcin de su proximidad. Son procesuales,
79
Diffrence (Deleuze, 1968): Dtermination relle, entirement positive, qui ne se laisse jamais rduire
ni l'identique ni l'Un, Infiniment productrice de diffrentiation virtuelle et de diffrenciation actuelle.
(Ibid.: p.114)
14
Image de la pense (Deleuze, 1962): Prsupposition et prconception que la pense se donne d'ellemme: soit comme recherche naturelle du vrai, soit comme instauration d'un plan de cration des
concepts. (Ibid.: p.181)
80
Todo concepto tiene una historia y un devenir15, que se relacionan con las
vinculaciones que los conceptos tienen entre ellos -tanto dentro de un mismo plano,
como en planos diversos-, y con los problemas a los que reenvan. La historia de los
conceptos en Deleuze, esta dada por las interrelaciones que se establecen entre
conceptos independientes y sus componentes, en el proceso de creacin de nuevos
conceptos (ningn concepto es creatio ex nihilo: en tanto que fragmentario se compone
trozos o de conceptos ya existentes). La historia de los conceptos tambin abarca la
totalidad de los problemas a los que los conceptos reenvan (tanto problemas actuales,
como aquellos que responden a necesidades del pasado):
Los planos hay que hacerlos, y los problemas, plantearlos, del mismo modo que
hay que crear los conceptos () [los conceptos de la historia de la filosofa] pueden ser
reactivados en nuestros problemas [en nuestra historia y en nuestros devenires actuales]
e inspirar estos conceptos nuevos que hay que crear (2005 : pp.36-38).
Por su parte, el devenir de los conceptos comprende las transformaciones que los
conceptos experimentan en el presente y los que advendrn ya sea por necesidad de
responder a nuevos problemas, o bien cuando un problema pierde vigencia-. El devenir
de los conceptos atae tambin al movimiento mismo de los conceptos y la velocidad
con que devienen. Es por ello que el concepto es permanente heterognesis: co-creacin
conformada por conceptos o partes independientes entre s, coexistentes en el mismo
plano, o provenientes de problemas y conceptos de otros planos.
Como pudimos ver, el concepto de concepto en Deleuze introduce originales
caractersticas de lo que comprende como concepto para la filosofa; al mismo tiempo
que delimita el mbito de la especificidad del quehacer filosfico: en tanto creacin de
conceptos puros, la filosofa extrae siempre un acontecimiento de las cosas y de los
seres. En este sentido, cabe ahondar en las resonancias que esta nocin es capaz de
producir en el plano de la historia conceptual, en razn de las novedades y del
desplazamiento del punto de vista sobre el concepto filosfico, que el concepto
deleuziano implica.
15
Devenir (Deleuze, 1962): A entendre en un sens verbal et non substantiel, cest un processus qui
implique une mtamorphose comme rencontre instantane des sries de points virtuels qui caractrisent
tout objet ou tre. (Ibid.: p.101)
81
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Tanto John Dewey como Anton S. Makarenko han sido objeto de estudio y se les ha
comparado por la importancia de su obra pedaggica la cual es ampliamente reconocida
a nivel internacional. Ambos autores vivieron cambios profundos en sus sociedades;
Makarenko fue testigo y protagonista de acontecimientos y procesos de la revolucin
rusa. Dewey fue partcipe y presenci la expansin democrtica norteamericana. Ambos
autores comparten una inquietud: proponer y poner en prctica su proyecto educativo.
Puede afirmarse que tanto Dewey como Makarenko coincidieron en la necesidad de
proponer nuevas prcticas pedaggicas, nuevos mtodos porque consideraban que no
resolvan la problemtica educativa de su tiempo y de su sociedad. Cada uno de ellos
desarroll algunos conceptos como son el de ciudadana, personalidad, inters,
esfuerzo, actividad y colectividad, todos ellos enmarcados en el concepto de democracia.
El presente texto pretende comparar los conceptos de Dewey y Makarenko a fin de
identificar la influencia de estos en los procesos educativos actuales, como bien seala
Martnez Bonafe (1998). Este resalta la importancia de producir materiales conceptuales
y procedimentales para inducir la reflexin sobre las posibilidades y los lmites de la
democratizacin de la escuela.
Por ello propone la necesidad de un nuevo proyecto educativo desde una
conceptualizacin alternativa del conocimiento socialmente compartido, a travs de las
denominadas claves. Estas claves se presentan desde los terrenos propios de las
disciplinas del conocimiento cientfico, para fomentar un pensamiento crtico (Martnez
Bonafe, 1998).
TEXTO/TEXT:
Presentacin
Tanto la obra pedaggica de John Dewey como la de Anton S. Makarenko han sido
objeto de estudio y sus aportaciones han sido reconocidas a nivel internacional. Ambos
autores fueron testigos y partcipes de cambios profundos en sus sociedades. En gran
82
Fue el pseudnimo utilizado por Aleksi Maksmovich Pshkov, escritor ruso identificado con el
movimiento revolucionario sovitico.
83
contiene una serie de conceptos que provienen de otros campos de conocimiento y que
la pedagoga retoma y aplica para su comprensin (Zapata, 2003:181). Desde esta
perspectiva tanto Makarenko, como Dewey elaboraron y propusieron un conjunto de
ideas y conceptos clave que identifican no slo sus propuestas sino su pensamiento
pedaggico. Ahora bien, De qu manera sus experiencias educativas quedan
expresadas en conceptos pedaggicos que articulan sus teoras? Es posible identificar a
travs de sus conceptos clave algunas coincidencias y divergencias en sus propuestas
pedaggicas? Aqu se revisarn algunos conceptos clave como escuela, colectividad,
profesor y alumno, que se sustentan en la idea de democracia y que son esenciales para
explicar sus teoras pedaggicas.
El concepto de escuela
Makarenko caracteriza a la institucin escolar como una colonia o escuelagranja, a la que concibe como una colectividad infantil organizada como un todo, cuyo
eje la constituyen la disciplina y la emulacin que se regula por principios y reglas bien
establecidas y aceptadas por sus integrantes. Los valores y las prcticas que se inculcan
en ella es el sentido del deber, del honor y los juegos. Unos y otras propician las
tensiones volitivas y fomentan la iniciativa de los educandos. La forma especfica que
deba adoptar la institucin educativa eran las colonias y en estas deba organizarse la
enseanza con carcter obligatorio para todos los miembros de la colectividad. Dicha
organizacin deba atender la educacin intelectual, moral, fsica, esttica y la
instruccin politcnica, adems de ejercicios militares (Makarenko, S/F, b: 258). Bajo
estos principios, Makarenko consideraba que su propuesta pedaggica no pretenda el
estudio del nio y ni la aplicacin de mtodos de educacin aislados, basados en ideas
abstractas, de ah la importancia que le otorga al trabajo manual. Desde esta perspectiva,
los problemas de la educacin residan tanto en la metodologa, la cual defina como el
conjunto de procedimientos para ensear, a saber que todo el proceso educativo se
realizaba nicamente en el saln de clase, sino en otras actividades y espacios porque se
trataba de que la educacin sirviera a lo largo de la vida del individuo (Makarenko,
2004).
Por su parte, Dewey defini y caracteriz la escuela experimental como una
pequea comunidad de la que el nio deba de sentirse pertenecer. En esa se fomentara
el trabajo y la cooperacin (Dewey, 2009: 53). As, por medio de estos principios y
prcticas era posible romper con los cnones de la escuela tradicional. Otras
caractersticas de tal comunidad es que los maestros no usaban reglas, ni campanas, ni
estaban al frente del grupo para trasmitir slo informacin a los alumnos; la
organizacin ya no era el saln de clase por lo que tampoco haba bancas ni sillas
ordenadas. Segn la concepcin filosfica deweyana, la escuela experimental era en
realidad una escuela-laboratorio que se sustentaba en un modelo de enseanza prctica
que implica la comprensin del entorno, la aprehensin de la realidad a fin de
transformarla y que requera la intervencin responsable del sujeto. En resumen, tal
escuela se enfoca en la resolucin de problemas de la vida cotidiana, (Meneses, 1983).
Como puede apreciarse, ambos autores coinciden en varios rasgos centrales de la
escuela, entre ellos concebirla como una comunidad comprometida en el trabajo
84
REFERENCIAS:
Del Castillo, Ramn (2004). Erase una Vez en Amrica, Estudio Preliminar a John
Dewey, La Opinin Pblica y sus problemas, Madrid: Ediciones Morata.
Dewey, John (1967). Experiencia y Educacin, (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S.A.,
1967).
Dewey, John. (2004). La Opinin Pblica y sus Problemas, Introduccin de Ramn del
Castillo, Madrid: Ediciones Morata.
Dewey, John. (2009). Democracia y escuela. Madrid: Editorial Popular, S.A.
Makarenko, Antn. (1975). Antn Makarenko, problemas de la educacin escolar
sovitica. Mosc: Editorial Progreso.
Makarenko, Antn. (1977). La Colectividad y la educacin de la personalidad. Mosc:
Editorial Progreso.
Makarenko, Anton. (1983). Conferencias sobre educacin infantil. Mxico: Editores
Mexicanos Unidos, S.A.
Makarenko, Anton. (2004). Poema Pedaggico. Mxico: Ediciones Quinto Sol.
Makarenko, Anton. S. (S/F). Flores de la vida el libro para los padres. Cuba: Imprenta
Nacional de Cuba, Ministerio de Educacin.
Makarenko, Antn. (S/F, b). Anton Makarenko su vida y labor pedaggica. Mosc:
Editorial Progreso.
88
89
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La propiedad con la que Koselleck dot a su Historik conceptual (como sabemos: de lo
abstracto a una materializacin lingstica en su praxis poltica), hizo del concepto
propiamente un lugar central de entre los residuos contextuales de la historia. En ste
desplazamiento, que tambin se efecta desde las filosofas idealistas (de la historia) a la
parcela de lo social, los estratos a los que el pensador se refiere y que se acumulan en el
concepto, si bien aceptamos la metfora, son en realidad los excesos o restos semnticos
necesariamente materiales significativos del lenguaje- a lo largo de su uso en el
tiempo. ste guio geolgico apunta directamente a un corte arqueolgico aqu un
Foucault benjaminiano- en el conocimiento de su devenir, esto es, en el transcurso o
viaje por aqu Mieke Bal- donde el concepto significa y, al tiempo, se modifica
propiamente a travs del espacio, del tiempo, en definitiva, de los contextos para
significar otra realidad. El concepto es, as, un signo claro de las temporalidades
distintas que lo conforman. Mi comunicacin apunta, pues, a este hecho en el que
concepto pasa a funcionar, desde los mrgenes de las corrientes filosficas sobre la
historia, como memoria material y conocimiento de los momentos histricos en los que
se trans-forman, pero no slo como mero registro identitario de lo real (Adorno), sino
tambin de sus usos. El giro epistemolgico que muchas disciplinas del mbito del
conocimiento o en las prcticas culturales, para generalizar- han dado hacia la
memoria en la actualidad, hacen necesario un nuevo centro de anlisis que no sean
solamente discursivas (el relato va texto) y donde la prioridad semntica d paso a una
pragmtica histrica, un ejercicio en el que el concepto no slo es el recuerdo presente
de aquello que signific, tambin el recuerdo del modo o maneras institucional,
poltico y social- en que tambin fue usado.
90
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Conceptual history in general, and more specifically conceptual dictionaries, are
proving to be a very useful tool to study the Spanish American history at the Age of
Revolution (and beyond). However, in Latin America sometimes this approach is
perceived as a sort of variation of the School of Cambridge approach to intellectual
history or, at least, as being a very similar perspective. In my opinion, it is important to
clarify some of the most important similitudes, tensions and differences between both
approaches. This exercise will highlight some of the strengths and some of the
limitations of both of them and also show that, in certain regards, they can complement
each other very well. I think that the conceptual approach should not lose from view
some of the insights of the Cambridge School in order to avoid the rigidity that it
evinces in certain respects (when dealing with a specific period of political/intellectual
history). In this paper I am interested in dealing with the aforementioned topics.
However, I dont want to stay at a purely methodological level; therefore, I will try to
illustrate my arguments using the Spanish American independence movements as the
laboratory in which I will put methodological principles to the test.
My paper will not only highlight the contributions that conceptual history has done to
the historiography devoted to political history and political ideas in Spanish America
during the first half of the XIXth century, but also try to spark a debate on what could be
considered some of its heuristic predicaments. To achieve this, I think that Skinners
approach can be very useful.
TEXT/TEXTO:
For several reasons, conceptual history and the School of Cambridge should be most
welcomed by the Latin American academy. Both methodologies have arrived fairly
recently to the academic world of Latin America and both of them are, at present, linked
more than anything else to the independence period and the first decades of independent
life of the several countries that emerged in the region after independence (i.e., 181091
1850). The main historians responsible for this arrival are Javier Fernndez Sebastin
in the case of conceptual history and Elas Palti in the case of what I will refer to in this
(not so brief) abstract as history of political languages. In my view, besides of course
their evident intellectual merits, there are three main reasons why both currents should
be welcomed by Latin American historians. In the first place, because traditionally Latin
American historiography has been rather careless in its use of political terms and
political concepts. Secondly, because for historians of the region presentism has been
a constant since history became an academic discipline in the middle of the XXth
century (with important variations within the region). This presentism has been very
much linked to the instrumental use of history for mainly political motives (more or less
disguised as an academic enterprise). Lastly, both methodologies should be welcomed
because there is a widespread reluctance among Latin American historians to give to
theory or theoretical thinking an important role in what they do. Needless to say, these
three elements can be developed and several nuances and/or exceptions can be made,
but as presented they appear to me as undeniable and therefore respond to the main
purposes of this abstract.
From my experience during the bicentennial congresses, seminars and
conferences that have taken place in Latin America during the last five or six years, I
perceive certain confusion between the two aforementioned methodologies among some
historians of the region. Of course, there are evident affinities between them: their care
for language; their concern for the linguistic-historic context of the author, the work or
the period under study; some of their theoretical principles, and the way in which they
have superseded the traditional way of approaching the history of ideas (mainly, the
dilution of great authors and great texts). Regarding this last aspect, the old habit of
some Latin American intellectual historians of finding influences (coming mainly
from England, the United States or France) will die hard. Another aspect, though
secondary, that may have contributed to the confusion that I perceive in some Latin
American historians between conceptual history and the history of political languages is
the fact that they both arrived to Latin American universities at more or less the same
time.
In any case, notwithstanding the reservations of some Latin American historians,
conceptual history and the history of political languages will keep on developing in
some of the best universities of the region. However, it is open to debate how far will
conceptual inroads will be able to get in the Latin American academic world. In this
abstract, I want to call the attention to five issues that, from my perspective, may
complicate and even hinder the proper development of conceptual history in the
region (i.e., a development that does not cover up its richness, its complexities, its
tensions and its ambiguities):
a) In the first place, going against what professor Koselleck insisted upon in
several of his works and contravening an aspect of Begriffsgechichte that
professor Bdeker has also emphasized emphatically in some of his texts, it
should be remembered that one of the clues of conceptual history is not in the
concepts themselves, but in the relation between concepts and circumstances or
experiences or reality. In other words, historic reality cannot be reduced to its
92
enterprise will not be available in its original language for all those historians
that, like myself, do not master the German language (to give an idea of his
dedication to the dictionary he edited along with Werner Conze and Otto
Brunner along almost three decades: Koselleck devoted two whole years to only
one voice: Bund). This issue regarding language may not be considered as
important as the preceding ones, but we should bear in mind that translations
from German to Spanish are not that common in certain academic topics (i.e., a
good part of Kosellecks work, in general, not only the Dictionary, will be
accessible for only the handful of Latin American historians that master
German).
The five issues I have outlined in this abstract have as their main objective sparking
a debate that, in the end, may contribute to the development of a conceptual history in
Latin American academy that brings to light as much as possible all of its richness and
all of its tensions. This methodology has proved its usefulness in many aspects and will
continue to do it. Historians in Latin America can profit from it and will continue to do
it, no doubt. Precisely because this will be the case, I think it is important to put on the
table some of its heuristic limitations (if I may say it this way), as well as some
aspects that may hinder its reception and diffusion.
95
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Como en el juego de palabras italiano traditore e traduttore el engao o el fraude estn
muy cercanos al proceso creativo de la traduccin. La intervencin activa en la
traduccin super las fronteras. As comienza la historia del krausismo con un viaje de
Julin Sanz del Ro (1814-1869) cruzando la frontera a Alemania en el ao 1843. Fue
entonces cuando la filosofa del alemn Karl Christian Friedrich Krause empez a echar
races en Espaa. Es la historia de un fenmeno peculiar que en otro espacio y en otro
tiempo tuvo al contrario en el pas de origen del autor mucho xito. Parece que no
haba una congruencia total de ideas y conceptos al traspasar el pensamiento de un
contexto cultural a otro. Por esta razn, es pertinente analizar las categoras de tradicin
e innovacin; o en el caso de Sanz del Ro tambin de fraude incriminado. Se trata tanto
de una traduccin literal del alemn al espaol como de una traduccin cultural: al haber
traducido los textos, Sanz del Ro ha posibilitado la adaptacin de ideas y conceptos.
Este trabajo se propone indagar acerca de la pregunta de cmo la categora de la
traduccin fomenta el anlisis de la transferencia cultural en el caso del krausismo. Para
ello tras dirimir la controversia acerca de la originalidad, se tratar a nivel micro la
figura del traductor y sus amistades, que constituy una red que conect la Espaa y la
Alemania de entonces. Finalmente se analizar el proceso de traspasar la lengua y
como, a causa de los cambios introducidos, Sanz del Ro se puede denominar traductor
creativo.
TEXTO/TEXT:
96
97
98
para Espaa. Destaca el ao 1860 con la publicacin de los dos ms importantes: Ideal
de la humanidad y la base filosfica de Krause traducida en Sistema de la filosofa.
Metafsica.
Durante varias dcadas de investigacin sobre el krausismo se habl de la
originalidad y creatividad con la que Sanz del Ro haba traducido el original de Krause.
En su Historia crtica del pensamiento espaol Luis Abelln caracteriza a Sanz del
Ro no solo como traductor, sino como intrprete que comenta, aade, suprime y da
nueva orientacin a las ideas de Krause.6 Como varios apartados no se encontraban en
la obra alemana, se explic ese fenmeno como adaptacin o invencin del traductor.
Ya en el ttulo Sanz del Ro indic el hecho de haber aadido comentarios.7 La especial
manera de traducir se deba al intento de explicar la filosofa alemana de un modo
comprensible a los lectores espaoles y acomodada al espritu de nuestro pueblo y a
las ms apremiantes necesidades de su cultura como se explica en la segunda edicin
del libro en 1871. 8 Segn esta interpretacin el krausismo fue asumido por la
transformacin del traductor. Se consider como un movimiento totalmente espaol que
luego fue transferido tambin a Amrica Latina.9 Aunque el filsofo alemn nunca
haba tenido ninguna relacin con el mundo hispnico, sus ideas fueron arrogadas
totalmente. La filosofa no tiene una nacionalidad, pero las ideas krausianas llegaron a
travs de la traduccin a suelo frtil en Espaa.
Esta fue la interpretacin comn, hasta que en 1988, el historiador madrileo
Enrique M. Urea consigui desvelar el fraude de Sanz como lo denomina en uno de
sus artculos.10 En realidad no se trata de una traduccin literal de Das Urbild, sino de
otros dos textos ms cortos de Krause. Urea cree derribar [] el mayor mito de []
una originalidad Krause-espaola []: el mito de un Ideal de la Humanidad que Sanz
del Ro hubiese acomodado a las necesidades de su pueblo.11 Comparando la fuente
alemana con la traduccin de Sanz de 1860 junto con otro manuscrito indito de 1851,
se demuestra el procedimiento de la traduccin.12 Al ao siguiente, 1998, se public
otra relacin comparativa del Sistema de la filosofa, anlisis por Orden Jimnez.13
Esta concordancia de las fuentes permite una lectura fcil de los diferentes escritos hoy
en da. Adems, ofrece la posibilidad de comprender el proceso de la (no-)traduccin.
Hablar de un nuevo original de la obra krausiana y no simplemente de una adaptacin
del original es, por eso, justificado.
6
Abelln, Jos Luis: Historia crtica del pensamiento espaol, Bd. 4: Liberalismo y romanticismo
1808 1874, Madrid 1984, p. 425.
7
C. Cr. Krause: Ideal de la Humanidad para la vida, con introduccin y comentarios por D.
Julin Sanz del Ro, Catedrtico de Historia de a Filososfa en la Universidad Central, Madrid,
1860. (ediciones adicionales en 1871, 1904 y 1985).
8
Abelln: Historia crtica, p. 426.
9
Stoetzer, Otto Carlos: Karl Christian Friedrich Krause and His Influence in the Hispanic World,
Kln 1998.
10
Urea, Enrique M.: El fraude de Sanz del Ro o la verdad sobre su 'Ideal de la Humanidad', in:
Pensamiento, 44: 173 (1988), p. 25-47.
11
Ibid. p. 26.
12
Urea, Enrique M. et al.: El 'ideal de la humanidad' de Sanz del Ro y su original alemn: textos
comparados con una introduccin, Madrid 21997.
13
Orden Jimnez, Rafael V.: Sanz del Ro: traductor y divulgador de Krause, Pamplona 1998.
99
Giner de los Ros, Francisco: Apunte biogrfico, ed. Pablo de Azcarate, Madrid 1969, p. 25.36.
Primera publicacin: En el centenario de Sanz del Ro, in: Boletn de la Institucin de Libre
Enseanza 653 (1914), p. 225-231.
15
Comparar: Giner de los Ros: Apunte biogrfico, p. 27.
100
Jakobson, Roman: On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, in: Selected Writings, Vol. II: Word
and Language, Berlin 1971, p. 260-266.
17
Ibid. p. 261.
18
Ibid.
19
Sanz del Ro a Leonhardi, 30.8.1848, en: Urea: Cincuenta cartas, p. 82.
20
Sanz lo traduce del original alemn de 1811: Der Mensch ist nicht allein Leib und Geist
zusammengenommen, sondern Leib und Geist in einer wahren harmonischen Vereinigung des
Lebens, der Kraft, der Empfindung, der Neigung und der Handlung, Urea: Textos comparados,
p. 75.
21
Ibid. p. 75.
101
del ttulo de El ideal de la humanidad para Das Urbild der Menschheit. Urbild
significa ms bien arquetipo que ideal pero Sanz del Ro lo cambi, exitosamente, a
un ttulo de impacto posibilitando la iniciacin del idealismo en Espaa. Hay que tener
en cuenta que la filosofa en Espaa no estaba hasta entonces familiarizada con el
idealismo como se estaba discutindo en Alemania, as que la importacin de las ideas
krausianas engendr un desarrollo.
Pero la obra de Krause no fue adaptada sin ms desde el principio. Aunque luego
se consider como el libro de horas de una generacin,22 en 1865 El Ideal fue
prohibido por la Iglesia Catlica. Once aos despus de la primera publicacin, en
1871, se edit de nuevo, justo durante del Sexenio Democrtico. Estas dos fechas
muestran claramente como la recepcin fue una lucha paralela a la evolucin de un
movimiento poltico liberal.
Para terminar: cien aos despus, se discute la credibilidad del traductor Sanz
del Ro por haber publicado un texto diferente al indicado. Pero yo considero excesivo
hablar en este caso de fraude, se trata de la interpretacin y la interaccin activa y
necesaria del traductor en el proceso de la transferencia cultural. No obstante ha logrado
ejercer una gran influencia en Espaa: Su figura est memorizada como precursor de la
filosofa, introductor de una nueva enseanza y, al mismo tiempo, ha establecido un
nexo entre los dos pases. Su conmemoracin hoy en da es an mayor que la de Krause
en Alemania. A diferencia de la no-consolidacin del krausismo en Alemania fue
transferida exitosamente a Espaa gracias a la traduccin creativa llevado a cabo por
Julin Sanz del Ro.
22
102
RESUMEN/ ABSTRACT:
El concepto conservador, referido al partido poltico que surgi en Mxico en 1848, y al
grupo de individuos que tenan ideas moderadas sobre los cambios que se deberan
realizar para fortalecer el Estado mexicano, fue adquiriendo diferentes significados con
el correr del tiempo. Esos significados se encuentran estrechamente realacionados con
los procesos polticos y los cambios que se fueron generando en torno al programa
reformador del partido liberal. Despus de la derrota de los conservadores e
imperialistas en 1867, el partido conservador desaparece de la escena y su lugar es
ocupado por los catlicos, sin pertenencia a ningn partido. La prensa nacional de la
poca se refera a la participacin poltica de los catlicos, como participacin de los
conservadores, reaccionarios y mochos, como indistintamente eran llamados.
103
104
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El presente trabajo acompaar a la palabra propaganda en diferentes enunciaciones
de la poltica mexicana en el perodo de 1934 a 1942. El trmino retuvo significados
permanentes, pero sufri tensiones, adherencias semnticas y transformaciones.
Siempre se manej como sinnimo de hacer publicidad. Pero esta equivalencia
fundamental se mestiz debido a la combinacin de aditivos ideolgicos del rgimen de
Lzaro Crdenas, la influencia de teoras sobre la comunicacin de masas, las relaciones
con los Estados Unidos, y ms adelante, con la retrica de la segunda guerra mundial.
As, lo que a mediados de la dcada de 1930 se identific como propaganda
revolucionaria, tom el color de una voz a la vez poltica patritica e internacionalista,
que encerraba los propsitos de unir filas en torno al presidente y promover confianza
en la victoria de las democracias y la derrota de los totalitarismos.
Este trabajo acude a ciertas propuestas metodolgicas de la historia conceptual. Si bien
las obras reconocidas en este campo historiogrfico refieren perodos amplios por
ejemplo, entre 1750 y 1850- aqu se atiende un perodo muy breve y cercano a nuestro
tiempo. Esto se justifica por los efectos de eventos internacionales, especialmente, la
segunda guerra mundial. Aqu atendemos una experiencia nacional que dio lugar a un
cambio conceptual veloz alentado por movimientos en la poltica, la diplomacia, el
desarrollo de los medios de comunicacin, la economa, y dems fenmenos asociados
a la integracin de Mxico en las dinmicas internacionales.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
El presente escrito acompaar a la palabra propaganda a travs de diferentes
enunciaciones de la poltica mexicana entre 1934 y 1942. La propaganda es un tipo de
informacin preferentemente asociada con la poltica. Varios autores sostienen que su
raz se identifica con la voz latina propagare, que supuso la difusin de la fe catlica a
105
En esta definicin coinciden: Collins, Sue, Propaganda Studies. The US Interwar Years, en
Valdivia, Angharad N., y Nerone, John, The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies,
Chichester, West Sussex, Wiley Blackwell, 2013, p. 579; y Cull. Nicholas J., Propaganda and
Mass Persuation. A historical Enciclopedia, 1500 to the Present, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC Clo,
2003, p. 317-323.
2
Collins, Sue, idem.
3
Esto es una alusin a la metfora geolgica de Reinhart Koselleck sobre los estratos de tiempo.
Ver. Kos
elleck, Reinhart, Los estratos del tiempo. Estudios sobre la historia; Barcelona,
Paids, 2001.
4
As lo expresa la Real Academia de la Lengua Espaola, 2013.
106
107
Una frase, por ejemplo, deca: Mexicano: la tierra da ciento por uno; la ley te da tierra. Ocpala
y cultvala., en Frases entrefiletes, AGN, Fondo DGI, caja 30, exp. 30(00)/1.
8
AGN, Fondo: Direccin General de Informacin, Serie Leyes, vol. 65, exp. 212.33(44)/1. Fecha:
julio de 1936.
9
La compaas Standard Oil , Texaco Oil Company y Continental Oil Company comunicaron de
varias maneras su rechazo a la expropiacin Vase, Huesca, Robert, The Mexican Oil
Expropiation
and
the
Ensuing
Propaganda
War,
Working
Paper,
en
http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/tpla/8804.pdf, fecha de obtencin: 15 diciembre 2012;
De William Harrion Furlong a Francisco J. Mgica, en Archivo Francisco Mjica, vol. 195,
Correspondencia particular, de la A, exp. 210. Sin fecha.
10
Ambos artculos se encuentran en el Archivo Francisco J. Mgica, en Literatura sobre la
Expropiacin petrolera, vol. 183, ao 1938.
108
Resemantizacin: la guerra
El estallido de la segunda guerra mundial indujo un espectro muy amplio de
efectos en Mxico. El entorno mundial generado por ella afect la organizacin
econmica, la administracin pblica, el comportamiento poltico, las actitudes sociales,
y por supuesto, el lenguaje de los mexicanos.
La relacin que empez a construirse entre Mxico con Estados Unidos, y en
particular, el bombardeo a la base de norteamericana de Pearl Harbor (diciembre 1941),
indujeron un mimetismo de la nocin mexicana de propaganda con aquella que
circulaba en el epicentro del conflicto. El sntoma ms evidente fue el llamado a apoyar
a las democracias contra los totalitarismos o fascismos, la lucha contra el imperialismo,
y los llamados a la libertad y a la solidaridad hemisfrica.
El bombardeo a los buques mexicanos Potrero del Llano (13 mayo 1942), y
luego el Faja de Oro (20 mayo de ese ao), que culmin con la declaracin del estado
de guerra (1 de junio de 1942), hizo florecer una gran efervescencia popular que
removi los registros tradicionales de la propaganda.11 En adelante, la palabra comenz
a acompaarse, muy frecuentemente, con los adjetivos de patritica y nacionalista.
La presencia de peligro se combin con una sensacin de vejacin tras el bombardeo a
los buques. As, si bien la semntica de la palabra mantuvo sus estratos originales, el
rtulo patritica le asest una carga emocional que la dispar hacia muchos espacios
sociales.
La palabra propaganda, de fuerte tono antifascista, se precipit por toda la
comunicacin civil. Una diversidad de individuos, asociaciones, cooperativas y comits
expresaron una voluntad patritica por unirse a los esfuerzos de guerra. Ms all,
manifestaron su intencin de contribuir en la propaganda, no nicamente divulgando
principios, sino haciendo un llamado a la movilizacin y contagiando nimos
combativos en el resto de la gente.
La transmisin del discurso del presidente, el 28 de mayo de 1942, ejemplifica
bastante bien este efecto de contribucin social. Varias empresas y sociedades enviaron
carros sonoros vehculos con magnavoces, para recorrer las calles
retransmitiendo spots relativos al discurso. La famacutica Syney Ross envi un
telegrama a sus filiales, indicando maana jueves diez treinta transmitirn todas
estaciones radio suplicamos hacer propaganda despertar sentimiento nacional apoyo
ejecutivo excitando no hacer versiones alarmistas y redoblar trabajo produccin.12
Estas respuestas anuncian la tonificacin positiva de la palabra. El trmino
pareci desprenderse del sinnimo de publicidad. Entrado el ao de 1942, la propaganda
ya estaba conjugada en la gramtica de los pases blicos. En este sentido, alcanz
concordancia con la definicin del terico Harold Lasswell en su libro Propaganda
Technique in World War I (1927). En sus palabras: Propaganda se refiere a la
11
Este brote de respaldo popular est descrito en Rankin, Mnica, Mxico, La Patria!
Propaganda and Production during World War II, University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
12
Telegrama Sydney Ross, en AGN, Fondo DGI, Caja 43, exp. Estado de guerra contra los pases
totalitarios, 216.66/9. Fecha: 27 de mayo de 1942.
109
Laswell, Harold, Propaganda Technique in World War I, Massachussets, MIT Press, 1971, p. 8-
9.
14
Estuvo encabezada por el director de esta secretara, Miguel Alemn, con el subsecretario
Fernando Casas Alemn; Jos Altamirano, director de la Direccin General de Informacin, y
antiguos miembros del DAPP: Quintn Rueda, Gregorio Castillo y Samuel Ruz Cabaas.
Tambin, el locutor Luis de la Rosa, Vicepresidente de la Cmara Nacional de la Industria de la
Radiodifusin.
15
Idem.
110
Este gran ejrcito estar dividido en grupos de diez; diez cruzados tendrn un jefe de
grupo; diez jefes de grupo con cien jefes en total
La transformacin de la palabra revel nuevas alianzas y relaciones entra la
poltica, los medios de comunicacin y los actores que los representaban. En el contexto
de guerra, el gobierno del presidente vila Camacho requiri a la prensa y a la radio
que reprodujeran lo que llam propaganda patritica. Adolfo Ruz Cortines, Secretario
de Gobernacin, solicit a los directores de los principales diarios que cedieran un
espacio reducido al final de la quinta columna de las terceras planas, para la
publicacin de unos pensamientos, frases y dibujos, a partir del 25 de junio de 1942.
Les deca que esto formaba parte de la propaganda en favor del mantenimiento
constante del espritu patritico.16
Si bien el gobierno pag tarifas exigidas por los diarios, obtuvo respuestas de
colaboracin entusiasta y sin fines de lucro. Muchas sociedades, comits, sindicatos,
cooperativas y asociaciones de trabajadores que publicaban sus propias revistas,
declararon una voluntad honestamente patritica por reproducir los contenidos de la
propaganda del gobierno.
La Federacin General de Trabajadores, a cargo de la revista Rumbo obrero
declar a Ruz Cortnez que poda contar con ella para publicar los aspectos ms
importantes que juzgue dar a publicidad para conocimiento del pueblo de Mxico en
esta poca de emergencia por la que atraviesa el pas, de leal y amplia cooperacin entre
trabajadores y gobierno17 Por su parte, una sociedad de origen militar, en Tijuana, Baja
California, que editaba una revista llamada Defensa, afirm al Secretario que dictara
sus rdenes para que se les proporcionaran artculos de orientacin y propaganda.18
El lenguaje de las cartas de apoyo es un muestrario para comprender
refracciones y adaptaciones de los vocabularios internacionales por parte de entidades
sociales de todo el pas. Lejos de asimilar pasivamente la terminologa oficial, los
diarios eran agentes activos que reformulaban a su manera la propaganda oficial.
Conclusiones
La palabra propaganda transit, de un vocabulario afiliado a las gramticas de la
revolucin sovitica, a un lenguaje internacional difundido al calor del conflicto
europeo entre 1939 y 1945. Esta transformacin, sin embargo, no fue inmediata ni
absoluta, de manera que muchos actores siguieron la inercia de los llamados militantes
de la revolucin de 1910. La propaganda retuvo sus tres acepciones. Sin embargo, el
sustrato por el cual la palabra refera a una exaltacin de valores nacionalistas,
sincroniz con vocabularios internacionales. Fue as que la nocin dej de referir un
llamado a defender la democracia para hablar de las democracias, en plural. La palabra
revolucin apareci menos frecuentemente en la prensa, folletos y otros impresos. En su
lugar, lucan los llamados a la libertad y a la solidaridad. La nueva propaganda se
16
El documento incluye las facturas de pago a los diarios por insertar frases de propaganda. AGN,
Fondo DGI, caja 46, exp. Propaganda patritica en la prensa de la capital, 300 (S-1)/5. Fechas:
mayo-junio 1942.
17
Federacin general de Trabajadores, en AGN, Fondo DGI, caja 46, exp. 300 (S-1)/5, Fecha: 16
de abril de 1943.
18
Defensa civil, en AGN, Fondo DGI, caja 46, exp. 300 (S-1)/5, Fecha: 24 de julio de 1942.
111
112
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Tras el asesinado de Gabriel Garca Moreno en Quito, 1875, se acenta un conflicto
poltico religioso en torno al legado de Garca Moreno y al lugar de la Iglesia en la
sociedad y en el Estado. La presidencia de Garca Moreno signific un experimento
poltico de un republicanismo un fuerte vinculo con la Iglesia catlica. Dicho
experimento fue cuestionado por los liberales. En el ejrcito ecuatoriano, haban
sectores de ambos bandos dispuestos a zanjar el conflicto. A diferencia del Per y de
modo similar a Colombia, la poltica se torn muy violenta y con fuertes contrastes
ideolgico a fines del siglo XIX. En la presentacin veremos, de igual modo, los
vnculos con Colombia en que la relacin poltica y religin fue explosiva.
La ponencia busca comprender como se van auto identificando los diferentes grupos
polticos y se va descalificando a sus oponentes. El conflicto poltico impuls a
constantes redefiniciones de los conceptos: catlico, patria, nacin, tolerancia y
libertad. Los grupos ultramontanos y defensores de la memoria de Garcia Moreno eran
acusados de terroristas por sectores auto definidos como liberales. Y los catlicos
acusaban a los liberales de impos, anti patriotas y destructores de la repblica.
El marco temporal de la ponencia va desde la muerte de Garcia Moreno hasta el primer
gobierno de Eloy Alfaro (1895-1901).
113
PARALLEL
SESSIONS
II
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Tomando, como ejemplo, discursos fundamentados con nociones de tiempo histrico
como eje de construccin de argumentos y proyectos polticos, propongo en esta
ponencia analizar algunos rasgos caractersticos de un proceso de temporalizacin de
los discursos y debates polticos surgidos en peridicos y panfletos en Ro de Janeiro,
durante la independencia de Brasil. Analizo este proceso, vinculando cambios en las
formas de experiencia del tiempo histrico y la creacin de una nueva dinmica poltica
que, a finales del siglo XVIII y comienzos del XIX, fue formando un espacio de
experiencia revolucionario moderno. En este sentido, se puede observar la
configuracin de una coyuntura mundial y una dinmica histrica sistmica vista
desde el campo conceptual y discursivo de las transformaciones de las realidades
polticas y sociales en s , en la que la proyeccin del cambio poltico implica una
relacin especfica con el tiempo histrico: al ser transformado en desafo y enigma,
el futuro se tornaba objeto de indagacin y controversia poltica, lo que proporcionaba,
de la misma forma, una disputa sobre el pasado y el presente. La concientizacin
creciente de que la fluidez del tiempo de otrora se diferenciaba de aquella poca, por
cierto en aceleracin, transformara el presente en un perodo de transicin, en el que
situaciones polticas nuevas posibilitaban interpretaciones divergentes sobre el pasado.
As, surga como cuestin saber lo que haba que preservar y lo que haba que superar
de ese pasado, as como la coyuntura contempornea se tornaba fuente de experiencia
indispensable para descifrar el futuro.
1
114
TEXTO/TEXT:
Portugueses, el paso que acabis de dar para vuestra felicidad futura era
necesario y hasta indispensable: vuestra desgraciada situacin plenamente
justifica vuestro procedimiento. No os intimidis [...] porque ciertamente no
traicionis los sentimientos de vuestra natural fidelidad. Ninguna Ley o
institucin humana es hecha para durar siempre; el ejemplo de nuestros
Vecinos bastara para tranquilizarnos2.
Con esta proclamacin a los portugueses, la Junta de Gobierno Supremo del Reino
asume el poder, el 24 de agosto de 1820, en la ciudad de Porto, proponiendo convocar
Cortes Constituyentes a fin de reformar las instituciones polticas de la nacin. En este
fragmento del Manifiesto, sobresalen dos aspectos con respecto a la excepcionalidad de
aquel acontecimiento: por un lado, impregnados de deseos vistos como legtimos, los
constitucionalistas portugueses se vean casi que forzados a tomar la iniciativa y
adelantarse en la construccin del futuro, vislumbrado como una poca cualitativamente
superior al presente como fue insinuado en el contraste entre una felicidad futura y
una desgraciada situacin; por otro lado, divulgaban la idea de que los sentimientos
de una natural fidelidad (al rey, a la religin catlica y dems valores tradicionales
identificados con el pasado) no seran incompatibles con las expectativas de cambios en
el orden institucional, pues nada estara sujeto a la permanencia inmutable. Al respecto,
podran observar las enseanzas de las experiencias polticas ms recientes de sus
Vecinos, por supuesto, ms concretamente Espaa.
As como en Portugal, tambin en el espacio lusoamericano los desempeos
discursivos manifestados por los hombres de Estado, literatos, clrigos, comerciantes y
publicistas, por lo general, se nutran de una nocin de tiempo histrico3 como eje de la
construccin de argumentos contra o a favor determinados principios y proyectos
polticos. Sin duda, la Revolucin de Porto y la Independencia de Brasil no inauguraban
este tipo de accin discursiva. En verdad, estos acontecimientos, as como sus formas de
manifestacin discursivas vinculabanse a la creacin de una nueva dinmica poltica, a
fines del siglo XVIII y comienzos del XIX, que iba constituyendo un espacio de
experiencia revolucionario moderno4.
Lo que indica la configuracin de una coyuntura mundial, una dinmica
histrica sistmica en que la proyeccin del cambio poltico implicaba una relacin
especfica con el tiempo histrico: al ser transformado en desafo y enigma, el futuro
se tornaba objeto de indagacin y controversia poltica, lo que proporcionaba, de la
2
115
misma forma, una disputa sobre el pasado y el presente. La conciencia creciente de que
la fluidez del tiempo de otrora se diferenciaba de aquella poca, en aceleracin,
transformara el presente en un perodo de transicin, en el que situaciones polticas
nuevas posibilitaban interpretaciones divergentes sobre el pasado. De esta manera,
surga como cuestin saber lo que haba que preservar y lo que haba que superar de ese
pasado, as como la coyuntura contempornea se tornaba fuente de experiencia
indispensable para descifrar el porvenir5.
En ese perodo, la prensa fue uno de los principales canales de produccin y
difusin de discursos polticos. Congregaba voces surgidas de espacios de sociabilidad
y de decisin poltica bastante diversificados, no obstante, formadores de esa
experiencia poltica singular, cuya proporcin era desconocida hasta entonces en el
mundo lusoamericano y que, en ese momento, aproximaban espacios, ideas y personas6.
En la prensa tuvo repercusin desde los debates de los diputados en las asambleas
constitucionales en Lisboa, entre 1821 y 1822, y en Ro de Janeiro, en 1823, hasta las
reuniones de los representantes de los gobiernos provinciales y municipales. Igualmente,
las manifestaciones espontneas de las poblaciones, ya fuera por los procesos
electorales y otras acciones civiles o incluso por las acciones militares, daran paso a
manifestaciones, proclamaciones y representaciones. En fin, publicistas de los ms
diversos orgenes profesionales y sociales usaron la prensa (especialmente, peridicos y
panfletos) a fin de divulgar sus ideas por medio de cartas, catecismos constitucionales,
dilogos, discursos, oraciones, memorias y relatos.
En todos estos documentos, es comn encontrar elaboraciones discursivas que
parten de lecturas de la historia y de lecturas del mundo (dgase, de las experiencias
revolucionarias en curso en otras partes de Amrica y Europa). Estas lecturas
suministraban a los partcipes del debate poltico lusoamericano de ciertos parmetros
de accin, inspiraciones, paradigmas negativos o positivos, indicacin de caminos y
posibilidades, enseanzas y temores que subsidiaban expectativas y legitimaban
proyectos potencialmente antagnicos7. As, es en el mbito del lenguaje que mejor se
manifiestan las sensaciones de estar viviendo una poca de cambios profundos de
manera mucho ms rpida y, a su vez, compartida por un gran nmero de individuos,
independiente de los principios y valores polticos que defendieran8.
Con base en estos presupuestos, busco caracterizar el proceso de
temporalizacin de los discursos a lo largo del debate poltico en el que se proyect la
Independencia de Brasil. En lneas generales, este proceso presenta los siguientes
aspectos: 1) una aguda percepcin de un tiempo acelerado, que traa consigo cambios
importantes en la vida poltica, pero tambin en la social y cultural; 2) el
5
116
Segn G. Zermeo Padilla, durante los movimientos polticos de inicios del siglo XIX en
el mundo Iberoamericano, el concepto de historia tendera a asimilarse a la naciente historia
nacional, o ms exactamente, a las otras formas de narrativas histricas que buscaban atribuir
sentido al proceso de emancipacin poltica. La apertura de un nuevo espacio de experiencia no
necesariamente elimina automticamente otras formas de vida conformadas en el pasado. La
trayectoria, por lo tanto, tendra que ser leda no en trminos lineales sino diferenciales. Los
pronsticos de futuro pueden ser formulados a la luz de una historia providencialista y, al mismo
tiempo, basarse en otra clase de argumentos. Unos y otros, sin embargo, se refieren a una misma
'experiencia'. cf.: ______, Historia, Experiencia y Modernidad en Iberoamrica, 1750-1850, in:
J. Fernndez Sebastin (Dir.). Diccionario poltico y social del mundo iberoamericano. La era de
las revoluciones, 1750-1850, Iberconceptos I, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Polticos y
Constitucinales, 2009, pp. 562.
10
A pesar de la evidente relacin con la problemtica koselleckiana, aqu no pretendo ser ni
tan esquemtico ni mucho menos proponer una aplicacin forzada de un modelo tericometodolgico a las fuentes. As, tales aspectos resaltados en ese fragmento, son propuestos a partir
de la lectura de las fuentes, principalmente de los peridicos y panfletos polticos y posiblemente
no son los nicos y podrn, an, ser mejor definidos. Cf: R. Koselleck, historia/Historia, Madrid,
Minima Trotta, 2004.
11
Segn Lcia P. das Neves, en 1821 y principios de 1822 las ideas favorables a la
emancipacin de Brasil, en los moldes en que se dara en seguida, se encontraban completamente
ausentes del debate poltico. Lcia P. das Neves, Corcundas e constitucionais: a cultura poltica
da Independncia, Rio de Janeiro, Revan/Faperj, 2003, p.283.
117
118
Sin embargo, tales perspectivas que intentaban acomodar los diferentes anhelos
de Portugal y Brasil en torno a un mismo proyecto constitucional no seran duraderas.
La coyuntura poltica sufrira grandes cambios despus de la promulgacin de los
decretos de las Cortes de Lisboa, en el segundo semestre de 182115. A partir de ese
momento, se intensificaran las crticas a la poltica de las Cortes y a sus supuestas
intenciones de recolonizacin. Algunos resultados prcticos de esta oposicin seran
vistos durante los primeros meses de 1822. Primero, con el movimiento de Fico y la
expulsin de las tropas portuguesas de la Divisin Auxiliadora, en enero y febrero
respectivamente; en seguida, la creacin de un Consejo de Procuradores de las
Provincias, tambin en febrero; y, finalmente, la convocacin, en junio, de una
Asamblea Constituyente y Legislativa en Brasil, lo que efectivamente dejaba el camino
abierto para la proyeccin de un pas independiente.
En el trascurso de aquellos meses, o incluso despus de la Independencia,
durante la primera Constituyente brasilea, en 1823, una profusin de voces desde
diferentes perspectivas polticas trataban de encaminar soluciones para un futuro que se
mostraba incierto. Al respecto, la evaluacin del Regulador Braslico-Luso sobre la
presente poca es un buen ejemplo. Segn el peridico, uno de los mayores triunfos
polticos de aquel momento, era el de saber moderar la convulsin general que
asolaba a todas las Naciones:
Nosotros ya no debemos considerar la poca de esta brillante regeneracin tan apartada,
como an se figura; el gnero humano realiza los cambios de su edad por siglos, as
como cada individuo al trmino de algunos aos: sin embargo a la vista de esta
convulsin general, que asola las Naciones, podemos afirmar, que lleg la poca, en
que todas estas familias dispersas sobre la superficie del Globo, distintas por sus
costumbres, por sus leyes, por su religin, deben pasar a otro estado, venciendo todos
los obstculos, aunque sean los ms formidables, que se presenten delante de la
velocidad de su carrera. [] Intentar el retroceso a esta altura, en el que se encuentra el
mundo moral, es un proyecto quimrico: las Naciones o han de ser libres o han de
progresar en perpetua agitacin, amenazando a los dspotas y quebrando sus hierros;
moderar esta convulsin, regularla bajo un sistema, que vengue la eclipsada nobleza del
pacto social, que afiance la inviolabilidad de los derechos de los Ciudadanos, ser uno
de los mayores triunfos de la poltica en la presente poca16.
14
119
Durante aquellos aos de intensa politizacin de las sociedades, entre 1820 y 1823,
concebir el cambio significara posicionarse en perspectiva histrica, creando
discursivamente el pasado y establecindose lneas de rupturas y continuidades con este
en la proyeccin del futuro. Lo que se insinuaba en los grandes acontecimientos y
novedades del presente. De tal modo, entendemos que las vivencias de un tiempo
acelerado interfirieron en la construccin de los discursos histricos que alimentaran
divisiones entre los grupos polticos en formacin a lo largo del proceso de
independencia de Brasil.
REFERENCIAS
FERNNDEZ SEBASTIN, Javier. 'Cabalgando el corcel del diablo'. Conceptos
Polticos y aceleracin histrica en las revoluciones hispnicas. In: ______. & G.
CAPELLN (org.), Lenguaje, tiempo y modernidad: ensayos de historia conceptual.
Santiago de Chile: Globo, 2011, pp. 21-54.
KOSELLECK, Reinhart. historia/Historia. Madrid: Minima Trotta, 2004.
______. Futuro Passado: contribuio semntica dos tempos histricos, Rio de
Janeiro, Contraponto, PUC-Rio, 2006.
Manifesto da Junta provisional do Governo Supremo do Reino aos Portugueses.
Reimpresso no Rio de Janeiro: Imp. Rgia, 1821, 2 p.
MOREL, Marco. As transformaes dos espaos pblicos: imprensa, atores polticos e
sociabilidades na Cidade Imperial (1820-1840). So Paulo: Hucitec, 2005.
NEVES, Lcia P. das. Corcundas e constitucionais: a cultura poltica da Independncia.
Rio de Janeiro: Revan/Faperj, 2003.
O Regulador Braslico-Luso (Regulador Brasileiro). Rio de Janeiro, 1822.
PIMENTA, Joo Paulo G. Tempos e espaos das independncias: a insero do Brasil
no mundo ocidental (c.1780-c.1830). So Paulo: FFLCH-USP, Tesis de Libre Docencia,
2012.
Resposta analytica a um artigo do Portugus Constitucional em defesa dos direitos do
Reino do Brasil. Por hum fluminense. Rio de Janeiro, Na Typographia Nacional, 1821,
30 p.
Revrbero Constitucional Fluminense. Rio de Janeiro, 1821-1822.
ZERMEO PADILLA, Guillermo. Historia, Experiencia y Modernidad en
Iberoamrica, 1750-1850. In: FERNNDEZ SEBASTIN, Javier (Dir). Diccionario
poltico y social del mundo iberoamericano. La era de las revoluciones, 1750-1850.
Iberconceptos I. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Polticos y Constitucionales, 2009, pp.
551-579.
120
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Mi propsito en este trabajo es revisar las obras del historiador uruguayo Arturo Ardao
y mostrar sus tesis originales sobre la interpretacin de los conceptos polticos de
liberalismo y latinoamericanismo. Ardao debe ser considerado un historiador conceptual
ya que ha innovado a mediados del siglo XX con un abordaje riguroso en el anlisis de
los conceptos, argumentos e ideas sociales y polticas. Presenta la migracin, recepcin
y difusin de los conceptos, y tambin la relacin entre ideologa y accin poltica, con
el fin de situar el texto en su contexto lingstico e ideolgico, explicando el cambio
conceptual no slo por su sentido literal, sino tambin por la perspectiva diacrnica y
sincrnica del contexto. Ardao, tomando la frase de Ortega una idea es siempre una
reaccin de un hombre a una determinada situacin de su vida, analiza las ideas
juicio metindose en los debates en que los protagonistas histricos estaban
involucrados. As escribe la historia de las ideas polticas fundndola simultneamente
como historia de los conceptos, y hacindola nacer como tal. Historia de las ideas, del
trmino, del vocablo, de la idea juicio, como finalmente llam a lo que hoy
reconocemos como conceptos. A partir de Ardao, y por su influjo, desde la dcada de
los 50 del siglo pasado, la Historia de las Ideas polticas en el Uruguay ha sido en su
mayora historia conceptual, aunque no se explicitara ello en trabajos tericos
especficos ni fuera usado este trmino. Basta leer sus tesis sobre el liberalismo y el
latinoamericanismo para percibir la cercana con la actual historia de los conceptos tanto
por el objeto de estudio como por la metodologa aplicada. No corresponden por lo
tanto las crticas que se han dirigido desde la Historia de los conceptos hacia la Historia
de las Ideas latinoamericanas, sin hacer notar, al menos, esta notable excepcin.
Arturo Ardao intenta analizar la forma en que se abstraen las ideas en situaciones
concretas dentro de una tradicin de pensamiento. Su campo de estudio es amplio
porque el proceso de abstraccin abarca algo ms que el lenguaje retrico en uso
acadmico, conteniendo en diverso nivel terico fuentes ms antiguas o importaciones
externas al contexto emisor y a su tradicin discursiva. Por eso, Ardao lo limita,
investigando el lenguaje slo cuando ste se transforma en contexto. Su historiografa es
acontecimental, se basa en los textos como actos y en los debates que provocan.
121
TEXTO/TEXT:
Panamericanismo y Latinoamericanismo
En 1986 Arturo Ardao presenta una sntesis histrica sobre estos dos conceptos,
comenzando por sus orgenes en Estados Unidos y en Francia. Ubicndolos
diacrnicamente, seala la alteracin del orden cronolgico por el cual el primero de
ellos, de 1889, aparece como anterior al otro, de 1836, en su primer uso historiogrfico,
hasta que la confrontacin dialctica entre ambos a mediados del siglo XX pone en un
primer plano al latinoamericanismo. En el caso del panamericanismo, el concepto es
expresin de la cobertura ideolgica de la doctrina del Destino Manifiesto.
En cuanto al de latinoamericanismo, cuando se produce entre los intelectuales una
reaccin de defensa ante el expansionismo norteamericano y en Europa un empuje de
nacionalismo que divide a anglosajones y latinos, el trmino define a los
hispanoamericanos que se vuelven hacia la latinidad en vnculo solidario con la Europa
latina. El concepto de latinoamericanismo es para Ardao una corriente de pensamiento
que se origin en un americanismo que contena latente y conflictivamente los futuros
panamericanismo y latinoamericanismo, desdoblados definitivamente despus de
1890.
En 1948 con la fundacin de la OEA, el panamericanismo se metamorfose en
interamericanismo. Este proceso histrico en el que los conceptos cambian
diacrnicamente es estudiado exhaustivamente pasando por fondos documentales que
abarcan tanto a los hechos como a los textos y discursos polticos generados desde 1836
hasta 1964, en Europa y en Amrica.
El archivo respalda cada una de las afirmaciones interpretativas que culminan en
este prrafo:
Pero si en el expresado sentido el panamericanismo se metamorfose, en otro
caduc. Caduc en su significacin tradicional de panismo, es decir, como
doctrina o movimiento destinado a interpretar la unidad ideal del conjunto de
naciones del hemisferio americano. Esa unidad ideal no exista de antemano, y el
panamericanismo no logr crearla infundindole un espritu que le fuera propio,
porque no lo tena. Por el contrario, sirvi cada vez ms para hacer resaltar en
lugar de la unidad, la dualidad. (Ardao, 1998,168)
122
124
No slo por el nmero de lenguas y culturas autctonas que incluye, sino, sobre
todo, por el alto grado de desarrollo, con verdadero refinamiento a veces, de algunas
pocas de ellas, como las nahua, quechua, aymara, guaran. En parte por los prstamos
lingsticos en una u otra direccin, en parte por los fenmenos de interpenetracin
cultural, es a este captulo de la romanstica al que mejor le cuadra, ensanchando su
limitada acepcin, el arriba visto trmino acuado por Corominas Indianorromnica.
(Ardao, 1991,149)
Liberalismo religioso, poltico, econmico. Su coexistencia y relacionamiento
hegemnico
Los momentos:
1855 a 1875 (Unin Liberal, Club liberal) el concepto liberalismo anticlerical, como
racionalismo, pasa a ser concepto beligerante desde el punto de vista filosfico
religioso. El concepto poltico liberal se confunde con el de principismo.
Ambos conceptos liberales coexisten dentro del predominio del racionalismo.
1884-1910 (Liga Liberal, Partido Liberal). Pasaje de la hegemona conceptual del
racionalismo a la hegemona del liberalismo poltico, extendido hacia el concepto de
secularizacin. Oposicin entre los conceptos liberal y clerical en el vocabulario
poltico. Nuevos sentidos del concepto: El liberalismo como librepensamiento.
El liberalismo como conciencia nacional.
ltimo cuarto siglo XX, liberalismo econmico. Separacin conceptual entre el
liberalismo poltico y el econmico. Nuevo sentido: Liberalismo como mtodo.
En Racionalismo y liberalismo en el Uruguay, la obra de 1962, Ardao encara una
tarea propiamente historiogrfica, al presentar el liberalismo anticlerical, demostrando
cmo despus de 1880 el racionalismo cede su sitio al liberalismo, tercera y ltima
gran forma histrica en el pas del racionalismo religioso, y sealar el contexto fctico
advirtiendo que no se trata de que la palabra se use por primera vez, o que circule en
mbitos no polticos, sino que hasta el 80:
el trmino se mantiene en un plano secundario, como accesorio de otros
trminos que histricamente dominan. En la cuestin religiosa anterior a 1865,
accede al trmino masonera, y en la posterior a ese ao, al trmino
racionalismo. En la cuestin religiosa que se desarrolla despus de 1880, en
cambio, el trmino liberalismo pasa a primer plano y son aquellos trminos los
que aparecen como accesorios suyos. A partir de entonces suplanta cada vez ms
al racionalismo, que pierde progresiva y rpidamente la aguda significacin
beligerante que durante tres lustros haba tenido. El racionalismo anterior al 80
era una forma de liberalismo religioso, como, a la inversa, el liberalismo
posterior al 80 fue una forma de racionalismo religioso, pero en el lxico
militante de la poca se produce entonces el pasaje de la hegemona del
racionalismo a la hegemona del liberalismo. (Ardao, 1962, 331-332):
Semejante sustitucin de trminos en el seno de la cuestin religiosa, no es
meramente verbal. Responde a una profunda renovacin del planteamiento de la
lucha contra la Iglesia, y se halla directamente condicionada por un fundamental
cambio operado en la conciencia filosfica nacional.(Ardao, 1962, 332)
125
educacin interior que pocos, muy pocos, alcanzan. Rod insiste tambin en la relacin
conceptual entre liberal y librepensador,Este es el liberalismo, para quien atienda a la
esencia del las cosas y las ideas, ste es el pensamiento libre Rod recoge otro
sentido conceptual, superponiendo como sinnimos liberalismo y librepensamiento.
El otro autor que transcribe, es Carlos Vaz Ferreira, para quien liberales seran los que
tienen un espritu libre, condicin que deberan tener todos los hombres, y por lo tanto,
librepensadores.
En 1997, 35 aos despus de las investigaciones que hemos comentado, Ardao,
en Cuadernos de Marcha, se dedica a algunos aspectos histricos del liberalismo en el
Uruguay, ante la hegemona del neoliberalismo econmico. En esta etapa de su
reflexin, comienza dirigindose al origen del concepto, como liberalidad o como
libertad, destacando la carga positiva de cualidades morales e intelectuales adjudicables
slo a los hombres libres. Al transformarse en liberalismo, se aplica a ideas defensoras
de la libertad, en materia poltica, econmica o religiosa. Continuando su rastreo del
concepto en los estratos temporales, menciona la primera vez en que aparece el
calificativo liberal en las Cortes de Cdiz y describe su sentido lingstico:
Circunscripto entonces al debate constitucional, en impugnacin del absolutismo
del antiguo rgimen en nombre de la libertad, gener de inmediato al liberalismo
de estricto carcter poltico. Muy rpidamente, los trminos liberal y liberalismo
as concebidos, se extendieron, al par que a los dems idiomas modernos, a los
dominios de la economa y la religin.
Pero mucho importa tener siempre presente que ellos son- ms all de su
gentico vnculo terico en relacin con la idea de libertad, y con mayor razn del
meramente lxico- independientes de hecho, los unos de los otros. (Ardao, 1998, 37).
Histricamente coexistentes, dice Ardao, cada uno de los tres liberalismos han ocupado
un absorbente primer plano en tanto que milicia, con respecto a los otros dos. La
historia de los tres conceptos es desarrollada en dos pginas de un resumen magistral,
detallando el uso del concepto en sentido poltico, desde la Unin Liberal de 1855 al
Club Liberal de 1872, el sentido religioso, de fines del siglo XlX a principios del XX,
con la Liga Liberal de 1884 al Partido Liberal de 1910, y el liberalismo econmico, en
el ltimo cuarto del siglo XX, con la dominante anttesis del neoliberalismo y el
economismo social:
La verdad es que en cada momento histrico, el nmero de declarados liberales
en el respectivo dominante sentido de la poca, ha sido siempre muy superior al
de los que han adoptado el trmino para definir o nombrar a una organizacin, o
asociacin, o movimiento. Y nunca antes la definicin de liberal en la estricta
materia econmica, tuvo sobre sus otros sentidos la preponderancia que tiene
hoy. (Ardao,1998, 39)
Finalmente, en Marcha, Ardao presenta un ltimo significado del concepto: El
liberalismo como mtodo, el liberalismo era ante todo y sobre todo un mtodo. Un
mtodo para plantear y tratar de resolver los problemas polticos, y no una solucin
dogmtica de ellos.Ardao, 1998,5). El liberalismo ya no es una filosofa.
127
REFERENCIAS
Arturo Artao
(1962), Racionalismo y liberalismo en el Uruguay, Montevideo, Universidad de la
Repblica.
(1968), Espiritualismo y positivismo en el Uruguay. 2da ed., Montevideo, Universidad
de la Repblica.
(1971), Etapas de la inteligencia uruguaya, Montevideo, Universidad de la Repblica.
(1986), Panamericanismo y latinoamericanismo, en Amrica Latina en sus ideas,
Mxico-Paris, Unesco-S.XXl.
(1997), Liberalismo y liberalismos, Cuadernos de Marcha, n130,Montevideo.
(1998), El liberalismo: de Pio Nono a Croce y Unamuno, en Marcha, Montevideo.
(2011), Artigas y la Confederacin en El unionismo hispanoamericano, Montevideo,
Fin de Siglo.
128
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La comunicacin propuesta examina la relacin entre temporalidad y escatologa en el
pensamiento iberoamericano durante la era de las revoluciones. Como sabemos, el
trnsito de los siglos XVIII al XIX produjo rupturas notables en el orbe hispnico, no
solo en trminos polticos, sino tambin en la dislocacin de los marcos tradicionales
sobre los cuales se pensaban las relaciones sociales y el tiempo. El diagnstico de los
contemporneos de estar en el trnsito entre dos "regmenes de historicidad", en una
nueva temporalidad caracterizada por su aceleracin y volatilidad propias del
advenimiento de la modernidad, llev a un diverso grupo de escritores a insertar estos
cambios en un marco heurstico global y providencial: la escatologa. Esta jug un papel
nada desdeable en la produccin de sentido asociada a esta nueva temporalidad. En
efecto, la celeridad de los cambios polticos, sociales y culturales que produjo en el
mundo hispnico la era de las revoluciones descoloc a muchos observadores a ambas
orillas del Atlntico, quienes encontraron una fuente de explicacin de estos fenmenos
en un lente apocalptico que permita reconstruir la lgica y dinmica de estos procesos,
puesto que, como sabemos, la escatologa se caracteriza particularmente por su riqueza
en la generacin de significado.
El esquema interpretativo posibilitado por la escatologa proporcionaba pistas para leer
los signos del presente, pero tambin para anticipar el futuro, dotando as de coherencia
a fenmenos que de por s eran desconcertantes y muchas veces inditos para la cultura
poltica iberoamericana del siglo XIX. Permita, as, otorgarle lgica a la compleja
articulacin entre pasado, presente y futuro, comprendiendo el devenir histrico de la
modernidad como el anuncio de la inminente "consumacin de los siglos".
129
TEXTO/TEXT:
Esta exposicin busca examinar la relacin entre temporalidad y escatologa en el
pensamiento iberoamericano durante la era de las revoluciones. Como sabemos, el
trnsito de los siglos XVIII al XIX produjo rupturas notables en el orbe hispnico, no
solo en trminos polticos, sino tambin en la dislocacin de los marcos tradicionales
sobre los cuales se pensaban las relaciones sociales y el tiempo. El diagnstico de los
contemporneos de estar en el trnsito entre dos "regmenes de historicidad", en una
nueva temporalidad caracterizada por su aceleracin y volatilidad propias del
advenimiento de la modernidad, llev a un diverso grupo de escritores a insertar estos
cambios en un marco heurstico providencial: la escatologa.
Esta jug un papel nada desdeable en la produccin de sentido asociada a esta
nueva temporalidad. En efecto, la celeridad de los cambios polticos, sociales y
culturales que produjo en el mundo hispnico la era de las revoluciones descoloc a
muchos observadores a ambas orillas del Atlntico, quienes encontraron una fuente de
explicacin de estos fenmenos en un lente apocalptico que permita reconstruir la
lgica y dinmica de estos procesos, puesto que, como sabemos, la escatologa se
caracteriza particularmente por su riqueza en la generacin de significado.1 El esquema
interpretativo posibilitado por la escatologa proporcionaba pistas para leer los signos
del presente, pero tambin para anticipar el futuro, dotando as de coherencia a
fenmenos que de por s eran desconcertantes y muchas veces inditos para la cultura
poltica iberoamericana del siglo XIX. Permita, as, otorgarle lgica a la compleja
articulacin entre pasado, presente y futuro, comprendiendo el devenir histrico de la
modernidad como el anuncio de la inminente "consumacin de los siglos".
La literatura judeocristiana, por cierto, abunda en lo que Franois Hartog
denomina "cronosofas", aquellas mezclas de profecas y periodizaciones que buscan
dotar de coherencia a las articulaciones entre pasado y futuro. 2 La relacin entre
escatologa y temporalidad no debera sorprendernos. Telogos como Oscar Cullman,
definen que "la esencia de la escatologa es la temporalidad", lo que se plasma en la
tensin constitutiva de la teologa cristiana entre lo "ya cumplido" y lo "todava
inacabado".3 Pero, asimismo, otra faceta de la escatologa cristiana resulta significativa,
en especial en perodos de cambio histrico. Me refiero a la ambigedad respecto a la
datacin del "fin de los tiempos". En efecto, si bien los textos bblicos no aseguran una
fecha precisa para el fin ("el da y la hora nadie la sabe", afirm Cristo), al mismo
tiempo se manifiestan una serie de indicios y singularidades que permitiran comprender
las "seales de los tiempos" e incentivar a los creyentes a estar atentos ante la
proximidad del juicio final.4
Malcolm Bull, (comp.), La teora del apocalipsis y los fines del mundo (Mxico: 1998), 19
Francois Hartog, Regmenes de historicidad. Presentismo y experiencias del tiempo (Mxico:
2003), 32-33
3
Oscar Cullman, Cristo y el tiempo (Barcelona: 1968), XXI-XXII
4
Para el caso de la teologa paulina, vase C. Marvin Pate, The End of the Age Has Come: The
Theology of Paul (Grand Rapids: 1995)
2
130
Josef de Palacio y Viana, Apocalypsis del apostol S. Juan (Madrid: 1789), IV.
Javier Fernndez Sebastin, Riding the Devils Steed. Politics and Historical Acceleration in
an Age of Revolutions, en Javier Fernndez Sebastin, ed. Political Concepts and Time: New
Approaches to Conceptual History (Santander: 2011) 369-411
7
"Carta pastoral de fray Antonio de San Miguel sobre los males de la Revolucin Francesa, 1793", en
Tarsicio Garca Daz, coord., Independencia nacional: vol. 1. Antecedentes - Hidalgo (Mxico: 2005),
24.
6
131
asignndole a ese momento histrico una personalidad particular, un "espritu" que haga
inteligible los cambios operados.8
Lo que caracterizaba a esta poca de transicin, junto con la celeridad de los
cambios, era una sorprendente mezcla entre irreligin, insurreccin y adhesin
irrestricta a "lo nuevo". "El espritu de este siglo es el de la independencia, de la
insubordinacin, y del trastorno de todas las potestades establecidas sobre la tierra",
sealaba a fines de la centuria dieciochesca el jesuita cataln Francisco Gust.9 "En que
tiempos vivimos!", exclamaba Matas Vinuesa Lpz de Alfaro, en el prlogo del
Preservativo contra la irreligin del padre Vlez. Y agregaba: "Podran nuestros
padres prever nuestros excesos, o ser posible que los crean nuestros descendientes? [...]
Hemos dado en la mana de la singularidad, y esta nos ha precipitado por tales
derrumbaderos. Hemos salido del camino trillado, abandonando las mximas ms
autorizadas, tratndolas como preocupaciones de nuestros mayores".10
Ms enftico fue Bruno de Zaragoza, para quien "nuestro miserable siglo es la
poca triste en que ms descubiertamente se han enardecido o desenfrenado las
pasiones", resultado de la operacin del "espritu faccionario de novedad". Lo relevante,
para los propsitos de esta exposicin, es que el capuchino vio en este "espritu de
novedad" la interpretacin del captulo XVII del Apocalipsis, que describa a la mujer Babilonia- montada en la bestia bermeja de diez cabezas. Esta era la representacin de
"la novedad en nuestro tenebroso siglo", valor que dominaba el mundo actual, donde
"nada se aprecia si no es nuevo", y donde "cada da manda una novedad". Esto era un
antivalor, puesto que como recordaba Zaragoza, para el catolicismo, "la novedad es la
madre de la desolacin".11
Como queda en evidencia, lo desconcertante de muchos de estos cambios
inspiraron en una parte del clero iberoamericano la veta apocalptica del pensamiento
religioso para explicar el turbulento surgimiento de una nueva poca y, en especial, el
creciente discurso antirreligioso. Para explicar este devenir fue preciso, para algunos,
insertar este proceso dentro de una dinmica temporal predictible, universal y
trascendente: la escatologa. Por una parte, esta facilitaba la "interpretacin figural" de
los acontecimientos, que ha examinado Francisco Javier Solans para el caso espaol,
permitiendo ponderar las especificidades histricas de los sucesos a la luz del paradigma
de la historia magistra vitae, viendo en la Revolucin Francesa si no la consumacin, al
menos la figuracin del Apocalipsis.12 De forma similar, la contingencia revolucionaria
fue interpretada a travs del lente apocalptico de algunos catlicos como la evidencia
ms clara de la decadencia moral que preludiaba tanto la aparicin del Anticristo como
8
132
el fin de los tiempos, que la era de las revoluciones y sus avatares parecan anunciar de
forma manifiesta.
Dentro de este escenario, una de las lecturas seminales fue la que realiz
Lorenzo Hervs. Para el jesuita vasco, si bien histricamente haban existido perodos
susceptibles de ser explicados en clave escatolgica, contemporneamente nada era
similar a la experiencia de la Revolucin Francesa, en especial por su veta irreligiosa,
siendo por tanto la seal proftica ms clara que hasta ahora ha acaecido para darnos a
conocer el carcter de la persecucin, que contra la Iglesia mover el antichristo.13
Hervs no estuvo solo en esta interpretacin. Un par de aos despus, ya con la
pennsula ibrica bajo el dominio napolenico, el clrigo Simn Lpez vio a travs de
su lente escatolgico a la experiencia francesa como la materializacin de una gran
conspiracin fraguada por la masonera y los filsofos cuyo propsito era descatolizar
el universo. Sintomticamente, para cumplir esta misin, los revolucionarios buscaron,
en "su astuta malicia el mudar los cmputos del tiempo y de los aos, instituyendo una
nueva cronologa y un nuevo calendario", reemplazando la datacin cristiana del
tiempo.14 Esta fue una imputacin que tambin refiri el clrigo neogranadino Rafael
Lasso de la Vega, quien en un sermn pronunciado en Bogot en 1809, profuso en
simbologas escatolgicas, mostraba que una de las seales del orgullo napolenico, al
igual que la bestia apocalptica, consista en haber "mudado los tiempos y trastornado
las leyes".15
La experiencia revolucionaria francesa fue considerada por varios intrpretes
como una seal clara si no del reinado del Anticristo, al menos como obra de sus
inmediatos precursores, una interpretacin bastante diseminada en el mundo occidental.
Con el ascenso al poder de Napolen, con los sucesos de Bayona para el mundo
hispnico, la visin escatolgica tendi a circunscribirse a su persona. Las
homologaciones de Bonaparte con simbologas apocalpticas estuvieron a la orden del
da desde 1808. Hubo quienes lo consignaron derechamente como el Anticristo, como
un Manifiesto a los franceses publicado ese mismo ao.16 El Diario de Mallorca, en
noviembre de 1808 vio en la similitud fontica del nombre del emperador francs una
evidencia clara para ver en l al ngel exterminador del Apocalipsis, Apolin.17 Un
annimo clrigo andaluz, tambin en 1808, lleg al extremo de interpretar el captulo
XII del Apocalipsis a la luz de la figura de Bonaparte, concluyendo que l era,
efectivamente, la bestia de siete cabezas y diez cuernos que all se consignaba.18 El
dominico mexicano Luis Carrasco y Enciso afirm que, en realidad, Napolen era uno
de los jinetes del Apocalipsis (el que montaba el caballo amarillo, smbolo de la
13
133
muerte);19 mientras que el sacerdote chileno Jos Mara Romo sostuvo, ya en 1815, que
el emperador de los franceses era el "Dragn del Apocalipsis".20
Otro aspecto de la relacin entre temporalidad y escatologa se refiere a la
apostasa que caracterizara a los hombres de los ltimos tiempos. Aqu, la epstola
paulina a Timoteo result central, en especial como una forma de explicar la nueva
relacin que la aceptacin del principio de la soberana popular asignaba a las
vinculaciones entre religin y poltica en el orden postrevolucionario, en especial en
Hispanoamrica. Haciendo una exgesis de este pasaje bblico, sobre el carcter de los
hombres en los ltimos tiempos (descritos como blasfemos, soberbios y desobedientes),
el sacerdote peruano Jos Calixto de Orihuela se preguntaba en 1820: "En estos
infelices tiempos de revolucin, quin no ha palpado el cumplimiento de esa proftica
prediccin?"Al "pie de la letra" coincidan con esta descripcin, aseguraba, "cuantos
han promovido el infernal estandarte de la insurreccin".21 De forma similar, en el Ro
de la Plata y a mediados de la misma dcada, en el marco de las primeras discusiones
sobre la tolerancia de cultos y la reforma de los regulares, Francisco Cndido Gutirrez
se preguntaba: "Qu siglo abund en deliriosos espantosos como el nuestro, en que
vemos cumplirse lo que el apstol prevea desde su tiempo? No se multiplican entre
nosotros esos hombres, que se gloran de resistir a la verdad, y cuya audacia
desenfrenada no reconociendo otra ley, que el atractivo del placer, otro Dios que la
razn, otros maestros que ellos mismos, pretenden realzar el triunfo de su orgullo sobre
las ruinas de la religin?"22
Me gustara finalizar esta exposicin haciendo referencia al trabajo del mexicano
Jos Mara Rozas publicado a fines del perodo aqu examinado, en 1835. Su Consulta a
los sabios, sobre la aprocsimacin de la segunda venida de Nuestro Seor Jesucristo,
una interpretacin de diversos textos bblicos, aseguraba que la aparicin del Anticristo
se realizara en 1847. Por tanto, su generacin estaba siendo protagonista, literalmente,
de los ltimos tiempos. De acuerdo a su perspectiva, basada en textos como Joel y
Apocalipsis, "el siglo pasado y parte del presente es el tiempo de la langosta", la quinta
trompeta, que preludiaba la aparicin del Anticristo. Las langostas eran los filsofos de
la Ilustracin, que haban conspirado para conseguir propsitos tales como el divorcio
de la razn de la fe, el libertinaje moral y la descristianizacin de la sociedad. Si bien
diversas profecas haban vaticinado el fin de los tiempos, viendo en la persecucin de
la religin una de sus seales ms claras, estas premoniciones haban fallado pues lo
relevante no eran tanto las persecuciones, sino las singularidades que tena este
fenmeno en el siglo XIX, donde lo particular del da, es que a la impiedad se le hace
pasar por sabidura exquisita, y a los mas lbricos, a los mas irreligiosos, a los mas antieclesisticos desrdenes se les llama luces. Solo en los verdaderos ltimos tiempos, los
avisados comprenderan el sentido del devenir histrico y del futuro, afirmaba. Por eso,
19
Luis Carrasco y Enciso, Sermn moral del fuego vengador de la caridad y de la dureza de las palabras
con que se han de redargir las impiedades de Napolen y sus sectarios (Mxico: 1810), 29.
20
Jos Mara Romo, Sermn de nuestra santsima madre de Mercedes (Santiago: 1815), 12.
21
Jos Calixto de Orihuela, Carta pastoral que sobre las obligaciones del cristianismo, y la
oposicin de este al espritu revolucionario de estos ltimos tiempos (Lima: 1820), 9-10.
22
Francisco Cndido Gutirrez, Sermn del mximo doctor San Gernimo patrn de Crdoba (Crdoba:
1825), 4.
134
23
Jos Mara Rozas, Consulta a los sabios, sobre la aprocsimacin de la segunda venida de
Nuestro Seor Jesucristo (Toluca: 1835), 51, 21, 206-216, 231.
24
Reinhart Koselleck, Aceleracin, prognosis y secularizacin (Valencia: 2003), 51-52.
135
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La dcada de l840 en Chile, y las polmicas de la Generacin de l842, son un excelente
laboratorio para experimentar la innovacin lingstica y conceptual que se despliega
sincrnicamente en el discurso periodstico religioso y el laico desde la asuncin al
mando presidencial del General Manuel Bulnes, en l841. A pesar que en la literatura ha
prevalecido la idea de que la religin es en general un obstculo a la modernizacin,
sostenemos que an oponindose a los cambios que afectaban su rol en el Estado,
incluso combatiendo a sus autoridades, y asumiendo posturas refractarias a las
propuestas de quienes se declaraban liberales, el discurso catlico adopt e incorpor
los conceptos de la modernidad. Ello permite caracterizar la polisemia conflictiva de
los mismos.
TEXTO/TEXT:
La historia atlntica consigna 1808 como una fecha crucial para el concepto de
modernidad. Entre sus mltiples consecuencias, la invasin napolenica a la pennsula
ibrica dio inicio al proceso de ruptura poltica entre Amrica Hispana y la Madre
Patria. Con ello, abri el curso para que nuevas concepciones de la poltica, la sociedad,
la cultura y la religin fluyeran hacia los canales que alimentaron las revoluciones de
independencia. El desafo planteado remeci no solamente a las instituciones de la
monarqua, asociada desde entonces con la tradicin y el Antiguo Rgimen, sino
tambin, a sus contemporneos, quienes tomaron conciencia de vivir un nuevo tiempo
de futuro incierto y abierto. En Chile, a la autonoma adoptada por la clase dirigente en
l8l0, sigui su adhesin al rgimen republicano en l8l8, y el esfuerzo por consolidar el
nuevo sistema poltico evitando los conflictos, y especialmente temores que despertaba
instaurar un nuevo orden en situacin de orfandad poltica. Las autoridades de la nueva
repblica sentan que deban asumir su madurez rechazando el pasado o, al menos, sin
mirar atrs, pero tambin procurando evitar la desintegracin social y la anarqua. Su
espacio de experiencia, como observ Koselleck, se distanci de su horizonte de futuro
y de expectativas, al punto de dejar al presente como el escenario donde inevitablemente
136
entraran en escena nuevos elencos con guiones desconocidos.1 Era una promesa que se
desplegaba en un clima de incertidumbre. La sancin del pueblo como nuevo soberano,
con todas sus implicancias, inauguraba una asimetra entre la experiencia y la
expectativa. La separacin, e incluso negacin del pasado, se confi a la Historia,
encargada simultneamente de abrir los nuevos horizontes y establecer un puente, como
el que se propuso tender el peridico El Liberal, en l823, cuando se present con un
Prospecto que declaraba su intencin de exponer lo que fuimos, lo que somos, y lo
que seremos. El pasado era la esclavitud, por 300 aos, el presente, nada en
realidad, y mucho en la esperanza. 2
En ese contexto, la sancin constitucional a la religin catlica como el nico
culto reconocido, el intento de evitar roces mayores por los problemas vinculados al
patronato, la difusin de una teologa republicana que carg la revolucin de
significacin positiva al considerarla como manifestacin de la voluntad liberadora de
Dios, y la crtica histrica de la monarqua hispana y su pretendida cristiandad
colonizadora, contribuyeron a legitimar la repblica como encarnacin de los valores
evanglicos y a hacerle el contrapeso a las tendencias absolutistas que defendan el
derecho divino de los reyes.3 En una sociedad eminentemente catlica, el vnculo entre
repblica y religin, dio un respaldo trascendente al nuevo contexto institucional. Por
otra parte, el quiebre con la monarqua desencaden tambin un proceso de constitucin
de la Iglesia como interlocutor separado del Estado, inaugurando un problema de poder
indito.4 Ambas instituciones disputaran, en adelante, su lugar. La Iglesia, en un
contexto donde la legitimacin por lo sagrado dejaba de ser requisito para las
instituciones polticas, con un clero que luchaba por su independencia y poder sobre los
smbolos religiosos;5 el Estado manteniendo el auxilio de la religin, pero imponiendo
un modelo que subordinase la accin de la Iglesia, dando cabida a reacciones anticlericales. Salvo pequeos roces, especialmente por demandas de tolerancia religiosa
para inmigrantes protestantes, ambos poderes dialogaron conscientes de su mutua
necesidad.6
La percepcin del tiempo como un trnsito, cuyo signo fue identificado
crecientemente como progreso, acompa las primeras dcadas despus de la
independencia. 7 La impronta de Andrs Bello descoll durante los aos 30,
1
137
Olivier Remaud, Pequea filosofa de la aceleracin de la Historia, en Faustino Oncina (ed.), Teoras
y prcticas de la historia conceptual, Madrid: CSIC/Plaza y Valds, 2009.
9
Brian Connaughton, La nueva historia poltica y la religiosidad: Un anacronismo en la transicin? en
Guillermo Palacios (coord..), Ensayos sobre la nueva historia poltica de Amrica Latina, siglo XIX,
Mxico: Colegio de Mxico, 2007
10
Brian Connaughton, op. cit. p. l77
11
Koselleck, R., op. Cit.
12
Javier Fernndez Sebastin, Guerra de palabras. Lengua y poltica en la revolucin de Espaa, en
Pedro Rjula y Jordi Canals (eds.), Guerra de Ideas. Poltica y cultura en Espaa de la guerra de la
independencia, Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2011.
13
El Mercurio de Valparaso, 28 de febrero de l841.
138
Quentin Skinner, Significado y comprensin en la historia de las ideas, en Prismas, No. 4, 2009, pp.
149-191.
15
Diego Barros Arana, Un Decenio en la historia de Chile, Tomo I, citado en Ana Mara Stuven, op. Cit,
pg.95.
16
El Mercurio de Valparaso, 26 de febrero de l841,en Stuven, 104
17
El Progreso, Santiago, l0 de noviembre de l842, No. 1.
18
Una palabra sobre el da de la Patria, El Crepsculo, l8 de septiembre de l845.
139
140
141
iglesia, en expresiones con evidente relacin a las prcticas polticas, a fin que sta
reconociera la tendencia evanglica a favor del rgimen republicano y la democracia.
Ya en l843, El Progreso haba asociado al cristianismo con los principios de igualdad y
unidad al vincular a la Iglesia como congregacin de los fieles representada en los
concilios con el gobierno representativo, intentando aislar al catolicismo como crtico a
las ideas del siglo. 33 La Revista se defendi apropindose de los principios
democrticos: la mejor base de la democracia es la religin catlica; porque ella
nos da las ms sublimes nociones sobre la dignidad, la libertad y la igualdad del
hombre, formando el espritu de una buena repblica.34 En una serie de artculos
titulados La religin considerada como la base de la civilizacin, la Revista consign
a la religin catlica como nico y poderoso regulador de la mquina social,
poderoso contra la opresin y la anarqua, el despotismo de los que gobiernan y
de la multitud.35 La libertad sobre la que se fundan las modernas sociedades es fruto
de la adopcin divina. El cristianismo procur (en la historia) tan solo apresurar el
momento de libertad general, produciendo en menos de tres siglos ms nmero de
emancipados que en cuarenta no haba verificado la civilizacin antigua. 36 En
definitiva, en su respeto a la libertad, la Providencia encendi una luz inextinguible y
segura que sirviese de faro a la razn en el oscuro y proceso pilago de la vida. Esta luz
es la religin.37
A propsito de una pastoral del obispo de La Serena prohibiendo la circulacin
de libros, se desat una polmica entre El Progreso y la Revista Catlica tambin por el
concepto de civilizacin, dirigido hacia las prcticas polticas. El diario afirm que el
documento estaba en contradiccin flagrante con el tiempo en que vivimos y la
sociedad en medio de la cual se ha lanzado; el Obispo deba, al menos, haber respetado
el mundo civilizado en cuya reputacin merecemos tan buen lugar. A su juicio,
estas prohibiciones no enseaban a ser republicanos a cuyo rango nos llama el siglo y
nuestras leyes. El dogma de la soberana del pueblo, que es la base de nuestro edificio
social, no se encuentra ciertamente en las Constituciones de San Ignacio de Loyola.38
La Revista respondi preguntndose: Qu hay en estoque contrarie los progresos
de la civilizacin? El respeto al siglo en que vivimos no justificara la indiferencia
ni la defensa del sistema de una sociedad que marcha a la vanguardia de los
defensores de la verdad. 39 La polmica dur varios meses; ambos contrincantes
radicalizando su discurso. Para El Progreso, finalmente, la censura impeda la marcha
progresiva de la humanidad, prohibiendo la lectura de los escritos de pueblos ms
aventajados en industria, poltica y filosofa40, mientras la Revista se cerr en que
33
142
de nada sirven las luces, porque sin moralidad jams puede ser feliz una nacin; y sin
religin tampoco puede haber moralidad verdadera.41
Aunque ya los debates dispersos lo presagiaban, la publicacin, en l844, de
Sociabilidad Chilena por Francisco Bilbao fue tal vez el detonante ms claro de que
un espacio, hasta ese momento, inmune a la crtica, dejaba de serlo, pues su crtica no
solo se dirigi hacia la Iglesia sino que dej a la religin catlica como fruto del pasado,
de una Espaa asociada a la Edad Media, como opuesta a la modernidad y como
habiendo traicionado el mensaje de un Cristo profeta pero no necesariamente divino.
Ante esa afronta, la iglesia entendi que la incorporacin en el lenguaje pblico de
conceptos cuya definicin se buscaba en teoras y filosofas al margen de las cannicas
catlicas, mereca profundizar la disputa por el dominio y alcance de los mismos. El
Arzobispo Valdivieso hizo de ello su causa permanente.
41
143
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper discusses how the French concept of the filmmaker as auteur was adapted to
the Norwegian post war film culture. Although the French word auteur was not used in
the Norwegian film debates before the late 1960s, the concept was embraced by the
Norwegian post war film culture and the Norwegian filmmaker Arne Skouen is today
conceived as a Norwegian auteur. By applying the approach of conceptual history this
paper highlights differences between the French and the Norwegian uses of the concept:
Where as the auteur concept in the French context was associated with creativity and
originality, the case of Arne Skouen shows that the auteur concept was rooted in the
idea of the author as a moral guide for the people. And whereas the French auteur
concept evolved in a critical debate over the aesthetic autonomy of film, the auteur
concept in Norway became an indicator and factor in the debates of the production
conditions.
The context for this paper is my PhD thesis in Norwegian film history. The thesis is an
historical investigation of the auteur concept in Norwegian film culture, reaching from
the 1950s to the 1980s. The theoretical approach stems from conceptual history,
focusing on both semantic and pragmatic changes of the concept. The main research
questions are: In what ways have various experiences and anticipations been invested in
the auteur concept and for what purposes has the concept been used? By tracking the
multiple uses of the auteur concept in Norwegian film culture, the thesis aims to shed
light on perceptions of film and film-making in Norway.
TEXT/TEXTO:
The most famous conception of the idea that the director is the artistic force in film
production was expressed in la politique des auteurs a film-critic approach practiced
by a young of guard film critics in the French film journal Les cahiers du cinma in the
1950s. Common to most historical accounts, is the understanding of la politique des
auteurs as a strategic maneuver, aimed to raise the status of film to the level of the other
144
art forms by granting it an artist: Ironically, the intervention of auteurism, [], was
simply the installation in the cinema of the figure who had dominated the other arts for
over a century: the romantic artist.(Caughie, 1981, p. 10). Due to the successful
transfer the auteur critics made from theory to praxis, resulting in the New Wave of
French cinema (1958-62), the concept of the auteur was exported to film cultures
worldwide.
Although the French word auteur is not used in Norwegian film debates before
the 1970s, it has been argued that the concept was central in Norwegian post war film
culture, and that it fit Norwegian film culture especially well because the director's role
in film production and film reception has been strong traditionally. (Iversen, 1992) The
most typical example of this praxis is the filmmaker Arne Skouen (1913-2003):
Skouen has been regarded as Norways first genuine auteur, because he wrote the
screenplays for all seventeen of his films save one. (Soila, Iversen, & Widding, 1998,
p. 124). With 17 feature films from 1949 to 1969 Skouen filmmaking career spans from
the aftermath of the WW2 to a new generation in Norwegian film in 1970 a period
marked by an increasing acceptance of film as art. According to Ren Bjerke Skouen
played a central role in the battle for film as an artistic expression in Norway:
Thus, one can safely say that at the same time as the main theme of Skouen
movies are people who fight their way from the cold into the warmth, he himself fought
the same fight for the art of film, for the understanding of film as an independent means
of artistic expression. (1983, p. 98)
By attaching the French auteur concept to Arne Skouen, Norwegian film
historians place Skouen and Norwegian film history into a broader European film
history: What happened there happened here too, Skouen is a Norwegian auteur.
Skouen is even conceived of as a Norwegian embodiment of the idea of the director as
auteur, even before the French concept was imported: "Although the term was not
invented at the time, Arne Skouen was a pure auteur - he wrote his own scripts, directed
the films and produced them for a long period."1 (Hanche, Aas, & Iversen, 2004, s. 58).
But can there be such a clean adaption of a concept from one culture to another?
Examining the specific conditions for the adaption of the auteur concept in Norwegian
film culture, this paper sets out to highlight the differences in the experiences and
expectations that were invested in the auteur concept in Norwegian and French film
culture. Not only being the allegedly embodiment of the auteur concept, Arne Skouens
period as a filmmaker coincided with the period the auteur concept travelled from
French film culture. In addition he himself was a central exponent of the idea of the
auteur and thus for the interpretation and adaption of the auteur concept in the
Norwegian film culture. Hence Arne Skouen will serve as the case study.
The travelling of a concept
Though this paper is not engaged in the study of larger conceptual histories,
insights from conceptual history is enlightening. According to Reinhart Koselleck, a
1
Note that the French term is used in all these quotes. This emphasises the fact that this is
conceived of as an
imported French idea, rather than if it had been translated to i.e filmartist.
145
concept, unlike words, always remain ambiguous. The ambiguity rests on its application
in a given context: A word becomes a concept only when the entirety of meaning and
experience within a socio-political context within which a word is used can be
condensed into one word. (2004, p. 85) Therefore to clarify the word status of auteur
as concept, we need to take in to consideration a larger semantic field, the parallel or
opposed concepts, generalized and particular concepts and the overlapping of
expressions. First I will summarize how the auteur concept can be conceived as both an
indicator and a factor in the French post war film culture.
The auteur concept is usually traced back to two central manifestos. The first
manifesto is Alexandre Astrucs essay Naissance d'une nouvelle avant-garde: La
camra-stylo from 1948 were he stated: The cinema is quite simply becoming a
means of expression, just as all the other arts have been before it, and in particular the
painting and the novel (2009, p. 31-32). In his article Astruc picks up the debate from
the late 1920s and 30s about the auteur (director) versus manuscript led film, granting
legitimacy to the first. According to Astruc, in the new kind of cinema to come, the
distinction between author and director loses all meaning. Direction is no longer a
means of illustrating or presenting a scene, but a true act of writing [...] (Astruc, 2009).
The concept of the avant-garde was central for the conception of the feature film as the
product of a unique force, the director, since the modernist avant garde films from the
1920s had distinguished themselves as (single) works, nonnegotiated and
nonnegotiable. (Andrew, 2010, p. 101). The film critic Francois Truffaut picked up
Astrucs battle against the film industry and its powerful manuscript writers in what is
today reckoned the second manifesto for the politique des auteurs from 1954 Une
certain tendence dans le cinema francaise. Here Truffaut attacked the dominant and
internationally acclaimed French film, la tradition du qualit and its screenplay
writers and directors. According to Truffaut the directors of these quasi films were
only for craftsmen to recon, metteurs-en-scene, who put pictures to the manuscript
unlike real auteurs - hommes de cinma whose films were marked by their personal
vision of the world. Stating that: I simply cannot bring myself to believe in a peaceful
coexistence between the tradition of Quality and a cinma dauteur, (Truffaut, 2009, p.
56) created what Koselleck has coined as an asymmetric pair of counter concepts,
auteurs versus craftsmen, thus distinguishing the frontlines and establishing an active
unit able to become politically effective. While Astruc had reserved the auteur concept
for individual filmmaking between the pure cinema of the 1920s and filmed theatre,
Truffauts articulation of the situation created a polarized debate on the state of the
contemporary French film that concerned the whole film institution.
Both Astruc and Truffaut made use of the idea of the romantic artist and linked
this idea to directors working at the margins of the established industry. Hence the
concept of the director as auteur became useful for legitimizing autodidact and
experimental filmmaking. Thus auteur cinema also functioned as a movement concept,
creating experience by describing a condition not yet experienced, but which had to be
articulated. By directing their attack at directors and screenplay writers, and not other
film critics, the auteur concept became a tool for young cinphile critics who wanted a
foot inside the film industry. Hence, the concept functioned not only an indicator of a
146
new awareness of cinema as something more than boulevard theatre, but also a factor
in the French film culture: As the auteur critics articulation of the situation was
accepted, it enhanced their success as auteurs of the French New Wave.
Susan Hayward has pointed out that the radical new about the concept of the
auteur was largely due to the avid attention which the Cahiers paid to American cinema,
where a director had little or nothing to say were the production concerned. Thus, the
need for the artist to be the totality of the film, was dismissed when the only space for
creativity was with mise-en-scne, which became the expressive tool at the directors
disposal. (Hayward, 1993, p. 141) In the fight for the autonomy of film as art the
immediate political or social meanings of the films became secondary or irrelevant as
the auteurs aesthetic signature became more important than thematic seriousness.
The Norwegian film artist becoming auteur
At the same time as the auteur concept is an imported idea, linked to the
polemics in French post war film culture; the concept of the romantic artist is also
rooted in the Norwegian culture. Contrary to the situation in France there was a lack of
screenplay-writers in the Norwegian film culture, and this was even conceived as a
major problem. There was a tradition that the director wrote his own scripts, and the
lack of creative personnel in the film culture was a challenge when the state took
interest in film as a cultural expression after the war. Arne Skouen was an established
writer and playwright before he began his career, and this makes him unique in the
Norwegian context. The anecdote of how he was introduced to filmmaking is telling:
Unlike other aspiring directors, Skouen did not wait for years for the opportunity to
direct his first film: He was approached by the most powerful man in Norwegian film,
top man of the nationwide organisation of municipal cinemas and managing director of
the municipal cinema organisation in Oslo, Kristoffer Aamot, telling him that he wanted
to see Skouens latest book adapted to film, and that he expected Skouen to adapt and
direct, assisted by a technical director. The following years Skouen made 3 films for the
state production company. The constant difficulty of having the films made, due to few
and unstable producers made Skouen, among other directors, become his own producer
in 1958 to assure continuity of production and the independency to follow his own
artistic program. The independency Skouen thus was granted as auteur (having total
control from first idea to final cut), was a result of the poor production conditions in
Norway and the lack of screenplay writers. Skouen was at least as important as a man of
letters, as a director to the Norwegian film culture, and as I will show, his independency
was not based on aesthetic principles; it was rather a virtue of necessity. In 1955 Skouen
expressed the exhausting multitasking young Norwegian directors due to the difficult
production conditions: "The new talents only way to get into the swing (production) was
to start at the top in combination producer / director / author. In the 1955 this right to
final cut was not conceived of as an advantage, bur rather an indication of weakness in
an amateurish film culture. By some critics it also was claimed to be an expression of a
distinctly Norwegian individualistic mentality an exaggerated urge to
independency. In 1963 Skouen put these aspects of his own practice in a new positive
light by applying to the auteur concept in an interview when asked: "Do you see it as an
147
advantage that the person who wrote the script, also directs the movie?" And Skouen
replied: "I expected that question: To take the film seriously means that it is one man's
work. It is to create a unified work, such as a painter, as a novelist/author does. The
echo of Astruc is evident, and the call for the romantic artist seems to have changed the
social perception of an established practice, which primarily was the result of a practical
choice, not of an artistic one. The point in equating the film artist/auteur with the painter
or the writer of novels for Astruc and Truffauts part, was not so much the independence
to be the total of the film, but to se film as an abstract language, that was able parallel,
or even surpass, the latest developments in the other arts, such as the modernism of the
New Novel.
While French cinephilia in postwar France evolved from Paris intellectual
youth culture, the interest for film in Norway was based in the labour movement. And
while the auteur concept in Les cahiers du cinema reflects the apolitical tendency of the
French culture in the 1950s and took a stance not against, but in favour of American
cinema, the nation building process and enlightenment ideology dominated the
Norwegian engagement in film. The Norwegian Society for Film, (an organ of the
labour movement founded in 1951), also saw film as the most important art form of
the time, but the background for this new awareness, was very different from the
French:
If we believe that the film is currently affecting people perhaps more than any
other art form or any other information agency, then we must also know
something about the film and keep the film under observation. Film debate, film
studies and film research is a necessity in modern society.2
Though Filmdebatt praised auteurs like Ingmar Bergman and Charlie Chaplin,
its approach to cinema was more political and democratic in its orientation. The
organization defended cinema as a positive cultural factor, as moral indignation grew
steadily through the fifties and sixties and was suspicious of the products spit out from
the dream factory across the Atlantic that corrupted national culture and especially
the youth. As the aesthetic and critical debates about film were almost non-existent at
the time, it is in the debates about the state financial support system that the auteur
concept is first used to articulate a specific agenda.
In 1954 a need for a new organisation of the Norwegian state financial support
system grew out of several films that were conceived as both technically and artistically
poor. The responsible filmmakers, accused of abusing the liberal funding system, were
called dilettantes and speculators. Their lack of respect and interest for were seen as the
main threat to the development of Norwegian cinema. Arne Skouen participated in this
discourse stating that the states subsidy system granting "freedom for all" had failed: it
was not freedom for all talents, but freedom for all speculators. The counter concept to
film artist became speculator, someone who made films to make money. At the same
time profiting on filmmaking was conceived of as speculating in the audience
preferences and hence morally questionable. By countering film artist with speculator it
2
148
was the filmmaker with honourable intentions that became the most artistic in the
Norwegian film debates of the 1950s.
It is this cultural context Arne Skouen was a part of, and that informs his
approach to cinema and his role as an auteur with the notion that artistic quality rested
on morality. Arne Skouen had his formative years as a journalist in the 1930s in the
cultural radical newspaper Dagbladet, an intellectual centre in the Norwegian society.
But while the intellectual tradition of cultural radicalism was radical in its political
regards (for example towards the church and sexuality), it was aesthetically and
formally conservative, and also very suspicious and hostile towards cinema, which was
conceived of as morally suspicious. Formal modernism was not accepted even in
literature, and even less in film. So while the French counter concepts
(craftsman/auteur) emphasised the artists need to be his own norm, honouring creativity
and originality, the Norwegian counter concepts (speculator/film artist) emphasises the
directors intentions and the artist's commitment to the community. So while radical
writers or directors in France in the 1950s were experimental in form and claimed
autonomy for their artistic praxis, Skouens artistic mission was moral and designated by
the people. This is expressed in his film Pastor Jarman comes home (1958) that opens
with a text poster signed by the filmmaker:
Dear T.K.D/You probably have forgotten that you wrote/to me once, but among/
many things you said this:/Why dont you make films about a/good and wise
man/who
risks
everything for what he thinks is right?/In these times such people are
needed./They are our last defense./Tell us about that kind of man!
You are right. Now I try to/answer you with this story/about the sailors priest
Roald Jarman./ A.
In his films Skouen was critical of the various institutions and his concern was
the marginal and isolated characters in society, deviants, dropouts or the leftovers of
modernity. This social commitment, rather than formal experimentation, marked
Skouens practice as a filmmaker and his signature of his oevre is thematic, rather than
aesthetic. Skouen was a typical Norwegian iddikter a term that resembles Jean Paul
Sartres ideal of the intellectual engag. His work as a journalist, novelist, playwright
and filmmaker is marked by his ability to combine different professions with his social
commitment, and his choice of medium, genre and style was always supportive of the
idea or social problem he wanted to debate. This holds true also when the French New
Wave hit the Norwegian shores in the early 1960s and Skouen in 1962 took a leap
towards a more modernistic film language with the feature film Kalde spor (1963) a
film concerned with war traumas. In his next films he balanced a light modernistic film
language while putting under debate the inadequate care of children with mental
troubles in the Tilla-trilogy.
In the French context the auteur concept was associated with creativity and
originality, while the case of Arne Skouen shows that the auteur concept was rooted in
the idea of the author as a moral guide for the people. The concept of auteur hence
legitimized artistic freedom that emphasised independency, also from economic
149
constraints, over creativity and originality. Rather than a battle between dominant
screenplay writers and directors, the experience invested in the auteur concept was that
of a poor film culture in dire need of Arne Skouen skills as a man of letters and
intellectual gravity. His work resulted in a legitimizing of an already established
practice: the director with final cut. Whereas the French auteur concept evolved in a
critical debate over the aesthetic autonomy of film, the auteur concept in Norway thus
became an indicator and factor in the debates of the production conditions.
REFERENCES
Andrew, D. (2010). What cinema is!: Bazin's quest and its charge. Malden, Mass.:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Astruc, A. (2009). The Birth of a new Avant-Garde: La Camra-Stylo. I P. Graham &
G. Vincendeau (Red.), The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks. London: British
Film Institute.
Bjerke, R. (1983). En dikter med kamera. I S. Skjnsberg (Red.), Hverdag og visjon :
en antologi om Arne Skouen (s. 90-117). Oslo: Aschehoug.
Caughie, J. (1981). Theories of authorship: a reader. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hanche, ., Aas, N. K., & Iversen, G. (2004). "Bedre enn sitt rykte" : en liten norsk
filmhistorie (2. utg. utg.). Oslo: Norsk filminstitutt.
Hayward, S. (1993). French national cinema. London: Routledge.
Iversen, G. (1992). Framtidsdrm og filmlek : Erik Lchens filmproduksjon og
filmestetikk. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, Institutionen fr teater- och
filmproduktion.
Koselleck, R. (2004). Futures past : on the semantics of historical time. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Koselleck, R., & White, H. (2002). The practice of conceptual history: timing history,
spacing concepts. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Munch, C. E. (1964, 11. juli). Benlse fugler i norsk film. Dagbladet.
Soila, T., Iversen, G., & Widding, A. S. (1998). Nordic national cinemas. London:
Routledge.
Truffaut, F. (2009). A Certain Tendency in French cinema. In P. Graham & G.
Vincendeau (Eds.), The French New Wave: Critical landmarks. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Mcmillian.
150
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
About a year ago, the Belgian Justice rejected a legal attempt to ban the
commercialization of the graphic novel Tintin au Congo (The Adventures of Tintin,
reporter for "Le Petit Vingtime..., in the Congo). The rejected motion was made by a
Congolese citizen, Mr. Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, and also was endorsed by a
French Civil Rights movement, Le CRAN (Representative Council for Black People's
Associations). The comic book, written by Herg (Georges Remi) in early 1930's - and
late recognized by its own author as product of prejudice - was translated and published
all around the world since then and have been facing the same questionings and
censorship attempts everywhere.
Notwithstanding the legal developments of those charges, our goal here is to make
another, yet small, contribution to the debate over the role of cultural expressions such
as graphic novels in the forgery of a cosmogony of positive and negative identities. We
seek to find in that kind of cultural expressions the tensions and mutations of the idea of
alterity and how it is the sine qua non condition in bulding not only an international
order, but also the very social foundations of the State and its behavior by defining
what is (and what is not) inside or outside its cultural, moral and political boundaries.
From the dawn of Christendom to the rise of sovereignty.
Herg's comic book itself is a masterpiece of popular culture at the dawn of the Colonial
Era. More than this, it is quite emblematic once it is related to the most infamous
colonial adventure, whose "horrors" have been inspiring denounces in Western culture,
from the times of Joseph Conrad to those of Vargas Llosa. Allowing therefore the
evolutive analysis of its key concepts from Conan Doyle to Roger Casement.
We assume that Tintin's (mis)adventures are the perfect demonstration of Naipaul's idea
of the role of identity in the colonization: "the colonizer constructs himself as he
constructs the colony. The relationship is intimate, an open secret that cannot be part of
official knowledge". Since Francisco de Vitoria, new forms to describe Mankind, race
and human law (also International Law or ius gens) lead to new concepts capable to
anticipate a whole new for to face the world: the most know is the idea of Civilization
(and its derivations, such as modernity or even aspects of universal rights). In this sense,
we are not interested in the idea of human (or inhuman) rights; actually, we are
interested in the construction of the sovereign ego based upon the creation of the alterity.
That "identity framework", if we can say so, cannot be restrained or contained by a legal
151
TEXT/TEXTO:
When I first accepted the challenge presented by a fellow colleague and dear friend to
do a small reflection about the comic book Tintin au Congo (which lead to the present
communication) I was acting, of course, with temerity. It must be said because the
narratives and consequences of the colonial encounter which are present in this classical
piece of sequential art (and about the piece itself) were object of rigorous reflections
made by several scholars - whose partial omission was necessary in order to keep the
bibliographic section of this communication smaller then the paper itself. The historical
outcomes of the colonial encounter in Congo; the Postcolonial Studies; the European
childhood imaginary during imperialism etc. All of them paradigmatic works which I
could not and I do not want to criticize here.
I was, nevertheless, intending to make a comparative reading of Europeans
representations of Belgian colonial actions over Congo: some travel journals published
from the age of Congo Free State to the first three decades of the Belgian Congo; some
humanitarian/interventionist European works (specially, Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad
and Roger Casement's Report), official reports and documents (the Bulletin Agricole du
Congo Belge1, contemporary with Herg's work) and some recent novels (namely,
Vargas Llosa's El sueo del Celta). The idea was to observe how the European identities
and, more importantly, how the civilized identity were shaped by the invention of the
concepts of alterity, in a perspective which would lay between an Edward Said's
approach and a Carl Schmitt's2 one. In that sense, our interest should be the changes of
the colonial encounter myths from the 16th Century Colonialism to the19th Century
Imperialism.
Notwithstanding, some current events are recalibrating my mind and the course
1
The Bulletin was one of the most important effects of the Belgian efforts in order to modernize
and rationalize the Congo administration after taking over Leopold's Congo Free State. It was
published from 1910 to 1961. Our goal is to focus from 1910 to the 1930's.
2
Here, we try to understand alterity as the perfect border between the self (us) and the other
(potentially defined as an enemy or the other). In this sense, the ethics of alterity are based
upon an idea of the representation of the world as an hierarchy.
152
of this communication in some degree. A Brazilian Lieutenant General (General-deDiviso) has been appointed as force commander of United Nations Stabilization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO)3 last May, following
another commander from an emerging power (Lieutenant General Wadhwa, from India).
The participation of those countries with solid post-colonial background in this new
effort of peace-building precisely in Congo (the laboratory of late 19th Century
colonialism and early 20th Century modernization) raises new questions about the
concepts of order and alterity and their cultural interfaces. In that way, we propose an
overview of the Congo's symbolic experience in the formation of a cultural substrate of
the international order. We are trying to think about how the violent ideas those
totalitarian or integral concepts of the world as a struggle - that shaped the current sense
of nation and international politics also shaped not only the colonial legitimacy, but
were shaped by it. Even in a State such as Belgium then a second rank power between
the main powers and still developing a myth of self-legitimacy.
Therefore, we shall describe this communication not as a working in progress,
but as a project in change for which your critics and references would be gladly
accepted. We will try to propose some possible methods and hypothesis. The later
would be that Tintin au Congo can be read as a cultural expression of a utopia: a
modern, rationalist and nationalist one. In that sense, its symbols and imaginary could
be saw as part of society builders and explorers narratives of late European 19th
Century and early 20th Century. At the same time, it reflects and has a key role in a
particular process of mutation of a project of Belgian nationalism separating itself from
the Crown and from the Cross, trying to forge a national destiny after the traumas of
1905 and 1914. In that sense, we propose a further reading of that specific Tintin's
adventure capable to identify on it:
a) the perceptions of the modernization of Congolese native cultures documents
(the role of civilized nations) produced during the transition of the Congo Free State
into Belgian Congo (anti-Belgian and pro Leopold) from 1904 to 1914;
b) the rise of a new Belgian militant nationalism during the post World War I
(specially the ideas shown at the pages of the Vingtime Sicle) and the concepts
developed by the modern society builders of European;
c) some key exponents of authoritarian utopias of society-building in Europe
(specially in Britain, Germany and France and, of course, Belgium) and its connection
to an imperialist international political (and legal) practice and discourse;
d) the coherence between the discourse of legitimacy built by Tintin au Congo
about the colonial encounter and the practices of Belgium under its second mandate
over Congo (helping to shape the Mandate System of the League of Nations).
Due the vast task we are proposing, it is not possible to summarize all the
elements we are trying to study. In this communication we will try only to put into
context the scenario of Tintin au Congo (the inter-war Belgium and the very newspaper
that gave birth to the adventure) and make some considerations about the background
that we understand we will deal with. We have to confirm that this project takes Tintin
3
153
We are using the Casterman's English edition of 1991, based upon the original edition in book
form of 1931. For now on, all the references to Tintin au Congo should be understood as extracted
from that edition, unless explicit indication of the contrary.
5
It is not our goal here to set a subjective profile of Mr. Herg or to bind him to his earlier writings.
We are only aiming to understand the place of Africa in European nationalism of interwar period
and some of its implications for the establishment of further legitimacy narrative of international
order.
6
Something like: set forth in Christ.
154
the voice of the shaken Homeland, putting aside, as Eric Defoort wrote, the Byzantine
quarrels, wheter social, religious or communitarian7 which were draining the living
forces of the Homeland. The man leading those efforts was Fernand Neuray, the chiefeditor in 1914 (the next year, he would launch the Neerlandese version of the new
Vingtime, Het Vaderland, mostly translated as The Homeland). After the war, in
1918, he launches La Nation Belge, or The Belgian Nation). Neuray removed the
Latin motto from the newspaper and led it to be the one of the greatest (if not the
greatest) diary in Belgium. The moral and religious articles were left in order to increase
the space of political ones.
Quickly, the newspaper became the convergence of former Catholics (in the
partidary sense) and former Liberals into a increasingly nationalist amalgam. That new
feature led, on the one hand, to the defection of former contributors, specially the
traditional Catholics, such as Fernand Passelecq. But, on the other hand, it became the
voice of some long time modern nationalists. One of them was the abbot Norbert
Wallez, whose positions where able to gain Neuray's sympathy and became central to
the newspaper. During the same time, Le Vingtime started to exchange positions and
articles with the Parisian L'Echo, one of the main voices of French nationalism (which
is, as we will see, anti-Germanism). In certain ways, the change of paradigm of the
Vingtime (when the Catholic Party agenda was replaced by a ideology increasingly
close to the Action Franaise) was the pinnacle of the Belgian nationalism an open
channel for further proximity with the Fascim. As did other modern heresies8 of the
period, Le Vingtime supported the idea of international violence (war) as a social
crucial foundation (by the same period, in Belgium appeared another nationalist
newspaper, called La Guerre, notre mre - The War, our mother). Wallez, who would
spend several of his last years in prision as a collaborationist with the Nazi occupation
of Belgium, was particularly efficient when combining such heresies of modern creed.
Combining the ideas of religious uniformity, the condemnation of parliamentary
democracy and the advantages of uniformity, he found in Charles Maurras' writings
(Maurras, notorious and conscientiously, saw the Catholicism not as a transcendent or
metaphysical creed, but as a political tool9) with the revolutionary thought of the
anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Wallez was one of the pioneers and voices of the
promotion of a kind of reactionary (yet modernist or futurist) thought in Belgium: the
amalgam of integral nationalism and socialist fervor. Both of them leading to a
violent and segregationist approach of the social life, defining the proper Belgians and
7
DEFOORT, Eric. L'Action Franaise dans le Nationalisme Belge, p. 116. Available, by July
2013,
at:
[http://www.journalbelgianhistory.be/en/system/files/article_pdf/BTNGRBHC%2C%2007%2C%201976%2C%201-2%2C%20pp%20113-152.pdf]
8
We well define the concept properly after this brief contextualization. For now, it is suffice to
affirm that we are referring to those modern ideologies of teleological and often violent approach
of History which were widespread during the late 19th Century and the Inter-War period in Europe.
Under the myth of progress and modernity, they set a new lexicon and, as a late Jochinism, tried to
promote a new identity based upon a substitute concept for the ancient Monarchia Universalis and
a new dynamic of alterity.
9
The late formal condemnation (and excommunication of its members) of the Action Franaise by
the Church (1926) is symbolic of the idea of modern heresy proposed here.
155
the barabaric ways.10 And he strongly supported a more assertive Belgian insertion
among international Great Powers, through its Army, its diplomacy and, of course, the
international prestige locus par excellence from late 19th Century to the Great Wars: the
imperialism.
That sentiment of being a victim of greedy and treacherous imperialist rivals
trying to undermine the mission civilizatrice belge is depicted by Herg. As soon Tintin
arrives in Africa, wealthy spokesmen from newspapers from Japan (the notorious
imperialist nation of the period, after the developments in China), United States, Britain
and even Portugal try to buy the pen and the soul of Tintin. The selection of those
hypocrite critics of Belgian administration echoed the reaction against the an alleged
illegitimacy of international intervention over Belgian sovereignty in a period of
reshaping the regime of the colonies.
Even the discourse of social and international security, a key concept of the
imperialist arguments, is part of the story. The villain, easily capable to manipulate a
silly backward sorcerer, was a kind of secret agent sent to eliminate the intrepid Tintin,
who was rescued by a brave priest (a kind of Wallez alter ego, perhaps). The man who
ordered Tintin's murder? Herg points clearly his origins. He is Gibbons, sent by the US
gangster Al Capone (!), who had interest in control Congos' diamonds and would do so
by spreading terror in Belgian Congo. As a fictional African newspaper (The African)
asks: would Congo be Chicago colony?
The historian William Langer wrote in 1935 that imperialism was a projection
of nationalism beyond the boundaries of Europe, a projection on a world scale of the
time-honored struggle for power11. An assertive which could be easily applied here.
When stating that the mother-country of the Africans is the far-away Belgium, Tintin
reflected a new form of pledge for legitimacy of Belgium's claims over Congo, which
arose after WWI and the subsequent League of Nations' regime of mandates. And, as
Langer observed in the Italian and German cases, for Belgium the imperialism was a
way to protect itself beyond boundaries, to use the very expression from Langer12.
Wallez saw his role on the Vingtime first, by using his own signed articles and, later,
his editorials - as a way to ensure the greatness and unity of the Belgian Nation. And,
once difficult as it was to ensure a linguistic or ethnic identity for Belgium, the
expansionism in Europe and abroad would help to forge a healthy Nation and, in the
process, to crush the internal Barbarians.
Those developments seen to be at hand when, in 1924, Wallez (nothing would
be more false than to interpret him as a mere transmission chain for Maurras' ideals: he
was himself an important author when forming the idea of integral nationalism, not only
in Belgium) was appointed by Cardinal Mercie as head of the Vingtime, concentrating
on his own hands the task to reorganize once more the Vingtime. An year earlier, he
had visited the new (this adjective here is quite important for our research) Italian
10
V. WALLEZ, Norbert. La Belgique de Demain et sa Politique. Paris: ?, 1916. Pp. 26 43; 11723. Apud DEFOORT, opus cit., pp. 122-4.
11
LANGER, William L. A critique of imperialism.Foreign Affairs, XIV (october, 1945). New
York: CFR, 1935. Pp. 102-15.
12
Idem.
156
dictator Benito Mussolini, who impressed him so greatly that he left his earlier
proximity to the Italian People's Catholic Party in order to support the Fascism. Even a
signed portrait of the dulce was a central piece in his office furniture.13 It was inside that
office that the somehow heretic priest created his front against all divisions (or
diversities) inside Belgium. In a certain way, the priest increasingly expressed a
discourse similar to those describe by Carl Schmitt's theory about the Grossraum: in
order to achieve its security and proper space on international and national arenas,
Belgium should annex the Rhineland, retaking what it lost in its mythical past. In his
own Grossraum, Wallez led a cry for reparation and for protection against foreign and
domestic barbarians and enemies or, the externalized alterities.14
The background of Schmitt's ideas as shown in the Concept of the Political
(1928) were not also aliens to Wallez' Vingtime Sicle: besides the nonconformity with
the idea of a plural society, the obstacles to the project of a nationalist and cohesive
Belgium were depicted as enemies, barbarians - whether internal or external. In a
some common sense, politics were the continuation of the struggle, of the war. And the
internal front was the continuation of the external confrontation: the suppression of the
discrepancy; the invention of the nation was the construction of the Enemy or the Other
(by violence and education in this last case, it is significant the lesson Tintin gave to
African students about their country, Belgium, when showing a map... of Europe, as
we referred earlier). That is other aspect of those profane theologies: the continuous
search for an enemy, who has a transcendent figure, an axial aspect; over the concept of
the alterity, the entire construction of of a new legitimacy and a new identity is erected .
In Wallez editorials, the enemy were the masons, the internationalists (whether
socialists or even Catholics), the foreigners (especially those Foreign Powers
responsible for Vienna and Versailles15) and the parliamentary politics of a bourgeoisie
society. In fact, the last one received a constant critic by the Vingtime. As Schmitt (or
even Otto Kirchheimer16) would do, Wallez criticized the divisions and frailty of a
parliamentary State, the stupid antithesis between force and law17 . Under the same
viewpoint, the international arena is taken as an hierarchy of nations in order to impose
its natural needs (as we referred to Grossraum earlier). Inside the European Belgian
territory, the Flemish alterity should be, in a paternalist way, suppressed and Africa
could be a proper laboratory. The Congo was also the scenario for a renewed credentials
of Belgians among the Concert of Nations under the its new regimes and legitimacies.
II Tintin and the late Imperialist Tradition
13
Cf. ASSOULINE, Pierre. Herg: the man who created Tintin. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009. Pp. 12-5.
14
DEFOORT, opus cit., pp. 114-9; ASSOULINE, opus cit., pp. 12-4. If for Schmitt the
exceptional state is the key for sovereignty, Wallez is really clear when affirming that the proper
function of the State is the war. Idem.
15
Cf. Le Vingtime Sicle . .Editorials from february ,1915 to october, 1915. Also referred by
DEFOORT, opus cit.
16
In a review of this work, our purpose is to do a comparative reading of the anti-parliamentary
lexicon through the main Colonial Powers and revolutionary movements in inter-war Europe,
including the earlier wrightings of the Frankfurtian Kirchheimer.
17
Apud DEFOORT, opus cit., p. 124.
157
Wallez was also the man who hired the young Georges Remi, a former
bureaucratic employee of the Vingtime with some experience drafting comics about
boy-scouting (Totor). It was 1925, and Remis was only 18 years old. We do not want to
look further at this moment about the ideological and personal influences of Wallez
over Tintin's creator. For now, it is enough to affirm that Remi reengaged at Le
Vingtime as a photographer and soon he became an illustrator. According to the
principle of gaining as soon as possible the battle for souls and minds, Wallez created
(1928) a juvenile section of the newspaper and Remi was placed heading the project,
publishing several comic stripes18 under the editorial line set by Wallez.
In 1929, under the auspices of the ever-looking priest, Tintin is brought to life in
an album designed to show the flaws of the internationalism socialist as we mentioned
earlier. Probably, both Wallez and Herg could not foresee the huge success that
creation would achieve int the future. Not only a Belgian national icon, Tintin would
place Belgium under positive international scrutiny as no one before. A late and
increasingly national (and then, Western) myth and symbol. Tintin, his dog Millou
(Snowy) and his late crew were the perfect translation of Rudyard Kipling literature to a
time of a dying Age of Columbus and crisis of the European central role on the
international stage.
Tintin's personality was recognizable for those used to late Victorian European
adventurers. He was something like a William T. Stead (1849 1912), the pope of
journalism or, as an American journalist stated, the perfect type of Nineteenth
Century19. As Stead, Tintin was an optimistic and self-confident idealist. As Stead, he
fought against public villains and slavery; promoted the cause of orphans and European
peace. And, above all, fought for a sane imperialism (concept of Stead). We
remember Stead also because he was the promoteur of a coalition of European small
powers that should be led by Belgium, during the golden years of Leopold II era of
prestige, in late 19th Century, shortly before the Casement Scandal. Another reason to
remember Stead is the possibility to read Tintin au Congo as a last effort to justify the
ideologies of colonialism, under siege in Belgium since the international
acknowledgment and pressure against the horrors which took place in Congo Free
State20, that absurd personal feud of Leopold II and the result of the partition of Africa.
A partition made under a shaken European order and the omnipresent violent utopia of
Progress by that time, an ideology of missionary and paternalist alterity, which
already legitimized both Berlin and Versailles Conferences.
As we saw, the personality of Tintin can be traced back to a lineage of
progressist media men from late Nineteenth Century. But if Stead is remembered by his
polemical articles and books (not to mention by his death, sinking with Titanic), Tintin
is more subtle. Herg was not making him writing explicit and vast discourses. His
message was passed through small commentaries and, mostly, by the direct interaction
18
158
with the environment an imaginary one, capable to replace the mere exploitation and
explicit racial prejudices with a clean, healthy, formal and positive concept of progress
and security.
Of course the young Herg (as, before him, the not so young Rousseau when
creating the idea of savage, another kind of self-constitutive alterity concept) had never
been at Congo. But he had a vast and intense research material, composed by official
propaganda and partial travel journals, published as a Belgian effort to counter the costs
of Leopold's genocide for Belgian image. As those diaries21, the adventure starts at the
port, where Tintin and Millou are under the admired attention of their fellow,
respectively, boy scouts and dogs. During the travel, both heroes are exposed to all the
archetypes of colonial adventure: the exotic fauna (the gun to shot elephants, the violent
parrot); the silly African servant (for whom, even the dog is a Master), whose only
utility is to do, under supervision, secondary jobs. Dorman, in his anti-Casement
journal22, gave a much similar picture. Even the dramatic figure of suspicious noBelgians Europeans are common to both.
Following the same script, Tintin is received as a hero by the locals and never
miss the opportunity to hunt even defending a bunch of natives aided by the bravery
of Millou, which gives space to infer that the natives were unable to face the threats
from that kind of beasts before the European arrival (the same could be said during the
games descriptions exhaustively depicted by Dorman following his accounts, the
Europeans, of course the only ones who should bare fireguns, should shot at every
moving shape in the wilderness, whether for fun, fame or power. And he never miss the
opportunity to reveal the inability of the indigenous people when doing so). Following
the same pattern, Tintin is capable to elude the silly backwards and the stupid (and
dangerous) animals. And, as depicted by Dorman, the mourning Africans, who were
been civilized by Belgium and Tintin are the clear evidence that the progress would be
the key for their own self-fulfillment and insertion in the Concert of nations, throughout
Belgium sovereign land. Being as Tintin as a Belgian (so says a Congolese: them say,
in Belgium all whites are like Tintin, who is all-powerful) - is the final aspiration of
every single Congolese and a proper last stripe for the comic.
REFERENCES
ALI, Tariq. Confronto de Fundamentalismos: cruzadas, jijhads e modernidade. Rio de
Janeiro: Record, 2002.
ANGHIE, Antony. Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
BOBBITT, Phillip. A Guerra e a Paz na Histria Moderna: o impacto dos grandes
21
It is impressive, specially, the sincronicity between the Tintin's cosmogony about the Congo, as
depicted by Herg and DORMAN's (1905) journal , which will lead our comparations here.
22
Idem.
159
STEARNS, Jason. Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: the collapse of the Congo and the
Great War of Africa. New York: Public Affairs, 2012 (digital edition).
SCHULZE, Hagen. Estado e Nao na Histria da Europa. Lisboa: Presena, 1997.
TUCHMAN, Barbara W. The Proud Tower: a portrait of the world before the war,
1890 1914. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994 (digital edition).
161
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La literatura psiquitrica, de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, ofrece mucho vocabulario
para la reflexin sobre la sociedad y el hombre, desarrollada dentro de la prensa y de las
disciplinas humansticas. Nos centraremos en un concepto que tuvo mucho xito en el
proceso de transferencia a otras disciplinas que es el concepto de degeneracin. Esto fue
teorizado por el psiquiatra francs August Morel en su obra Trait des dgnrescences
physiques, intellectuelles et morales de lespce humaine, publicado en 1857. Morel ve
una enfermedad mental, considerada grave, como tendencia hereditaria y a aumentar
cuando se pasa de generacin en generacin. La enfermedad progresa y el nmero de
pacientes aumenta exponencialmente a medida que las generaciones se reproducen.
Despus de la muerte de Morel, en 1873, sus discpulos, en especial Valentin Magnan,
ampliam el alcance del diagnstico de la degeneracin, dejando al pblico a una
realidad alarmante: La degeneracin es ms que una enfermedad individual, es una
amenaza para la sociedad. El concepto salt rapidamente de la literatura psiquitrica
para otros campos. En la literatura, el concepto se afirma con la aparicin de la escuela
naturalista-realista. Emile Zola, uno de los mximos exponentes de esta escuela, est
profundamente influenciado, en sus escritos, por conceptos mdicos, incluyendo la
degeneracin que ocupa un lugar prominente.
La cultura portuguesa se integra en la rbita de la cultura francesa. Tambin el
naturalismo en Portugal har uso del concepto de degeneracin. Ms all de los grandes
nombres de la literatura, como Camilo Castelo Branco y Ea de Queirs, cuya obra
trasciende las fronteras de la escuela realista, hay una serie de escritores de segunda
categora, pero muy ledos en su momento, donde la cuestin de la degeneracin est en
todas partes: Abel Botelho, Jlio Loureno Pinto, Teixeira de Queirs. Es una literatura
que elige personajes que sufren de varias taras, como el alcoholismo o la histeria. que
los transforman en seres degenerados. Nuestro objectivo es analizar lo proceso de
traslado, recepcin y redefinicin del concepto de degeneracin de la psiquiatra para la
literatura en Portugal.
TEXTO/TEXT:
162
El siglo XIX, siglo de la ciencia, entre otros ttulos de grandeza y poder conquistados
por occidente, atribuye a la medicina un reconocimiento pblico excepcional. A la
medicina le cabe el cuidado de la salud de los pueblos. Los mdicos ya no se limitan a
permanecer junto a la cabecera del lecho de los poderosos, para pasar a atender tambin
a los desfavorecidos, pues disponen ahora de armas mucho ms eficaces, que les
permiten luchar contra las enfermedades con un optimismo renovado. Dentro de la
medicina, la psiquiatra es un rea emergente que gana una progresiva autonoma a lo
largo del siglo. En el universo de la psiquiatra francesa, asume protagonismo un
alienista de manicomio, Bndict Augustin Morel (1809-1873), al escribir un Trait des
dgnrescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espce humaine (1857). La
idea central del libro es que las enfermedades mentales son hereditarias y se agravan de
generacin en generacin, dando origen a anormalidades progresivamente ms
aberrantes. Valentin Magnan (1835-1916), sucediendo a Morel, ampli la nocin de
degeneracin a todo tipo de trastornos mentales, combinndola con la teora de Darwin,
que entre tanto haba conquistado el mundo de la ciencia en las ltimas dcadas del
siglo XIX. Jacques-Joseph Moureau (1804-1884) extiende la idea de degeneracin ms
all de las fronteras de la enfermedad mental, estableciendo una relacin entre
degeneracin y genio que ms tarde alcanz resonancia con la obra de Max Nordau
(1849-1923), Degeneracin (1892), un best-seller europeo. Segn Nordau, Europa
estaba sufriendo el flagelo de una grave epidemia mental, de degeneracin e
histeria, que minaba su vitalidad. Entre tanto, en 1886, Von Krafft-Ebing (18491902), neuropsiquiatra austraco, public su libro Psicopatia Sexualis, dedicado al
estudio de varias formas de patologa sexual como manifestaciones de herencia
degenerada. La teora de la degeneracin se extiende por toda Europa, no slo en los
crculos mdicos y cientficos, sino tambin en la prensa y en el universo vinculado a
las humanidades. Todo un vasto vocabulario mdico-psiquitrico pasa a integrar el
discurso de las elites intelectuales como si, gracias a l, la verdad ms ntima y oscura
de la sociedad pudiera ser revelada1. En la literatura, la teora de la degeneracin conoce
un enorme xito. La escuela naturalista de mile Zola se yergue a su sombra. Sin ella y
los conceptos que le estn asociados, Zola no podra haber escrito Germinal, ni gran
parte de sus novelas.
La cultura portuguesa ochocentista se mantiene firmemente en la rbita de la
cultura francesa y, por lo tanto, no es de extraar que el naturalismo tenga en ese medio
sus cultores y apasionados. Abel Botelho (1856-1917) es probablemente el autor que
ms lejos lleva su adhesin al mensaje del naturalismo2. Militante republicano, tras el
advenimiento de la Repblica, fue nombrado, en 1911, embajador en Buenos Aires,
donde morira en 1917. Escribi varias obras de teatro y, en 1891, dio inicio a un ciclo
de cinco novelas titulado Patologia Social: O Baro de Lavos (1891), O Livro de Alda
1
163
(1898), Amanh (1901), Fatal Dilema (1907) y Prspero Fortuna (1910). Abel
Botelho, en la estela de Zola, expone al lector casos humanos en los que la degradacin
psicolgica y fsica se va materializando a lo largo del tiempo, de forma constante e
irreductible. Es la leccin de la teora de la degeneracin, de Morel y sus seguidores,
aplicada a la literatura, cumpliendo el programa de la escuela naturalista de mostrar la
verdad sobre la sociedad y los individuos. Es precisamente el contenido de esa
verdad el objeto de este texto, a partir de las novelas El Barn de Lavos y El Libro de
Alda.
El Barn de Lavos se llama Sebastin, su mujer, Elvira, y el amante de ambos,
Eugenio. El barn siente una fuerte inclinacin por jvenes adolescentes, aunque
acumule en su currculo varias aventuras con mujeres y est casado. La pederastia, en
tanto que vicio y atavismo, forma parte del repertorio de las viles aberraciones de
la carne3. El narrador nos da a conocer un individuo enfermo, ms precisamente
degenerado, ya que l representa la agravacin de un estado de enfermedad iniciado
en el seno de su familia hace varias generaciones. Sebastin se integraba, por injerto
doblemente bastardo, en dos de las ms antiguas e ilustres familias de Portugal4.
Llegada al siglo XVI, esta familia queda rehn de un hombre muelle, enfermo,
linftico, poltrn5. A partir de entonces, el mal se transmite a sus herederos y, al llegar
la vez del barn, el atavismo hizo explotar en ste, con rbida energa, todos los vicios
constitucionales que emponzoaban la sangre de su raza, exagerados en una confluencia
de seis generaciones6.
La explicacin de la pederastia de Sebastin excede la mera historia de un
caso de degeneracin familiar. La cuestin de fondo reside en la divulgacin muy
precoz de ese vicio en la Pennsula Ibrica, anterior a la formacin de la nacionalidad.
Prctica arraigada en la Grecia antigua, se difunde, con los romanos, a travs del
imperio, hasta llegar a la Pennsula. A pesar de que la sangre nueva introducida por
los brbaros constituy una reparacin saludable, el germen mrbido resisti
latente7. La civilizacin rabe y, ms tarde, el abuso del monaquismo y de las
expediciones nuticas lejanas favorecieron el vicio, que se fue agravando hasta
ganar contornos de cronicidad8.
El lector acompaa los entusiasmos del barn en su caza a los efebos. En esos
momentos vence la brutalidad animal de sus instintos. La fascinacin le domina.
Queda hipnotizado. Una noche, encuentra un efebo tan deslumbrante que decide
convertirle en su mantenido para as tenerle enteramente a su disposicin. Los efebos
pertenecen siempre a las clases bajas, estn hambrientos y sucios. El amante no escapa a
la regla9. Sebastin le viste, le alimenta y se propone transformar su lenguaje verbal y
gestual para poder mostrarse con l en pblico y ser recibido por su propia mujer, en el
3
164
hogar comn. El mancebo es todo menos agradecido, y no slo le roba sino que tambin
se enreda con su mujer, Elvira, tambin ella el resultado de una educacin errnea, con
los sentidos envenenados por lecturas nocivas, especialmente la tragedia disolvente de
Madame Bovary10. Ambos, Sebastin y Elvira, van cediendo a los pedidos de dinero
cada vez ms insistentes de Eugenio, hasta la ruina completa. El barn vive los ltimos
aos a costa de la caridad de viejos amigos que le cobijan y alimentan11. Su muerte, a
manos de una chusma de muchachos que le maltratan, dejndole tirado en plena calle,
sobre un charco de sangre, es el corolario inevitable de una vida disoluta.
La homosexualidad conduce a la ruina personal y financiera. Ya es una
penalizacin suficientemente fuerte. Pero, ms an, significa una degradacin moral que
por poco no conduce al barn a perder su honor viril. En la relacin que mantuvo con
Eugenio, naturalmente l era el macho mientras que el zagal era el sometido, el pasivo
sexual, y eso, pese a la mcula de acostarse con alguien del mismo sexo, bastaba para
conservar el estatuto de superioridad del barn. En la Grecia antigua, de hecho, si era
aceptada la prctica de que un hombre adulto iniciara sexualmente a un joven, jams el
adulto poda ser penetrado por otro hombre, como si fuera una mujer12. Sebastin estuvo
cerca de atravesar ese umbral, al sentir, a veces, en contacto con el joven, el deseo de
ser posedo, de ser ahembrado13. Ser ahembrado constitua el envilecimiento ltimo
para cualquier hombre de bien y, si cabe, en mayor grado an para un hidalgo.
El Libro de Alda se compone de una serie de cartas escritas por el narrador,
Mario, a un amigo, explicando su infortunio. En esta novela, al contrario de la primera,
existe un personaje que encarna el bien absoluto, haciendo justicia a su nombre: Blanca.
Los otros dos, el novio de Blanca, Mario, y la amante de ste, Alda, son criaturas
degeneradas por las circunstancias de la vida y por el peso de la herencia. Durante los
primeros aos de vida adulta, sin embargo, Mario se haba mantenido voluntariamente
apartado de toda forma de vida depravada. Pero su voluntad era dbil ante el instinto y
una noche, al salir de la casa de su novia, se vio inmerso en el torbellino del Carnaval,
acabando en la cama de una joven. No era una prostituta, o an no lo era, pero ya haba
rodado por varios hombres, no expresamente como modo de vida, para ganar dinero,
sino por ninfomana. Tena el vicio del sexo. Es conviccin del narrador que las
mujeres son, en general, peligrosas, con raras excepciones, y los hombres, seres
indefensos que, al caer en la celada tendida por ellas, son del todo incapaces de liberarse
de su yugo. Dos figuras de hombre alertan sobre el peligro femenino: la primera es un
joven, Gustavo, conocido de Mario, quien asegura que nunca se relaciona sexualmente
con hembras, para evitar perderse. Les olfatea el perfume dice y eso le basta. El
sexo, para Gustavo, forma parte de la clase de las violencias bestiales14. La otra es un
viejo decrpito, apodado Securas, siempre enredado en faldas. Completamente
subyugado por las mujeres, se ha rebajado hasta el punto de convertirse en un
especialista del placer femenino. Su lema es darles placer, buscar y estimular el placer
10
165
de ellas por medio de sabias maniobras y demoras, hasta llevarlas a los paroxismos
extremos del placer15. sta es la mayor miseria a la que un hombre puede llegar. Con
las mujeres la obligacin del hombre es simplemente gozarlas (), montarlas y echar a
andar, tomarlas en su valor subalterno, retribuirles el gozo en desprecio16. Securas
insiste que fue ese galopante vrtigo de placer el que le consumi y anul17.
En las antpodas del mundo sucio de las exigencias de la carne, estn algunas
mujeres, pocas, que sobrevuelan por encima de este infierno de los instintos animales
alojados en los seres humanos comunes. Blanca es el eptome de ese tipo de mujer. Ser
hiertico y austero, pero dueo de una hermosura hecha de suavidad y de perdn,
mimosa, suplicante. Si el amado se lo exigiera, recibira las clidas imposiciones del
amor con una impasibilidad de santa y se ofrecera en holocausto con una esttica
resignacin de mrtir 18.
Mario y Alda, los pecadores de este libro, tuvieron unos antecedentes familiares
y una historia de vida nada recomendables, que les moldearon un carcter defectuoso,
incapaz de resistir a la llamada de los instintos. Mario se define como neurastnico,
dbil, con falta de determinacin y exigidad de voluntad19. Fue su flaqueza la
que, en medio de la multitud innoble20, le hizo olvidar las obligaciones y aceptar la
seduccin de una endiablada figurita de mujer21. Su mirada lasciva cre en l una
fascinacin absoluta22. Adems de su mirada, su cuerpo era magnfico. Al contrario
de los patrones de belleza vigentes, que idolatraban la mujer bien nutrida, Mario aprecia
mujeres delgadas y sta lo era, aunque dotada de unas tetas enormes y respingonas.
Ella era el producto aberrante y mrbido de este fin de siglo destemplado y egosta en
que la contumacia en el placer produce toda esa descerebrada legin de ninfmanas23.
Este tipo de mujer contra-natura, comedora de hombres, era un ser fascinante en su
doble condicin de ngel y demonio. La primera noche de sexo expresa bien esta
contradiccin terrible: noche abominable y celeste, arrebatadora y terrible. El animal
existente en ella se manifiesta sobremanera en las dos grandes tetas, tiesas y vidas
como tentculos24. Mario, que era adepto de la moderacin, de lo delicado, cae en
los excesos ms desenfrenados. Los excesos exigan fuertes organizaciones
equilibradas, que l no posea. Mario cuenta a la amante pasajes de su vida. Lleg a
Lisboa slo, sin recursos, sin proteccin, sin arrimo25. Su to le dio consejos, le
consigui contactos, le dio dinero y ropa, le pag los estudios, pero confiesa nunca
me consinti su intimidad26. Este abandono haba justificado en l una manera de ser
delicada y dbil.
15
166
Alda, por su parte, haba nacido en el norte del pas, de madre lisboeta, hija de
una tabernera y de un ropavejero, gentes sin entraas ni moral27. Con 15 aos, su
madre venda flores por los teatros y pronto fue seducida por un abogado de provincias,
que se la llev con l a la aldea. Abandonada, se entrega a las manos del prroco y se
queda embarazada, muriendo en el nacimiento de Alda. El cura enva a la nia a casa de
su hermano, quien a su vez se la confa a una mujeruca. sta la deja a su aire, a la
buena de Dios, descalza, andrajosa, ignorante, a la lluvia y al sol en una sucia
promiscuidad con los cerdos y las gallinas28. Ya crecidita, el to pas a recibirla en
casa. Sentndola en el regazo, la palpaba toda, besuquendola29. La pequea ya
manifestaba impulsos, caprichos, fascinaciones, tendencias que hundan su
raz en las ms profundas anastomosis de su alma y haban de ser el auriga desptico y
fatal de su destino30. Huy a Oporto y se amanceb con un actor y ms tarde con un
apuntador repugnante y deforme, que le barri toda la casta de sentimientos buenos y
afectuosos31. Entr en un burdel con 15 aos y, ms tarde, se convirti en protegida de
la marquesa de guas Belas, que pas a sustentarla, admitindole compaas
masculinas aunque le prohibiera las femeninas32.
Al final del libro, Blanca acaba por morir pues su salud frgil no soporta el
disgusto de conocer la verdad. Mario se salva del suicidio gracias a un amigo, mientras
que Alda sigue su vida con un nuevo amante.
Unos se suicidan, otros se prostituyen. Sufrimos en esto como en todo lo
dems, el mal de la poca (). De esta agona de civilizacin () cul es la
caracterstica, si no un estado nauseativo del alma?33
Civilizacin agnica y almas nauseadas. Las almas puras, como Blanca, no
tienen capacidad de influir positivamente a la sociedad. La degeneracin es un
proceso imparable que va contaminando a un nmero cada vez mayor de personas. El
vicio es ms poderoso que la virtud, arrastrando a los individuos a la perdicin. En un
mundo plagado de vicios, el sexo es uno de los mayores disolventes, si no el mayor, de
la personalidad. La ninfomana y la pederastia son los grandes flagelos. Las ninfmanas
acechan la oportunidad de succionar a los hombres, transformndoles en perros
sumisos. Los pederastas se entregan a manos de sus maricones y ya son incapaces de
liberarse, hasta caer en la total abyeccin que representa el comportamiento del
pederasta que, en cierto momento de su estado vicioso, acaba por sentir el deseo de
invertir los papeles con el efebo, ofrecindose como hembra para ser penetrado. Nada es
ms repugnante, nada es ms humillante para un hombre, a no ser el deseo de dar placer
a una mujer. Ambos comportamientos constituyen el mximo de envilecimiento al que
un hombre puede rebajarse. El drama del pas es que abundan los pederastas y las
ninfmanas. Son vicios entraados en la psicologa nacional, que se fueron abultando a
lo largo de los siglos, como es propio de todas las degeneraciones. El futuro no es
27
167
REFERENCIAS
Fuentes
Botelho, Abel: O Baro de Lavos, Estarreja, Mel Editores, 2011 [1 edicin: 1891].
Existe traduccin al espaol: El barn de Lavos: novela; traduccin del portugus y
prologo de Felipe Trigo, Madrid: Librera de Pueyo, 1907.
Botelho, Abel: O Livro de Alda, Porto, Lello e Irmo Editores, 1982 [1 edicin: 1898].
Existe traduccin al espaol: El libro de Alda: Novela; traduccin de Andrs Guilmain,
Madrid: Rafael Caro Raggio, 1919.
Bibliografa
Correia, Anabela Barros: O Espelho Deformante. Imagens do grotesco em Fatal
Dilema, de Abel Botelho, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, Departamento
de Literaturas Romnicas, 2008.
Goldhill, Simon: Amor, Sexo e Tragdia. A Contemporaneidade do Classicismo,
Lisboa, Altheia Editores, 2006.
Neto, Victor: Abel Botelho. Quadros de Patologia Social, Revista de Histria das
Ideias, 2000, vol. 21, pp. 261-306.
Pina, Ana Maria: O conceito de degenerescncia no Portugal do sculo XIX, ponencia
presentada al IV Congreso Internacional de Iberconceptos, Bilbao, 10-12 de septiembre
de 2012 (en prensa).
Ribeiro, Maria Aparecida: Realismo e Naturalismo in Reis, Carlos (coord.), Histria
Crtica da Literatura Portuguesa, vol. VI, Lisboa, Editorial Verbo, 1994, pp. 274-313.
Shorter, Edward: Uma Histria da Psiquiatria, Lisboa, Climepsi Editores, 2001.
34
168
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The notion of totalitarianism has played a crucial role in the reshaping of the public
discourse and historical consciousness in all post-Communist countries. The expansion
of the use of this concept has been, however, accompanied by sharp criticism, which
was not devoid of political connotations. The notion of totalitarianism has thus been
accused of subsuming the complexity of the societies and political agency in really
existing socialism under a reductionist pseudo-concept that is, moreover, a belated
reception of a highly politicized notion which had emerged in the context of Cold War
Liberalism. In the countries of former Yugoslavia, furthermore, critics have pointed out
that the notion of totalitarianism has been imported from the former Eastern Bloc area
and has been subsequently schematically applied to a very different historical
experience. Totalitarianism is thus seen as part of a package of historical notions,
belatedly imported from the former Eastern Bloc (together with opposition and
dissidents), that not only prevents a critical and nuanced approach towards the
Communist past, but also retroactively superimposes a terminology that is alien to the
self-perception and original mental framework of the contemporary critics of the
Yugoslav regime. In my paper, which will focus on the case of Slovenia, I will show
that, contrary to these claims, intellectuals, critical to the regime, not only employed the
notion of totalitarianism throughout the Socialist period but used it in innovative ways.
In many cases, this usage preceded the Cold War propaganda and was very rarely
mediated through Western Sovietology. The accumulation of different layers of
receptions from the West and their interaction with the local intellectual traditions
(especially, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Marxist revisionist critique of alienation and
consumerism) and with, in the 1980s, a reception of the intellectual production of the
dissident subcultures from the Eastern Bloc countries, created different configurations
of meaning. More than a signifier of a historical or political phenomenon, or a counterconcept aiming at a normative re-description of the Socialist reality in terms of a clear
dichotomy, totalitarianism was part of a loosely delimited semantic field that signaled a
critical discourse. As such, it was rarely used in a coherent way; nevertheless, it was
copiously used in the dissident vocabulary of the 1970s and 1980s (as I will show, one
can also find prominent leftist intellectuals among them who later criticized this notion),
and it also served as the point of departure of some elaborated theoretical edifices.
169
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The presentation is meant as a genealogical inquiry into the intellectual origins of postcommunist neo-liberalism. The demise of communism in Poland was often acclaimed
as both the victory of a self-limiting revolution of Solidarity and as a clarion call of a
global liberal revolution, despite the complicated relationship between Solidarity and
contemporary liberalism. While the liberal character of Solidarity has been widely
debated since, my presentation will examine the other part of the equation, e.g. the
negative importance of Solidarity in the forging of post-communist liberalism. In its
rhetorical use of the conceptual distinctions between liberty and democracy, between
constructivism and spontaneity of the social order, or between totalitarianism and
authoritarian dictatorships, this liberalism generously borrowed from Cold War
liberalism of the neo-conservative variety. At the same time, its performance of the
neoliberal repertoire was original insofar as it had to be employed in a local
environment defined both by the political context the decaying communist state,
Solidarity occupying the space of the political opposition, the place of Catholic religion
and the role of the Church in Polish society as well as by the discursive strength of the
local conservative tradition. I will show that choosing Solidarity as its constitutive
other, embracing Catholicism and taking up role of counselor to the Communist prince
were decisions that shaped the conceptual apparatus of Polish neo-liberalism as it was
emerging to dominance in the decade after 1989.
TEXT/TEXTO:
170
171
successfully appeal for unity of the political forces of the opposition, the prolonged
stalemate between the movement and the Jaruzelski regime induced many groups with
political ambitions to claim an autonomous position with respect to the trade union
which began to be perceived as a closed chapter of history. Among groups that acted
upon this assumption were the liberals who decided to bring together the hitherto
dispersed individuals and groups and form a sort of common front. Their main forum
was The Political Club Dziekania, which benefited from support of the Catholic
Church and increasingly, official acceptance in line with the governments policy to
open up for non-party opinion while isolating Solidarity and its supporters. In the later
part of the decade, entrepreneurial associations were created in Warsaw and Krakw
and many liberals offered their council to the Communist prince from the columns of
the official press. The liberals were very active during the changes and rose to
prominent positions in the first post-1989 governments.
Secondly, the official policy of selective openness entailed also a stronger
political presence of the Catholic Church, which, due to the special place of Catholicism
in Polish society, could now re-claim its role of intermediary between the society and
the state, a role which has been previously occupied by the trade union. A third element
which made up the circumstance in which the neoliberals acted was the vitality of the
conservative tradition of political realism, whose main imperative, since the Polish
Uprisings in the late 19th century, was to define the conditions of possibility of a
compromise between the hegemonic but illegitimate state and the collective aspirations
of the society, while presenting a conservative critique of the excesses of those
aspirations.
For the purpose of this occasion I will focus on a single author, Mirosaw
Dzielski. Dzielski was one of the most recognizable figures of the Polish neo-liberalism,
his work often condensing ideological threads present in the writings of his political
friends. More importantly, he qualifies for what Jan Werner Muller called turn to
history of political thought that mattered politically, one that would understand
political concepts in a more problem-driven way, that would focus more on the
interaction between intellectual and institutional invention, and hence, on the inbetween figures and actors whose thinking, can be said to have had a direct impact on
the political praxis.4 Starting his political activity already in the late 1970s, Dzielski was
an editor of numerous influential underground periodicals and a popular author but also
an activist the vice-chair of the Dziekania Club and the initiator of the Krakw
Society for Industry. Despite his growing criticism, he participated in almost every
collective body that had an influence on the agenda of the mainstream political
opposition: a spokesperson of Solidarity in the Krakw region, a member of the
Primates Social Council and signatory of the Citizen Committee - the advisory body to
Lech Wasa around the time of Round Table talks. Reportedly, before his premature
death in October 1989 while on a lecture tour in the US, he was the candidate of the
Primate for prime minister.
4
172
Dzielski developed the main ideas of his Christian liberalism before emergence
of Solidarity, in rivalry with the main figures of the democratic opposition. in his
manifesto How to perpetuate power in Peoples Poland? published in April 1980
Dzielski advocated what can be called a Chileanization scenario, as opposed to what
the eminent dissident Jacek Kuro called a Finlandization scenario devolution of
internal sovereignty while remaining in the orbit of the Warsaw Pact. Communists
Dzielski argued would never consent to democratization, since it would threaten their
existential interests as rulers. They could be inclined, however, to keep political power,
while re-privatizing the economy and transform Poland into an authoritarian regime
resembling late Francoism, Pinochets Chile or Argentina under Videla.5
In justifying this blueprint of compromise, Dzielski employed Hayeks
interpretiation of the distinction between liberalism and democracy.6 Democratization
was not only unrealistic since it did not take into consideration the vital interests of
the other party but also founded on a conceptual mistake, that of identifying liberty
and democracy, whereas in fact for the liberals freedoms other is totalitarianism, not
authoritarianism, which is the opposite of democracy.7 Bringing Hayeks distinction to a
practical conclusion, Dzielski argued that just like in principle one could imagine a
totalitarian democracy (at this stage without specifying the actual carrier of such
project), the Latin examples showed that an authoritarian government was able to
safeguard the values most dear to liberals freedom of enterprise, freedom of
conscience and freedom of movement and that in the longer run exercise of those
liberties would bring political democracy as well.
In other words, the Chileanization scenario was a neoliberal formulation of the
transition from communism. Its worth exploring it in detail:
It seems to me that we should not fear even a long transition period of
authoritarian government in our country. All true supporters of freedom will
cherish the liberty of enterprise, the mobility, the regional self-government and the
legal safeguards provided by such government. With democratization we can
really wait for better times. The imperative of democratization and its
identification with liberty this is what scares the ruling elite away from reforms.
Identifying democracy and freedom automatically puts rulers and the partisans of
reform in a situation of irreconcilable existential conflict. Consider that the ruling
elite might to some degree become an ally of liberty. They might like especially
the freedom of enterprise, which given their privileged economic position, is
surely on their mind. And this freedom is probably the most fundamental of them
all.8
In order to get a better grasp of this project, it is useful to compare it to one of the most
vocal statements of Reagans foreign policy, Dictatorship and double standards, in
which Jeane J. Kirkpatrick employed Hayeks distinction to justify alliances with anticommunist dictatorships and, at the same time, a tough stance against communist
5
Mirosaw Dzielski, Duch nadchodzcego czasu. cz. 1-2 [Wrocaw : "Wektory", 1985], p. 5.
F. A. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 166.
7
Dzielski, p. 27.
8
Dzielski, p. 28.
6
173
dictatorships9, providing intellectual ammunition for the Cold War reprise. Dzielskis
intentions were quite different in this regard. Most of all he differed in the assessment of
the totalitarian quality of the communist regime. It was not a coincidence that his
manifesto was addressed to lieutenant Borewicz, which was a star protagonist of the a
popular TV series about a socialist cop. For Dzielski Borewicz, rather than the members
of the Central Committee (to whom the dissidents would address their open letters), was
the symbol of actually existing socialism, Westernized in its habits and cynical in his
attitude towards the official party-state doctrine. The transition from communism,
Dzielski assumed, could only be a result of the alliance of the society with the cynics,
whereas democratic mobilization of society could, in a moment of a political crisis,
pave the way to power of the ideologues with totalitarian inclinations.10
More importantly, while in Dzielskis view the trend away from totalitarianism
was quite advanced among the establishment of Peoples Poland, the common people
were still captive of the socialist paideia. That is why Chileanization of Poland was
not just a matter of sober, realist judgment. It was also meant to be a tutelary
dictatorship that would steer the process of overcoming the mental residues of
communism in peoples mind an habits by gradually devolving liberties. Political
liberties could only be a culmination of this evolution, which, according to Dzielski,
would take at least 30 years.11
The Martial Law only confirmed Dzielski in the need for what he now called creative
or constructive anticommunism. However, some elements of his doctrine changed.
First of all, - the addressee of his project. It was not anymore the pragmatic element of
the ruling establishment symbolized by Borewicz but its coercion apparatus.12 This
change was surely provoked by the militarization of the regime, from government
through factories to TV broadcasting (even the lector in sign language would appear in
military uniform). Besides the obvious bidding for the strongest party, the shift also
signified a further approximation to Hayek and his reading of totalitarianism.13 Unlike
for the classics of totalitarianism, who identified the concept first and foremost with
ideology and the figure of the ideologue, the Hayekans believed that it was the growth
of bureaucracy which was indissociable from planning, that accounted for the
totalitarian tendency and this led them to trace this tendency also within the Western
welfare states.14 For Dzielski, the bureaucracy became the common enemy against
which the interests of the coercion apparatus and the creative anticommunism could
converge.
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).
10
Dzielski, pp. 9-12.
11
Dzielski, p. 14.
12
Dzielski, p. 133-134.
13
F. A. Hayek , The road to serfdom (London : Routledge, 1991).
14
Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to choose : a personal statement (San Diego : Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1980). For Dzielskis quite uncritical apprisal see Duch nadchodzcego czasu, pp.
231-249.
174
Dzielski, p. 135.
Dzielski, pp. 167-191.
17
F.A. Hayek, Errors of constructivism New Sludies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the
History of Ideas (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 3-22.
18
Dzielski, 135-136.
19
Dzielski, 250-260.
16
175
Dzielski, 137-138.
For more on the uses of the concept of totalitarianism across the 1989 divide see my Totalitarianism
and The Limits of the Political Thought of Polish Dissidents: Late Socialism and After in Thinkng
Through Transition: Liberal Democracy, Authoritarian Pasts, and Intellectual History in East Central
Europe After 1989 (CEU Press, forthcoming) eds. Michal Kopeek and Piotr Wcilik.
21
176
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Feminism, which has a long pre-WWII history in the region of East Central Europe,
returned in the later decades of the Yugoslav state socialist system, while elsewhere it
waited to become one of the hotly debated questions of the post-communist
democracies. Therefore, Yugoslavia is the only case where one can analyze the
relationship between state socialism and feminism, and it offers a chance to see what a
feminist opposition does within the frames of such a regime. In the meantime, the other
countries in the region encounter feminism in an organized form only after 1989. Both
the pre-1989 Yugoslav and the post-1989 Hungarian feminism, which I selected as my
two case studies, take inspiration from the Western second wave of feminism, which in
the meantime is a wide and multifaceted source and its various texts, concepts and ideas
can be translated and transferred into new contexts creatively and with the attribution of
new meanings. This exploration in the conceptual history of feminism attempts to
answer two main questions: how has feminism been defined and redefined by various
actors throughout these decades? How are its various definitions related to the different
contexts in which they were articulated as well as the different genealogies of feminism
in Yugoslavia and its successor states, on the one hand, and Hungary, on the other? The
different contexts influence meanings just as much as the transfers from the Western
second wave and the states anti-feminism maintain and ensure similarities.
TEXTO/TEXT:
I will compare here the reception of feminism as a concept and its interpretations as an
ideology in the 1970s1980s in Yugoslavia and in the 1990s in Hungary. The
comparison is not only across countries, but also time frames. The reason behind is an
attempt to provide a broader picture with a more regional perspective, while I have to
admit that one cannot detect a direct transfer between the two countries. As feminism is
always framed through discursive transfers, the travel of concepts and ideologies, and as
these transfers are never one-directional, the interference between the two cases reveals
more of these, the juxtapositions and contingencies. Moreover, after 1991, the
177
discourses in Yugoslavia are to such an extent overtaken by the war and nationalism
that I would not consider it a typical post-transition discourse. The defining factor,
which, in my analysis, explains the difference between the conceptualisations of
feminism in the two cases, is the role anti-feminism plays in each. On the one hand,
there is a general anti-feminist or rather, post-feminist element in the gender equality
discourse of state socialisms, both in Hungary and Yugoslavia, on the other hand,
however, the emergence of a new feminist discourse at around the time of the
appearance of Western second wave feminisms gives new meanings to the concept.1 As
I argue in the abstract already, before 1989, socialist Yugoslavia was the only country in
Eastern Europe with such a broad and understanding discussion of feminism, leading to
various interpretations of the concept and its local ideational varieties. The years of
socialist Yugoslavia provided a context where authors could investigate, analyse and
discuss feminism, facing anti-feminist arguments, which, however, were not dominating
the discourse. Post-state socialist Hungary, on the contrary, is not a hospitable
environment for feminism and the discussions of the idea start with an offensively
defensive anti-feminist discourse, which, in the meantime, has its ideational inspirations
in state socialist anti-feminism.
Anti-feminism is crucial for its omnipresence in the socialist and post-socialist
discourse, constantly reconceptualising an imagined feminism. It is even more important
in contexts like Hungary, where it precedes feminism and therefore predefines its
meanings. In the Yugoslav case, as there is a feminism triggering the anti-feminist
reactions, it is less definitive of the concept of feminism. As I argue elsewhere, in my
reading, state socialist pro-regime anti-feminism is always rather a form of postfeminism, where the state claims to have achieved a full emancipation of women and a
total equality of men and women, thus superseding the struggles of interwar bourgeois
feminism.2 This is complemented by forms of direct anti-feminism and often even
misogyny in the emerging opposition circles, which to a significant extent will provide
the post-1989 mainstream political actors and public intellectuals.
In Yugoslavia, the 1970s and 1980s were the years when the Yugoslav
feminists had the time and the space to experiment with the meaning of feminism. They
came up with definitions and were working towards an amalgamation of local ideas on
womens emancipation and Western feminism. The three main methods to offer
definitions I would differentiate include 1) introductions to the latest developments of
feminism elsewhere, with a historical perspective, as well as historical reassessments of
the womens movements in Yugoslavia; 2) interpretations of authors the Yugoslav
feminists find inspiring; 3) as a result of the former two, through interpretations the
1
What is usually referred to as second wave feminism in the West, is most often called new
feminism in Yugoslavia, keeping the reference to earlier appearances of feminism both in the
region and internationally.
2
For the definition, cf. Amelia Jones, Feminism, Incorporated. Reading Postfeminism in an
Anti-Feminist Age, in. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. Ed. Amelia Jones. London:
Routledge, 2003 (1992). 314-329; for a detailed argument (in Hungarian): Lrnd, (Poszt)szocialista poszt-feminizmus (Post-socialist post-feminism), TNTF, 2012. summer.
178
authors offer their own definitions. Here, I make an attempt to synthesise them and
highlight their function through examples.
The descriptive-analytical presentations of feminism in other countries and the
historical reconstruction of feminism in Yugoslavia both serve the purpose to legitimise
and normalise the concept in a discursive environment generally hostile to or ignorant
of feminism. One direction is to present the state of the art of feminism elsewhere and to
point out through historical parallels the major aspects of a feminist criticism of the
socialist regime in Yugoslavia. The case of Italian feminism, as presented by Rada
Ivekovi, serves to show that the roots of the womens movement both in the late 19th
centuryfin-de-sicle (first wave) and in the 1960s (second wave) are deeper in the
workers movement and the left in general and to pose questions about how the new
laws after the second world war do not ensure or achieve gender equality, which is one
of the most important elements of the Yugoslav new feminist discourse. As the article
argues, the importance and specificity of neofeminizam (new feminism, that is, the
second wave) in Italy lays in highlighting various topics, which return all over as central
concepts of the new Yugoslav feminist discourse as well: womens creativity in the arts
and the humanities, the debates about sexuality (in Italy mostly about rights to
contraception and abortion), consciousness-raising and through this, the relations
between the public and the private, domestic violence and sexual violence.3 The very
same effort is visible in Lydia Sklevicks research about the early feminism in
Yugoslavia, which she rehabilitates despite the states dismissal of it as bourgeois.
Sklevicks analysis shows that the early feminists were socially sensitive and their
concern stretched beyond class boundaries, therefore claiming a new definition of
feminism, which is not contradictory to, but complementary of socialism and social
sensitivity.4
Similarly to the parallel narratives on the success and methods on womens
emancipation in Yugoslavia, there are parallel stories about feminisms elsewhere with
emphasis on the new feminism. Telling the story of new feminisms in the world
involves evaluation, and therefore, reveals the authors opinion, in the manner of which
these can be read as manifests on behalf of the authors. Especially in case of those
Yugoslav new feminists, who, either as young scholars, like Rada Ivekovi, Sklevick,
or arana Papi, or as established professors, like Blaenka Despot or Gordana
Bosanac, are attempting to bring in a new, competing ideology, for which the innocentlooking introductions to the currents of new feminism in other countries prove to be a
good strategy. The abundance of references makes synthesis almost impossible,
however, through transfer via translation, both cultural and textual, input from AngloSaxon Marxist feminism, French post-structuralism, feminist literary criticism, as well
as North American liberal and radical feminism are all present here. From the
perspective of the Yugoslav authors background education in Marxism and their
3
179
awareness of the relevance of the workers and the partisan movement, there almost
always is an urge to show the political relevance of high theory, well exemplified by the
taming of Luce Irigaray for the movement.
To what extent the transfer becomes an issue of creating a new language, new
terminology (new concepts), I will take the case of an early selection of texts from the
journal Student, from 1976, edited by arana Papi and Ivan Vejvoda in 1976. It
includes texts from the volume Sisterhood is Powerful5 by Pat Mainardi (Redstockings)
and Zoe Moss, an interview with Luce Irigaray made by Cathrine Clment originally
in La Nouvelle Critique, one text by Marie-Thrse Baudrillard from Politique Hebdo
and an excerpt from Shulamith Firestones The Dialectic of Sex. What they state in the
introduction may not look extremely complicated: It is interesting to get acquainted
with insights of the new thinking of the problem of women, her speech [govor],
agency [delanje] and living [ivljenje], and this through a mosaic of broad elements,
from analytical-theoretical approaches to personal statements. Though here it is
seemingly only about foreign experience, a lot is this experience of women is
universal.6 The introduction does not identify the selection of texts as feminist, but it
also avoids the term ensko pitanje by the problem of women, where the quotation
marks distance the authors from identifying with those who consider women a
problem. The terms agency and speech point towards the language of the new
feminism, and so does the selection from the more avant-garde or radical texts, which,
by other authors in the Yugoslav publications, are dismissed for various reasons.
Reasons which can be well organised around the evaluation of and reservation to a
stream of feminism as radical, revolutionary or extremist on the one hand, and
reactionary-bourgeois on the other. The identification or appreciation of these varieties
of feminism is rather divergent and needs to be treated in the revolutionary Yugoslav
context. Again, new feminism needs to be related to and sometimes even reconciled
with the post-NOB7 self-managing Yugoslav system, at the conceptual level as well.
()
Through the transfers, the authors offer their own definitions of the concept of
feminism, moreover, also evaluate the possible interpretations. They always treat
revolution as a positive concept, whereas radicalism is ambiguous: as long as it is
means revolutionary, it is welcome, however, the moment it refers the strategies of
womens liberation groups like SCUM and WITCH, or the guerrilla theatre strategies
(which initially came from the mainstream of the New Left, mostly in the protests
against the Vietnam war) some authors became rejectively critical. Gordana CerjanLetica criticises those organisational forms which are rather mass entertainment or
street theatre.8 In another text she describes those smaller womens liberation-type of
groups as ones which with their performances and other public actions represent only a
5
Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood is Powerful. An Anthology from the Womens Liberation
Movement (New York: Vintage, 1970)
6
Papi Vejvoda, ena je ovjek. Umesto uvoda, 7.
7
NOB is the Narodna oslobodilaka borba, that is the National Liberation Struggle during
WWII.
8
Cerjan-Letica, Feminizam na tragu radikalizma ezdesetih godina, 8.
180
181
shall see, are not the affirmative definitions of the emerging local feminism, but rather
those of the anti-feminist discourses.13
One of the most prominent members of the early feminist groups, Judit Acsdy,
a sociologist with work about the 19th century and early 20th century womens
movements the recovery of their own traditions is probably the most significant
similarity between the Hungarian and the Yugoslav feminists ,14 analyses the reasons
for the refusal of feminism in Hungary.15 Her assessment is based on the work of
several prominent Hungarian and international intellectuals who tried to explain the
difficulties of feminism, often even with a proto-feminist agenda. Their explanations,
mostly unintentionally, provide meanings of feminism which are attributed to it by the
anti-feminist attacks. Here, based on Acsdys summary of these explanations, I will
point out how these explanations entail definitions of feminism by anti-feminism.
There is a clear anti-communist attitude expressed in several arguments. The
most predominant is that equals feminism with the emancipatory politics of the state
socialist regimes. This argument for its own purpose disregards the anti-feminism of
state socialism, which labelled feminism bourgeois and exclusionary, an interpretation
present both in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the state socialist discourse. Retrospectively,
failing to provide a detailed analysis of the fallacies of state socialist gender policy was
one of the biggest mistakes of the early Hungarian feminists in the battle for the
meaning of the concept. Further explanations include the argument that women do not
consider their own position as discriminated against. It is used as a justification,
implying that if women do not mind discrimination, there is no discrimination, even if it
can be proven statistically. 16 Feminisms legitimacy is questioned by refuting the
presence of one of the key concepts of the new, small feminist discourse, and at the
same time, re-defining discrimination, not as something done to someone, but
something experienced subjectively. A milder anti-feminist attempt is to prove that first
the entire Hungarian political sphere needs to develop, in order for feminism to find a
niche. The reference to the lack of consciousness of any liberal freedom rights
presupposes that feminism is necessarily liberal, while the entire argument bears a lot in
common with that of the state socialist regimes, which claimed that once the class
question is resolved, there will be no womens question any longer either. Authors who
would otherwise refuse to share platform with the former communists easily slip into
13
As a digression, it should be mentioned that there is a similar discussion among literary scholars,
especially Anna Gcs, Gyrgyi Horvth and Judit Kdr, who investigate the issue from a
different perspective and identify the biggest difficulty in the political nature of feminist literary
criticism. A political motive in literary scholarship was associated with state socialism and
socialist realism and therefore considered non-scientific enough. However, since there was almost
no interaction between these academics and the activist-feminists, I will not go into the details of
this debate.
14
The other author to be mentioned here with several works on womens and feminist history is
Andrea Pet. A researcher who joins the Hungarian academic scene a bit later is Susan
Zimmerman.
15
Judit Acsdy, Kellett-e neknk feminizmus? [Whether we needed feminism?], 2000,
September 2001, 12-23. Most of my references are from pp. 16-17.
16
Based on the research of the National Bureau of Statistics, there are clear wage differences, there
is a glass ceiling phenomenon and women do more unpaid domestic and child rearing work than
men, to varying extents over time, but to the constant disadvantage of women.
182
the arguments of the despised enemy, in case it serves their interest. On the other hand,
there is another anti-communist aspect to the anti-feminist discussions, which is the idea
that during state socialism, there was a community of suffering shared by men and
women and this eliminates the need of feminism, with the implication that feminism is
anti-male and cannot potentially embrace the rights of men too.
These negative definitions of feminism are accompanied with a new
essentialism, a promotion of womens right to return to their traditional roles of
housewives and mothers, which communism deprived them of. This conservative
argument is even shared from a liberal platform, accepting the will of the individual,
and again, associating feminism with the forced emancipation of state socialism. In
the meantime, this argument is amalgamated with arguments by post-colonialist
authors, quoted even by Acsdy herself, which unavoidably allows space to the antifeminist claims, accepting that feminism may harm the life of women. She refers to
Uma Narayans argument how the traditionalist society appreciates women as wives
and mothers, an attitude becoming more and more prevailing in Hungary as well,
according to Acsdy.17 Despite the heavy anti-feminist pressure, though, the founders of
the journal Nszemly try to counter the arguments by problematising the double
standards towards men and women, as well as the double-faced expectations women
face. To take an example from their pamphlet: if we stand up for our rights, we are
aggressive and unfeminine, if we dont, we are typical weak women; if we want to get
married, we want to entrap men, if we dont, we are unnatural.18 As we have seen, their
efforts, largely built after the womens lib model of the early US second wave, had to
struggle with an immense anti-feminist resistance though. If we compare the cases of
Hungary and Yugoslavia, there is a clear difference of how a consciously built concept
of feminism, even if, or especially if it is complex and multifaceted, stands up against
anti-feminism, than one which starts to be discussed and therefore conceptualised in an
already prevailingly anti-feminist context. When an emerging feminist discourse is
already defensive and reactive, it has less space to develop its own definitions, as it first
needs to identify and dismantle the anti-feminist ones.
17
Acsdy, 13
Judit Acsdy Nilda Bullain, A ni alternativa [Womens alternative], Mozg vilg, 1993,
No. 12. 122-128. 125
18
183
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Libertad fue uno de los conceptos con mayor dimensin de promesa y expansin
mundial en el convulsionado siglo XIX. Se trata tambin de uno de los conceptos de
mayor polisemia, sobre sobre todo si prestamos atencin a los tipos de libertades que se
invocaban en su nombre. El sintagma libertad de enseanza es un ejemplo de tal
polisemia, y el objetivo de este trabajo es precisar su trayectoria entre ca. 1790 y ca.
1890, considerando su emergencia, sus cambios de sentido y sus migraciones en tres
contextos diferentes: Mxico, Francia y Colombia. El estudio de sus trayectorias en ese
periodo permite entender la evolucin de la relacin histrica entre el estado, la iglesia y
la esfera civil en el mbito educativo. La consideracin de tres contextos diferentes
obedece a la bsqueda de sincronas y especificidades en procesos histricos parecidos
de conformacin del Estado, as como a la bsqueda de influencias entre Francia y los
pases hispanoamericanos: intentaremos determinar si las numerosas menciones a las
leyes francesas de libertad de enseanza en la prensa mexicana y colombiana en los
momentos en que estos pases discutan sus propias leyes educativas constituyeron
efectivamente transferencias de sentido o nicamente referencias para la legitimacin de
las reformas a introducir.
Desde finales del siglo XVIII y hasta mediados de siglo XIX, en el mundo
hispnico la libertad de enseanza tena que ver con el socavamiento del poder de
gremios y corporaciones (civiles y eclesisticas) en tareas educativas, como parte de la
construccin de un orden de libertades individuales. A eso se refera la constitucin
mexicana de 1857 cuando estableci que la enseanza es libre, y se era tambin el
sentido de la ley colombiana de Libertad de Enseanza de 1850, que daba a los colegios
de los distintos departamentos la facultad de conceder grados superiores hasta entonces
atributo de la Universidad de Bogot. En cambio en Francia hasta antes de 1880 las
leyes que consacraban la libertad de enseanza (Ley Guizot 1830, Ley Falloux 1850,
Ley Buffet 1875) parecan referirse fundamentalmente a la libertad de las corporaciones
religiosas para ejercer tareas de enseanza, en todos los niveles del mbito pblico y
privado. Si en Francia las leyes de Ferry de la dcada de 1880 se han considerado como
las que terminaron con la libertad de enseanza al consagrar la educacin laica, en
Colombia en ese periodo el concepto de libertad de enseanza pas de ser una bandera
de los grupos liberales en su lucha contra el poder de las corporaciones, a ser
propugnada por los sectores conservadores en su lucha por mantener su influencia en el
mbito de la educacin. En cambio, en Mxico entre 1870 y 1890 la libertad de
184
TEXTO/TEXT:
Esta ponencia trata de las trayectorias de conceptualizacin de la libertad de
enseanza en Mxico y Colombia durante el siglo XIX y el papel que jug (si es que lo
hubo) en ello la referencia francesa. Siguiendo la propuesta de historia global de C.A.
Bayly (2008), mostramos, por una parte una aparente tendencia hacia una uniformidad
externa en dicha conceptualizacin en los tres pases; por la otra, exploramos cmo el
lenguaje de la libertad de enseanza se articula con dinmicas econmicas, polticas e
ideolgicas distintas al interior de cada una de esos pases. Tambin prestamos atencin
a las posibles conexiones entre los distintos pases en torno al concepto. Nuestras
fuentes son: leyes, reglamentos, proyectos de leyes y reglamentos, debates
parlamentarios y artculos de opinin en la prensa a lo largo de todo el siglo XIX en los
tres pases.
En trminos polticos, la historia de los tres pases a lo largo del siglo XIX es
muy distinta. Francia inici el siglo con un proceso revolucionario de grandes rupturas
(con la monarqua, la Iglesia catlica y el orden estamental), al que siguieron dcadas de
restauracin monrquica que procuraban devolver poder poltico a la Iglesia a la vez
que acomodaban a la creciente burguesa comercial e industrial, para volver en
1870/1875 a instaurar una nueva repblica; sta establecera muchas de las reformas
planteadas originalmente por la revolucin. Mxico y Colombia arrancaron el siglo con
procesos revolucionarios independentistas que les llevaron a instaurar rdenes
republicanos desde la dcada de 1820; sufrieron periodos de inestabilidad institucional
en el proceso de creacin de un estado nacional, y en las dcadas de 1850 y 1860
efectuaron reformas liberales de grandes rupturas con el orden corporativo heredado de
la colonia. A partir de la dcada de1880 Colombia vivi una fuerte reaccin
conservadora que restaur el poder poltico de la Iglesia catlica, mientras que Mxico
consigui una consolidacin morigerada de las reformas liberales introducidas
previamente. Pese a tales diferencias, la trayectoria de conceptualizacin de la libertad
asociada a la enseanza presenta importantes similitudes de ritmo y direccin, como
veremos enseguida.
1. 1789-ca.1848 Establecimiento de principios y derechos: la educacin como deber
del estado y la libertad como derecho individual
Los aos de la revolucin francesa establecieron una serie de principios de gran carga
de expectativa. Fue entonces cuando se defini la educacin como un deber de la
sociedad hacia los ciudadanos19 y se estableci el papel interventor del estado para
19
Condorcet,
Premier
mmoire
sur
linstruction
publique,
1791
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/condorcet/cinq_memoires_instruction/Cinq_memoires_instr_p
ub.pdf (Consultado: 15/07/2013)
185
Dclaration
des
droits
de
l'homme
et
du
citoyen,
1789,
art.
4
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/Droit-francais/Constitution/Declaration-des-Droits-de-l-Homme-etdu-Citoyen-de-1789 (Consultado: 15/07/2013).
21
El Nivel (Guadalajara, Jal.), 02/02/1826.
186
187
con sus programas; que no enseen nada contrario a la religin, a las buenas
costumbres, a las instituciones polticas, ni se falte a las leyes vigentes.23 En Colombia,
el Plan Ospina (1842-1847) tambin intenta uniformar la administracin y curriculum
de la instruccin primaria y superior: mantiene la supervisin gubernamental a las
escuelas primarias sostenidas por parroquias y conventos, implementa una reforma
universitaria que centraliza parcialmente la educacin superior y uniformiza su
curriculum, devuelve a los Jesuitas la direccin de escuelas y universidades bajo
supervisin de una Direccin General de Estudios, y dificulta a las lites los requisitos
de ingreso y titulacin en las carreras tradicionales para encaminarlas hacia las recin
creadas carreras de ciencias matemticas y naturales (Jaramillo, 1989).
2. 1848-ca. 1867/1875. Periodo de la libertad de enseanza
Los aos 1848 a 1867 han sido calificados para Colombia como de la libertad de
enseanza (Senz y Saldarriaga, 2008), una denominacin que puede aplicarse tambin
a Mxico y Francia (con alguna variacin cronolgica en el caso francs). Es un periodo
de leyes y reformas educativas que llevan ese nombre, si bien con sentidos diferentes en
cada pas. En Colombia y Mxico la libertad de enseanza forma parte de las reformas
liberales que intentan separar la Iglesia y el Estado y terminar de desarticular de la
estructura corporativa colonial; en Francia, la libertad de enseanza proclamada durante
la Segunda Repblica (1848-1852) y el Segundo Imperio (1852-1875) se refiere
claramente a la restauracin la funcin educativa de la Iglesia en enseanza secundaria
y superior.
En los tres pases la libertad de enseanza mantiene el significado de educacin
privada: la enseanza privada es libre; el poder pblico no tiene ms intervencin que
la de cuidar de que no se ataque la moral dice El Estatuto Orgnico Provisional de la
Repblica Mexicana del 20/05/1856.24 Pero adems adquiere un nuevo sentido como la
libertad para ensear y aprender a nivel superior. La ley colombiana del 8/05/1848
declara: La enseanza en todos sus ramos ser libre. En consecuencia, podrn adquirir
y recibir la instruccin literaria y cientfica en establecimientos pblicos, privados o de
particulares, con el objeto de obtener grados acadmicos. Y el Estatuto Orgnico
mexicano de 1856 prohbe todos los monopolios relativos a la enseanza y ejercicio de
las profesiones.25
El ao 1850 es tambin de sincronicidades. En Francia, la Ley Falloux del
15/03/1850 reafirma la divisin de la enseanza en pblica y libre y permite
adems que las congregaciones religiosas tengan escuelas secundarias y que haya
sacerdotes en los consejos universitarios.26 Con todo, centra en la universidad estatal el
monopolio para otorgar ttulos (Orlandis, 2005). La ley formaba parte de una poltica de
acercamiento del ministro Falloux a la Santa Sede; esto fue referido positivamente por
los peridicos catlicos colombianos, que procuraban incidir en el debate interno y
23
188
El Catolicismo, 1/04/1850.
Loi relative a la liberte de l'enseignement superieur
du 12 juillet 1875,
http://www.adressrlr.cndp.fr/uploads/media/009_1875_1207.pdf (Consultado: 15/07/2013)
29
http://www.ordenjuridico.gob.mx/Constitucion/1856.pdf (Consultado: 15/07/2013).
30
http://www.inap.mx/portal/images/pdf/lat/colombia/constitucion%20estadis%20unidos%20colo
mbia%201863.pdf (Consultado: 15/07/2013).
28
189
Estado. Por tanto, la oposicin a tal centralizacin se da tanto entre los liberales como
entre los conservadores apelando a la libertad de enseanza. En Francia, la
proclamacin de la Tercera Repblica en 1875 lleva a reestablecer el ideal
revolucionario de separacin de la Iglesia y el Estado y la proclamacin de las leyes de
Jules Ferry (1880-1882) termina con la libertad de enseanza entendida como la
participacin de la Iglesia en lo educativo a todos los niveles. Entre tanto, la neutralidad
religiosa del Estado en el mbito educativo se consolida con la eliminacin de la
instruccin religiosa del curriculum de la primaria: esto ocurre en Mxico en 1867, en
Colombia en 1870 (aunque es restaurada en 1886) y en Francia en 1882.
La libertad de enseanza pierde su significado de libertad de ejercicio
profesional. En Colombia la fundacin de la Universidad Nacional (ley 22/09/1867),
con reglamentaciones estrictas para el otorgamiento de ttulos y grados, da por abolida
la ley de 1850. En Mxico la ley de instruccin pblica de 1867 restablece los exmenes
de la profesin y de estudios preparatorios para obtener el ttulo, y se promulgan
diversas leyes que establecen la certificacin para numerosas profesiones.31
Frente los intentos de reglamentar la enseanza primaria pblica como
obligatoria y uniforme32, as como el curriculum y las lecturas a nivel superior, se
plantea el problema de si la obligatoriedad y la libertad de enseanza son compatibles.
En 1873 el liberal Isidro Montiel Duarte considera que la ley de Instruccin Pblica de
1867 ha contrariado el principio de libertad de enseanza y su corolario de la libertad
de profesin al uniformar estudios preparatorios y superiores y exigir ttulos. 33
Asegurando que el principio de la libertad de enseanza no est reido con el deber de
procurar en los establecimientos pblicos la formacin moral y religiosa de la
juventud, hace referencia detallada la legislacin en torno a libertad de enseanza
promulgada en varios pases de Amrica Latina y Europa, incluyendo Francia, aunque
no examina su variada significacin ni su contexto.34 Y Guillermo Prieto, en el marco
de una discusin en el congreso sobre si el gobierno deba sostener internados para los
colegios de la capital, afirma: Supuesta la enseanza libre y la abstencin completa del
Estado en materias religiosas, es debido, es conveniente, es lgico que subsistan los
cursantes internos bajo la direccin y por cuenta del Estado?... La libertad de enseanza
ante todo implica la idea de que no se ingiera el Estado, ni en el cundo, ni en el cmo,
ni en los mtodos de que se sirvi el nio para saber: acepta la ciencia y le da su carta de
ciudadana sin indagar su procedencia.35 Prieto estaba en contra de la obligatoriedad de
la primaria y contra la reglamentacin estricta de la enseanza superior por las mismas
razones.36
31
Isidro Montiel Duarte, en una serie de artculos titulados Libertad de enseanza publicados en
El Siglo XIX del 19 al 27/09/1873 enumera 17 profesiones para cuyo ejercicio distintas leyes
haban marcado que requeran ttulo; entre ellas, estaban las de abogado, mdico, farmacutico,
ingeniero, veterinario y maestro de primeras letras.
32
Ley colombiana sobre instruccin pblica 30/05/1868 y su Decreto Orgnico de 1/11/1870; Ley
Orgnica de Instruccin Pblica del Distrito Federal del 2/12/1867, modelo para leyes semejantes
en los estados.
33
El siglo XIX, 26/09/1873.
34
El siglo XIX,25/09/1873.
35
El siglo XIX, 26/03/1873.
36
El siglo XIX, 6/01/1874.
190
191
192
193
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La vieja discusin fundacional, que ocupara a la filosofa pblica en Chile hasta los
1840, culmin en una cierta sntesis entre libertad y autoridad. Sin embargo, para fines
del siglo XIX, se observa una desatada disputa sobre los trminos, que incomoda a los
mismos hablantes. La disputa gira en torno a la apropiacin de aquella palabra ilustre
que, desde los inicios de la vida independiente, ha representado lo mejor de los nuevos
tiempos, libertad, el trmino clave del lenguaje poltico del siglo, que articula en gran
medida las denuncias, las defensas, los contraataques o las propuestas. Frente a
libertad, se levanta la otra palabra que suele ser invocada como su contraparte, la
autoridad, que adquiere connotaciones funestas cuando se habla de autoritario y
autoritarismo como sinnimo de despotismo, absolutismo y omnipotencia. Pese a este
aparente enfrentamiento entre la libertad y la autoridad, los distintos discursos apelan a
una frmula de sntesis de ambas nociones. Ms aun, los bandos se impugnan
mutuamente de ser incapaces de concebir adecuadamente esta sntesis y, es la accin del
adversario denuncian- la que provoca la corrupcin de los principios: o el despotismo,
consignado como el abuso de la autoridad; o la anarqua que equivale al ejercicio de una
libertad sin freno. As, libertad y autoridad es el compuesto conceptual que articula las
diferentes posiciones en el debate pblico de la poca.
En mi ponencia propongo una cierta lectura de esta disputa pblica que rene a
actores relevantes de la poca (la Iglesia Catlica, conservadores, el ala modernizadora
y progresista del Partido Radical, el Partido Democrtico y los primeros discursos
socialistas y cratas). El estudio permite revisar, desde la perspectiva de la historia
conceptual, parte del proceso de laicizacin en Chile y el surgimiento de la cuestin
social en Chile, con enormes proyecciones para el siglo XX chileno.
Como pretendo demostrarlo, esta compleja operacin colectiva de reflexin
poltica pone al descubierto las relaciones entre la repblica y la religin, que
constituyen la herencia poltica del republicanismo chileno. El examen de los papeles
pblicos de la poca permite identificar dos posiciones influyentes y enfrentadas, dado
su privilegiado caudal disponible de recursos materiales y simblicos. La relacin
repblica/religin es afirmada polmicamente por los conservadores catlicos y es
rechazada en el discurso positivista de Valentn Letelier. Frente a ellos se levanta la
194
incipiente voz poltica de los sectores populares. Este dilogo polmico nos permite
extender hacia el final del siglo la comprensin de la repblica fundada en Chile y su
relacin con la religin. Si consideramos con cuidado la advertencia de nuestros
conservadores catlicos finiseculares: sin la religin sostienen- el Estado se resiente, se
reduce a pura coercin y se ve obligado a incrementar el uso de la fuerza para obtener la
disciplina social. El siglo que se abre puede ser interpretado por la bsqueda de una
fuente alternativa a la religin para asentar la moral pblica en Chile. Si tomamos en
serio la advertencia, descubriremos que la utilizacin cada vez ms recurrente, cruenta e
incremental de la violencia por parte del Estado chileno a comienzos del siglo XX
parece darle la razn a esa advertencia y a ese pronstico. La bsqueda pareciera, pues,
no tener xito.
La represin aparecer cada vez ms como el recurso mayormente utilizado para
imponer la autoridad, en una situacin donde los nuevos sectores sociales exigirn la
libertad que una repblica, consignada en los papeles constitucionales como gobierno
popular y representativo, parece reconocerles, pero la realidad negarles. Se trata, pues,
de una situacin que no logra nunca recomponer la perdida sntesis de libertad y
autoridad de la vieja repblica. En julio de 1907, el viejo conservador Abdn Cifuentes,
citando al clebre impo Proudhon, reflexionaba: Hemos quitado la fe al pueblo,
antes de un siglo no lo podremos contener ni con camisa de fuerza.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Libertad y autoridad
La vieja discusin fundacional que ocupara a la filosofa pblica en Chile hasta los
1840, la relacin entre orden, libertad y ley, retorna a fines del siglo XIX con nuevos
problemas y desafos. La discusin original estableci tempranamente una cierta sntesis
entre la libertad y la autoridad, que se expres en la consigna de la libertad dentro del
orden y el anatema de la anarqua frente al gobierno de la ley. Pero para fines del siglo,
la discusin ha derivado en una desatada disputa sobre los trminos. El diputado Carlos
Walker Martnez, en la sesin del Congreso del 21 de mayo de 1887, se queja de que
en esta poca y en esta tierra () las palabras lo menos que significan son las cosas
que representan.
La disputa gira en torno a la apropiacin de aquella palabra ilustre que, desde los
inicios de la vida independiente, ha representado lo mejor de los nuevos tiempos. Esa
palabra es, libertad, el trmino clave del lenguaje poltico del siglo, que articula en
gran medida las argumentaciones pblicas. As, Monseor Mariano Casanova, cabeza
de la Iglesia Catlica Chilena, en su Pastoral sobre la libertad humana del 21 de
septiembre de 1888, dedicada a la presentacin de la Encclica de Len XIII, Libertas,
declara: Nunca como en el presente siglo se ha abusado tanto de la palabra libertad. Si
hubiramos de creer a los adversarios de la Iglesia, apenas hace un siglo que el hombre
se da cuenta cabal de su libertad y que ha proclamado sus derechos. Y precisamente,
cuando se aprestan a celebrar esa mentida libertad, la voz augusta del venerado
195
Fiel a la clave de lectura que ha adoptado, la cuestin social ser interpretada como
un problema de autoridad, como un sntoma del resquebrajamiento de la autoridad, en
otras palabras, como insubordinacin. No se trata de un problema nuevo, es ms bien la
consecuencia de haber minado los fundamentos del orden en los aos anteriores, que
fijaban, para todos, los lmites de la libertad, junto con ensearles su deber. La solucin
solo puede comenzar por restablecer la fuente de la autoridad, la religin, en la vida de
la repblica. En breve, se debe recomponer la relacin de la repblica con la religin.
El 26 de agosto de 1893, la Revista Catlica, declara que la cuestin social y la
religin estn ntimamente unidas, dado que Quitando el freno de la moral cristiana,
que ensea a cada uno a contentarse con su suerte y a buscar en el trabajo, en el ahorro y
por caminos lcitos, el mejoramiento de las condiciones sociales, ha tenido que suceder
lo que estamos viendo. Casanova, por su parte, advierte que el nico remedio que
puede curar la llaga mortal del socialismo, se encuentra en el Evangelio, que ensea a
los ricos el desprendimiento y a los pobres la resignacin.
Sin la religin, se piensa, la obligacin poltica solo queda asegurada por la desnuda
amenaza de coercin por parte del Estado. La posibilidad de una obediencia voluntaria,
libre y consentida se consigue en la medida en que dicha obediencia descansa en la
libertad ilustrada por la fe. La religin fundamenta el por qu unos hombres han de
obedecer a otros hombres en algo superior al mero arbitrio humano. La religin
aportara el poder moral a la repblica que supera la simple obediencia al poder fsico.
En virtud de su concurso, la libertad no degenera en anarqua, ni el poder poltico en
despotismo. A la libertad, que fcilmente puede degenerar en excesos, le aade el
contrapeso de una autoridad que, fundada en el poder divino, se sobrepone al mero
ejercicio arbitrario del poder humano. Cree posible as proporcionar al poder poltico
una legitimidad que ninguna potencia humana puede superar o siquiera igualar ante la
libre conciencia del hombre de fe.
Ciencia y Estado
Por su parte, el enfoque positivista de Valentn Letelier rechaza la religin como
expresin de una teocracia y afirma la autoridad del Estado. Dicha autoridad es
fundamentada en la ciencia poltica positiva, habilitada para descubrir las leyes sociales
que gobiernan los hechos polticos. La religin no puede ser fuente autntica de la
autoridad en una era positiva, porque no protege cabalmente las libertades importantes.
En la ya referida conferencia de 1889, denuncia el errado y peligroso apego a una
concepcin metafsica de la libertad de parte de los compaeros de ruta del
radicalismo, los liberales, que los lleva a renunciar a toda cooperacin de la parte del
Estado; e imaginndola (a la libertad) dotada de una vida propia, inmortal e
independiente de las condiciones sociales, han solido anular los poderes llamados a
protegerla y han dejado imprudentemente desarrollarse fuerzas reaccionarias.
La conclusin de Letelier es que los liberales han anulado los poderes destinados a
proteger la libertad y con ello han facilitado el desarrollo de fuerzas reaccionarias. En el
da, los principales beneficiados de esta poltica son los conservadores catlicos, los
defensores de la teocracia como los denomina: Ellos, que siempre fueron
autoritarios, se valen de la libertad cuando la libertad puede servirles para afianzar el
199
utilizacin cada vez ms recurrente, cruenta e incremental de la violencia por parte del
Estado chileno a comienzos del siglo XX. En el corto plazo, la bsqueda de una fuente
alternativa a la religin para asentar la moral pblica en Chile, pareciera no tener xito.
La represin aparecer como el principal recurso utilizado para imponer la autoridad,
en una situacin donde los nuevos sectores sociales exigirn la libertad que una
repblica, consignada en los papeles constitucionales como gobierno popular y
representativo, parece reconocerles, pero la realidad negarles. Se trata, pues, de una
situacin que no logra nunca ofrecer una alternativa a la perdida sntesis de libertad y
autoridad que construy la antigua repblica conservadora. En julio de 1907, el viejo
conservador Abdn Cifuentes, citando al clebre impo Proudhon, sombramente
reflexionaba: Hemos quitado la fe al pueblo, antes de un siglo no lo podremos contener
ni con camisa de fuerza.
202
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Durante el perodo investigado, puede decirse que la voz democracia no tuvo una
presencia hegemnica dentro de los principales conceptos que caracterizaron los
lenguajes polticos desplegados en Iberoamrica. Sin embargo, resulta visible que su
uso se fue popularizando en forma progresiva, sufri resignificaciones de importancia y
se ubic en una cada vez ms extensa y compleja red conceptual, dentro de la cual fue
configurando sus diversos sentidos, sus ambigedades y su radical polisemia. Estos
perfiles e itinerarios de cambio no slo marcaron sus usos en trminos de
significacin, sino que tambin jalonaron su suerte en la clave de la disputa poltica ms
concreta. En el marco de un pleito que se hizo frecuente, las cargas valorativas sobre el
concepto alternaron entre el rechazo y la aceptacin, entre el recelo acrrimo y el
incipiente prestigio. Estas ambivalencias fueron proyectndose en la perspectiva de un
sustantivo que ya por entonces comenz a requerir cada vez ms de adjetivos, siempre
de acuerdo a los intereses y visiones de los actores en juego.
En Iberoamrica fue la crisis de la Monarqua la que impuls un uso mucho ms
frecuente del concepto entre los actores polticos enfrentados durante las guerras de la
Independencia. Fue en efecto el marco de ese conflicto polivalente el que reformul sus
perfiles controversiales en perspectivas bastante diferentes a las devenidas en toda
Europa tras la fase robespierriana de la Revolucin francesa. Esto llev a que su uso
pronto trascendiera en Iberoamrica los diques de una visin monolticamente crtica
sobre el trmino democracia, lo que gener matices y hasta visiones contrapuestas, fruto
ms de la pugna poltica que de la confrontacin ideolgica estricta. Las luchas polticas
y la diversidad de intereses enfrentados dentro del turbin revolucionario llevaron a
los propios actores a reubicarse en relacin al tipo de uso poltico de la voz de acuerdo a
sus posiciones de coyuntura.
As se perfilaba la trayectoria del uso de la voz democracia cuando su progresivo
cruce con la compleja cuestin de la representacin termin por complicar aun ms todo
el campo semntico de su utilizacin. La tensin estos dos conceptos tradicionalmente
incompatibles en la teora poltica de la Antigedad clsica, dio lugar en forma
progresiva a intentos ms o menos afortunados por arraigar un sintagma totalmente
nuevo y de difcil o imposible implantacin por entonces- como fue el de democracia
representativa. En su formulacin ms especfica, este devino en Iberoamrica en
forma muy posterior, pero ello no evit que en el siglo XIX, entre los conceptos de
203
TEXTOS/TEXTS:
REFERENCIAS:
CAETANO, Gerardo (2004): Antologa del Discurso Poltico en el Uruguay. Tomo I.
De la Constitucin de 1830 a la Revolucin de 1904. Montevideo, Taurus.
CAETANO, Gerardo - CAPELLAN DE MIGUEL, Gonzalo eds. (2010): El concepto
democracia en Iberoamrica antes y despus de las independencias, en Alcores.
Revista de Historia Contempornea. N 9, Salamanca, pp. 11-169.
CAPELLAN DE MIGUEL, Gonzalo - GARCIA RUIZ, Roco (2010): Una poderosa
pequeez. El concepto democracia en Espaa. (1750-1870), en Alcores. Revista de
Historia Contempornea. N 9, Salamanca, pp. 43-70.
CARDENAS AYALA, Elisa (2010): La escurridiza democracia mexicana, en
Alcores. Revista de Historia Contempornea. N 9, Salamanca, pp. 73-91.
209
211
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
La filosofa poltica de Maquiavelo puede ser leda como una ontologa de lo social, la
que se fundamenta en la coexistencia del estado de guerra, propio del estado de
naturaleza, en la Sociedad. El Hombre, como animal poltico, sera un homo homini
lupus y no, como sostuviese Aristteles, uno que buscase naturalmente la colaboracin.
El conflicto, el cual tendra un carcter esencial en la vida poltica, sera producto de los
apetitos de dominacin de la elite sobre la multitud. Es as, como las instituciones
polticas seran las nicas capaces de dar vida al Homo, sacra res homini de Sneca,
teniendo la ley la funcin de generar la fundacin y sacralizacin de lo humano.
Para el florentino, lo sagrado tomara la forma de un estatus garantizado
institucionalmente producto de una construccin poltico-social por medio de la cual se
impide que los ms poderosos, los Grandi, producto de su voracidad depredadora
devoren a la multitud.
La teora republicana que ha recobrado un vvido inters en las ltimas dcadas,
particularmente gracias a los trabajos de J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner y de Philip
Pettit; ha centrado el debate en la comprensin del concepto de libertad propio de esa
tradicin y las formas institucionales que le son consustanciales, reconociendo estos
autores en la figura de Maquiavelo a su principal referente histrico.
En ste trabajo se explorar la relevancia de la metfora animal en la teora de
Maquiavelo y sus consecuencias ontolgicas que se siguen tanto institucionalmente
como respecto del sentido del concepto mismo de lo poltico en el autor de los
Discursos. Adicionalmente, se explorar hasta dnde existe en el rescate de la teora
republicana de autores como Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit, as como en otras
reconstrucciones que desafan las anteriores, tales como la populista de John P.
McCormick y los defensores de una democracia radical como Miguel Vatter; una
ausencia de reconocimiento a la animalidad y su significado para la comprensin de lo
poltico y sus instituciones en la principal fuente de dichas teoras; Maquiavelo1.
1
Lo que propondr es una divisin de la interpretacin realizada sobre Maquiavelo al interior del
debate sobre el republicanismo y la teora democrtica siguiendo la divisin sobre la misma
212
TEXTO/TEXT:
La filosofa poltica de Maquiavelo puede ser leda como una ontologa de lo social, la
que se fundamenta en la coexistencia del estado de guerra, propio del estado de
naturaleza, en la Sociedad. El Hombre, como animal poltico, sera un homo homini
lupus y no, como sostuviese Aristteles, uno que buscase naturalmente la colaboracin.
El conflicto, el cual tendra un carcter esencial en la vida poltica, sera producto de los
apetitos de dominacin de la elite sobre la multitud. Es as, como las instituciones
polticas seran las nicas capaces de dar vida al Homo, sacra res homini de Sneca,
teniendo la ley la funcin de generar la fundacin y sacralizacin de lo humano.
Para el florentino, lo sagrado tomara la forma de un estatus garantizado
institucionalmente producto de una construccin poltico-social por medio de la cual se
impide que los ms poderosos, los Grandi, producto de su voracidad depredadora
devoren a la multitud.
La teora republicana que ha recobrado un vvido inters en las ltimas dcadas,
particularmente gracias a los trabajos de J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner y de Philip
Pettit; ha centrado el debate en la comprensin del concepto de libertad propio de esa
tradicin y las formas institucionales que le son consustanciales, reconociendo estos
autores en la figura de Maquiavelo a su principal referente histrico.
En ste trabajo se explorar la relevancia de la metfora animal en la teora de
Maquiavelo y sus consecuencias ontolgicas que se siguen tanto institucionalmente
como respecto del sentido del concepto mismo de lo poltico en el autor de los
Discursos. Adicionalmente, se explorar hasta dnde existe en el rescate de la teora
republicana de autores como Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit, as como en otras
reconstrucciones que desafan las anteriores, tales como la populista de John P.
McCormick y los defensores de una democracia radical como Miguel Vatter; una
ausencia de reconocimiento a la animalidad y su significado para la comprensin de lo
poltico y sus instituciones en la principal fuente de dichas teoras; Maquiavelo2.
Maquiavelo como protector de la Libertad Civil: Cambridge School revisited
Se puede sintetizar el rescate del republicanismo de Quentin Skinner (1998)
desde una reconstruccin de su idea de libertad como una respuesta a la divisin de
Isaiah Berlin (1994) quien reduce la posibilidad de acotar la libertad a dos formas,
Negativa y Positiva. Se cometera no slo una arbitrariedad metodolgica sino que
adems olvidara una forma de libertad negativa ms antigua que la liberal y distinta de
efectuada por McCormick: Republicanismo clsico (Cambridge School), Democracia Radical (
Vatter) y Democracia Popular (el propio McCormick); ms all por cierto de las objeciones que se
pueden realizar a sta clasificacin.
2
Lo que propondr es una divisin de la interpretacin realizada sobre Maquiavelo al interior del
debate sobre el republicanismo y la teora democrtica siguiendo la divisin sobre la misma
efectuada por McCormick: Republicanismo clsico (Cambridge School), Democracia Radical (
Vatter) y Democracia Popular (el propio McCormick); ms all por cierto de las objeciones que se
pueden realizar a sta clasificacin.
213
214
Vatter tomar la distincin de forma-evento de Carlo Diano. Ver: Diano C. (1993) Forma ed
Evento. Principi per una interpretazione del mondo greco. Venezia. Marsilio.
216
217
REFERENCIAS
Brown, Alison.2010. The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge,MA:
Harvard University Press
Gillespie S. & Hardie P. 2007. Cambridge Companion to Lucretius. Cambridge
University Press.
Machiavelli, Niccol. 1996. Discourses on Livy. trans. Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan
Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Machiavelli, Niccol. 1998. The Prince. trans. Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
McCormick, John. 1993. Addressing the Political Exception: Machiavellis
Accidents and the Mixed Regime. The American Political Science Review. 87:4,
888-900.
McCormick, John. 2001. Machiavellian Democracy: Controlling Elites with Ferocious
Populism. The American Political Science Review. 2001. 95:2, 297-313
McCormick, John. 2003. Machiavelli against Republicanism, On the Cambridge
Schools Guicciardinian Moments. Political Theory. 31:5, 615-643.
Palmer Ada. 2007. Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance. Journal of the History of
Ideas , Vol. 73, No. 3 (July 2012), pp. 395-416
Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism, A Theory of Freedom and Government. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Pocock, J.G.A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Skinner, Quentin.1984. The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical
Perspective. Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner, ed. In Philosophy
in History. New York: Cambridge University Pres
218
Skinner, Quentin. 1993. The Republican ideal of political liberty. In Machiavelli and
Republicanism. ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 293-390.
Skinner, Quentin. 1998. Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Vatter, Miguel. 2000. Between Form and Event: Machiavellis Theory of Political
Freedom. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Vatter, Miguel. 2005. Pettit and Modern Republican Political Thought. In Political
Exclusion and Domination. ed. Melissa S. Williams and Stephen Macedo. New York:
New York University Press.
TEXT/TEXTO:
Machiavellis political philosophy can be viewed as an ontological interpretation of
Society based on the existence of a state of war within Society, itself inherent in the
state of nature. Man, as a political animal, is considered a homo homini lupus and not,
as Aristotle would argue, as a naturally cooperative being. This conflict, which is
intrinsic to political life, is the product of the elites appetite for domination over the
masses. This is why political institutions are the only ones capable of giving life to
Senecas homo sacra res homini, with laws in place to produce and sustain the
sacralisation of all things human.
For the Florentine philosopher, the sacred takes the form of an institutionally
guaranteed status, resulting from a socio-political construct which prevents the most
powerful - the grandi - from devouring the common people as a result of their predatory
voracity.
In recent decades, there has been a vibrant revival of republican theory,
particularly thanks to J.G.A Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Phillip Pettits work. They
have centred the debate on the specific interpretations of freedom unique to the
republican tradition, and on the appropriate institutions required for its protection. And
all of them have recognised Machiavelli as their main historical point of reference.
This work will explore the relevance of the animal metaphor in Machiavellis
theory and its ontological consequences not only in institutional terms but also
politically (in the broad sense of politics as understood by Machiavelli). Additionally,
we will explore the revival of republican theory thanks to authors like Quentin Skinner
and Philip Pettit, as well as reconstructions that challenge them (such as John P.
McCormicks Populist Democracy and Miguel Vatters radical democracy). We will
attempt to evaluate to what degree the absence of animality and its significance for the
comprehension of political phenomena affect the way these works engage with
Machiavelli.
Machiavelli as a defender of civil freedom: the Cambridge School revisited
219
be fundamental. That impugnation would fall not on the rule of law but rather on those
who enforce it.
McCormick: Popular democracy as the anti Cambridge School
McCormick would view Machiavellis theory as being different from the
republican tradition of the Cambridge School. Machiavellis proposal is a popular
democracy with different social classes antagonistically struggling against one another.
Furthermore, it is fundamental that the distinction between who wants to rule and
effectively does (the few, the ruling class) and those who do not want to rule and
effectively do not (the many) be impossible to nullify. For Machiavelli, it is precisely
this distinction between these two kinds of individuals and between these two social
groups that essentially determines a political regime.
For McCormick, Machiavelli does not focus his attention on political stability
but rather on the freedom of the masses. For this author, what is admirable about the
Roman republic - from the Florentines point of view - is the quality of the regime
measured by its ability to defend the common people from the elites ambition and
voraciousness. The latter would be the main source of danger for freedom, not the
populace.
According to McCormick and his Machiavellian interpretation of democracy,
the lex which safeguards freedom must come from the people and what would
ultimately protect this freedom would be judgement carried out by this very same body
of people. Machiavelli would defend the deliberative capacity of the common people
that would enable them not only to judge the flaws and merits of those who have
governed them, but also endow them with the power to propose new laws, deliberate
over political sentences and other matters of substantial relevance. McCormick sustains
that Machiavelli defends the peoples capacity to judge by asserting that this basically
rests in their desire not to be dominated, instead of a wish to dominate.
McCormick would consider Pettit and the Cambridge School as heirs to the
elitist republicanism of Guicciardini. Certainly, he included Pocock in this group, whose
work - according to him - is more a Guicciardian Moment than a Machiavellian
Moment.
Machiavelli: freedom as an-arche and the Radical Democracy
Miguel Vatter would reconstrue the Machiavellian theory in a critical way as
an attempt to impose freedom on the prevailing circumstances and times. Therefore, the
guiding principle for political action would be the free action of the people (the masses)
expressed by a desire to not be governed (non-rule); this is why freedom would take on
the shape of an an-arche non-principle.
In this way, the Florentine philosopher would establish - as an essential
characteristic of political action - the need for and the possibility to challenge any norm
that constrains actions taken by the masses, be it the arbitrary will of one person or
several people or be it the political-legal system that imposes form (rule of law) over
political action (Vatter, 2000).
From Vatters point of view, it is the need for the presence of revolution as a
221
Form
and
Event
in
the
sense
of
Carlo
Diano.
See:
Diano
C.
(1993)
Forma
ed
Evento.
Principi
per
una
interpretazione
del
mondo
greco.
Venezia.
Marsilio
222
223
societies to both flourish and perish. Furthermore, the past is valuable not as an
impossible quest to return to it but rather in order to change and improve the present.
Conclusion
All of the different Machiavellis from the Cambridge School and its
offshoots through McCormick and Vatter, portray this Florentine philosopher as a
thinker true to the democratic, constitutional and republican tradition, one who was
often a source of inspiration and whose influence can be seen from Harrington to
Althusser. Machiavellis thinking was innovative because he saw that, as the new world
was emerging, with military technologies being invented and the religious world slowly
diminishing, a new understanding of what it meant to be human was urgently needed.
No longer a human being made sacred by his father (be it a god or gods) to be served by
the world, but one that had to render himself sacred and assimilate that he is nothing
more and nothing less than just another animal; but one who can live by forgetting the
animal in him, thanks to his freedom.
REFERENCES
Brown, Alison.2010. The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge,MA:
Harvard University Press
Gillespie S. & Hardie P. 2007. Cambridge Companion to Lucretius. Cambridge
University Press.
Machiavelli, Niccol. 1996. Discourses on Livy. trans. Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan
Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Machiavelli, Niccol. 1998. The Prince. trans. Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
McCormick, John. 1993. Addressing the Political Exception: Machiavellis
Accidents and the Mixed Regime. The American Political Science Review. 87:4,
888-900.
McCormick, John. 2001. Machiavellian Democracy: Controlling Elites with Ferocious
Populism. The American Political Science Review. 2001. 95:2, 297-313
McCormick, John. 2003. Machiavelli against Republicanism, On the Cambridge
Schools Guicciardinian Moments. Political Theory. 31:5, 615-643.
Palmer Ada. 2007. Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance. Journal of the History of
Ideas , Vol. 73, No. 3 (July 2012), pp. 395-416
Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism, A Theory of Freedom and Government. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Pocock, J.G.A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Skinner, Quentin.1984. The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical
Perspective. Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner, ed. In Philosophy
in History. New York: Cambridge University Press.
224
Skinner, Quentin. 1993. The Republican ideal of political liberty. In Machiavelli and
Republicanism. ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 293-390.
Skinner, Quentin. 1998. Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Vatter, Miguel. 2000. Between Form and Event: Machiavellis Theory of Political
Freedom. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Vatter, Miguel. 2005. Pettit and Modern Republican Political Thought. In Political
Exclusion and Domination. ed. Melissa S. Williams and Stephen Macedo. New York:
New York University Press.
225
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Como es bien sabido, el siglo XVIII se considera por excelencia el siglo de la
filosofa, una poca en que nacen y se desarrollan conceptos fundamentales, y
sobre todo se forma una nueva manera de pensar, en que la razn sustituye a la
autoridad. En Espaa considerada por demasiado tiempo y errneamente, ajena
al debate filosfico europeo el pasaje de la Escolstica a la filosofa Moderna
representa uno de los estmulos fundamentales para la reflexin en mbito
cientfico.
En las colonias americanas se sigue un camino parecido, aunque con un
desfase temporal respecto a la Pennsula, un camino parecido, pero no idntico.
En efecto, en las obras de criollos y espaoles que han atravesado el ocano el
concepto de filosofa adquiere una peculiaridad que es deudora de las
circunstancias histricas en que se desarrolla.
La finalidad de mi contribucin que se enmarca en el proyecto Estudio del
vocabulario cientfico y tcnico del espaol del siglo XVIII. Ciencia y tcnica en
Amrica (VCT18-II) Ref. FFI2011-24090 es la de poner de relieve dicha
peculiaridad, estudiando cmo se modifica el concepto de filosofa en el pasaje de
una a otra orilla, y formulando hiptesis sobre las causas. Despus del anlisis de
las voces filosofa y filsofo, expuesto por lvarez de Miranda (1992: 454-461),
se echa de menos un estudio que se interese por la variacin conceptual de estos
vocablos en obras escritas en la Amrica hispana.
A tal propsito, desde un enfoque que conjuga la lexicologa con la historia
de las ideas, se va a analizar un corpus constituido por algunas obras de autores
americanos pertenecientes a distintos gneros ensayos, epistolarios, textos
docentes con el objeto de ahondar en la evolucin conceptual de la voz filosofia
entre Espaa y Amrica. Dicho corpus, del cual se expondrn los criterios, es
fruto de la investigacin que estoy llevando a cabo en el marco del proyecto
citado.
226
TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
El siglo XVIII es la poca en que se forma una nueva manera de pensar, y la
razn sustituye a la autoridad. En Espaa el pasaje de la Escolstica a la filosofa
moderna representa uno de los estmulos fundamentales para la reflexin en mbito
cientfico. En las colonias americanas se sigue un camino parecido pero no idntico,
debido al desfase temporal respecto a la Pennsula y a las condiciones sociales: el
concepto de filosofa adquiere una peculiaridad que es deudora de las circunstancias
histricas en que se desarrolla.
La finalidad de mi contribucin es la de poner de relieve dicha peculiaridad;
desde un enfoque que conjuga la lexicologa con la historia de las ideas (Lapesa 1978),
voy a analizar un corpus constituido por obras de autores americanos pertenecientes a
distintos gneros con el objeto de ahondar en la evolucin conceptual de la voz filosofia
entre Espaa y Amrica1.
Filosofa
Filosofa es una palabra culta que etimolgicamente significa amor y deseo de
la sabidura. RAE A 1737 diferencia entre filosofa en cuanto ciencia que trata de la
esencia, propiedades, causas y efectos de las cosas naturales y filosofa moral, que
trata de la bondad, malicia de las acciones humanas, enseando las que se deben
abrazar, y las que se deben huir, y explicando la naturaleza de las virtudes y vicios.
Anloga distincin se encuentra en el Diccionario Castellano del padre Terreros: la
filosofa es el estudio de la naturaleza, y de la moral, fundado en el raciocinio,
mientras que filosofa moral remite a tica, la ciencia moral, arte de bien vivir.
Como es de esperar, la relacin entre raciocinio y filosofa se encuentra
asimismo en la Encyclopedie: en el Discours prliminaire, DAlembert define la
filosofa como la portion de la connoissance humaine qu'il faut rapporter la Raison
(EN 1751-1765: I-XLVIIJ). Sobre estas bases, la entrada filosofa de la EN da cuenta
del valor conceptual de la palabra segn la definicin de Wolff:
Philosopher, c'est donner la raison des choses, ou du moins la chercher [] celui qui
s'arrte dcouvrir la raison qui fait que les choses sont, & qu'elles sont plutt ainsi que
d'une autre maniere, c'est le philosophe proprement dit []. [Selon Mr. Wolf la
philosophie] c'est la science des possibles en tant que possibles. C'est une science, car
elle dmontre ce qu'elle avance. C'est la science des possibles, car son but est de rendre
raison de tout ce qui est & de tout ce qui peut tre dans toutes les choses qui arrivent.
(EN 1765: 12- 512).
1
Este trabajo es fruto de la investigacin que estoy llevando a cabo en el marco del
proyecto Estudio del
vocabulario cientfico y tcnico del espaol del siglo XVIII. Ciencia y tcnica en Amrica (VCT18-II)
Ref. FFI2011-24090, dirigido por la Prof.ra Josefa Gmez de Enterra.
227
En el mbito del movimiento patritico que durante las ltimas dcadas del siglo
se opone a la invasin napolenica, los ilustrados reciben el apodo de filsofos,
individuos influidos por las doctrinas falsas y afrancesadas que ahondan sus races en la
reforma protestante. El vocablo adquiere la carga despectiva de philosophe, un hombre
cuya aspiracin a ejercer la libertad natural lo transforma en una bestia viciosa
(Hervs y Panduro 1803: 113). De hecho, la palabra se utiliza como sinnimo de
libertino: En este ltimo estado son llamados Destas, Libertinos, Indiferentes,
Filsofos. Todas estas voces son sinonomas (sic) [...] (Cevallos y Mier 1775 : I-12).
La fuerte contraposicin entre la verdadera Filosofia [y] la pretendida Filosofia de los
Incrdulos modernos (Nonnotte 1793: 259), y la necesidad de distinguir entre las
diversas orientaciones ideolgicas justifican la productividad de la voz filosofa en la
formacin de unidades fraseolgicas. Se habla de nueva athomistica philosophia
(Lessaca 1724: s.n) y de philosophia de tomos (Lessaca 1724: 80); de los vulgares
cursos de la Philosophia peripatetica (Zapata 1721 [1745]: 70); de la Philosophia de
Des-Cartes, que llaman nueva (Zapata 1721 [1745]: 149); de la vulgar philosopha
(Feijoo 1734 [1778]: 273); de la rancia Philosofa de sympathas y antipathas (Feijoo
1729 [1777]: 89), y de filosofa moderna falsa [y] extravagante (Caraccioli 1776: 35).
La Filosofa Moderna en Amrica
En Amrica, durante la primera parte del siglo XVIII no existe un fenmeno
parecido al de los novatores espaoles: los peridicos que se publican hasta la mitad del
siglo se limitan a sealar acontecimientos locales y regionales, sin aludir a ningn tipo de
debate ideolgico. Sin embargo, en la cita que va a continuacin sacada de la
Respuesta a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz de Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz se
aprecian los grmenes del inters por la filosofa natural que va a caracterizar la
filosofa americana:
[...] una prelada muy santa y muy cndida que crey que el estudio era cosa de
Inquisicin me mand que no estudiase. Yo la obedec [] en cuanto a no tomar
libro, que en cuanto a no estudiar absolutamente, como no cae debajo de mi
potestad, no lo pude hacer, porque aunque no estudiaba en los libros, estudiaba
en todas las cosas que Dios cri, sirvindome ellas de letras, y de libro toda esta
mquina universal. Nada vea sin reflejar; nada oa sin consideracin, aun en las
cosas ms menudas y materiales [] As yo, vuelvo a decir, las miraba y
admiraba todas; de tal manera que de las mismas personas con quienes hablaba,
y de lo que me decan, me estaban resaltando mil consideraciones (Juana Ins de
la Cruz 1691: sp).
Generalmente, el comienzo de la Ilustracin neogranadina se fija en 1761,
cuando Jos Celestino Mutis dicta el curso de matemtica en el Colegio del Rosario
(Hernndez de Alba 1982). Por lo que se refiere al virreinato de Nueva Espaa, la
filosofa moderna hizo su solemne aparicin en Mxico con la obra del P. Gamarra,
titulada: Elementa Recentiori Philosophiae, impresa [...] el ao de 1774 (Valverde Tllez
1896: 41). Sin embargo, el mismo autor subraya que los estudios experimentales
encontraban desde haca bastante tiempo un ambiente propicio en las escuelas y
229
universidades, favorecidos por la labor cientfica de Jos Antonio Alzate y Ramrez, editor
del Diario Literario de Mxico (1768) y de las Gacetas de literatura de Mxico (1788 1795).
Filosofa en obras americanas
Desde los aos sesenta del siglo ilustrado, en Amrica por filosofa se entiende
filosofa natural, que persigue el objetivo de [...] describir los fenmenos de la
naturaleza, descubrir sus causas, exponer sus relaciones, y hacer descubrimientos sobre
toda la constitucin y orden del universo (Mutis 1764 [1989]: 80). Para el mismo
autor, filosofa natural corresponde a filosofa experimental (Mutis 1764 [1989]: 84)
cuyo mximo exponente es Newton que pocos aos despus se va a denominar fsica:
Por buena Fsica entenderemos una Ciencia, que nos d conocimiento de los cuerpos,
bastante para explicar la naturaleza de ellos, sus propriedades, i los efectos sensibles
(Bartolache 1772: 2-3), fundada en la Historia Natural.
La filosofa aristotlica, que hasta la mitad del siglo haba dominado los estudios
universitarios, se considera ya un ejercicio estril: Tubimos el gusto de ver un
Certamen literario digno de la Filosofia, porque en el triunf la razon libre de las
pesadas Cadenas del peripto (PP 1791: XXII-182)2. En las universidades se difunde
con siempre mayor xito la nueva filosofa: data de 1791 la Carta de los colegiales de
filosofa del San Bartolom solicitando catedrtico de filosofia moderna y matematicas,
en la cual contraponen la filosofa delirante a la buena filosofa, pidiendo poner a
nuestras expensas un profesor de filosofa que nos instruya en los elementos de fsica y
matemticas, que nos d algunas ideas de botnica e historia natural. [...] El catedrtico
del colegio podr ensear a los que quieren el Rancio peripato (1791 [1989]: 377).
Podemos suponer que los estudiantes de San Bartolom quieran estudiar los autores
citados en el Suplemento al PP (1791: IX-2-3): A la verdad los reidos con los
Netwones, con los Wolfios, Muschenbroek, Buffnes, y dems Sabios de esta clase,
debemos creer que estn reidos con la verdadera Filosofa. Sin embargo, el annimo
autor granadino del Elogio de la filosofa (1797 ca [1989]: 125) distingue entre dos
tipos de filosofa moderna: condena sin reparos la de autores como Espinoza, Hobbes y
Voltaire:
230
REFERENCIAS
lvarez de Miranda, Pedro (1992), Palabras e ideas: el lxico de la Ilustracin
temprana en Espaa (1680-1760), Madrid, Anejos del Boletn de la Real Academia
Espaola.
Hernndez de Alba, Gonzalo (1982), Pensamiento cientfico y filosfico de Jos Celestino
Mutis, Bogot, Ediciones Fondo Cultural Cafetero.
232
Lapesa, Rafael (1978), Historia lingstica e historia general, en Buscad sus pares,
pocos, Ctedra-Seminario Menndez Pidal de la Universidad Complutense, Madrid,
Gredos, 13-24.
Lapesa, Rafael (1966-67) Ideas y Palabras: del vocabulario de la Ilustracin al de los
primeros liberales, Asclepio, XVIII-XIX, 189-218.
Saldaa, Juan Jos (1995), Ilustracin, ciencia y tcnica en Amrica, en Soto Arango,
Diana (ed.), La Ilustracin en Amrica colonial: bibliografa crtica. Madrid, Doce
Calles, D.L, 19-53.
Snchez-Blanco, Francisco (1997), La Ilustracin en Espaa, Madrid, Ediciones Akal.
Soto Arango, Diana Elvira (2011), La Universidad en el perodo colonial. Educadores
criollos neogranadinos, Tunja, Ediciones Doce Calles, Bhos Editores.
Valverde Tllez, Emeterio (1896), Apuntaciones histricas sobre la filosofa en Mxico,
Mxico, Herrero Hermanos, Libreros Editores.
Fuentes documentales
Caballero y Gngora, Antonio (1787) [1994], Plan de Universidad y estudios generales,
propuesto a su majestad, para la ciudad de Santaf, en Soto Arango, Diana (ed.), La
Ilustracin en las universidades y colegios mayores de Santaf, Quito y Caracas:
estudio bibliogrfico y de fuentes, Santaf de Bogota, UPN.
Caraccioli, Louis Antoine (1776), Idioma de la razn contra los falsos filsofos
modernos, en Madrid, por Miguel Escribano.
Carta de los colegiales de filosofa del San Bartolom solicitando catedrtico de
filosofia moderna y matematicas (1791) [1989], Cuadernos de Filosofa
latinoamericana, 41-42, 377-79.
Cevallos y Mier, Fernando de (1775), La falsa filosofa o El atesmo, deismo,
materialismo y dems nuevas sectas convencidas de crimen de estado contra los
soberanos y sus regalas, contra los magistrados y potestades legtimas..., Madrid,
Imprenta de Antonio de Sancha, Tomo primero.
Elogio de la filosofa (1797 ca) [1989], Cuadernos de Filosofa latinoamericana, 41-42,
121-36.
Feijoo, Benito Jernimo (1729) [1777], Teatro crtico universal, Madrid, Imprenta de
Antonio Prez de Soto, tomo tercero.
Feijoo, Benito Jernimo (1734) [1778]), Teatro crtico universal, Madrid, Por Andrs
Ortega, tomo sexto.
Fernndez Valcarce, Vicente (1788), Desengaos filosoficos,... Madrid.. por don Blas
Roman, Impresor de la Real Academia de Derecho Espaol y Pblico.
Hervs y Panduro, Lorenzo (1803), Revolucin religionaria y civil de los Franceses en
el ao 1789..., Tomo II, Madrid, s.e.
Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de (1986), Obras completas. Tomo III: Correspondencia. 2
(Julio 1794-Marzo 1801), Edicin crtica, introduccin y notas de Jos Miguel Caso
Gonzlez, Oviedo, Instituto Feijoo de Estudios del Siglo XVIII.
Juana Ins de la Cruz, Sor (1691), Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea
de la Cruz. <http://www.ensayistas.org/antologia/XVII/sorjuana/sorjuana1.htm>
233
Repertorios lexicogrficos
Terreros y Pando, Esteban de [1765-1767] (1987), Diccionario castellano con las voces
de ciencias y artes, Edicin facsimil, Madrid, Arco Libros.
EN = Encyclopdie, ou dictionnaire raisonn des sciences, des arts et des mtiers, etc.,
[1751-1765] eds. Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond D'Alembert. University of Chicago:
ARTFL Encyclopdie Project (Spring 2011 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed).
http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.
RAE A 1737: REAL ACADEMIA ESPAOLA (1737): Diccionario de la lengua castellana,
Madrid, Imprenta de la Real Academia Espaola, por los herederos de Francisco del
Hierro.
234
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Casi dos siglos despus de su aparicin, sigue sin haber un consenso sobre qu son lo
humanitario y el humanitarismo, pese a que el extendido uso de ambos trminos, su
universal aplauso y la reclamacin de su ejercicio, implican un contenido comprensible
y compartido. La dificultad de dar cuenta acerca de ello, ha llevado a encajarlo como
una sensibilidad (Haskell, 1985 3 ), a tratar de estudiarlo desde las narrativas
(Laqueur, 19894, 20095), a situarlo como una identificacin simpattica con la situacin
del otro que emerge en el siglo XVIII (Festa, 20106) o a asumir su inaprensibilidad
(Barnett, 20117). Para contribuir a disipar preconcepciones y proyecciones, se examinan
las diferentes maneras de entenderse, utilizarse y esgrimirse lo humanitario, en los
primeros 50 aos de existencia del trmino.
TEXTO/TEXT:
La primera aparicin que hemos podido constatar del trmino humanitario en
cualquier lengua, que posiblemente sea una invencin ex novo del vocablo, tuvo lugar
en Inglaterra, el ao 1793, en la dplica de una controversia que el abogado Benjamin
Hobhouse, de la confesin unitarista inglesa, sostena con el telogo del Kings
3
235
Benjamin Hobhouse, A Reply to the Rev. F. Randolph's Scriptural Revision of Socinian Arguments
Vindicated, London, R. Cruttwell, 1793. La polmica puede seguirse bien en la entregas de 1792 a 1794
de The Monthly Review.
9
Revue des Deux Mondes (1836) 8: 463-477.
10
Revista Europea II (1837): 143-157.
236
237
12
240
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Mi objetivo consiste en desvelar algunas de las contradicciones,
paradojas y mitos a que ha dado lugar el concepto de tolerancia en la
historia del pensamiento occidental y que se sitan respectivamente
en la Antigedad, en la Edad Media, en la Modernidad y en el siglo
XIX.
El primer mito que quisiera rebatir es que las sociedades
politestas son por definicin tolerantes. Sin embargo y, como tratar
de demostrar, ni Atenas, en su poca ms democrtica, ni Roma lo
fueron. Ambas toleraron las divergencias religiosas o de otro tipo
mientras no conllevaron un cuestionamiento del orden socio-poltico
pero hicieron uso de la represin ms feroz cuando lo consideraron
necesario. Paradjicamente, un monarca absoluto y de religin
monotesta como Ciro el Grande encarn el mayor grado de tolerancia
en la Antigedad.
El segundo mito que quisiera abordar aqu sostiene que la
tolerancia se instaur con la ilustracin y que es un rasgo distintivo del
pensamiento moderno occidental y, ms en concreto, del liberalismo
poltico. Sin embargo, cada vez ms especialistas discuten esta tesis e
insisten en que en la Edad Media, caracterizada tradicionalmente
como una sociedad excluyente, cerrada e intolerante, hubo voces a
favor de la tolerancia y resquicios para ejercerla. Por ejemplo, se
toler el mal menor de la prostitucin para evitar males mayores como
el adulterio y la violacin, y se permiti el culto judaico para prevenir
la conversin forzosa de judos. Otro mito es el de la Inquisicin,
segn el cual la poca medieval y el comienzo de la modernidad se
distinguieron por la sistemtica persecucin y extirpacin de los
herejes. Pero, como sugiere un libro de reciente aparicin, en contra
de lo difundido por la leyenda negra, la Corona espaola fue un
ejemplo de inusitada tolerancia religiosa e ideolgica en su poltica en
las Indias.
El tercer ejemplo del carcter paradjico que puede tener el
concepto de tolerancia nos lleva al siglo XVII. Aqu contrastar la
241
TEXTO/TEXT:
Mi objetivo en esta comunicacin es desentraar algunas de las contradicciones,
paradojas y mitos a que ha dado lugar el concepto de tolerancia en la historia del
pensamiento occidental. Voy a referirme a varios casos situados respectivamente en
la Antigedad, en la Edad Media, en la Modernidad y en el siglo XIX, para analizar
algunos de los clichs y lugares comunes que an hoy se siguen manejando.
1.a
Uno de estos tpicos es que el politesmo conlleva la tolerancia religiosa.
Como es sabido, las poleis griegas eran politestas y, segn el clich al uso, sera de
esperar que Atenas, la polis democrtica por excelencia, fuera tolerante. Para
cuestionar este mito, voy a poner algunos ejemplos de intolerancia y de exclusin
social que tuvieron lugar en la polis ateniense en el perodo clsico, y despus
comparar la poltica religiosa de dicha sociedad democrtica con la de un monarca
absoluto como Ciro el grande.
En el ao 415, en plena guerra del Peloponeso y poco antes de la partida de la
expedicin martima contra Siracusa, al mando de Alcibades, se produjeron dos
sacrilegios que sacudieron los cimientos de la sociedad ateniense. El primero
consisti en la profanacin de los Misterios de Elusis y el segundo en la mutilacin
de los hermai1, unas toscas representaciones del dios Hermes que se colocaban en los
cruces para santificarlos y ahuyentar el peligro. El carcter metdico de la mutilacin
hizo propagar el rumor de que se trataba de una conspiracin contra la democracia y,
como consecuencia, se desat una oleada de acusaciones. Entre los acusados,
figuraba Alcibades y su hetera (grupo de amigos), a quienes se relacion tambin,
1
Para hablar de este caso me baso en Alicia Chueca Ramn, "Consecuencias del proceso de los
Hermocpidas",
http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/eserv.php?pid=bibliuned:ETFSerie2-62905E8C-9DB113EC-1DD7-80E549267062&dsID=Documento.pdf
242
sin pruebas, con las parodias y representaciones grotescas de los misterios de Elusis,
que se realizaban en casas particulares. A raz de las imputaciones, se instaur un
clima de persecucin en el que las cuestiones polticas y religiosas se
entremezclaron. A quienes no lograron huir se les arrest. Alcibades se refugi en
Esparta pero Andcides, el futuro orador, fue encarcelado y, a pesar de que acept
denunciar a su hetera y de la promesa de impunidad, fue exiliado. Segn la versin
de Tucdides y Diodoro Sculo, el castigo decretado por participar en los sacrilegios
fue la pena de muerte. Pero ni siquiera bastaron la pena mxima y el exilio para
castigar la impiedad. Como se lamentaba el hijo de Alcibades, tambin fueron
vctimas los propios familiares de los acusados a quienes se confiscaron los bienes;
incluso se inscribi la condena en unas estelas para escarnio pblico. Es muy posible,
sin embargo, que la denuncia de los sacrilegios ocultara una lucha de facciones y un
intento por acabar con las heteras aristocrticas, del que Alcibades fue vctima.
El siguiente caso al que quisiera referirme es el de Scrates. Como es sabido,
una de las acusaciones contra l de Anito y Meleto era de tipo religioso: se le
imputaba no creer en los dioses sino en cosas demonacas falsas. Obviamente se
referan al famoso demon, que dictaba a Scrates normas de comportamiento al
margen de las leyes y convenciones de la polis. Otro de los cargos le acusaba de
corromper polticamente a los jvenes2, es decir de difundir concepciones antidemcraticas.3 En realidad, la imputacin subyacente era an ms grave pues lo que
se le achacaba era no compartir los valores cvicos de la polis. Y, ciertamente, sus
valores eran otros, como queda de manifiesto en el discurso final que pronunci,
segn Platn, ante la Asamblea que lo conden a la pena de muerte.4 Al rechazar
tanto la moral como el ideal de participacin cvica, que sus contemporneos
identificaban con la vida buena, y predicar el abstencionismo poltico, una forma
de vida alternativa e inaceptable para sus conciudadanos, Scrates se situaba al
margen de la comunidad tanto en el terreno tico-religioso como poltico, y pona en
cuestin sus cimientos5, lo que le acarre la pena mxima.
Sobre el testimonio de Jenofonte, ver Fernando Souto Delibes, La figura de Scrates en Jenofonte.
Tesis indita presentada en la Facultad de Filologa de la UCM, pp. 59 y ss.
3
Como es sabido, los testimonios proceden bsicamente de Platn, Jenofonte y Aristfanes.
4
Pero quizs parezca extrao que vaya por las calles, dando consejos en particular y mezclndome
en los asuntos de los dems y que en pblico no ose aparecer en vuestras asambleas y dar consejos a la
repblica. () Ella (la voz del demon) es la que se opone a que me ocupe de la poltica y creo que es
muy favorable para m que me desve de ello. Pues sabedlo bien, atenienses, si desde mi juventud me
hubiera mezclado en los asuntos pblicos, estara muerto desde mi juventud y no habra prestado
ningn servicio a vosotros ni a m mismo. Y no os enfadis contra m si os digo la verdad: no hay
nadie que pueda salvar su vida, si valientemente se opone a vosotros o a cualquier otra asamblea
popular y si quiere impedir que se cometan muchas injusticias e ilegalidades en el Estado. Cuando
realmente se quiere combatir por la justicia y si se quiere vivir algn tiempo, es absolutamente
necesario confinarse en la vida privada y no abordar la vida pblica". Platn, Apologa de Scrates,
Critn, Fedn, Visin, Barcelona, 1980. Apologa de Scrates, p. 54. Las cursivas son mas. La
utilizacin de la palabra Estado es, obviamente, un anacronismo del traductor.
5
De ah, por ejemplo, el desprecio que le profesa Aristfanes en Las nubes: "Ah! Esos mendigos, ya
los conozco. Te refieres a esos charlatanes, a esos rostros demacrados, a esos pies desnudos, entre los
que se encuentran ese desgraciado Scrates y Querefn". Platn/Aristfanes, Apologa de Scrates,
Critn, Las nubes, Orbis, Barcelona, 1985 (1966), p. 97.
243
En Atenas se poda castigar a un ciudadano por incivismo, es decir, por falta de afecto a la polis. Ver
Santiago Montero Daz, De Calicls a Trajano. Estudios sobre Historia Poltica del Mundo Antiguo,
Instituto de Estudios Polticos, Madrid, 1948, p. 19.
7
Tambin despreciaban el dinero y las ganancias materiales: No pienso deca Antstenes- que los
hombres () tengan la riqueza o la pobreza en sus casas, sino en sus almas. Carlos Garca Gual, La
secta del perro. Digenes Laercio: Vidas de los filsofos cnicos, Alianza, Madrid, 1990 (1987), p. 62.
8
Vivir conforme a la naturaleza y no a los dictados de la sociedad era el lema de todas las escuelas
helensticas. Ver Alfonso Reyes, La filosofa helenstica, F. C. E., Mxico, 1965 (2 ed.), p. 160.
9
Carlos Garca Gual, La secta del perro, op., cit., p. 48, nota 2.
10
Ibdem, p. 58.
11
El vegetarianismo entraba en conflicto con los nomoi y simbolizaba una opcin al margen de la
polis. Pero de Digenes se dice que coma carne cruda, lo que le exclua, no solo de los banquetes
religiosos como forma de participacin social, sino de la propia civilizacin pues ello significaba que
quera, realmente, ser un perro, no vivir como un perro. Carles Miralles, El helenismo. pocas
helenstica y romana de la cultura griega, Montesinos, Barcelona, 1989, (1981), p. 35.
12
Aristteles, La Poltica, Editora Nacional, Madrid, 1981, p. 23.
13
Las mltiples ancdotas que hacen referencia al enfrentamiento entre Platn y Digenes son
interesantes, no porque sean histricas, sino por lo que tienen de simblico. Ver Carlos Garca Gual,
La secta del perro. p. 66.
244
el eu zen, es decir, la vida bella y feliz.14 La polis era as elevada al marco perfecto
para la realizacin del fin natural de la vida humana.15
La impopularidad del sabio cnico, que representa el reverso de la filosofa
platnico-aristotlica, es el test que mide su indiferencia hacia lo que hoy
denominaramos la opinin pblica. Una dxa, que encarnan la Asamblea y las
restantes instituciones democrticas, y que agitan, adems de continuos vaivenes, la
irresponsabilidad, la ignorancia y la pasin.
Pero tambin suponan una amenaza los epicreos16, con sus prdicas y
proclamas abstencionistas y sus advertencias de que la perfeccin no se halla en la
vida pblica, sino en la huida de la poltica17, el cuadriltero donde se desgarran los
que ansan el aplauso de la mayora. Ni la virtud se adquiere en las asambleas y los
cargos pblicos, ni la justicia es ese conjunto de reglas impuestas por el legislador y
respaldadas por un poder coactivo. Con ellos y los cnicos se abre paso una nueva
concepcin del mundo que repudia la polygragmosyne preconizada en el siglo V18, la
ambicin de los grandes logros que alimenta la vida cvica.
La conclusin que se desprende de este pequeo aperu es que, an siendo
una sociedad politesta, Atenas se ergua sobre una concepcin de la vida buena y
una religin cvica impuestas a sus ciudadanos bajo pena de exclusin social, cuando
no de castigos ms graves y an de la pena de muerte. Al tener la religin como
objetivo, como su propio nombre indica, el de religare, es decir, establecer slidos
lazos entre los ciudadanos, los rituales y ceremonias religiosos eran obligatorios. En
este contexto, la tolerancia no tena caba.
1. b. El monotesmo persa y la tolerancia
Quisiera oponer ahora a la intransigencia de la democrtica y politesta
sociedad ateniense, la tolerancia de un monarca absoluto persa, Ciro el grande, que el
cnico Antstenes tuvo la osada de convertir en icono de la virtud.19 Personificar la
virtud en un brbaro, el modelo que ms despreciaban los griegos, era una
provocacin en toda regla.20
La informacin que tenemos de Ciro21 procede de Herdoto, Jenofonte y
Josefo pero tambin del famoso cilindro que actualmente se expone en el museo de
Tehern y que antes fue propiedad del Museo Britnico. Ciro fue el fundador del
14
245
imperio persa y el conquistador del imperio babilonio y llev a cabo una poltica
tolerante y humanitaria hacia los pueblos conquistados. De acuerdo con la
inscripcin que figura en el cilindro, habra pronunciado las siguientes palabras:
Devolv a estas ciudades sagradas del otro lado del Tigris, cuyos santuarios haban
sido ruinas largo tiempo, las imgenes que solan vivir en ellas y establec para ellas
santuarios permanentes. Tambin reun a todos sus habitantes antiguos y les devolv
sus solares.
Se ha destacado en especial la tolerancia de Ciro hacia los judos, que
contrasta poderosamente con el trato que stos haban recibido de sus gobernantes
anteriores. Ciro no solo les devolvi los ornamentos sagrados del templo que
Nabucodonosor II haba trasladado a Babilonia, sino que les otorg permiso para
importar maderas de cedro del Lbano y autoriz la entrega de fondos procedentes de
la casa real para cubrir los gastos de construccin del templo de Jerusaln. El decreto
de Ciro que autorizaba a los judos a volver a Jerusaln y reconstruir el templo,
marca el final de setenta aos de desolacin. Es de destacar que, an siendo un
seguidor del zoroastrismo, una religin monotesta, Ciro se presenta como el elegido
por Marduk, dios de los babilonios, para convertirse en gobernante del mundo, y por
Jehov para liberar a los judos. Aunque muy probablemente se tratara de una mera
propaganda poltica para congraciarse con sus sbditos babilonios y judos, no deja
de ser significativo el grado de tolerancia religiosa y flexibilidad poltica que ello
implica.
1. c.
Voy a referirme a continuacin a Roma que, al igual que Atenas, era una
sociedad politesta. Segn Michael Mann, la flexibilidad del Imperio romano fue una
de las claves de su xito militar.22 No solo autorizaba a los pueblos conquistados a
practicar libremente su religin 23 , sino que integr hbilmente a sus elites y
comparti con ellas los beneficios derivados del poder poltico. Estos rasgos,
sumados al progreso econmico que propiciaban los intercambios comerciales con la
metrpoli y las obras pblicas acometidas, explican el alcance de su dominio.
Tolerancia religiosa, apertura social e integracin poltica constituyeron los pilares
sobre los que se alz su Imperio.24
Ello no obsta para que hiciera uso, en ocasiones, de una brutal represin. En
el caso de los cristianos, aunque la persecucin solo tuvo lugar de manera espordica
y localizada, e incluso, con frecuencia, fue desalentada por los propios oficiales
romanos que simpatizaban con los imputados, la acusacin comportaba la pena de
22
Michael Mann, Las fuentes del poder social. Una historia del poder desde los comienzos hasta
1760 d.C., Alianza, Madrid, 1991, v. I, pp. 359 y ss.
23
Angela Cowley, "Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman World", 2008. Open
Access Dissertations and Thesis. Paper 5344, p. 7. Segn Cary Nederman, los pueblos conquistados
por Roma tenan que rendir sacrificios a las deidades romanas junto a sus propios dioses, lo que no
sola provocar conflictos dado el carcter pantesta o politesta de dichos pueblos. C. Nederman,
Worlds of Difference. European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100-c.1550, The Pennsylvannia State
University Press, Pennsylvania, 2000, p. 13.
24
Michael Mann, Las fuentes del poder social, op., cit., p. 385-386.
246
Angela Cowley, "Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman World", pp. 55 y ss.
26
Incluso despus de la revuelta del aos 66, Tito se neg a retirarles los privilegios especiales de que
gozaban como requeran los habitantes de Antioqua. Angela Cowley, "Religious Toleration and
Political Power in the Roman World", op., cit., pp. 49-50.
27
C. Nederman, Worlds of Difference, op., cit., p. 12.
28
Peter Garnsey, "Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity" en W.J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and
Toleration, Studies in Church History 21, 1984, p. 10.
29
Ver Angela Cowley, "Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman World", op., cit., p.
60.
30
Aunque, es cierto que con Domiciano la poltica romana hacia los judos se endureci. Ibdem, p.
49-50.
247
I. Bejczy, Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept, Journal of the History of Ideas LVIII (1997) pp. 36584.
32
C. Nederman, Worlds of Difference. European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100-c.1550, op., cit., p.
7.
33
Sobre Abelardo, ver Constant J. Mews, "Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue" en J.C.
Laursen y C. J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the
Enlightenment, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1998, pp. 25 y ss.
34
Sobre Salisbury, ver C. Nederman, Worlds of Difference. European Discourses of Toleration, pp.
39 y ss.
35
Henry Kamen, Nacimiento y desarrollo de la Tolerancia en la Europa Moderna. Alianza, Madrid,
1987. La edicin en ingls es de 1967.
36
Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society. Power and Deviance in Western Europe,
950-1250. Blackwell, Oxford, 1987.
37
J.C. Laursen y C. J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society, op., cit., p. 4.
38
Sobre Las Casas, ver tambin Cary Nederman, Worlds of Difference, op., cit., pp. 99 y ss.
248
J.C. Laursen y C. J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society, op., cit.,, p. 5.
40
Me baso en el libro de Francisco Castilla, El pensamiento de Juan Gins de Seplveda. Vida activa,
humanismo y guerra en el Renacimiento, Centro de Estudios Polticos y Constitucionales, Madrid,
2013, en especial pp. 179 a 210.
41
Cary Nederman, Worlds of Difference, op., cit., p. 100 y nota 4 p. 138.
42
Fue el propio Seplveda quien advirti de que la divulgacin por Europa del ltimo libro de Las
Casas causara un gran descrdito a Espaa. F. Castilla, El pensamiento de Juan Gins de Seplveda,
op., cit., p. 209.
249
3.
Quisiera referirme a continuacin al carcter paradjico que tuvo el concepto
de tolerancia en la Modernidad. Los editores de Beyond the persecuting society43
llaman la atencin sobre la "obsesin" de los historiadores con Locke, encumbrado a
icono de la tolerancia moderna. Y sostienen que ni la argumentacin de Locke fue
original ni su tolerancia fue excepcional, como evidencia su carta de 1659 a Henry
Strubbe, donde propona acabar con los disidentes religiosos. Pero, adems, incluso
antes de que el escritor ingls publicara su famosa Carta sobre la tolerancia, de
1689, en Holanda, su amigo y anfitrin holands, Philip van Limborch, ya haba
escrito a favor de la tolerancia, as como otros autores como Adriaan van Paets o
Pierre Bayle.44
Pierre Bayle, considerado otro de los artfices de la tolerancia moderna por su
Comentario Filosfico de 1685, ofrece tambin lados oscuros. John Christian
Laursen 45 ha subrayado las contradicciones existentes entre su Comentario
Filosfico y su Diccionario histrico y crtico, publicado en 1697, donde afirma sin
empacho alguno que no le importara ver a Savonarola morir quemado en una
hoguera en Florencia, a Simon Morin en Paris, o a Quirinus Kuhlmann en Mosc. La
razn de esta feroz diatriba es que Bayle despreciaba a los msticos, milenaristas y
quiliastas, a quienes englobaba bajo la etiqueta de entusiasmo religioso. Una parte
importante del Diccionario contiene despiadados e injustos ataques contra ellos.
Laursen46 ha comparado el concepto de tolerancia de Bayle, un supuesto ateo, con el
de Christian Thomasius, un abogado protestante, ortodoxo y estricto. Parecera
lgico suponer que la nocin de tolerancia de Bayle trascendiera la de Thomasius y,
sin embargo, no es as. El enfoque jurdico de Thomasius le permiti trascender la
tolerancia de Bayle, quien esgrimi los trminos de supersticin y fanatismo para
desacreditar, descalificar y demonizar a todos aquellos que consideraba indignos de
ser tolerados. Tambin Kant atac de manera desproporcionada a los visionarios que
creen tener revelaciones y relaciones directas con los poderes celestiales. 47 La
conclusin que extrae el profesor Laursen es que los anti-fanticos pueden
convertirse en los fanticos ms peligrosos.
4.
Finalmente mi ltimo ejemplo nos traslada a la India de finales del siglo
XVIII, donde se da una de las paradojas que ms hieren nuestra sensibilidad
43
J.C. Laursen y C. J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society, op., cit., pp. 2-3.
44
J.C. Laursen y C. J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society, op., cit., p. 3.
45
J.C. Laursen, "Baylean Liberalism: Tolerance requires Nontolerance" en J.C. Laursen y C. J.
Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society, op., cit., pp. 197 y ss.
46
J.C. Laursen, "Christian Thomasius as Lawyer for the Atheists: Defending the Author of The
History of the Severambians", paper given at conference on "Philosophie, libertinage et free-thinking
de Campanella Hume", Ecole Normale Suprieure, Lyon, France, 28-29 de junio 2012; aparecer
prximamente en un libro editado por Nicole Gengoux y publicado por Honor Champion, Pars.
47
J.C. Laursen, "Intolerance of Fanatics in Bayle, Hume, and Kant", J.C. Laursen y M. J. Villaverde,
eds., Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought, Lexington Books, 2012,
pp. 186 y ss.
250
moderna. Se trata de la autorizacin del sati (la inmolacin de las viudas en la pira
funeraria de sus maridos), una prctica que los gobernadores ingleses, protestantes
creyentes, consideraban, sin embargo, moralmente condenable. En un captulo del
libro Forjadores de la tolerancia, del 2008, Jakob De Roover y S. N.
Balagangadhara48 explican cmo llegaron las autoridades inglesas a permitir dicha
prctica.
Cuando algunos estudiosos ingleses argumentaron que las costumbres
religiosas hinduistas deban tolerarse, no por una cuestin prudencial sino debido a
una obligacin moral, los legisladores estuvieron de acuerdo y la tolerancia religiosa
se convirti en principio bsico de la poltica colonial. Como consecuencia, las
autoridades se vieron forzadas a tolerar prcticas inhumanas como el sati o el
enterramiento vivo de los leprosos, porque figuraban en los textos sagrados
hinduistas, es decir, estaban amparadas por su religin. Por el contrario, la costumbre
de las mujeres de la casta joogee de enterrarse vivas con sus maridos fue prohibida
porque, aunque proceda de tiempos inmemoriales, no estaba contemplada en los
textos religiosos. En otras palabras, los ingleses toleraron determinadas tradiciones
nativas como el sati, no para evitar conflictos con la poblacin, sino porque crean,
errneamente o no, que estaba avalada por su religin. Por este motivo, las leyes
britnicas no podan ni deban interferir. La justificacin ltima de tal proceder se
encontraba en la Carta sobre la tolerancia de Locke y en la creencia de que la
religin y la poltica eran dos esferas separadas, una de las obsesiones del
pensamiento poltico moderno en sus inicios.
Para concluir quisiera resaltar dos aspectos. Uno, que no hay sociedades o
autores tolerantes o intolerantes en trminos absolutos. El desvelar los lados oscuros
de Locke, Bayle, Hume o Kant no significa degradarlos de la posicin que ocupan
como forjadores de la tolerancia, sino recordar que fueron, al fin y al cabo, hombres
de su tiempo incapaces de trascender las lneas rojas que marca cada poca histrica.
Hubo, es cierto, pensadores que se atrevieron a cruzar esos lmites (como Scrates o
los cnicos) pero sobre ellos recay todo el peso de la sociedad. En segundo lugar,
quisiera destacar que la tolerancia no es un proceso lineal que conduce desde la
intransigencia y el fanatismo al respeto y el reconocimiento del otro. Aunque hoy
vivimos en una sociedad liberal y democrtica y todos nos declaramos tolerantes, en
realidad hay concepciones y prcticas que no estamos dispuestos a tolerar, lo mismo
que ocurra en la Edad Media o a comienzos de la modernidad. Lo que han cambiado
son las ideas y comportamientos que consideramos intolerables, las lneas rojas que
marca la sociedad. Por lo general, somos ms tolerantes en materia religiosa que lo
eran nuestros antepasados de los siglos XI al XVII o XVIII porque las creencias
religiosas nos importan menos. Pero nuestra tolerancia tiene lmites. La mayora de
nosotros no estamos dispuestos a tolerar a los nazis, los pedfilos, los homfobos o
los maltratadores, por poner algunos ejemplos. Y tampoco estamos dispuestos a
consentir determinadas tradiciones religiosas o culturales como la ablacin del
48
251
252
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This panel will present the results of a collaborative project on the transnational history
of the semantic field of civility and civilization, involving a group of fourteen
researchers, working on thirteen languages (Helge Jordheim, Nordic languages;
Emanuelle Saada, French; Margrit Pernau, English; Christian Bailey, German; Einar
Wigen, Ottoman Turkish; Orit Bashkin, Arabic; Mana Kia, Persian; Margrit Pernau,
Urdu; Mohinder Singh, Hindi; Rochona Majumdar, Bengali; Angelika Messner,
Chinese; Oleg Benesh, Japanese; Myoungkyu Park, Korean; Jan Ifversen and Dominic
Sachsenmaier, Commentators).
The overcoming of methodological nationalism is a requirement for conceptual
history, no less than for political and social history. The history of concepts can no
longer be written as a national project, based on one language and at the utmost taking
into consideration (Western) European influences, but has to acknowledge the influence
colonialism and globalisation had on the creation of key concepts. Like nations,
languages were no closed, pre-existing entities, but came into being and were sustained
through exchange. A global history of the concept of civility/civilisation therefore
cannot be written as an addition of national histories, but has to place these exchanges at
the centre of its endeavors this was the main rationale for conducting such a project as
collaborative research, based on close interaction between the researchers responsible
for the different regions.
To achieve this, the project aimed to study the semantic field of civility as a way
of understanding processes of colonisation and globalisation in the 18th and 19th century
253
and to work out the interaction between concepts emanating from Europe and concepts
in the different Asian languages and to investigate their entanglement.
In this presentation we will present the basic theoretical and methodological
assumptions of the project, the results from selected case studies (one each from
Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia), and a final assessment of the
importance of this approach for the further development of conceptual history.
Ideally this would be done in an hour-long integrated presentation by the three of
us, rather than in three consecutive statements; followed by 45-60 minutes discussion.
As the last meeting of the research group is still to take place in Oslo in June, it is only
at that stage that we will know the final results of the project and then be able to decide
on the exact distribution of roles among us.
254
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
In the writings of Koselleck, and of his most influential English language
interpreter, Melvin Richter, the word concept is sometimes used in contexts
where word or term would serve better.
Thomas Dixon made this remark in 2008, in an introduction to a monograph, which
traced changing uses in the word altruism in the nineteenth century. At the outset of
his book, he acknowledges some affinity with the tradition of Begriffsgeschichte, but is
reluctant to refer to his work as "history of a concept". Dixon is not alone in this
inconvenience regarding the phrase history of concepts; it is, as I will try to show,
shared by many Anglophone scholars, including some who would be considered major
figures in Conceptual history. When conversing in English with non-native speakers,
well-intentioned Anglophones tend to be polite about their language. They would not
usually dare or care to suggest that their interlocutor misuses a word (as they most
happily would if the latter was an Anglophone, in which case the suggestion would
count as a legitimate argumentation strategy). This does not mean that they do not
harbor the suspicion that this is exactly the case: a foreigners poor choice of words.
In the suggested talk I will try to examine this inconvenience: is Dixon right? Is
it possible that the English (and other languages) title for our approach, the very
description of what we do, is based on a mistranslation? Whatever the answer is, I
believe this claim merits a serious examination, which will combine both theoretical
considerations and an empirical study of the history and use of this (mis-?) translation.
255
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Contrary to the common undeclared pedagogical assumptions in translation skill classes
that faithfulness to the source text is the highest good guiding translation exercises,
translations which have found a place in history are often not the most faithful but the
most successful in establishing themselves as the standard or authoritative translations
by displacing other alternatives. In his close attention to the ideologization and
politicization of language, Kosellecks Begriffsgeschichte provides a powerful tool for
examining the history of translation as driven by the will to power rather than
truthfulness to the source text. My essay analyzes the Chinese renditions of two
Western terms in the early twentieth century in order to demonstrate how the
translations which became standardized managed to gain dominance over their
competitors by engaging specifically the Chinese peoples will to empowerment when
China as both an ancient civilization and a young nation was under constant threats of
subjugation by colonial powers. Having thus demonstrated the new horizon opened up
by Begriffsgeschichte for Translation Studies, the essay ends with a comparison
between conceptual history and other approaches to translation, arguing for the
distinctive contributions made possible by the former.
256
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Current thought on conceptual history, my paper will argue, might profit from a reexamination of its semantic presuppositions. Taking a very basic cue from Wittgenstein,
it appears that semantics in natural languages consists of a variety of operations through
which meaning can be determined, explained, and communicated. Mere gestural
ostentation; paradigmatic demarcations of the use of certain expressions; translations
between different languages; grammatical analyses; lexical definitions; nonconceptual (Blumenberg) tropes; the deployment of images; explanation in the terms
of particular scientific idioms; and probably various other types of semantic operations
co-exist legitimately in any given natural language and among any given natural
languages. This multitude of semantic operations also suggests that semantics, in natural
language, is actually disunified. If so, there is no common denominator, no underlying
meta-operation such as the identification of a periods formative experiences and
expectations, let alone access to a basic set of unequivocal lexical traditions that
would be capable of providing unified foundations to linguistic meaning. Moreover,
linguistic meaning, in natural languages, appears to spill over from one language into
the other. There is thus a strong case to be made in favor of a lack of self-sufficiency of
natural languages as semantic systems. If translation and the recurrence to specific notso-natural, e.g. scholarly, vocabularies are irreducibly part of the semantic toolkits of
natural languages, it becomes difficult to regard a given natural language as fully
supplying all of its own semantic operations. In my paper, I will attempt (1) to outline
somewhat more fully the theoretical position here sketched; (2) to contrast this position
with some historical work on the history of concepts (with Walter Benjamins work on
tragedy, and Reinhart Kosellecks on history, as model cases); and (3) to present
some tentative perspectives regarding the question of how one might explore the
disunified historical semantics of tragedy and history across 19th-century European
history.
257
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Reinhart Kosellecks work is becoming increasingly popular in Southern and Eastern
Europe, but also in the Anglophone world. A prime example of migrating concepts,
nomadic notions from Kosellecks oeuvre continue to nest, thrive and become sedentary
in different languages and discursive environments. Chief among the successful
travelling concepts are space of experience and horizon of expectation
(Erfahrungsraum and Erwartungshorizont), also among them if somewhat less
conspicuously is the concept Sattelzeit. After Kosellecks introductory essay to the
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe the Sattelzeit the epoch roughly between the 1750s and
the 1850s marked by the temporalization, politicisation and democratization of concepts
remained the conceptual backbone of the lexicon. Despite Kosellecks later
deflationary remarks about the heuristic device and its limited value, suggesting that it
had become something of a mixed blessing for the project, it continued to shape the
chronological setup and filter screen the lexicons authors used to process their material.
The Sattelzeit thus became important for how the lexicons authors skimmed their
sources, but also for the way they located interfaces between specialised discourses they
dealt with.
The main objective of my paper is not to trace the fortunes of the Sattelzeit
through the pages of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe only a few preliminary
prompters will be given here but rather to look for its conceptual precedents.
Koselleck is often credited with having conceptualised and organised the Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe single-handedly, hence Werner Conzes and Otto Brunners roles in the
triumvirate are reduced to those of innocent bystanders. Yet the Sattelzeit lends itself
particularly well to highlight the importance of Otto Brunners oeuvre for the
conceptualisation of the lexicon. It is Brunners notion of Alteuropa, Old Europe,
marked by stable social relationships and a constitutional order not bedevilled by liberal
disjunctive thought (Trennungsdenken) that left an indelible imprint on Kosellecks
Sattelzeit. Brunner developed his notion of Alteuropa in his work on fiefdom, vassalage
and corve as well as in his book on the aristocratic societas civilis. Brunners old
Europe was the world that Koselleck believed to have been destroyed by the ideological
dynamics of the Sattelzeit.
258
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El texto pretende ser una primera decantacin de una investigacin en ciernes sobre
diversos autores que, en el sigo veinte, han sostenido concepciones del tiempo acordes
con la presencia espectral del pasado en el presente, y que, en consecuencia, han
impugnado en cierto modo lo que Franois Hartog llama el rgimen de historicidad
moderno, es decir, la confianza en un tiempo progresivo de orientacin futurista. En
efecto, los anacronismos, asincronas, regresos o supervivencias han sido explorados en
mbitos diversos, entre los que destacan la literatura y la filosofa.
La novela, desde la temprana historia de Balzac sobre el retorno del coronel
Chabert hasta el Austerlitz de Sebald, pasando por Musil, Sartre o el nouveau roman, no
ha dejado de interrogar al tiempo y de revelar las mltiples aristas, la no
contemporaneidad de lo contemporneo. Paralelamente, la filosofa, de Ernst Bloch a
Frank Ankersmit, pasando por las supervivencias de Aby Warburg, los estratos del
tiempo de Reinhart Koselleck o los espectros de Jacques Derrida, ha tratado de dar
salida a las aporas de la temporalidad tal como fue concebida en el siglo diecinueve.
En el texto propuesto se ensayar una primera aproximacin a estas
concepciones del tiempo a partir de la lectura de La experiencia histrica sublime de
Frank Ankersmit y de la atencin al debate en torno a la nocin de presencia que, en
2006, reuni entre otros a historiadores como Eelco Runia y a filsofos como HansUlrich Gumbrecht en Groninga. El objetivo es apuntalar un concepto de historia
sensible a las discordancias del tiempo y capaz de responder a las exigencias de nuestra
temporalidad presentista.
259
TEXTO/TEXT:
Las citas, en GADAMER (1977: 370 y 20). El contexto, en GMEZ RAMOS (2000: 52).
Las citas, en GADAMER (1977: 367).
3
Remtase a GADAMER y KOSELLECK (1997: 67-94). Las citas, por orden, en las pp. 89 y 85.
2
260
261
que Blumenberg da a este problema es la metaforologa, que constata que las metforas
llenan los vacos que deja el pensamiento abstracto y cuestiona la existencia de
conceptos eternos. Frente a la bsqueda de la pureza cartesiana, esa cierta vaguedad que
recubre el mbito de lo humano. La teora se ha idealizado a s misma como la
necesidad que por primera vez le da un fundamento a la vida; pero no precisar de
fundamento es la certeza de la vida misma.9
As pues, todo acontecer se recorta sobre un fondo invisible, pone en juego una
dialctica de ausencias y presencias, y al mismo tiempo que se anuncia, deja entrever
una lnea de sombra. Por eso, en la historia, siempre hay ms de lo que se puede
explicitar. Blumenberg da en el clavo cuando sostiene que las historias tienen la misma
estructura que la vida, razn por la cual narrarlas es un buen modo de explorar las
posibilidades de comprenderse entre seres cuya naturaleza es, precisamente, la
posibilidad. Pero, a tal efecto, la mayor parte de las veces, los conceptos que tenemos en
comn no se componen de datos, sino de historias, pues ellos mismos son el resultado
provisional de las realidades que se agolpan a sus espaldas y de los deseos que
despiertan. Una clara consecuencia de todo esto es que no hay clausura del saber y de la
comprensin.10 El crculo nunca se cierra, el tiempo no muere jams.
PRESENCIAS
De un tiempo a esta parte, la reflexin sobre la inconceptualidad, por decirlo
con Blumenberg, sobre aquello que escapa a la representacin, constituye una de las
fuentes ms prometedoras para la renovacin terica de la escritura de la historia. Uno
de los artfices de este movimiento es Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, quien en 2004 publica
una obra fruto de una larga reflexin: Produccin de presencia.11 En ella, el filsofo
alemn sostiene que el vuelo del pensamiento est severamente limitado por el
absolutismo del giro lingstico. De ah la urgencia que reviste hallar un modo de salir
de ese marasmo epistemolgico. La pregunta central que se formula es si hay algo en la
presencia que escapa a lo que el significado puede transmitir y que merezca ser
tenido en cuenta. La renovacin de la epistemologa apunta, pues, a la reconexin con la
ontologa.
La propuesta de Gumbrecht radica en tratar de hallar conceptos con los que
pensar una teora del conocimiento que l llama postmetafsica, atenta a la tensin u
oscilacin entre los efectos de presencia y los efectos de significado, capaz de
suscitar la predisposicin a dejarse tocar por los objetos presentes. Porque hasta ahora la
era del significado se ha vinculado con la profundidad, con el desvelamiento de lo que
est oculto detrs de los estratos de la apariencia es en este sentido en el que
Gumbrecht llama metafsico a ese propsito. Esto ha llevado a un desprestigio de lo
superficial, de lo que se da a ver y, en consecuencia, tambin se da por descontado. Y
9
262
12
Lo que sigue est sistematizado en GUMBRECHT (2006: 320-4) y, con leves modificaciones, en
GUMBRECHT (2010: 140-5).
263
13
Sobre esto, vase SCHLGEL (2007), una coleccin de ensayos bellamente titulada En el espacio leemos
el tiempo.
14
Vuelvo aqu a GUMBRECHT (2005). En este caso, p. 128.
15
Vase el comienzo de la Analtica de lo sublime en KANT (2003: 199-239).
264
265
percibe un anhelo de estar en contacto con el mundo, con las personas, las cosas, los
acontecimientos y los sentimientos que nos han hecho quienes somos. Seguramente
porque buscamos un asidero para comprender a carta cabal el misterio de cmo es
posible que sigamos siendo nosotros mismos aunque hayamos dejado de ser casi por
completo quienes ramos antes.
Es un anhelo que puede considerarse el equivalente existencial del problema
epistemolgico de la discontinuidad en la historia, que desde los aos sesenta ha sido
discutido con frecuencia. En este contexto, Runia propone ampararse en el concepto de
metonimia ese tropo que consiste en designar algo con el nombre de otra cosa
tomando el efecto por la causa o viceversa, el autor por sus obras, el signo por la cosa
significada, segn el diccionario de la Academia para profundizar en la dialctica
entre continuidad y discontinuidad, entre ausencia y presencia. Su sugerencia inicial es
que transformemos el tiempo en espacio, pues los lugares son almacenes de
presencia.20
Traducir el tiempo a espacio hace posible dar cuenta de la simultaneidad de la
continuidad y la discontinuidad. Y aqu la metonimia, si no la entendemos como un
fenmeno exclusivamente lingstico, puede sernos de gran ayuda. Los fsiles y las
reliquias son instancias de ese tipo de metonimia que se caracteriza por presentar la
parte por el todo. Los monumentos poseen tambin un componente de denotacin
metonmica junto con la connotacin metafrica: dicen algo sobre aquello por lo que
estn ah. Pensemos por un momento en el monumento a los judos asesinados en
Europa diseado por Peter Eisenman, que recuerda en Berln a las vctimas del
holocausto. Ese vasto campo de losas o estelas de hormign presenta un acontecimiento
del pasado en la actualidad. Pero difcilmente puede decirse de l que lo representa.
Expresado de otro modo: el monumento tiene poco que decir pero mucho por lo que
estar ah. De hecho, puede afirmarse que lo que hace el memorial es presentar una
ausencia.
En la escritura de la historia existe tambin una oscilacin entre un polo
metonmico sintagmtico y un polo metafrico paradigmtico, aunque semejante
tensin pase a veces desapercibida. El primer polo es el que abre el lenguaje al mundo
prelingstico de los acontecimientos y las impresiones que causan, y el segundo es el
que bucea en su significado explotando el rendimiento de un cdigo de signos
lingsticos. Pero los textos histricos, tramados metafricamente, tienden a esconder
ese otro polo metonmico. Entonces la presencia est an ms ausente que en las
obras de arte mencionadas. Pero an est ah. En esas tenues metonimias ensombrecidas
por la cegadora luz de las metforas, el pasado permanece agazapado, ausentemente
presente.
Por eso prestar atencin a la relacin entre la continuidad y la discontinuidad,
entre la metfora y la metonimia, puede auparnos ms all del umbral donde el
paradigma de la representacin se detiene, y permitirnos avizorar desde ah el vnculo
entre la historiografa y la realidad histrica. Quiz no logremos establecer con ella el
20
RUNIA (2006: 14). Mi exposicin, que no reproduce el complejo argumento del autor, se basa sobre
todo en las pp. 2-6, 16-7, 19 y 25-8 de su artculo. De ah provienen todas las citas que he entresacado.
266
contacto que querramos, pero tendremos las puertas abiertas para que ella establezca
algn tipo de contacto con nosotros. Porque, a pesar de todo, el pasado sigue ah. Viaja
con la historiografa no como un pasajero sino como un polizn. Como un polizn el
pasado sobrevive a los textos. Y, como un polizn, puede depararnos an muchas
sorpresas.
CODA
Si todo terminara una vez hecho, sera conveniente acabar pronto.21 As dice
Macbeth cuando fantasea sobre un crimen perfecto, que sea a un tiempo todo y fin de
todo. Pero sabemos que al cometer el acto se desencadena la tragedia, y l sucumbe al
ruido y la furia no sin descubrir que no se borra fcilmente el pesar escrito en el cerebro
ni se arranca del recuerdo un dolor arraigado. Porque no, el presente no es solamente
ese instante pasajero al que cantaron algunos poetas. Y cuanto sucede en l no se
cancela con el solo girar de las manecillas del reloj. Por eso todo intento de establecer
un corte, una ruptura o un punto de partida choca contra la persistencia de las cosas en
el tiempo, con los restos, las demoras, las ruinas y los fantasmas, y contra la poderosa
fuerza de los futuros incumplidos del pasado.
BIBLIOGRAFA
ANKERSMIT, Frank (2001): The Sublime Dissociation of the Past: Or How to Be(come)
What One Is No Longer, en History and Theory, vol. 40, nm. 3, pp. 295-323.
(2010): La experiencia histrica sublime, trad. Nathalie Schwan, Mxico DF,
Universidad Iberoamericana.
BLUMENBERG, Hans (1995): Naufragio con espectador, trad. Jorge Vigil, Madrid,
Visor.
(2002): La posibilidad de comprenderse, trad. Csar G. Cantn, Madrid, Sntesis.
(2003): Conceptos en historias, trad. Csar G. Cantn y Daniel Innerarity, Madrid,
Sntesis.
(2004): Salidas de caverna, trad. Jos Luis Arntegui, Madrid, Antonio Machado
Libros.
GADAMER, Hans-Georg (1977): Verdad y Mtodo, trad. Ana Agud Aparicio y Rafael de
Agapito, Salamanca, Sgueme.
GADAMER, Hans-Georg y KOSELLECK, Reinhart (1997): Histrica y Hermenutica, trad.
Faustino Oncina Coves, Barcelona, Paids. I.C.E.| U.A.B.
GMEZ RAMOS, Antonio (2000): Entre las lneas. Gadamer y la pertinencia de traducir,
Madrid, Visor.
GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich (2005): Produccin de presencia. Lo que el significado no
puede transmitir, trad. Aldo Mazzucchelli, Mxico DF, Universidad Iberoamericana.
21
267
268
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Desde la rbita de recepcin con que Bacon traduce la premisa bblica de que el
tiempo de la vida y el tiempo del mundo fueron una vez idnticos en el Paraso, y
que sugiere su actualizacin por obra de la coordinacin entre conocimiento y verdad
trascendental, esta propuesta pretende mostrar a travs de su articulacin metafrica y
conceptual- cmo en la obra del jesuita Jacob Baegert se plasma una peculiar
disposicin de los elementos anteriores y en la que ciencia y teologa confluyen como
mbito de una experiencia de la historia que asume para s los valores de toda
trascendencia posible.
El entramado de significacin procede de la pertenencia de las Cartas y Las
Noticias de la Antigua California al logos escritural jesuita determinable hacia la
segunda mitad del siglo XVIII y a la formalizacin que adquiere en los textos de
Baegert a la luz de su experiencia misional en el desierto, bsicamente circunscrita por
la condicin nmada de las poblaciones sujetas a la evangelizacin. Se trata del relato
unitario de un viajero situado en el umbral de poca denominado por Koselleck
Sattelzeit, y cuya escritura es por eso parte esencial del fenmeno mismo de
temporalizacin de la historia y de surgimiento de un tiempo nuevo.
A partir de su delimitacin conforme a las disposiciones metaforolgicas de
Blumenberg metforas absolutas que en contextos paradigmticos posibilitan la
concrecin de sentido de los conceptos-, en la obra de Baegert se dibuja un espacio de
experiencia explicitado por la metafrica apostlica del camino y el desierto y que
se abre en su expectativa por va del concepto de sana curiosidad hacia los mbitos de
una trascendencia plausiblemente histrica.
De la equiparacin de sustrato demoniaco que Baegert realiza entre las
correras nmadas y la quietud y renuncia a los riesgos del desierto y el
naufragio de protestantes y filsofos modernos, emerge una tensin entre el
presente y el pasado la conversin de Europa en una Repblica California- cuya
resolucin de necesidad futura converge con el probabilismo y la ciencia media
como formulaciones terico/teolgicas ligadas a una verdad trascendente que no
puede ser privada de los contenidos de experiencia de la prdica evanglica y su
implcita contingencia.
As, el tiempo de la vida y el tiempo del mundo se identifican para Baegert
en el tiempo de la historia, como la realizacin del mejor de los mundos posibles.
269
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En el trnsito a la modernidad de la sociedad espaola de finales del siglo XVIII se
produjo un cambio en la conciencia del tiempo histrico en parte de las elites
intelectuales. La historia dej progresivamente de ser maestra de vida pero al unsono se
origin la imperiosa necesidad de entroncar tradicin y continuidad con el pasado con
una nueva conciencia social y poltica. La tradicin y la historia sern interpretadas de
manera diferente segn la contingencia histrica y la ideologa de los actores. La
historiografa espaola ha calificado por lo general, de manera demasiado unitaria y
simplista, de historicistas las simples menciones al pasado por parte de los polticos
decimonnicos y de tradicionales, y as pues antimodernas, cualquier apego a
costumbres pasadas.
En el presente trabajo pretendemos analizar las diferentes formas de entender la
temporalidad durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX en Espaa y consecuentemente los
diferentes mecanismos de conceptualizacin de la historia. Nuestro objetivo es resaltar
como las variadas estrategias utilizadas entroncaron con los diferentes proyectos
polticos que desearon llevar a cabo los intelectuales decimonnicos as como con el
sustrato cultural subyacente. Para llevar a cabo dicho estudio utilizaremos como fuentes
los debates parlamentarios y periodsticos de la poca as como las principales obras
histricas del momento.
TEXTO/TEXT:
La tradicin condiciona muchas dimensiones de la vida humana, entre ellas y en
particular la poltica donde juega un importante papel como fuente de legitimacin. Si
entendemos el concepto de tradicin como la transmisin intergeneracional de
elementos culturales no es posible concebir la convivencia humana sin tradicin. Tal y
como apunta James Alexander, no hay que olvidar que en el proceso de transmisin la
tradicin sufre transformaciones por parte de aquellos que realizan la transferencia y
que esas transformaciones pueden ser consideradas legtimamente como tradicionales.
Partiendo de la interpretacin de que el pasado por s mismo no es historia y que ste se
convierte en historia mediante la toma de conciencia histrica por parte de los actores,
270
pactismo medieval o el derecho natural, con las que los polticos van a enlazar no
estaban solamente durmientes en el inconsciente cultural de la sociedad sino que se
analizaban racionalmente. Si aceptamos, como hemos explicado previamente, que es
posible sentirse identificado con una tradicin a pesar de que se le est dando un
significado totalmente diferente al que haba tenido en tiempos pasados, lo que
necesitamos comprender es porqu se enlaza con una tradicin concreta y no con otra.
Independientemente del significado que se le quiera atribuir, tiene que haber algo en esa
tradicin que lleve a su utilizacin especfica: costumbre, prestigio, crticaEs decir
estaramos considerando aspectos valorativos (y as pues sociales) de la tradicin ms
que los significados que lleve asociados para justificar su uso en un momento concreto.
Si analizamos el proceso bajo una perspectiva instrumentalista, nos encontraremos que
la conclusin ms lgica sera que el enlace con una tradicin pasada es realizado por
los polticos de manera intencionada con una finalidad concreta, en este caso de
legitimar una nueva lnea ideolgica. Si en cambio ponemos el acento en el aspecto
emocional durmiente o latente de las tradiciones en el inconsciente cultural resulta ms
fcil entender cmo pudieron estos intelectuales enlazar con tradiciones muy alejadas en
el tiempo y totalmente diferentes en cuanto a su significado de las defendidas en un
momento concreto del presente de los actores. Lo que defendemos es que adems del
aspecto de la family resemblance y del traceable historical process como elementos
que permiten ese enlace con tradiciones pasadas, existe un aspecto emocional, muchas
veces ligado a personajes o hechos histricos concretos, que resulta definitivo en el
momento de optar por la identificacin con una tradicin concreta. Creemos as que el
core de Kuukkanen o de Burns tendra un componente emocional que facilitara el
sentirse identificado con una determinada tradicin poltica.
Tenemos que considerar adems que, desde los inicios del siglo XIX, se observa
como la historia se politiza e ideologiza (y as pues en gran parte se emocionaliza)
entrando en la arena de las luchas polticas. Cada faccin del mundo liberal y no liberal
va a enlazar con una tradicin poltica. Pero no hay que confundir tradicin con
tradicionalismo lo cual en la historiografa espaola del siglo XIX se ha hecho
frecuentemente. De hecho durante los debates y aprobacin de la Constitucin liberal de
Cdiz de 1812, el bando defensor del sistema de Antiguo Rgimen ha sido denominado
por los historiadores actuales como tradicionalista. Este hecho no implica por otra parte
que los defensores de ese tradicionalismo no tuvieran un concepto de tradicin, pero en
su caso entendido como de algo que no cambia. Su mirada al pasado es solo
unidireccional: el presente debe ser una continuidad del pasado del cual se van a resaltar
sus principales virtudes. Es la defensa de la tradicin por la tradicin, sirviendo la
historia solo para mostrar que una prctica ha existido y en consecuencia debe de seguir
existiendo. En este caso la tradicin es entendida en el sentido expuesto por Hannah
Arendt de religion, tradition and authority y as pues asociada con unidad, coercin y
nica verdad.
Durante la redaccin de la Constitucin de Cdiz de 1812, parte del mundo
liberal enlazar con la tradicin iusnaturalista y pactista, en algunos casos de raigambre
catlica, para defender los nuevos conceptos polticos de soberana nacional y de
libertades civiles y polticas: En este sentido, Francisco Martnez Marina, historiador y
273
poltico liberal con gran influencia en el proceso constituyente espaol, consider que:
El contrato social bien se puede decir, en cierto sentido, que comenz con el mundo; y
aunque sus clusulas no hayan sido expresadas ni consignadas [] subsistan grabadas
en el fondo del corazn y en el cdigo de la naturaleza, anterior a todas las cartas,
diplomas y cdigos.
Otra parte del mundo liberal, menos numerosa, defender que los nuevos
conceptos polticos manejados enlazaban con una tradicin catlica y moral. As
Alberto Lista, eclesistico afrancesado, afirmar en 1809 desde las pginas del
peridico liberal El Espectador Sevillano que si la existencia de un marco legal era
indispensable para establecer una forma de gobierno estable, ms importantes eran las
bases morales que lo regan.
Raros sern los liberales espaoles que en estos primeros aos del siglo XIX se
atrevan a defender los nuevos conceptos sin entroncar con alguna tradicin previa.
Esta actitud de los liberales espaoles de sentir sus nuevas ideas polticas
insertas en el marco de las tradiciones polticas anteriores no nos debe de extraar pues
podemos observarlo tambin por ejemplo en Francia, durante la Restauracin (18151830) o en Inglaterra con la interpretacin Whig de la historia.
Volviendo al caso espaol y haciendo un pequeo salto en el tiempo, en la
dcada de 1830, tras la muerte del rey Fernando VII y el restablecimiento de unas
polticas liberales de gobierno, podemos observar como las diferentes facciones del
liberalismo que se haban ido configurando, van a seguir enlazando con tradiciones
polticas del pasado pero desde presupuestos diferentes a los mantenidos dos dcadas
antes. De manera esquemtica se podra decir que el elemento ms progresista del
mundo liberal, al apoyar sus posiciones en conceptos abstractos (ya no tanto de derecho
natural pero s de justicia y moralidad) seguir, en la lnea observada desde el periodo
constituyente de Cdiz de 1812, estableciendo una relacin fluida entre pasado, presente
y futuro mientras que el elemento ms moderado, amparndose en el criterio de la
historicidad de las pocas, tender a basar sus decisiones polticas en criterios ms
utilitaristas y prcticos. En el caso de los moderados la reinterpretacin del pasado se
realizar principalmente buscando antecedentes de un derecho de propiedad.
En realidad son las dos facetas de una misma manera de concebir la historia, una
historia hecha por los hombres y as pues reinterpretable. Esta visin ms utilitarista de
la historia dejar sin embargo una cierta sensacin de vaco ntimo que ser en parte
compensado con la recuperacin del concepto de Providencia que en el fondo no haba
sido del todo abandonado desde poca ilustrada. Pero este concepto se recuperar bajo
dos formas, una que podramos calificar de ms secularizada y otra de caractersticas
ms teolgicas. La primera de estas dos lneas de argumentacin entender la
Providencia de una manera matizada como un factor trascendente e ntimo de seguridad
que ayudara al hombre a tomar decisiones importantes, sin sostener por ello
exactamente que Dios estuviese marcando los destinos del hombre de una manera
inexorable (sera la teora de los hombres como coautores de la historia defendida por
Schelling). Los representantes de la segunda posicin, por el contrario, interpretarn la
Providencia divina de un modo mucho ms activo, sosteniendo que Dios estaba rigiendo
secretamente desde el ms all todas las facetas de la actividad del ser humano,
274
uno dar una interpretacin diferente de unos mismos hechos histricos. Al mismo
tiempo podemos percibir que tradiciones polticas cobran fuerza en la sociedad
decimonnica, tradiciones reinterpretadas a la luz de la nueva realidad poltica y social.
Aunque este trabajo est centrado en la Espaa de la primera mitad del siglo XIX
creemos que las conclusiones obtenidas pueden extrapolarse al conjunto del proceso
modernizador. A mayor grado de inseguridad y de aceleracin de los tiempos, mayor
necesidad de sentir la existencia del colchn de la tradicin y de la historia detrs.
276
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The Select Committees for reforming the British House of Commons procedure in late
mineteenthc were oriented to a stricter control of speeches and distribution of
parliamentary time. The Liberal MP Thomas Whittaker from 1913 to 1914 led,
however, a committee with an unconventional task, namely the existence of a feeling
amongst private Members of Parliament that their power and influence in connection
with legislation, and their control over finance and administration, have been and are
seriously curtailed; while the continually increasing power of the Government of the
day and its monopolisation of the time of the House of Commons are rendering the
position of a private Member of Parliament less attractive than it used to be to many
who would be useful Members of that assembly, have allowed their consideration of
suggested remedies to ranger over a somewhat wide field as its point of departure.
(Whittaker Committee, 7) Although the Committee proposals were moderate and never
realised due to World War I, its hearings contained important alternatives to current
trends to reactivate private members as well as combine the parliamentary government
better with the principle of deliberative assembly. The conceptual, contextual and
rhetorical analysis of the committee hearing debates provides an history of losers
perspective on the conceptual history of parliamentarism.
277
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The paper focuses on the conceptual and rhetorical devices, as well as styles of
argument, that are typically found in economic policy debates in parliamentary politics,
with a case study focus on the Finnish parliament. The history of economic policy
debates seen in the light of a parliamentary style of politics form the subtext of the
paper.
The rhetoric of uniformity is then examined through both logical and rhetorical
methods, as aspiring to such uniformity is often the goal in many economic policy
debates. A policy might be put forward as representing the "only" option that is
available. In budget politics, both the government and opposition are eager to talk the
talk of necessity, the former in terms of "we have no other options" and the latter with
"change is inevitable". The concept of crisis could be seen as an essential starting
point for different arguments. Crisis, in its most general sense, implies the turning point
in a process. The usage of the concept of crisis (as Grundbegriffe by Koselleck) in
argumentation thus brings into focus the ways of defining the economic situation at the
time of debate.
In economic policy debates legitimization for opinions and proposed actions is
often sought and gained by appealing to certain authorities, through persuasion, and
through intimidation. Authorities can be outside operators or simply anonymous market
forces. An even stronger legitimization is provided by what, in argumentation theory, is
called the "god-term" (Kenneth Burke 1953, A Rhetoric of Motives). This term is used
in situations in which complicated topical entities are perhaps falsely tied to one,
exhaustive line of argument. According to Burke, money is not only an instrument, or a
tool in the argumentation, but also a motive for actions.
The wider context of the paper is the 'pro et contra' argumentation used in policy
debate in parliament, and specifically economic policy debate. My Phd research project
combines the study of the rhetorical figures that are common in economic policy debate,
and the use of theories for simplifying issues in the politics of convincing. By studying
a limited genre of argumentation (parliamentary economy/ budget debates), the project
278
is shedding new light (from a rhetorical and conceptual history perspective) on the study
of economic policies and studies on parliamentarism and rhetoric.
279
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper covers the essential rhetorical devices and figures of speech used in Finnish
parliamentary debates about the welfare state from the 1980s up to the present day. The
main focus of study is therefore the concept itself of welfare state, covering the main
contexts in which it features, and the different contents the concept may have, in a
political sense.
The concept of welfare state is used in Finnish parliamentary debates very often
and in very different political contexts, thus the contents vary greatly. Typically, the
concept represents an aspect of society in which the state (i.e., public sector) takes
responsibility for ensuring the general well-being of its citizens, or at least plays an
important role in promoting and securing their welfare.
All the political parties represented in the Finnish parliament are clearly in
favour of promoting the welfare state. In periods when the concept of welfare state has
particularly flourished, the rhetoric has focused on fulfilling the basic needs of citizens.
But with the economic slowdown in the 1990s, new types of argument were brought to
bear on discussions of the concept and its future. A new genre of parliamentary debate
talked of saving, defending and renewing the welfare state.
Debates on the welfare state have also been influenced by an expansion of the
concept to include economic, social and cultural rights, which were previously not
considered to be basic rights. An expansion of the two concepts of basic rights and the
welfare state have thus gone hand in hand, which means basic rights now feature
significantly in welfare state debates.
One of the main questions in the political debate about the welfare state is who is
responsible for its delivery. Analysing this question reveals significant ideological
differences among debaters. Basic social values become apparent in the debate over the
welfare state. Notions about freedom and equality influence opinions as to what kind of
welfare state should be considered just.
The normative content for the concept of welfare state is about creating a degree
of well-being for society. This is how it becomes, or is often viewed, as a mechanism
for satisfying the basic needs of people. But for this to happen, the concept of basic
needs must be better defined. Struggles over this definition indeed constitute one of the
essential conceptual debates about the welfare state in parliament.
280
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper examines the argumentative strategies as regards the radicalisation of
political liberalism in Victorian parliamentary culture. More precisely, it studies how a
number of intellectuals and politicians see themselves as advocates of advanced
liberalism and in which ways their writings and speeches recast liberal ideological
principles.
Whereas the label advanced liberalism is customarily used in academic
literature to define some turn-of-the-century political thinkers, such as John A. Hobson
and L. T. Hobhouse, its roots may be traced back to the 1860s, where figures like Henry
Fawcett, John Stuart Mill, John Bright, Richard Cobden and John Morley sought to
reinvigorate the Liberal party. Animated by a growing number of political extraparliamentary organisations, their reformist agenda promoted, for instance, the
extension of the suffrage to both the working classes and women. As an exploratory
attempt, the paper will study some parliamentary debates that may help understand how
advanced liberalism differs from the so-called moderate liberalism. This in turn
means examining political liberalism by focusing on the rhetorical strategies that lead to
conceptual change.
281
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The European Union of today has advanced far beyond being an inter-governmental
organisation among others. But what it is, remains an open question. In classical terms,
the EU in some respects resembles the mixed constitutions and their problems of
balancing between powers in a manner that is, however, different from the United States
or other federal constitutions. Anyhow, the EUs regime indeed is not easy to
categorise, it may even be termed a hybrid combining elements of presidential, semipresidential and parliamentary systems. Besides classifications as such, it is important to
take another characteristic of the EUs regime into account: its continuous development.
EU institutions since the beginning of integration change their character, competencies,
and members; moreover, they interact with each other, often via power struggles aiming
at strenghtening or not losing positions and influence. Hence, the paper suggests to
enlarge the focus of analysis on the EUs political regime beyond established concepts
and use an approach for analysing the procedural and institutional roles and practices as
well as the interplay between the EUs institutions. The aim of this approach is to
understand the forms of acting politically and regulating it in the EUs regime.
Based on these considerations, the core argument of this paper is that the
European Parliament, still often criticised for not being a full-fledged parliament or for
possessing only limited law-making powers, has a specific role in developing and
democratising the EU representative institutional system. Namely, it has shown a
remarkable institutional and strategic creativity over the last years. The EP has used its
decision-making powers as assigned by the EU Treaties to enlarge its influence and
strenghten its role in the EU political system. The parliamentary tools of dissensus,
debate and deliberation, both within the EP and with regard to Commission and
Council, have been decisive means in this respect.
282
TEXT/TEXTO:
The core argument of this paper is that the European Parliament, still often criticised for
not being a full-fledged parliament or for possessing only limited law-making powers,
should be regarded in a more differenciated way for two reasons: First, it shows several
particularities, and second it has a specific role in developing and democratising the EU
representative institutional system. Namely, it has shown a remarkable institutional and
strategic creativity over the last years. The EP has used its decision-making powers as
assigned by the EU Treaties to enlarge its influence and strenghten its role in the EU
political system. The parliamentary tools of dissensus, debate and deliberation, both
within the EP and with regard to Commission and Council, have been decisive means in
this respect.
In the following, two examples for the EPs strategies and the processes that lead
to de facto power gains over the Commission will be analysed the conflicts around the
nominations of the Prodi and the first Barroso commission in 1999 and 2005. Their
consequences for the EU institutional system will also be discussed.
EP strategies of shaping institutional roles
The EPs development not only underlines the openness and procedural
character of the EUs institutional system: the EPs gains of parliamentary competencies
over the years were in great part an outcome of its effective strategies in dealing with
Commission and Council. Political struggles, conflicts, dissensus and debate in what
could have been institutional routine as fixed by the Treaties are one decisive factor in
shaping the EPs institutional role: Existing competencies are broadened first by halfformal, half-informal `framework agreements between EP and commission, often
followed by formal Treaty changes. A closer look at these procedures allows to
delineate specific strategies used by the EP.
Two main struggles of the last 15 years will be described here. They both led to
changed framework agreements as new `grey law. The first conflict dates back to 1999
when the commission under the presidency of Jacques Santer had to resign; the second
happened in 2004 before the EP agreed upon the Barroso commission in 2004.
The fall of the Santer commission
In 1998, Paul van Buitenen, a commission employee, published a report on
intransparent and doubtful bookkeeping and employment practices within the EU
commission. He later was suspended of his functions by the commission (Sddeutsche
Zeitung, November 26th, 1999; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan 7th, 1999). As a
consequence of the Buitenen report, the EP majority did vote against a formal approval
of the commissions actions for the year of 1996 in the end of 1998 (Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, Dec. 18th, 1998). Commission president Jacques Santer in reaction
asked the EP for a vote of no confidence against the commission. He hoped that the
MEPs would not dare to take this step, but he was mistaken: on January 14th, 1999 the
EP voted for the first time in its history on no confidence for the commission. However,
283
because of personal and national loyalties showed by certain MEPs (in particular many
French MEPs refused to vote against Edith Cresson, who was the person that was
criticised the most), and because some MEPs judged the step as too far-reaching, the
vote of no confidence missed even a relative and by far the necessary two-thirdsmajority. EP and commission, however, decided the same day to create a joint expert
commission charged to investigate on the problems in the commission the EP had
obtained a key role in the further development of the affair (Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, January 15th, 1999).
In early march 1999 it became obvious that the expert report would contain
serious recriminations. Santer for the first time openly declared that individual
commissioners could be forced to resign (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 4th,
1999). When the report was published on March 15th, it confirmed serious problems
concerning transparency and accountability in the commissions bookkeeping and
practices. The experts criticised moreover that the responsabilities were so dispersed
throughout the commission that it proved difficult to find out the person responsible for
a given problem. The Santer commission got under immediate pressure, MEPs claiming
a collective resignation and announcing another possible vote of no confidence. The
commission did not give public comments and held a crisis meeting; later in the night it
resigned collectively (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 16th and 17th, 1999).
Soon afterwards, the Council suggested former Italian Minister President
Romano Prodi as new Comission president (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March
26th, 1999). The new commission should be in service for the remaining six months of
office of the former Santer commission and also for the next election period, that is, for
five years and six months in total. The EP now used the crisis after the resignation of
the Santer commission, as well as the fact that it had to approve of the new commission
two times (for the remaining part of the election period and for the following term) to
practically enlarge its competencies way beyond the Treaties regulations.
The EP used a clear strategy: The MEPs had created a negotiation commission
to accompany the selection process of the new commissioners, when the Treaties
formally only foresaw that the EP should approve on the proposal of the commission on
the whole. The negotiation committee indicated to Prodi that the MEPs would only
accept the commission if the candidates had presented themselves in person to an
extensive hearing before the EPs respective committees. Prodi accepted this. The
designed commissioners first responded to a catalogue of questions and declared their
incomes and properties both the reponses and the income declarations were published
on the internet (Sddeutsche Zeitung, August 18th and 28th, 1999). The individual
hearings after that went on from August, 30th to September 7th, 1999 and sometimes
lasted hours; imitating the practices of the US-american Congress. This procedure was
entirely new: until then, short presentations of commissioner candidates had happened
often directly before a new commission was about to be approved of by the EP. The EP
still had no formal right to vote on individual candidates, but Romano Prodi had assured
the MEPs beforehand that he would seriously take into account any concerns or doubts
against individual candidates (Sddeutsche Zeitung, August 18th and 28th; September
2nd, 1999).
284
When the hearings were finished, the EP signalled it would approve of the
commission, and it finally did so on September 15th, 1999 but the MEPs also had
negotiated a series of de facto institutional changes. Namely, Prodi assured the MEPs
that in the future he would seriously take into account any claims for demission of a
commissioner issued by MEPs, and also to take seriously into account the EPs ideas
when drafting law initiatives. He also underlined that the commission further on would
treat the EP respectfully this meant among other things that commissioners from then
on were forced to be present in the EP when it treated matters related to their policy
fields and cooperate in mutual trust (Sddeutsche Zeitung, September 8th, 15th and
16th, 1999; DIE ZEIT September 1st, 1999).
These results were officially and verbatim settled in the new Framework
agreement between the EP and the commission that was published in Summer 2000
(European Parliament 2010). They had a huge practical impact: the proceedings that
were agreed upon set a measure that could not be thrown about by the next commission,
hence every new commission now had to follow it. The EP got quite close to a political
goal, the right to propose a commission, by using the institutional lever of the right to a
vote of approval upon the commission. As Willi Grlach, German MEP until 2004
states, the EP quite often used such strategies: "The EP obtains new competencies by
assuring compliance in a certain area. This leads to lasting, new unwritten rules"
(Wiesner 2002).
The approval of the Barroso commission
The EP used its rights obtained in 1999 before the Barroso-commission was
approved of in 2004: again a power struggle between the designed commission
president, some Council members, and the MEPs took place. Barroso had announced
his proposal for a new commission in August 2004 (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
August 14th, 2004). But before the candidates had even had their hearings in the EP, it
became evident that doubts against some of them were too important, and that a clear
majority in favour of an approval of the commission was not assured. A main person to
be criticised was the designed commissioner for Justice, Rocco Buttiglione. In
interviews preceding his hearings he had openly criticised homosexuals and single
mothers and met with indignation by several MEPs because of these statements, and
because of the fact that he was designed as commissioner for justice and
antidiscrimination matters. The EP committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home
Affairs voted against the candidate Buttiglione, and most fractions in the EP claimed
changes in the proposed commission. Barroso refused this at first (Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, October 17th, 22nd and 28th, 2004). He tried to depreciate the MEPs
until the last minute, stating that commissioner candidates might have individual
opinions, and discrediting pro-integrationist fractions for associating with eurosceptics
in the willingness to vote `no (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 28th, 2004).
Negotiations went on until late in the night before the vote was scheduled.
Interistingly enough the presidents of the Christian democratic and the liberal fractions
tried to persuade their members to approve of the commission without success.
Shortly before the vote, it became evident that there would not be a majority for the
285
commission proposal without personnel changes being carried out. The MEPs made it
clear that in particular Buttiglione was not acceptable to them. Barroso thus was forced
to draw back his proposal and announce personnel changes, the vote did not take place,
and the Prodi commission stayed in office for some more time (Sddeutsche Zeitung,
October 28th and 29th, 2004 and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 28th, 2004).
Since this power struggle had become obvious three days before the Council
meeting in Rome when the EU Constitutional Treaty (which never was fully ratified due
to the negative Referenda in France and the Netherlands) was signed by the Heads of
State, many Council members pressed for a speeding up of proceedings. This led to a
considerable pressure on those governments having suggested the candidates that were
most criticised. So finally, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi declared he would
not keep up the candidate Rocco Buttiglione after having vehemently declined this
possibility for the days before (Sddeutsche Zeitung October 30th and 31st, November
1st, 2004).
Barroso further negotiated with the Council and then changed the Italian and the
Latvian candidate (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 5th and 6th, 2004). The
new setting of commissioner candidates encountered a high acceptance throughout the
EP hearings. The vote of approval on the first Barroso commission was clearly positive
(680 votes were cast and 449 were in favour). But the MEPs stated again that the
commission president should take seriously into account claims for individual
commissioners to resign, and Barroso accepted this (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
November 19th, 2004 and Sddeutsche Zeitung, November 17th and 19th, 2004). The
next Framework agreement in 2005 fixed this strengthened claim again verbatim
(European Parliament 2005).
These two examples sketch the strategies and tools the EP uses to extend its
competencies, in conflicts both with the commission and the Council. By using an
existing competence in the first case the right of approval of the commissions actions,
that is, a part of the budgetary rights; in the second, the newly obtained right resulting
from the first and the parliamentary tools of dissensus and deliberation, the EP
obtained new competencies, which it then could use again to broaden its competencies
and its influence. The new competencies were also officially fixed in the framework
agreements, which represent a sort of `grey law, but of a quasi-constitutional character,
since they regulate relationships between two organs of the legislative and the
executive. Judging the new competencies, a comparative look at national parliaments
underlines that the right to hearings for new commissioners is farther reaching than the
standards of most national parliaments.
Conclusion
It has been argued that the EP, still often criticised for not being a full-fledged
parliament, has a specific role in democratising the EU representative institutional
system.
The discussion has underlined these claims: In sum, it seems short-sighted and
ahistorical to judge the EP as a deficitary parliament. It is different from parliaments in
most classical parliamentary systems, true; but it is a parliament in development, and
286
the way this development proceeds is largely shaped by the EP using its competencies
and the parliamentary tools of dissensus and deliberation strategically and quite
succesfully. The EP also is an agent of politicisation in the EU institutional system
because it puts topics on the agenda, discusses them publicly, and takes a stand. And it
is politicking, it acts as a political actor willing to enlarge its influence in the EU
institutional system and thus contributes to EU democratisation by making the EUs
representative system more balanced. Finally, the EP is a multilingual and transnational
parliament (not many of these exist in the world, the UN general assembly being the
other prominent example). Many of these features are not written down in the Treaties;
they result either from informal practices or they are ruled in `grey documents.
Moreover, the dynamism of the EPs development shows clear similarities to
parliaments developments in the first waves of representative democratisation in nation
states it can be very well compared, for example, to the development of the German
Reichstag in the late 19th century (see Wiesner 2007, 256, 265). Whether one wants to
push such a comparison further or not: it is obvious that in the moment, with the EU
financial crisis going on, there is `open space both for new changes towards further
EU democratisation and / or parliamentarisation fuelled by necessity, and for opposite
tendencies.
The focus of future research on the EP thus should be widened to take into
account these aspects and fields, concentrating on the process dimension and the
dynamics of the EPs development and the factors that shape it: individual and
collective actors, their strategies, and the EPs use of its parliamentary tools.
REFERENCES
I. Newspapers
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, researched in online archive at http://fazarchiv.faz.net/
Sddeutsche Zeitung, researched online at http://www.sz-archiv.de/
DIE ZEIT, researched online at http://www.zeit.de/1999/index
II. Secondary literature
European Parliament. 2005. P6_TA(2005)0194 Framework agreement on EPCommission relations and European Parliament decision on the revision of the
Framework Agreement on relations between the European Parliament and the
Commission
(2005/2076(ACI)).
Accessed
May
08,
2012.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+TA+P6TA-2005-0194+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN.
. 2010. Framework Agreement between Parliament and Commission.
Accessed May 08, 2012. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=//EP//NONSGML+IMPRESS+20100202BKG68427+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN.
Grlach, W. M. 2002 (MEP). Interview by C. Wiesner. March 15. Frankfurt.
Wiesner, Claudia. 2007. Brgerschaft und Demokratie in der EU. Mnster: LIT.
287
288
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Durante el gobierno de los Austrias, diversos mecanismos de administracin, ms all
de los rganos de gobierno tradicionales, fueron puestos en prctica por la autoridad real
para dinamizar la gestin de la Monarqua Hispnica. En la corte, la mxima expresin
de ello fueron las denominadas juntas, rganos colegiados paralelos a los Consejos
Reales que vinieron a minar las competencias y la capacidad de actuacin de stos.
De entre los mltiples periodos en los que se recurri a dichos rganos se ha
considerado el valimiento del conde-duque Olivares (1621-1643) como punto lgido,
pues ste llev su recurso a cotas insospechadas1. Pero, en la mayora de casos, salvo
una excepcin, los rganos constituidos en la corte durante ese periodo recibieron la
consideracin administrativa de juntas, siendo denominados as.
El estallido de la guerra con Francia en 1635 puso en evidencia las deficiencias
del sistema administrativo de la Monarqua Hispnica. Ya previamente se haba tratado
de paliarlas mediante la creacin de las citadas juntas, pero stas adolecan de un
problema semejante a los Consejos Reales: el desfase existente entre la deliberacin y
toma de resolucin en la corte, y su ejecucin si es que sta tena lugar- ms all de la
cerca madrilea. Para solventar dicha deficiencia ms notoria si cabe en una fase de
urgencia, como la de guerra abierta en la pennsula ibrica-, la Corona resolvi
comisionar a diversos cortesanos para que procediesen a gestionar diferentes tareas,
desplazndoles a los lugares donde deban llevarlas a cabo.
En lo referente al mbito blico, algunos de dichos desplazamientos fueron
realizados de forma conjunta, trasladndose tres o ms consejeros para acometer las
tareas. En estos casos, se proceda a instituir un nuevo rgano colegiado que deba de
actuar in situ, sobre el terreno. Significativamente en los primeros ejemplos constatados
1
Elliott, J. H.: El conde-duque de Olivares. El poltico en una poca de decadencia, Crtica, Barcelona,
1990, p. 301.
289
los nuevos rganos no recibieron la comn denominacin de juntas, sino que se les
bautiz como consejos.
Pretendemos en esta comunicacin abordar las hondas implicaciones que ese
concepto, el de consejo, tena en aquella poca y aquel contexto, y por qu fueron estos
rganos as intitulados. Lo contrapondremos con las escasas- menciones posteriores,
que han tendido a equiparar nominalmente estos rganos a las juntas. En sntesis,
reflexionaremos sobre la importancia que tena en aquel periodo el que estos rganos
fueran llamados consejos.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Especialmente para lo referido a la fiscalidad: Crceles de Gea, Beatriz: Del juez de comisin al
comisario real. El fraude fiscal como agente del <<gobierno econmico>>, en Studia Historica.
Historia Moderna, n 13, 1995, pp. 155-175.
3
Baltar Rodrguez, Juan Francisco: Las Juntas de Gobierno de la Monarqua Hispnica (siglos
XVI-XVII), CEPC, Madrid, 1998; Snchez Gonzlez, Dolores del Mar: El deber de consejo en el
Estado Moderno. Las Juntas ad hoc en Espaa (1471-1665), Polifemo, Madrid, 1993 y
Snchez Gonzlez, Dolores del Mar: Las juntas ordinarias, tribunales permanentes en la corte de
los Austrias, UNED, Madrid, 1995.
4
Elliott, John Huxtable: El conde-duque de Olivares. El poltico en una poca de decadencia,
Crtica, Barcelona, 1990, p. 301.
5
Gonzlez Alonso, Benjamn: El conde duque de Olivares y la administracin de su tiempo, en
Elliott, John Huxtable y Garca Sanz, ngel (eds.): La Espaa del Conde Duque de Olivares,
Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, 1990, en especial pp. 289-302.
290
gran nmero de juntas, en especial en lo referente a las materias que mayor atencin
requeran en un contexto blico: la Hacienda Real y la propia guerra.
La cuestin nominal en la poca del conde-duque de Olivares
Visto pues que la creacin de rganos colegiados para la gestin de
determinados asuntos durante el valimiento de Olivares no era una novedad, pasamos a
reflexionar sobre las distintas denominaciones que recibieron, detenindonos en la parte
del nombre que los estableca como rgano administrativo.
Dentro del amplio nmero de rganos colegiados constituidos durante el
gobierno del conde-duque, podemos establecer una doble clasificacin, en base a la
ubicacin de su sede. Por un lado tenemos aquellos rganos residentes en la corte,
prximos al monarca. En dicha casustica la mayor parte de rganos fueron constituidos
como juntas, y por ende as bautizados. El valido, consciente seguramente de la
importancia nominal y de la animadversin que ciertos consejos reales le desarrollaron,
prefiri mantener la frmula y nombres tradicionales de los rganos paralelos.
nicamente encontraremos un caso en el cual se constituy un consejo: el de la Sal.
ste fue creado para la gestin de un impuesto nuevo sobre la sal que la Corona trat de
establecer a comienzos de 1631 6 . Dada la importancia y carcter novedoso del
cometido, fue equiparado tanto orgnica y funcional como nominalmente a los
principales rganos de gobierno de la Monarqua.
En el seno de la corte, durante el periodo del valimiento del conde-duque de
Olivares se produjo tambin una medida en sentido contrario de gran significacin, es
decir, la supresin de un consejo. Tal fue el caso Consejo de Portugal, memoria del
reino donde quiera que estuviera el monarca7, que fue reemplazado en 1639 el ao
previo al inicio de la rebelin portuguesa- por sendas juntas en Madrid y Lisboa que
vinieron a reforzar la posicin de un clan, el Vasconceslos-Soares, adeptos al valido8.
El segundo de los grupos, al que prestaremos mayor atencin, es el de los rganos
establecidos lejos de las salas de alczar madrileo para la gestin de diferentes
aspectos in situ. Dicho procedimiento lo hemos hallado para la administracin de
guerra, con los casos de los Consejos de Badajoz, Ayamonte y Cantabria9.
6
291
10
Covarrubias, Sebastin de: Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, Luis Snchez, Madrid,
1611, fol. 233.
11
Dios, Salustiano de: El Consejo Real de Castilla (1385-1521), CEC, Madrid, 1982, p. 219.
12
Mackay, Ruth: Los lmites de la autoridad real. Resistencia y obediencia en la Castilla del sigo
XVII, Junta de Castilla y Len, Valladolid, 2007, pp. 43-53.
292
Ha de tenerse en cuenta que en el siglo XVII el trmino Cantabria distaba de tener el significado que en
la actualidad refleja, puesto que las fronteras del mismo no se circunscriban a la Comunidad Autnoma
de Cantabria. Al contrario, durante los siglos XVI y XVII tuvo plena vigencia en la Monarqua Hispnica
el mito del vasco-cantabrismo, que consideraba que los actuales territorios de la Comunidad Autnoma
del Pas Vasco y otros limtrofes haban formado parte de la legendaria Cantabria, cuyos habitantes
haban resistido heroicamente el ataque de los romanos. Obviamente dicha interpretacin, lejos de ser
asptica, tenan hondas implicaciones polticas, siendo uno de los pilares discursivos fundamentales del
engarce de los territorios vascos, en especial los costeros, en el complejo imperial. Vid en este sentido
Monreal Zia, G.: Anotaciones sobre el pensamiento poltico tradicional vasco en el siglo XVI, AHDE, t.
L, 1980, pp. 971-1004.
14
Real Decreto, San Lorenzo del Escorial, 14.X.1638, en Archivo Histrico Nacional (AHN),
Consejos Suprimidos (CCSS), leg. 13198.
15
Consulta del Consejo de Sal, referida por Schaub, J.-F.: Ltat , op. cit., p. 28.
293
VV.AA.: Actas de las Juntas Generales de lava, t. XVII, Juntas Generales de lava, Vitoria,
1994, p. 42.
17
Domnguez Ortiz, Antonio: La conspiracin del duque de Medina Sidonia y el marqus de
Ayamonte, en Domnguez Ortiz, Antonio: Crisis y decadencia de la Espaa de los Austrias, Ariel,
Barcelona, 1973, pp. 113-153 y Salas Almela, Luis: Medina Sidonia. El poder de la aristocracia. 15801670, Marcial Pons, Madrid, 2008, pp. 348-408.
18
Carta de Juan de Santelices al duque de Medina Sidonia, s. l., s. f., en AHN, CCSS, leg. 7261.
294
territorios donde deba actuar, as como de cara a los propios integrantes del rgano. De
ah que stos defendiesen su precisa denominacin, aunque no siempre lo consiguieran.
La mayora de los rganos apuntados, sin embargo, tuvieron una vigencia efmera. El
Consejo de la Sal pudo alcanzar aproximadamente los doce aos de existencia. Lejos
an de otros casos como el del Consejo de Cantabria, vigente apenas cuatro aos y
medio. Pero en ningn caso sobrevivieron a la contrarreforma administrativa que se
produjo poco despus de la cada de su impulsor y valedor: el conde-duque de Olivares,
en enero de 1643.
Su desaparicin trajo a estos rganos una doble postergacin. Por un lado, dada
su ligazn al valido, padecieron durante un largo periodo la damnatio memoriae a la que
fue sometida el ministro y su ministerio19. A raz de su desaparicin, y a lo largo de los
siglos, muy pocos volvieron sobre ellos, hasta que a finales del siglo XX diferentes
obras, interesadas en el anlisis poltico-institucional de la Monarqua Hispnica, han
permitido que salieran del sueo de los justos en que estaban inmersos20.
Pero junto con el olvido, los rganos tambin padecieron una segunda
postergacin: la nominal. Mientras estuvieron vigentes pocos utilizaron otro trmino
que no fuera el oficial otorgado por la Corona, y cuando sucedi y tuvieron
conocimiento, sus integrantes procedieron a denunciar y solicitar la subsanacin del
error. Pero tras su supresin, la nitidez con la que se haban referido los coetneos se fue
difuminando paulatinamente. Su autoridad ya no era relevante, pues ya no tena
implicacin prctica alguna. Adems, dado que se enmarcaban en un periodo que, en lo
administrativo, haba estado caracterizado por la creacin de juntas, parecan semejarse
a stas. Ms an, las hondas implicaciones que tena el trmino consejo parecan no
casar con la eventualidad y limitado marco de actuacin de los rganos as constituidos
en la poca. Por eso parecan poder ser referidos indistintamente como juntas o en los
menos casos- consejos21. Una vez estos consejos haban desaparecido, su denominacin
pareca haber perdido su importancia.
19
295
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
A consolidated even if outdated legal-historical tradition defines under the generic
name of Grande Tribunale (Supreme Court) the high Court of every stateorganization of the Modern period; a royal court composed only by the choicest jurists,
personally appointed by the sovereign, with exclusive competence on a number of
subjects (above all crimen laesae maiestatis) and competence of appeal on any sentence
issued by lower tribunals.
Like all the others territorial-political systems in Europe, even Siciliy is
characterized by the presence of these royal Courts of Appeal. Therefore, being so
relevant the analysis of these structures, wich stood at the top of the administrative and
jurisdictional organization of early modern kingdoms, equally valuable is the study of
the officiales, i.e. the judges who formed the courts. These figures, in fact, constituted a
powerful and often cohesive class, the so-called togati, which greatly influenced the
institutional dynamics of the Five seventeenth century monarchies.
Appointed by the sovereigns in order to set up their own judicial arm and ensure
the strict application of the royal law, these officials actually exercised an alternative
power, often opposing to the central one. This counter-power stemmed precisely from
the prominent role performed, ex officio, in the administration of justice of last degree,
not to mention the personal prestige claimed by these judges, chosen among the most
distinguished jurists of the realm and coming from the most relevant families.
A silent confrontation, then, that elects Law and in particular the rules of the
process as a privileged ground of clash. This is a capital fact, especially if focusing, as
I intend to do in this paper, on the collections of Seventeenth century decisiones relating
to the judgements of the Supremi Tribunali of the Regnum Siciliae. These represent a
literary genre flourishing in Sicily in that time, a genre to which the most distinguished
jurists devoted themselves, the same who, as mentioned, were part of those same courts
as judges. These primary sources return an image of a legal doctrine committed to
provide such an extensive interpretation of the royal law as to result almost subversive,
presenting a scheme in wich the doctrin produced by the togati became itself a source of
law, thus overtaking the royal legitimacy.
Here, then, as the Sixteenth century judge, in his role as high royal official,
becomes the balance of the political, institutional an doctrinal reality of the Regnum
Siciliae.
296
TEXTO/TEXT:
The purpose of the present contribution is to give an account of how a royal official as
the judge in the Seventeenth century might influence the judicial practice applied in
Regnum Siciliae both ex officio as a member of the Supreme Courts of the Kingdom that
as a jurist author of works of doctrine especially collections of decisiones. An influence
that is expressed in terms of application and interpretation of the law of the sovereign.
Like all the others modern territorial-political systems in Europe, even Siciliy is
characterized by the presence of royal Courts of Appeal, institutions that a consolidated
even if outdated legal-historical tradition brought together under the generic name of
Grandi Corti (Great Courts) or Tribunali Supremi (Supreme Courts).1
It is known that the definition of Grande Tribunale can be related to the
Supreme Court of every state-organization of the modern period; a high court composed
only by the choicest jurists, personally appointed by the sovereign, with exclusive
competence on a number of subjects (above all crimen laesae maiestatis) and
competence of appeal on any sentence issued by lower tribunals. In the past decades, the
studies on the Grandi Tribunali had a significant development, even though
characterized by sporadic occurrence; in addition, it's to point out that, at least by
historians of law, it has been paid more attention to the production of case law in
particular the collections of decisiones than to the procedural documentation.2
Therefore, being so relevant the analysis of these structures, wich stood at the
top of the administrative and jurisdictional organization of early modern kingdoms,
equally valuable is the study of the officiales, i.e. the judges who formed the courts.
These figures, in fact, constituted a powerful and often cohesive class, the so-called
togati, which greatly influenced the institutional dynamics of the sixteenth- seventeenth
century monarchies.
1
Is known that the issue was addressed around the 70s of the last century from studies by Gino
Gorla, I Tribunali Supremi degli Stati italiani. fra i secc. XVI e XIX, quali fattori della unificazione
del diritto nello Stato e della sua uniformazione fra Stati (Disegno storico-comparatistico), in La
formazione storica del diritto moderno in Europa, I, Firenze 1977, pp.445-532; on conceptual and
definitional problems posed by this historiographical category cf M. Ascheri, Tribunali Giuristi e
Istituzioni dal medioevo allet moderna, Bologna 1989; R. Savelli, Tribunali, "decisiones" e
giuristi: una proposta di ritorno alle fonti, in Origini dello Stato. Processi di formazione statale in
Italia fra medioevo ed et moderna, edited by G. Chittolini-A. Mohlo-P. Schiera, Bologna 1994,
pp.397-421; I. Birocchi, Alla ricerca dellordine, Torino 2002, pp.85-93.
2
The most significant examples are U. Petronio, Il Senato di Milano. Istituzioni giuridiche ed
esercizio del potere nel Ducato di Milano da Carlo V a Giuseppe II, I, Milano 1977; Id., I Senati
giudiziari, in Il Senato nella storia. Il Senato nel medioevo e nella prima et moderna, Roma
1997, pp.355-453; G.P. Massetto, Monarchia spagnola, Senato e Governatore: la questione delle
grazie nel Ducato di Milano. Secoli XVI-XVII, in "Archivio storico lombardo", CXVI (1990),
pp.75-112; M.N. Miletti, Stylus iudicandi. Le raccolte di "decisiones" del Regno di Napoli in et
moderna, Napoli 1995; Grandi tribunali e rote nell'Italia di antico regime, edited by M. SbriccoliA. Bettoni, Milano 1993; J. Krynen, Qu'est-ce qu'un Parlement qui reprsente le roi?, in
Excerptiones iuris: Studies in Honor of Andr Gouron, edited by B.Durand-L. Mayali, Berkeley
2000, pp.353-66.
297
Appointed by the sovereigns in order to set up their own judicial arm and ensure
the strict application of the royal law, these officials actually exercised an alternative
power, often opposing to the central one. This counter-power stemmed precisely from
the prominent role performed, ex officio, in the administration of justice of last degree,
not to mention the personal prestige claimed by these judges, chosen among the most
distinguished jurists of the realm and coming from the most relevant families.
A silent confrontation, then, that elects Law and in particular the rules of the
process as a privileged ground of clash. This is a capital fact, especially if focusing, as
I intend to do in this paper, on the collections of Seventeenth century decisiones relating
to the judgements of the Supremi Tribunali of the Regnum Siciliae.
Referring to case law in late-medieval and early-modern European law,
particularly in the ius commune tradition, usually means relying on collections of socalled Decisiones or continental-type law reports, which were works written by authors
in their private capacity, and therefore works which belonged primarily to legal
doctrine. These collections rarely reproduced the text of the judgements, which would
anyway, as they did not express the legal principles upon which the judge or the court
had relied, not have fulfilled the purpose of reporting decided cases. Most collections of
Decisiones contain a legal analysis or commentary of one or more decisions from one or
more courts. Because many of these printed collections would nonetheless purport to
present the legal grounds and reasoning behind the decisions, they were instrumental, as
a successful genre in early-modern legal literature, in establishing the notion that cases
did contribute to legal developments, and could therefore qualify as an authority or a
source of law, and therefore as case law.3
Legal science Sicily, between '500 and '600 is characterized by a very close
connection with the field of procedure. This is evident, in fact, from the works of
sicilian jurists which are composed in this period, at least from a purely quantitative
point of view. A production which is so wide and varied in terms of expressing the legal
doctrine of Siciliy between the fifteenth and seventeenth century is important from the
point of view of quantity but especially valuable from that of quality, according to the
high degree of authority both within the island and that which reached beyond the
borders of it, evidenced especially by the spread of the largest collections of decisiones
of the sicilian courts, which were printed in various editions across most of Europe.
The first collection of decisiones of a Sicilian court came out in 1593 and is
assigned to the judge Francesco Milanese.4 The work opens, stating that this is a very
fortunate series of Decisiones for Sicily. It is, in fact, followed by editions of many
other books whose authors-Mastrillo, 5 Intrigliolo, 6 Del Castillo, 7 Giurba, 8 Muta, 9
3
A. Wijffels, Legal Records and Reports in the Great Council of Malines (15th to 18th Centuries),
), in Judicial records, law reports and the growth of the Case-law, edited by J.H.Baker, Berlin
1989, pp. 181-207.
4
F. Milanese, Aureae decisiones Regiae Curiae Regni Siciliae, vol. I e II, Venetiis 1593.
5
G. Mastrillo, Decisiones Consistorii Sacrae Regiae Conscientiae Regni Siciliae, Panormi 1606.
6
N. Intrigliolo, Decisiones aureae Magnae Regiae Curiae Regni Siciliae, Panormi 1609.
7
G.F. Del Castillo, Decisiones Tribunalis Consistorii Sacrae Regiae Conscientiae Regni Siciliae,
Panormi 1613.
8
M. Giurba, Decisiones novissimae Consistorii Sacrae Regiae Conscientiae Regni Siciliae,
Messanae 1616.
298
Caracciolo 10 and Basilic, 11 to name the best-known representatives are the most
influential among Sicilian lawyers and judges lived between the second half of the
sixteenth and the seventeenth century. Their collections are inherent mainly to causes
discussed in the courts of the Regia Gran Corte12 and of the Concistoro della Sacra
Regia Coscienza,13 with no discernible collections of judgments of the Curia Rationum.
Most of the decisiones regards the feudal matter, the most debated in local courts,
although there are collections entirely focused on criminal disputes or volumes that
collect judgments in the field of trade and census.
In Sicily, then, published examples of such literature are not found before 1593,
but in the fifty years from 1600 to 1650 there are more than even thirty editions, which
then diminish to less than ten in the second fifty years of the seventeenth century. The
reasons behind that flourishing in this period are attributable to a number of factors.
First, the stabilization process of the High Courts in Sicily, which began in the midfifteenth century matures with the prammatica de reformatione tribunalium of Philip II
in November 1569.14 And 'with that decision, in fact, the structure of the judiciary of the
island with the apex courts of the Regia Gran Corte end of the Concistoro della Sacra
Regia Coscienza is essentially defined, including in relation to a preconceived system of
ordinary appeals.15
Added to this is surely the massive professionalization of the judiciary because
of the presence, as judges of the supreme courts, of the greatest jurists of the island,
especially those which could not but help to increase the prestige of the decisions taken
by those courts. These same judges are also the authors of the collections of these
decisiones. Significant influence may also have been a "fashion" which took the form of
a literary genre in those years, which largely succeed in Europe. . Do not underestimate
the momentum which was finally derived from the creation and dissemination of
printing works in Palermo, useful for decreasing the cost and facilitating the necessary
contacts for the editions.
The collections of decisiones by Sicilian judges and jurists stand on the
9
M. Muta, Decisiones novissimae Magnae Regiae Curiae supremisque magistratus Regni Siciliae,
Panormi 1619.
10
O. Caracciolo, Decisiones Curiae Pretoris Felicis Urbis Panormi, Panormi 1641.
11
G. Basilic, , Decisiones Magnae Regiae Curiae Regni Siciliae, Messanae 1669.
12
On The Decisiones issued by the Regia Gran Corte see A. Romano, Le decisiones della Regia
Gran Corte del Regno di Sicilia. Forma delle sentenze, registrazione, raccolte, in Case Law in the
making. The Techniques and Methods of Judicial Records and Law Reports, vol.2: Documents,
edited by A. Wijffels, Berlin 1997, pp.137-194.
13
On this subject could see F. Di Chiara, Per un repertorio della dottrina giuridica di et
moderna. Le Decisiones del Concistoro della Sacra Regia Coscienza del Regno di Sicilia, Palermo
2011 (on-line version on www.mediterranearicerchestoriche.it).
14
Pragmaticarum regni Siciliae novissima collectio, Panormi 1637, tomo II, tit. I, pragm. unica,
pp.1-7.
15
On Modern Sicilian administration of justice see A. Baviera Albanese, L'ufficio di Consultore
del Vicer nel quadro delle riforme dell'organizzazione giudiziaria del secolo XVI in Sicilia, in
Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato, 1960; now in Ead., Scritti minori, Soveria Mannelli (CZ), 1992,
pp.109-158 e di V. Sciuti Russi, Astrea in Sicilia. Il ministero togato nella societ siciliana dei
secoli XVI e XVII , Napoli 1983.; A. Romano, La Regia Gran Corte del Regno di Sicilia, in Case
Law in the Making. The Techniques and Methods of Judicial Records and Law Reports, vol. 1,
edited by A. Wijffels, Berlin 1997, pp. 111-161; for a period longer dating see B.Pasciuta, In regia
curia civiliter convenire. Giustizia e citt nella Sicilia tardomedievale, Torino 2003, pp. 41-68.
299
crossroads of several legal traditions at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th
century. They are anchored in the civil law or ius commune tradition, but their
perspective is that of the Sicilians Kingdom. As works written primarily by the
standards of the ius commune literature, they reflect in many ways the law of the
books, but because their proclaimed emphasis is on the practice of the sicilian superior
courts, they also reflect to some degree legal practice, or, as it is sometimes called, the
law in action.
These collections of case law although totally neglected by historians to date,
undoubtedly constitute sources of knowledge of primary importance not only for the
study of legal thought between the Sicilian XVI and XVII century, but also to
investigate the contribution of the doctrine to the interpretation and effective formation
of the positive law of the Kingdom of Sicily.
To complete the picture, always with regard to the production of doctrine, treaties
explicitly on the procedure for forensic activity are also held in high esteem, in addition
to the collections of Decisiones. This is also the case for the 'practicae' and
commentaries on the civil and criminal Ritus Magnae Regiae Curiae16 in particular, the
source of law with which Alfonso V in 1446 intended to regulate the internal praxis of
the courts of the Kingdom. 17 These works, which were produced in considerable
numbers as early as the second half of the fifteenth century, spread particularly in the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, in the same period in which, as has been
seen, the collections of sicilian decisiones also thrive. Also the authors of these works
are all successful judges and lawyers, who often write not only treated but also
collections of decisions. This factor determines not only homogeneity, especially in
style between the two genres, but also a dense series of reciprocal citations among the
decisiones and treaties in a continuous exchange between auctoritates that "play" to
legitimize each other. This created a framework to render this dynamic and vibrant
island of doctrine, which was compact at the same time and characterized by the
intrinsic continuity which arose out of contamination between the genres.
Works of doctrine, despite their undeniable differences, mainly due to the different
literary genres used by the authors, are characterized, in fact, for the purpose of
explaining, and perhaps most importantly, for interpreting the Ritus, an interpretation
that necessarily become creative, arise sufficiently to make the work of teaching a
source which takes precedence over the original legal text. This finding seems
incontrovertible, even with regard to the perception that users have the same law. In
fact, all citations of the Ritus, contained in the collections of sicilian-decisiones which in
the eyes of contemporaries reflected the law as applied in judicial practice, do not make
direct reference to Ritus, but to the works in which this law is commented on,
particularly in the two commentaries of Conversano18 and Cumia.19 So that which goes
16
The full text of the Ritus Magnae Regiae Curiae et totius Regni Siciliae Curiarum, by Alfonso
V il Magnanimo is in Capitula regni Siciliae, edited by F. Testa, tt. II, Panormi 1741 (riprint
edited by A. Romano, Saveria Mannelli (CZ) 1999), t. I pp. 240-273.
17
On the Ritus Magnae Regiae Curiae see B. Pasciuta, In regia curia, pp.88-91.
18
M. Conversano, Commentaria super ritu regni Siciliae ... a Marcello Conversano collecta,
Panormi 1614.
300
to make up the communis opinio, resolving disputes, is not the source of law, since it is
the interpretation which makes the doctrine. The legislation, as such, seen rather in
terms of in its deterioration, is unclear and uncoordinated. Hence, this doctrine, with its
rationality, corrects it, thus providing a procedural model which to some extent offered
an alternative to that imposed directed by standardization.
Moreover, it is no coincidence that in the sicilian collectios of decisiones statute law
both domestic and foreign- is occasionally, but not frequently, quoted as an authority.
Indeed, case law essued by Sicilian or foreign courts appears to be by far the most
frequently quoted type of authority, together with the works of doctrine, used as solutio
to resolve disputes.
This is a response within the scope of the activity of lawyers, regarding the
interpretation and implementation of the law, against the attempt by the sicilian
monarchy to include procedural matters entirely within the legislative powers of the
sovereign.
The formal law of the state and legal doctrine are therefore constantly engaged in a
silent opposition to electing procedure as an arena for activities and accommodation,
with the purpose stated, to bring order to a discipline which in itself is chaotic and less
inclined to fall into grids which are unique and preconceived. 20 Simply study the
possible krasis of the rule laid down by the king and the interpretation given by lawyers
in order to identify the space occupied by the law actually applied in the Kingdom.
Here, then, as the Sixteenth century judge, in his role as high royal official and at the
same time as jurist author of works of doctrine, becomes the balance of the political,
institutional an doctrinal reality of the Regnum Siciliae. In this regard the collections of
decisions, made by the judges become primary sources that return this image of a legal
doctrine committed to provide such an extensive interpretation of the royal law as to
result almost subversive, presenting a scheme in wich the doctrin produced by the togati
became itself a source of law, thus overtaking the royal legitimacy.
19
G. Cumia, In ritus magnae regiae curiae ac totius regni Siciliae curiarum Commentaria,
praxisque super eiusdem Magnae Regiae Curiae ritibus [....], Panormi 1578.
20
This theme is further developed by B. Pasciuta, Le fonti giudiziarie del Regno di Sicilia tra
tardo Medioevo e prima Et Moderna: le magistrature centrali, in La documentazione degli
organi giudiziari nellItalia Tardo-Medievale e Moderna, edited by A.Giorgi, S. Moscadelli and
C. Zarrilli, Siena 2012, pp. 315-330.
301
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Es algo compartido que al momento de ser nombrado un ministro recibese ciertos
privilegios que le habran permitido el ascenso en la escala social. Sin embargo justo
por eso haba que compartir ciertas virtudes que, por as decirlo, eran inherentes al
prncipe en cuanto gobernante. El ministro, en otras palabras, tena que estar adornado
de algunas virtudes del Rey, aunque no de todas, porque algunas eran prerrogativa solo
del Soberano: por ejemplo, el ministro poda y deba ser clemente, pero tena que saber
que como derecho ese era atributo exclusivo de la soberana.
Entonces, el ministro, despus de la nmina, pasaba a ser persona pblica. y por
tanto, su tarea no poda ser otra que la consecucin y mantenimiento del bien de la
comunidad. Un bien que puede ser identificado, con bastante seguridad, en la paz social,
o es mejor decir en la armona y concordia entre las distintas componentes sociales y
polticas que componan la repblica: un elemento imprescindible por los varios
virreyes, que podan gobernar los distintos dominios solo gracias al consenso de la
varias elites naturales. De consecuencia, si el prncipe en privado poda ser un bellaco y
ejercer su actividad pblica con extraordinario virtuosismo, el ministro tena que ser en
pblico como en privado virtuoso.
Por estos motivos, el trabajo intentar analizar este rasgo peculiar de los oficial
regios en Antiguo Rgimen, y lo har eximinando varios casos de altos ministros del
gobierno del Reino de Sicilia en el siglo XVII, removidos da sus cargas por ser culpable
de haber estropeado con sus actos la concordia de la repblica, poniendo en peligro el
consenso necesario a la actuacin de la poltica de la Corona; con eso se espera poder
contribuir al objetivo que si pone este panel: alcanzar una mejor definicin y un ms
puntual acotamiento de la distintas facetas de un concepto as polidrico y significativo
en la historiografa jurdico-institucional, como es aquello de oficial.
302
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Los cien aos que van desde la segunda mitad del siglo XIX hasta la primera del XX
son sin duda el periodo en el cual el binomio tcnico-funcionario se convirti en la
Europa continental en el ms asumido rasgo identificativo de los miembros de la
publica administracin, al punto de llegar a ser un estereotipo sociolgico y cultural.
Una imagen que los mismos protagonistas de la funcin pblica colaboraron a
promover, fundamentando justo en su formacin tcnica su inamovilidad, frente a un
mundo de la poltica cambiante y en movimiento. Una dimensin la Poltica que se
quiso definir como incompatible a partir de la nocin que lo mismos miembros de la
publica administracin contribuan a dar del concepto de funcionario. Una
incompatibilidad que habra encontrado su fundamento ltimo en las muchas
disposiciones reglamentarias, legales, sino cuando constitucionales, que el mismo
mundo de la poltica pona como barrera entre estas dos dimensiones. Sin embargo
parece justo preguntarse si este relato del concepto de funcionario no sea poco ms que
un idola fori, que al repetirse hace olvidar su nacimiento.
No es casualidad que en la larga temporada constituyente de cuo democrtico
entre las dos guerras mundiales se haya empezado a plantear de otra forma el problema
de la incompatibilidad, en el doble sentido de posibilidad de participacin del
funcionario a la poltica activa y al mismo tiempo de fidelidad del miembro de la
administracin a proyectos democrticos que rompan el hilo de una tradicin, real o
inventada que fuese. Lo que en realidad denunciaba este debate era el aflorar de aquella
dimensin poltica del funcionario que la propria definicin del concepto, elaborada por
muchos de los protagonistas de la vida pblica, ocultaba por detrs de la fidelidad a un
poder legalmente constituido.
Por eso el examen del caso espaol entre el final de la Gran Guerra y la
afirmacin del Rgimen franquista resulta muy llamativo: vinculado a lo largo del siglo
XIX a lgicas de Cuerpo ms bien cercanas a la dimensin del Oficio, el mundo de la
pblica administracin, o mejor de las muchas administraciones que componan el
panorama de la funcin pblica espaola, vivi entre el 1918, ao de la aprobacin de la
Ley de Funcionarios, y la cada de la Segunda Repblica una convulsa temporada de
expansin numrica y tcnica del funcionariado, acompaada por una de la ms densas,
concitadas y relevantes etapas poltico-institucionales de su Historia. Una temporada en
303
TEXTO/TEXT:
304
305
reflexin que lleg a su ltimo grado de madurez justo en el momento crucial de la gran
Guerra y del colapso del Reich guillermino: en el marco de la construccin de la primera
repblica alemana en Weimar vital era entender como parlamentarismo y burocracia
pudiesen convivir en el marco de unas sociedades democrticas siempre ms complejas
y necesitadas tanto de una gestin competente como de espacios de libertad pblica
organizados9. Cabe sin embargo destacar una diferencia fundamental: como es sabido la
obra del Weber maduro se pona como propsito fotografiar dos realidades existentes,
es a decir la potencial omnipotencia del cuerpo burocrtico prusiano y la inmadurez del
parlamentarismo alemn, con el intento de llegar a encontrar un equilibrio que entregase
el momento ltimo de la accin poltica a los partidos, como representantes oficiales de
la voluntad popular en el Reichstag. Lo que se propona resolver era el nudo de un bien
estructurado y definido mundo del funcionariado, que cuanto ms negaba con su
tecnicidad su responsabilidad y funcin poltica, ms encarnaba el real momento apical
de la accin de gobierno10.
En el caso espaol nos enfrentamos en realidad a un sistema de pequeas lites
aisladas, que en su totalidad no sali de las lgicas de cuerpos, en alguna medida
contrapuestos, hasta entrado el siglo XX: y si tal vez en el parlamentarismo canovista la
llegada de fuerzas ajenas o marginales al sistema del turno puso en fibrilacin un
mecanismo que, ms que controlar la periferia y la administracin, era en ltima
instancia producto de sus lites, el mundo de los funcionarios pblicos sigui
fraccionado en unos compartimentos estancos que funcionaban ms en la lgica de la
posesin y gestin corporativa del oficio, en el cual cada escala administrativa tena
como horizonte el propio cuerpo y los propios superiores. Nos encontramos entonces
hasta metido el siglo XX con la ausencia de un plan global de construccin de una
verdadera administracin del Estado, tanto si nos referimos a ella como estructura,
cuanto como capacidad de dar forma a un ethos estatal de sus operadores11.
Por supuesto la aprobacin de la Ley de Funcionarios en 1918 supuso un cambio
muy hondo, por lo menos del marco legal y reglamentario de referencia, aunque su
llegada tarda, y en condiciones de gran convulsin poltica, limitaron tanto su alcance
como su aplicacin.
Sin embargo no hay que imaginar el sistema de las oposiciones como un
mecanismo de por si capaz de romper sistemas de seleccin que tenan ms relacin con
la defensa de la capacidad de control del cuerpo sobre sus miembros que con las
certificacin de competencias: como justamente ha puesto de relieve Fernando Martnez
Prez varias podan ser las prcticas para vaciar de contenido la oposicin como ...por
ejemplo, el control por parte de los funcionarios del cuerpo de la composicin de los
de Weber: Y. Ruano de la Fuente, La presencia de Max Weber en el pensamiento espaol:
historia de una doble recepcin, en Arbor: Ciencia, pensamiento y cultura, n. 726, 2007, pp. 545566.
9H. Schulze, Storia della Repubblica di Weimar, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1987, pp. 123-144.
10P. P. Portinaro, Max Weber..., pp. 18-21; A. Gianna Manca, W. Brauneder (de.), L'istituzione
parlamentare nel XIX secolo. Una prospettiva comparata / Die parlamentarische Institution im 19
Jahrhundert. Ein Vergleich, Bologna Berlin, Il Mulino Dunker & Humbolt, 2000.
11F. Villacorta Baos, Profesionales y burcratas: estado y poder corporativo en la Espaa del
siglo XX, 1890-1923, Madrid, Siglo XXI de Espaa, 1989 (aqu sobre todo pp. 28-31).
306
307
aquellos cuerpos especiales (pero al final no tan diferentes) que por sus funciones y
sus caractersticas mantenan una estrecha y constante relacin no solo con la clase
poltica, sino tambin con su funcin legislativa. En este sentido los oficiales de la
Secretaria del Congreso, a los cuales perteneca nuestro Pons y Umbert, pueden
constituir un punto de mira privilegiado a la hora de analizar las relaciones entre una
micro lite tcnica y los representantes de la voluntad popular17. Lo que se acaba de
afirmar podra de todas formas levantar unas cuantas dudas: al fin y al cabo los oficiales
del Congreso seran a nuestros ojos miembros de la que se ha definido una
administracin medial, dependiente directamente del Parlamento y desvinculada de
cualquier control por parte del ejecutivo, en nombre de la libertad parlamentaria en
materia de reglamentos18.
En realidad, como se ha dicho con anterioridad, si consideramos la estructura
fragmentada en ncleos cerrados de la administracin espaola tanto del siglo XIX
como de la primera mitad del XX, el problema es encontrar algo que en ltima instancia
no sea un cuerpo administrativo que gestione y responda a los intereses de su propio
centro de poder: los oficiales de Cortes, ms que representar en este sentido una
anomala, son una parte ms de un conjunto articulado y complejo, que sin embargo va
aglutinndose alrededor de una imagen del alto funcionario como tcnico que auxilia la
poltica sin ejercerla de manera activa19. Se trataba de un diafragma sutil, dbil, tan dbil
da resultar en buena medida inexistente: la obra de asesoramiento jurdico que los
oficiales de Cortes cumplan a lo largo de la elaboracin y debate a nivel parlamentario
de una ley sea tal vez uno de los ejemplos ms claros del peso poltico que el
desempeo de un auxilio tcnico poda conllevar. Y sin embargo mantener este punto
era fundamental a la hora de amparar los tres rasgo definitorios a travs de los cuales se
daba forma a un concepto de funcionario que, solo en su totalidad, constitua la clave de
bveda que sujetaba la supervivencia de los integrantes de los distintos cuerpos
administrativos ms all de los cambios de rgimen. Volvemos por un momento a Pons
y Umbert y a su expediente: en la acta redactada por la vista que Vidarte organiz con el
17J. V. Gmez Rivas, La Administracin parlamentaria espaola. Creacin y consolidacin,
Madrid, Congreso de los Diputados, 2002; J. F. Merino Merchn, Los Reglamentos
parlamentarios durante el sexenio revolucionario, en Revista de derecho poltico, N 55-56, 2002,
pp. 295-342; N. Prez Serrano Jaregui, El letrado de las Cortes: (un oficio tcnico de jurista
cercano a la poltica), in L. M. Dez-Picazo, (a cura de), El oficio de jurista, Madrid, Siglo XXI,
2006, pp. 103-147; M. Ruiz Jimnez, Organizacin interna de las Cortes de Cdiz, en F.
Miranda Rubio, (coord.) Actas Congreso internacional Guerra, sociedad y poltica (1808-1814),
Vol. 1, 2008, pp. 667-690; B. Cosculluela Martnez (dir.), Bicentenario de la Secretara y del
Cuerpo de Letrados de las Cortes, 1811-2011, Madrid, Dep. de Publicaciones Congreso de los
Diputados, 2011.
18F. Garrido Falla, M. Baena del Alcazar y R. Entrena Cuesta, La Administracin en la
Constitucin, Madrid, CEC, 1980; con tema los reglamentos parlamentarios: adems del clsico de
N. Prez Serrano Naturaleza jurdica del Reglamento parlamentario, en Revista de Estudios
Polticos, Madrid 1959, n. 105, Mayo-Junio, p. 99-169, vease: I. Fernndez Sarasola (ed.),
Reglamentos parlamentarios:(1810-1977), en J. Varela Suanzes Carpegna (coord.), Leyes
polticas espaolas. 1808-1978, T. 3, Madrid, Iustel, 2012.
19Muy llamativas me parecen ser las palabras de N. Prez Serrano Jregui en El letrado de ..., p.
103 a la hora de definir al da de hoy el cuerpo de los Letrados de Cortes: ...se trata de un cuerpo
de servidores del Estado con una labor ms que callada, pero no por ello oscura, y cuyo buen hacer
puede contribuir a estabilizar algo de por si espasmdico -al menos en Espaa- como es la poltica
parlamentaria..
308
20ACD, (G.I.), leg. 130, exp. 3-1.
309
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El estudio sobre las dinmicas del poder poltico constituye uno de los terrenos ms
frtiles en el que el contenido de los conceptos jurdicos muta constantemente teniendo
que adaptarse a la realidad de la vida social, poltica y cultural de referencia.
El estudioso que se enfrenta con el anlisis del desarrollo de las instituciones
jurdicas y polticas en el contexto del constitucionalismo contemporneo no puede
prescindir de un enfoque histrico que tome come punto de partida esas categoras
individualistas, como las de oficial o funcionario, para llegar a interpretar en sentido
evolutivo las nuevas formas de distribucin del poder y las dinmicas nteristitucionales. De hecho, los actores del poder pertenecen a distintos universos poltico,
legislativo y jurisdiccional que se nter-relacionan e interactan entre si. Mas en
detalle es propiamente a partir del siglo XX que el nivel poltico se ha puesto en una
nueva conexin con el nivel jurisdiccional contribuyendo a la realizacin de diferentes y
nuevas relaciones y representaciones en los respectivos contextos de actuacin
institucional, poltica y social. Por lo tanto se ha asistido a la creacin, a nivel jurdicoinstitucional, de una nueva articulacin de las relaciones entre instituciones: la justicia
constitucional. Su evolucin a partir de las primeras dcadas del siglo XX segn las
teorizaciones de Hans Kelsen ha sido en el sentido de que dentro del marco
constitucional de la democracia pluralista, la justicia constitucional es parte del
equilibrio dinmico entre los poderes, dejando su huella para la construccin de las
funciones gubernamentales y presentndose como una garanta del sistema
constitucional en su conjunto.
El paper que se propone se coloca en el marco anteriormente descrito y su
objetivo es reflexionar sobre el papel de los jueces constitucionales, buscando una
respuesta a la pregunta siguiente: en consideracin de sus especiales habilidades
tcnicas y de la tarea de legislador negativo que desempean podemos considerar los
jueces constitucionales como altos funcionarios, titulares de cargos polticos?
La comprensin del papel de los jueces constitucionales en las democracias
pluralistas no puede no moverse desde la idea que la conciencia que es la propia funcin
de las constituciones que ha cambiado profundamente a lo largo del siglo XX y las
Constituciones ahora tienen la capacidad de influir en la sociedad y involucran todas las
310
TEXTO/TEXT:
El estudio de las dinmicas del poder poltico constituye uno de los terrenos ms frtiles
en el que el contenido de los conceptos jurdicos muta constantemente, teniendo que
adaptarse a la realidad de la vida social, poltica y cultural de referencia. A su vez, quien
se enfrenta con el anlisis del desarrollo de las instituciones jurdicas y polticas en el
contexto del constitucionalismo contemporneo no puede prescindir de un enfoque
histrico, que tome come punto de partida esas categoras individualistas (entre las
cuales las de oficial o funcionario), para llegar a interpretar en sentido evolutivo las
nuevas formas de distribucin del poder y las dinmicas nter-istitucionales.
De hecho, los actores del poder pertenecen a distintos universos poltico,
legislativo y jurisdiccional que se nter-relacionan e interactan entre si. Mas en
detalle es propiamente a partir del siglo XX 1 , con la aprobacin de la cartas
constitucionales democrticas, que el nivel poltico se ha puesto en una nueva conexin
con el nivel jurisdiccional, y precisamente con el nivel constitucional, contribuyendo a
la realizacin de diferentes y nuevas relaciones y representaciones en los respectivos
contextos de actuacin institucional, poltica y social.
Preliminar para una comprensin llena del papel de los jueces constitucionales
en las democracias pluralistas del siglo XX no se puede prescindir de la idea que la
funcin de las constituciones ha cambiado profundamente a lo largo del siglo XX2.
Ademas es muy importante tener en consideracin que la interpretacin de las cartas
constitucionales tiene que tener en cuenta las claves histricas a las que responden, es
decir, bien las constituciones del pasado, bien las actuales3.
1
Los procesos de consolidacin democrtica que se han desarrollado en todo el mundo a lo largo de los
siglos XX y XXI se han acompaado al establecimiento de un aparato institucional y normativo cuyo
objetivo principal se concentra en la divisin de poder poltico, para preservar las libertades y los
derechos fundamentales. Ya en el pensamiento iluminista elaborado por Montesquieu y en el famoso
artculo 16 de la Declaracin de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano del 26 de agosto de 1789 se
encontraba la idea segn la cual las Constituciones (es decir, el orden jurdico en su conjunto) tienen
como fin el establecimiento de la divisin de poderes para garantizar los derechos fundamentales. Vase
M. Carbonell, Estudio preliminar, en T. Groppi (coord.), Las grandes decisiones de la Corte
constitucional italiana, Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nacin, Mexico, 2008.
2
La historia del Estado constitucional en su conjunto es una mezcla al mismo tiempo de grandes
corrientes de pensamiento y de una serie compartida de problemas y de circunstancias locales y de
intereses concretos. Vase M. Carbonell, Estudio preliminar, en T. Groppi (coord.), Las grandes
decisiones de la Corte constitucional italiana, cit., segn el cual, entre muchos factores, hay que
destacar como las tradiciones de cada pas y la forma en que se conciben las relaciones entre los
particulares y el Estado tienen un peso muy relevante en el establecimiento de las garantas de los
textos normativos supremos.
3
Vase H. P. Schneider, Democracia y constitucin, Madrid, CEC, 1991, 49, segun el cual La
Constitucin posee, ms bien, el carcter de un amplio modelo, es un modelo de vida para la
comunidad poltica orientado hacia el futuro... y, por ello, siempre tiene algo de utopa concreta.
De ello resulta la orientacin finalista del Derecho constitucional con respecto a determinados
pensamientos orientativos, directivas y mandatos constitucionales, que reflejan esperanzas del
poder constituyente y prometen una mejora de las circunstancias actuales; es decir, que van ms
all de registrar solamente las relaciones de poder existentes. Tales objetivos de la Constitucin
311
De ah viene que las constituciones de nuestros das son, a la vez, pasado, presente y
futuro, son el resultado de movimientos, revoluciones y costumbres. Al mismo tiempo
son tambin aspiraciones hacia el futuro. Segn las palabras de Gustavo Zagrebelsky:
Las constituciones de nuestro tiempo miran al futuro teniendo firme el pasado,
es decir el patrimonio de experiencia histrico-constitucional que quieren
salvaguardar y enriquecer... pasado y futuro se ligan en una nica lnea y, como
los valores del pasado orientan la bsqueda del futuro, as tambin las exigencias
del futuro obligan a una contina puntualizacin del patrimonio constitucional
del pasado y por tanto a una contina redefinicin de los principios de la
convivencia constitucional4.
Como antes mencionado, el constitucionalismo del siglo XX ha asistido a la
creacin, a nivel jurdico-institucional, de una nueva articulacin de las relaciones entre
instituciones: la justicia constitucional, cual garanta de la superioridad de la
Constitucin misma.
Su evolucin a partir de las primeras dcadas del siglo XX, segn las
teorizaciones de Hans Kelsen, ha sido en el sentido de que dentro del marco
constitucional de la democracia pluralista, la justicia constitucional es parte del
equilibrio dinmico entre los poderes, dejando su huella para la construccin de las
funciones gubernamentales y presentndose como una garanta del sistema
constitucional en su conjunto. En realidad, segn la idea de Kelsen el juicio
constitucional tena que ser totalmente formalizado, impidiendo al mismo tiempo
cualquiera forma de interferencias poltico-ideolgica. En este sentido haba que
entenderse la justicia constitucional como un verdadero juicio, es decir, como simple
aplicacin de normas positivas.
La posicin de Kelsen ha sido criticada de manera muy fuerte por Carl Schmitt,
segn el cual la justicia constitucional disfrazaba las sentencias de los tribunales
constitucionales. En realidad se trataba de decisiones poltico-legislativas, o ms bien
poltico-constitucionales, bajo el aspecto solo exterior de la jurisdiccin.
Se trataba de un riesgo, segn Schmitt, relacionado con el hecho que los jueces
constitucionales son llamados a decidir con base en principios de derecho natural, mas
que en aplicacin de normas de derecho positivo. La aplicacin de normas
constitucionales, algunas de las cuales con una formulacin muy amplia y genrica, en
realidad cubrira una ideologa poltica que cada ordenamiento utiliza para definir su
propia identidad. El reconocimiento constitucional de principios de derecho natural
son la realizacin de una humanidad real en la convivencia social, el respeto de la dignidad
humana, el logro de la justicia social sobre la base de la solidaridad y en el marco de la igualdad y
de la libertad, la creacin de condiciones socioeconmicas para la libre autorrealizacin y
emancipacin humana, as como el desarrollo de una conciencia poltica general de
responsabilidad democrtica. Estos contenidos de la Constitucin, la mayora de las veces, no
estn presentes en la realidad, sino que siempre estn pendientes de una futura configuracin
poltica... la Constitucin... se produce activamente y se transforma en praxis autnomamente en
virtud de la participacin democrtica en las decisiones estatales.
4
Vease G. Zagrebelsky, Historia y Constitucin, Madrid, Trotta, 2005 (traduccin y prlogo de
Miguel Carbonell), 90-91.
312
como el principio a la equidad, a la libertad, etctera, con falta de precisin literal slo
significa que tanto el legislador como los rganos antepuestos a la ejecucin de la ley
estn autorizados a llenar discrecionalmente el espacio dejado por la Constitucin
misma5.
Segn Kelsen, si as ocurriera,
la concepcin de la justicia de la mayora de los jueces del tribunal
constitucional podra ser considerada sencillamente intolerable. Dicha
concepcin de la justicia podra contrastar completamente con la de la mayora
de la poblacin y evidentemente tambin con la del parlamento que ha querido
dicha ley [] Para evitar un desplazamiento de poder similar ciertamente
rechazado y polticamente contraindicado del parlamento a un rgano extrao,
el cual puede llegar a convertirse en el representante de fuerzas polticas muy
diversas de las que se expresan en el parlamento, la constitucin debe, sobre
todo cuando crea un tribunal constitucional, abstenerse de esta terminologa y, si
quiere poner principios relativos al contenido de las leyes, los debe formular en
el modo ms preciso posible6.
Si se quiere tener restringido el poder de los tribunales y, por lo tanto, el carcter
poltico de sus funciones [] debe estar lo ms limitado posible al mbito de la
discrecionalidad que las leyes atribuyen para su aplicacin. Las normas
constitucionales que un tribunal est llamado a aplicar y, en particular, aquellas
que establecen el contenido de las futuras leyes como las disposiciones sobre
los derechos fundamentales y similares no deben ser formuladas en trminos
demasiado genricos. En definitiva, el peligro del desplazamiento de poder
indica la eventualidad del control de la Constitucin, introduciendo contenidos
jurdicos constitucionales que no son imputables a la constitucin, y que se
extienda discrecionalmente, atentando a las prerrogativas del legislador y
asechando la democracia7.
Este fenmeno descrito por Kelsen de desplazamiento del poder configura los
tribunales constitucionales como algo que va mas all de la simple idea de legisladores
negativos, delineando un organo que, aunque con un procedimiento jurisdiccional,
desempea un cargo poltico en el momento en que puede crear normas positivas.
Las constituciones del constitucionalismo actual (en particular del
consticuionalismo de finales del siglo XX) no son textos normativos en el sentido del
positivismo jurdico. En efecto, se trata de textos ricos de normas constitucionales
abiertas (precisamente aquellas proposiciones que Kelsen invitaba evitar). La presencia
de este tipo de normas es una caracterstica inevitable de las constituciones
5
En este sentido vase G. Zagrebelsky, El juez constitucional en el siglo XXI, en E. Ferrer MacGregor, C. de J. Molina Surez, El juez constitucional en el siglo XXI, Tomo I , Instituto de
Investigaciones Juridicas-UNAM, Mexico, 2009, 250.
6
H. Kelsen, Chi deve essere il custode della costituzione? [1930- 1931], en ID., La giustizia
costituzionale, trad. it. de C. Geraci, Milano, Giuffr, 1981, 189 ss.
7
Ibidem, 253-254.
313
La fuerza del pasado no puede ser tal que nos impida modificar el texto constitucional conforme a las
necesidades del presente. Vase G. Zagrebelsky, Historia y Constitucin, cit., 45-46; segn el cual es
desde el siglo XVIII que se comenzaron a realizar planteamientos sobre el mito constituyente, en
referencia a un origen histrico tan alto de las constituciones que sera imposible repetirlo.
9
A la concepcin dual se dedica G. Zagrebelsky, La legge e la sua giustizia, Bologna, Il Mulino,
2009, en el cual trata de mostrar cmo la poca contempornea asiste al renacimiento de conceptos
y categoras antiguas, como las de ius y lex. En este contexto el ius se manifiesta a travs de las
normas constitucionales indeterminadas, a las cuales no se adhiere la estructura del si
entonces. Tampoco adhiere un vnculo de exclusividad a una voluntad legisladora, con referencia
a la cual se puede hablar de desplazamiento de poder.
314
10
En este sentido vase G. Zagrebelsky, El juez constitucional en el siglo XXI, cit. Segun
Zagrebelsky Si esta norma perteneciera a la constitucin positiva se debera, en efecto, admitir
que cambindola o suprimindola, se pueda hacer modificable lo que en ella se haba previsto
como irreformable. Para poder afirmar la irreformabilidad absoluta de la constitucin o de sus
partes individuales, hace falta hacer referencia a una dimensin material de derecho constitucional
que no depende de la voluntad de alguna autoridad constitucional fundada en la constitucin
misma y, por consiguiente, no derivado de algn estatuto autorizado por normas constitucionales
positivas. Estamos aqu en una dimensin de derecho constitucional pre-positivo que siendo la
constitucin la ms alta norma positiva pertenece a la esfera no de la forma, o sea de la fuerza
metida en forma de lex, sino de la sustancia, o sea del ius, es decir, de un derecho material
independiente de su forma definida positivamente. Ibidem, 254-255
11
Vase F. Modugno, Corte costituzionale e potere legislativo, in P. Barile, E. Cheli, S. Grassi (coords.),
Corte costituzionale e sviluppo della forma di governo in Italia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1982, 54 y 99.
Contrario a esta perspectiva, segn la cual a la funcin de desarrollo constitucional serian llamados bien
la Corte constitucional, bien el legislador, es G. Zagrebelsky, La giustizia costituzionale, Bologna, Il
Mulino, 1988, 39 ss. La Constitucin sera, de hecho, no una restriccin externa, que pone lmites
insuperables, que pero se manifiesta indiferentemente a lo que sucede en el interior, sino que una fuerza
interna, animadora de toda la actividad legislativa (...) El papel real de Corte, entonces, seria el de
participar en el proceso destinado a cumplir esa fuerza interna, en un proceso que, como es evidente, no
tiene nada que ver con la revisin judicial, si no se deje engaar por las apariencias desnudas e ilusorias,
pero tiene todas las caractersticas polticas, al menos en el sentido en que la aplicacin de la Constitucin
es poltica.
315
PLENARY
SESSION
II
316
B. Putting Concepts
Performances
on
Display:
Reflections
on
Conceptual
317
318
PARALLEL
SESSIONS
IV
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Academic interest in cosmopolitanism has since the end of the Cold War been growing
dramatically. In order to approach the challenges of cosmopolitanism in current
processes of globalization, not least in the form of fundamentalism, one needs to rethink cosmopolitanism in the context of its historical and geographical
conceptualisation. Cosmopolitanism has become especially topical within the social
sciences, sometimes resulting in anachronism and ahistorical essentialism. Conceptual
history, in this project situated within the humanities, can hopefully serve as a reflexive
corrective for many an unreflective tendency. Only since Kant, the godfather of socalled New Cosmopolitanism, the understanding of concepts such as human nature,
citizen, city, nation, state, sovereignty, politics, border, asylum, migration, Europe,
humanity, has fluctuated. When Kant re-discovered and transformed the Stoic idea of a
detached world citizenship he partly did it in the light of the theories of natural law of
the 18th and 17th century. Today world citizenship is linked to human rights, which
ontologically are of a different, non-metaphysical, kind. These are important
considerations when discussing contemporary problems of globalization from a
cosmopolitan perspective. However, when critically reconstructing the semantic
transformations and pragmatic appropriations of cosmopolitanism, recognized as a
contingent concept, one must resist the temptation of Eurocentrism, by exploring also
alternative trajectories of cosmopolitanism beyond Western hegemony. This implies in
many ways a break with the Enlightenment tradition at the same time as its legacy is
crucial.
The paper outlines and discusses results from an on-going research project of
conceptual history, East of Cosmopolis, in general, and from the editing of a volume
in progress, Critique of Cosmopolitan Reason, in particular.
319
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Considering the fact that the concept of human rights has become one of the central
moral and political universalisms of our time, it has been subjected to remarkably little
critical historical research. It is only recently that historians have moved beyond the
traditional triumphalist accounts of the gradual rise of Human Rights to a more critical
exploration of how the concept gained its central and unquestionable position, and of
the rhetorical struggles to define the concept at different points in time and in different
political and intellectual circumstances (most notably Hoffman 2011 and Moyn 2010).
This paper examines the reception, translation and appropriation of human
rights rhetoric in Scandinavia during the immediate post war period. Whereas the rise
and fall of Nazism provoked a thorough moral reconsideration, a renaissance of natural
law, and a triumph of incontestable individual human rights in the greater part of the
western world, the Scandinavian intellectual discussion remained surprisingly
unaffected by the atrocities of the Second World War. The tradition of moral relativism
and legal realism (or positivism) remained strong, which made the reception of human
rights somewhat problematic. According to the Scandinavian doctrine, the concept of a
legal right was meaningless unless it referred to a set of rules that was enforced by
use of the monopolised force of the state. From this perspective international law and
human rights were entirely misleading concepts.
The paper explores the ways in which Scandinavian intellectuals responded to
the challenges of post war period when the call for natural law, moral universalism and
human rights was loud. Given the legacy of Scandinavian Legal Realism, how did the
Nordic countries become the self-appointed global proponents of Human Rights? In
what way was the domestic intellectual tradition re-described in order to facilitate for
the rhetoric of human rights? And conversely, how was the human rights ethos of
the Nuremberg trials, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the
European Convention of Human Rights (1950) received, translated and appropriated by
leading intellectuals and legal scholars in Scandinavia?
Preliminary findings indicate that the Scandinavian intellectuals remained
convinced that universal moral claims, natural law and human rights were nonsensical,
but recognised the political demand human rights in countries more severely affected
by the war. In this way, the human rights rhetoric, for example the UDHR and ECHR,
was interpreted as a moral declaration significant for some problematic countries, but
with little relevance for Scandinavian political or legal culture.
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TEXT/TEXTO:
If there are such things as basic concepts in our present age of globalisation, human
rights must surely be included among them. During recent decades human rights
have become a universal moral-political yardstick by which nations as well as
corporations are judged. Violations of human rights call for reaction by the
international community and recognition of the validity of human rights serves as a
criterion for membership in the European Union. Indeed, anyone in the Western world
who openly criticises human rights clearly moves beyond the morally and perhaps
even linguistically possible.
From this perspective it is remarkable that it is only recently that the concept of
human rights has become subject to historical research. For sure, we have for long
been familiar with the well-established genre of partisan presentations of the steady
advance of human rights from the French Revolution, through the abolishment of
slavery to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Recently, however, these triumphalist narratives have been challenged by accounts that
call attention to the different purposes to which human rights have been used and to
the different meanings that have been attached to the concept in different contexts and at
different points in time.
Mark Mazower (2004) has, for example, argued that the the strange triumph of
human rights in the immediate post-war period was a result of the failed minority
rights regime of the League of Nations during the inter-war period. The turn of focus to
individuals instead of groups was well in line with Anglo-American liberal thought, as
well as with the lessons of the totalitarian experience according to which it was
necessary to guard the rights of the individual against the threats of an omnipotent state.
More significant, however, was the fact that the concept of human rights was largely
left vague and undefined and that there was no binding commitment involved. Human
rights could be used for a whole range of different purposes without ever really
triumphing over national sovereignty, which was the price necessary for US and Soviet
participation in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but which also made it into
a key ideological battle field in the Cold War.
Samuel Moyn (2010), on the other hand, has argued that it was only in the 1970s
that human rights became the global movement we know today. His key argument is
summarized by the diagram on page 231 in his book, which shows a steep rise in
occurrences of human rights in the New York Times and the London Times around
1977. According to Moyn, human rights became the The Last Utopia, replacing a
range of different collapsed universalisms like Christianity or socialism.
Both Mazower and Moyn figure among the writers in Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmans
anthology Human Rights in the twentieth century (2011). The aim of Hoffmanns book
321
was to explore how the concept of human rights gained its current prominence and
self-evidence. The book gives ample evidence of the flexible instrumentality by which
the human rights rhetoric has been used by different actors throughout the twentieth
century, by the different parties in the ideological battle of the Cold War, and by the
different parties in the processes of decolonisation.
In my on-going postdoctoral project on Nordic moral, legal and political science
after the Second World War, the Scandinavian reception of the human rights rhetoric
is of special interest. There are a number of reasons for this. On the one hand, during
recent years, the Nordic countries have tried hard to profile themselves internationally
as some kind of champions of human rights, for example by establishing centres for
Human Rights, by arranging international Holocaust Forums and by adopting a small
state moralistic attitude in international affairs. Historically, there is a basis for this
kind of internationalist universalism in Scandinavia, as the countries throughout the
twentieth century have been eager to stress the importance of international law and
international organizations like the League of Nations and the United Nations.
Scandinavia tried to position themselves as neutrals or mediators not only in the EastWest conflict, but also in the North-South conflict by being generous with foreign aid.
But on the other hand, if we look at human rights as something emerging out
of the experience of the Second World War in general and the Holocaust in particular, it
is not obvious how the Nordic countries came to embrace this kind of rhetoric. In the
inter-war period Scandinavian philosophy and legal science was dominated by different
forms of anti-metaphysical philosophies. Some of them were inspired by logical
empiricism, and others were developing the legacy of the original Swedish Uppsala
philosopher Axel Hgerstrm (1868-1939), but many of them embraced a relativistic
moral philosophy and a realistic/positivistic legal philosophy.
Value relativism and legal realism were not solely Scandinavian phenomena in
the inter-war era. During the first half of the twentieth century similar ideas were widely
held in, for example, Germany and the United States. But it is often claimed that,
whereas the rise and fall of Nazism provoked a thorough moral reconsideration and a
renaissance of natural law and incontestable individual basic (human) rights in many
parts of the western world, the Nordic discussion remained confined to the positivistic
doctrines of Scandinavian Realism (e.g. Nergelius 1994; Skirbekk 1984; stling 2008).
In Scandinavia there was no profiled conversion from value relativism and legal realism
to natural law as that of Gustav Radbruch in Germany.
The aim of my project is to examine how Nordic moral and legal philosophers
confronted the tensions between the domestic positivistic-realistic tradition and the
moral and political demands of the particular historical situation. With the experience of
Nazism, the Second World War and the Holocaust fresh in the memory, how was it
possible to claim that the law does not have any higher truth or purpose than the one it
is given by the official authorities (legal realism); that moral judgements cannot be true
or false, but have to be interpreted as expressions of emotion (value
nihilism/emotivism); and that democracy is essentially equal to parliamentarian
majority rule, thus downplaying the importance of constitutional protection of basic
(human) rights?
322
At the time of writing my project is still very much in its initial phases, so what I
will give here is some preliminary results combined with some research hypotheses and
educated guesses.
The general attitude within the Nordic, and particularly the Swedish, intellectual
community after the Second World War was arguably that the Nordic political culture
had proved democratic and solid, that it had withstood the totalitarian challenge. In such
a context there was no immediate need for a conversion from the positivistic-realistic
programme. A plausible first hypothesis is therefore that the Scandinavian Realists
reacted with silence. It is not unlikely that the Scandinavian Realists remained
convinced that the universal moral claims were defunct and that the idea of a natural
law was metaphysical, but that they nevertheless recognised the political and cultural
demand for such ideas in countries that had been more severely affected by the war. For
example, according to the Swedish historian Johan stling the Nuremberg trials were
only briefly mentioned in Swedish legal journals and were generally looked upon as a
politically triggered foreign event with no profound consequences for Swedish legal
thinking (stling 2008). On the other hand, one can also say that in some respects, the
experience of war actually facilitated a culture of silence. In Finland where there were
apparent political reasons for avoiding difficult political and moral themes, Lars Bjrne
has suggested that the legal discussion in 1945 was characterised by articles such as
Om frestetid vid hstkp enligt 1734 rs lag [Probation in connection with horse deals
according to the law of 1734] (Bjrne 2007, 279).
A second hypothesis is that the Second World War actually enforced the
realistic-positivistic dominance in the Nordic countries. The Nordic logical empiricists,
Uppsala philosophers and legal realists effectively stigmatised their adversaries as
foreign, continental or German, thus establishing a (Popperian) view that it was
not positivism or legal realism, but its opponents that were connected to totalitarianism.
For example, in 1945 the Danish legal realist Alf Ross outmanoeuvred his older
colleague Vinding Kruse by claiming that he represented a legal philosophy from the
19th century and that he was marked by the mentality of totalitarianism (Ross 1945).
A third hypothesis is that a common strategy for the Scandinavian Realists was
to re-describe or re-define the value relativist and legal realist legacy in the light of the
transformed situation. In my dissertation I have given ample evidence of the ways in
which a younger generation of Scandinavian Realists modified the theory in ways that
made it less aggravating (Strang 2010). Ingemar Hedenius transformed the value
nihilistic theory so that moral and legal judgements were not always meaningless and
metaphysical, but could be true or false in situations where they referred to a set of
cultural or legal norms (Hedenius 1941). Similarly, by Ross the concept of legal right
was no longer rejected as wicked metaphysics but re-defined as a useful syntactical
tool for presentation that merely lacked a semantic reference (Ross 1951).
A fourth hypothesis is that the Scandinavian Realists reinterpreted the foreign
ideas and tendencies in ways that made them more compatible with their own position.
On the one hand, the Scandinavian Realists might have been selective in their
appropriation, choosing to discuss only ideas and theories that were similar to their own
views. On the other hand, it is also conceivable that some of the Scandinavian Realists
323
reinterpreted the foreign ideas in a way that made them unnecessary, and indeed
impossible, to engage with professionally. Existentialist philosophers were read as poets
and not as scientific philosophers. Gustav Radbruchs conversion to natural law was
taken as a moral outburst, understandable against the experiences in Germany, but with
little or no theoretical consequence. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948) was given little attention in Scandinavia, and was largely received as a political
manifesto which was admirable and well worth supporting when it came to criticising
violent and undemocratic regimes around the world. Similarly, the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) was
despite its legally binding status received largely as an affair for post-totalitarian
countries but which was without any profound legal or moral consequences in
Scandinavia.
Human rights is a sensitive topic and anyone who treats it from a historical
and particularly a conceptual historical perspective is likely to provoke accusations of
moral relativism. Historians such as Mazower, Moyn or Hoffman commonly try to
counter these arguments by claiming that, for example, we need to understand the
origins and history of human rights in order to be able to prevent history from repeating
itself or that it is only by gaining insight into the historical contingency of our
normative concepts that we can comprehend why human rights continues to fail in our
age (Hoffmann 2011, 26).
I believe, however, that there is a stronger moral lesson to be learned from a
conceptual history perspective on human rights. It is only by accepting that human
rights is a contested political concept, without a definitive meaning, that we can
overcome the cultural relativist argument and the recurrent accusations of Western
imperialism. Instead of ardently proclaiming the universal and eternal validity of
human rights, the aim should be to create political institutions that engage and
commit the peoples of the world to a joint and continuous process of debating and
defining human rights.
And from this perspective there could actually be some important lessons to be
learned from the Scandinavian value relativist and legal realist traditions. Revealing and
embracing the political nature of legal concepts could be a far more important
contribution to the international discussion the moralistic attitude that the Scandinavian
countries unfortunately seem to practice today.
REFERENCES
Bjrne, Lars (2007) Realism och Skandinavisk realism den nordiska rttsvetenskapens
historia, del IV 1911-1950 [Rttshistoriskt bibliotek 62], Stockholm: Rnnells
Antikvariat
Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig (ed.) Human Rights in the 20th century, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011
324
Hedenius, Ingemar (1941) Om rtt och moral, Stockholm: Wahlstrm & Widstrand,
1963
Mazower, Mark (2004) The Strange Triumph of Human Rights 1933-1950, The
Historical Journal, 2004:2
Moyn, Samuel (2010) The Last Utopia Human Rights in History, London: Belknap
Nergelius, Joakim (1996), Konstitutionellt rttighetsskydd svensk rtt i ett
komparativt perspektiv, Stockholm: Fritzes
Radbruch, Gustav (1945) Fnf Minuten Rechtsphilosophie, Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung
(Heidelberg), (translated as Five minutes of legal philosophy, Oxford Journal of
Legal Studies, vol. 26, No 1 (2006), pp.13-15)
Radbruch, Gustav (1946) Gesetzliches Unrecht und bergesetzliches Recht,
Sddeutsche Juristenzeitung 1, pp. 105-108
Ross, Alf (1945) En retslre fra det 19. aarhundrede, in Tidsskrift for Retsvitenskap,
273-292
Ross, Alf (1951) T-t, in Festskrift til Henry Ussing, Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 468-484
Skirbekk, Gunnar (1984) I refleksjonens mangel... Om vekslande intellektuelle elitar
i norsk etterkrigstid, in Nytt norsk tidsskrift, vol. 1, nr. 1, 21-37
Strang, Johan (2010) History, Transfer, Politics Five Studies on the legacy of Uppsala
philosophy, Helsinki: Juvenes
stling, Johan (2008) Nazismens sensmoral svenska erfarenheter i andra
vrldskrigets efterdyning, Stockholm: Atlantis.
325
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The history of concepts usually focuses on social and political concepts. This keeps in
the background the concealed but very important evolution of concepts, characterizing
the behavior of a separate person and his/her moral constitution. The evolution of those
concepts remains neglected, because even the scholars believe them to be timeless
constants.
The concept of manhood seems to be a constant of that kind, universal and
archaic. In the present paper an attempt is made to investigate the formation of the
concept of manhood in the Russian culture. The concept is regarded as that describing
the new standard of human behavior. In the beginning of the 18th century in the Russian
culture there existed a set of epithets for praising war heroes, but there was no notion of
firmness, strength of mind as an important inner quality ones ability to face ordeals
and dangers. During the century, as the relations between an individual and the state
were rethought, such a notion was gradually developed in the literary tradition: firstly in
the laudatory sermons dedicated to the Russian empresses, then in the Russian radical
sentimentalist literature.
The notion of firmness was embodied in the polysemantic concept muestvo
manhood, previously applied mainly to war heroes. It refers simultaneously to images
of firmness, bravery, determination and to the horizon of maturity, self-fulfillment,
moral integrity. The requirement to be manly became a touchstone for a human as a
political and social individual. The fate of the concept is considered in a wider context
of the European culture where the ideal of firmness plays a less important and more
particular role because of peculiarities of the Russian and the Western social and
political history and different ways of conceptualizing human behavior.
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TEXT/TEXTO:
I. Manhood: The problem and the concept
It is widely known that the transition from the medieval to the modern time was
accompanied by considerable changes in the behavior of a person. Scholars speak about
social disciplining, disciplinary revolution, the development of self-control,
perfecting and unifying of the introspection and the mutual supervision practices etc. It
was those cardinal shifts in the individual ethical systems that finally resulted in
changing the European social, economical and political landscape. However social,
economical and political concepts often attract attention of scholars, while the concepts
which are used for the description of the human behavior stay in the background,
because they evidently seem to be timeless and unchangeable. Meanwhile,
constituting one or another behavior characteristics as a concept can be a evidence to
highly important changes in discursive technique of the (self-)description of the
personality and, as a result, in the whole system of concepts concerning a person and a
society.
The theme of the present paper is twofold. On the one hand, I consider more or
less universal notion of firmness, strength of mind, courage, which can be found in
numerous cultures. I believe that that notion was not timeless and that at the threshold
of the modern time most interesting and important changes took place.
On the other hand, I consider the Russian concept which is intimately connected
with the historical specificity of the Russian language and the Russian culture. It was
the Russian language that was influenced by the Greek literacy; other European
languages knew no such an influence. Under the Greek influence the Russian word
muestvo manhood (cf. Greek ) spreaded to many texts, became the most
respectable term used for praising ones firmness and fearlessness.
It would be wrong to say that other languages knew no man-derived words,
having similar meaning; cf. Eng. manhood, manliness; Fr. virilit; Germ. Mnnlichkeit;
Sp. hombria. But in those languages such characteristics seem to have no such allembracing pragmatics, such powerful overtones as the Russian word muestvo. It means
not only bravery or endurance, but the highest degree of maturity, which includes
wisdom, sense of responsibility, talent for making hard but required decisions etc. And
at the same time it was not developed into a polysemantic word which would embrace
moral virtue, honesty, loyalty. Manhood is associated only with strength of mind, not
moral values as such (although a morally inconsistent person can hardly be called a
manly one). Their was no such a semantic development like that of Latin virtus. It
seems that the culture stopped its focus on the complex of qualities near to firmness and
psychological resilience, neglecting moral consistence or any value consistence at all.
Here I am trying to explain this concernment with courage which takes place in
the Russian culture. I think it is connected with the early modern period and different
327
ways of cultural evolution in Russia and in the Western societies. Two aspects of the
history of the concept are connected: the history of the complex of notions in general
helps to understand the specificity of the history of the concept within a separate
culture.
II. The problem of the inner courage
As for courage, this characteristic of a personality has two different sides or, in other
words, we know two kinds of courage. The first kind of courage is an outward one. A
person performs a heroic deed, and we can speak about him/her: (s)he has showed
him/her courage (this quality could be applied to women as well as to men). In this
perspective courage is a characteristic of ones behavior, it often implies a visual image.
The second kind of courage is an inner one. It designates a certain mental ability to
resist the pressure of people and circumstances, to do what is to be done in spite of
grave dangers, threats and difficulties. The first kind of courage pertains to a sphere of
deeds, the second kind of courage to a mental sphere.
The didactic we are accustomed to tends to compare the superficial, ostentatious
courage with the genuine strength of mind based on reason, ethic, moral discipline. This
contraposition is usually realized by images of a militant hero and a modest, even quiet
person who bravely meets life sorrows, injustice, heavy diseases. I would quote from
the famous novel by Harper Lee To kill a mocking-bird (1960): I wanted you to see
what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his
hand. Its when you know youre licked before you begin but you begin anyway and
you see it through no matter what.
The basic scheme of such an argumentation implies that the true courage, the
true, inner courage is displayed in the events of everyday life rather than in the
wartime episodes. Usually we are speaking about the inner courage, when we are
bearing in mind a quality which allows one to act in accordance with ones debt or work
for a fixed purpose in spite of obstacles, difficulties, dangers and threats. The outward
courage is about looking heroic, while the inner courage is about being firm. I would
mention a distinction which Thomas Aquinas made: the term fortitude can be taken
in two ways. First, as simply denoting a certain firmness of mind, and in this sense it is
a general virtue, or rather a condition of every virtue <>. Secondly, fortitude may be
taken to denote firmness only in bearing and withstanding those things wherein it is
most difficult to be firm, namely in certain grave dangers <>. On this sense fortitude
is reckoned a special virtue, because it has a special matter [Thomas Aquinas III-II-2:
1702]. The inner courage corresponds to the first sense of fortitude, the outward
one to the second sense.
Focusing on the inner courage means that ones attention is attracted to a
certain ability of human mind the ability of acting in accordance with ones intention
and contrary to people and circumstances. This ability is regarded as very important,
essential personality trait detached from moral virtues and talents. This means, in turn,
that the psychological resistibility and resilience of a human became important by
themselves, apart from loyalty, moral or piety. That shift happened to take place in the
328
early modern time, when an individual got of course, only partially emancipated
from the dictates of transpersonal value systems. It was the early modern period that
personal firmness went up in peoples estimation.
III. The inner courage and European standard of behavior
The development of self-control which had been described by Norbert Elias
manifested itself in strict demands for the everyday behavior. A person who faced the
ordeals must pass them through with dignity and endurance. Heavy diseases and
surgical procedures may be an appropriate to show that. Starting with the 16th century,
we are detecting an intense interest in courageous behavior during surgical operations.
The Ignatius Loyola account of the long and painful operation on his wounded leg may
provide the first example I know [Loyola 1990: 28]. In the further history one could
remember the description of worthy behavior of Louis XIV during the operation of his
anal fistula (1686) and on his sickbed at all [Journal de la sant 1862: 174175] or
the heroic patience of Charles XII of Sweden during the excision of bone fragments
from his royal foot near Poltava in 1709 [Nordberg 1748: 308]. These examples are
evidences that the courage, firmness, patience became a part of a certain behavior
standard any person must correspond to.
The strong accent on patience and endurance we can find in the works of Michel
Montaigne and Justus Lipsius. They propagated the constancy in the troubles of the life,
fortitude in the face of dangers and sufferings. These ideas (especially in Lipsius
exposition) became the point of departure for the humanistic cultural movement of neoStoicism which, along with the protestant doctrines, laid the basis for the social
disciplining of the coming epoch. The question of the inner courage can be
considered in the context of more general problem of self-restraint. This put forward
another problem of a standard of behavior. Montaigne and Lipsius did not praise
courageous behavior as an exceptional heroic one, they persuaded their contemporaries
to be constant in everyday troubles. Montaigne claimed that the indifference to physical
pain achievable to anyone. Lipsius explained that it is constancy amid misfortunes that
could make one happy. The philosophers of the early modern time made courage and
firmness components of behavior standard. They avoided such a pompous words.
This prevented such a words from conceptualization as the qualities of a good
citizen and from inclusion into political anthropology. In the beginning of his treatise
Politicorum libri sex (1589) Lipsius gave two guides to civil life, namely prudentia
and virtus. Virtus should be a counterbalance to prudentia, because in the absence of the
former the latter could turn into cunning and craft. As for virtus, the author gave a
remarkable comment to this word:
civem vere bonum nullum arbitror, nisi et virum [Lipsi Politicorum 1589: 1].
Another way, Lipsius actualizes the metaphor underlied the word: virtus
characterized a person who could be referred to as vir, man. The philosopher refreshed
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a worn-out etymology obvious for any Latin scholar, and thus determined the place of
virtus in the whole system of concepts. It was a question of standard of behavior which
should be proper to any mentally and socially mature citizen to a man.
The man must be pious and honest: Lipsius regarded virtus as consisting of pietas
and probitas. The constancy remained a precondition of sound living, acting, making
decisions, but it made no independent virtue. Describing the standard of human
behavior, the philosopher focused on moral and religious consistency, while the
psychological resilience remains off screen.
The posterior epoch cured the wounds caused by the religious wars. Now the
absolutist state pretended to defend its subjects from dangers and losses of war of the all
against the all. It saved human beings from the trauma, and its very power, its very
prerogatives were based on that. This, as Reinhart Koselleck showed, resulted in the
emancipation of moral conscience and then in the emergence of moralistic civil society
[Koselleck 1988]. The question of ones courage, firmness would imply that one faced
the traumatic factors, but such a hypothesis would put into question the whole
construction. The absolutist epoch established the clear distribution of responsibilities: a
subject must control his/her passions and aggressive impulses, a sovereign was
supposed to defend his subject from sufferings and dangers. In that value system
strength of mind was pushed aside, however were important at the periphery of social
life, where usual problem-solving failed, e.g. during the wartime.
IV. The Russian specificity
In Russia a rather different situation has arisen. The country knew no devastating
religious wars, no such a heavy trauma as the Thirty Years War. The legitimacy of the
absolute monarchy (autocracy) was based here not upon its role as a peacemaker and
protector, but upon consensus of elites and monarchs loyalty to the Orthodox faith and
traditional way of life. When Peter the Great began his large-scale reforms, he caused
profound trauma to his subjects. They should choose between their loyalty to the
tradition (and in this case the tsars disgrace) and the loyalty to the tsar (and in this case
discord with their own conscience). The former choice meant dishonor and heavy
penalty, the latter one shame and thoughts about the lost soul. There was no honorable
death.
It is clear that in this epoch no notion of firmness as a moral standard could be
developed. Even in those cases when troubles one experienced gained sympathy of
those around him/her nobody admired his/her firmness which he/she showed bearing
his/her sufferings. All the more, nobody praised firmness of those who opposed the
authorities and openly defend his/her position. In such cases the resistance was
undertaken because of religious discord, so in the conscience of sympathizers (e.g. Old
Believers or confederates of Stefan Yavorsky) a personal strength of mind was closely
connected, in conformity with hagiographic templates, with piety and abiding faith and
with usual help of God. As for secular resistance, e.g. in the case of major Stepan
Glebov, tsarina Eudoxias lover who never bent before Peter and was tormented and
executed by the latters order [Ustrialov VI: 209ff.], I can remember no example
330
when firmness would be praised or at least would be given its due (in the documents
loyal to Peter as well as in the documents of anti-Petrine trend).
In the same time it seems that most subjects of Peter the Great valued firmness
rather low. The autobiography of Boris Kurakin, Peters celebrated diplomat, could be a
typical example. The autobiography was intended, most probably, for reading by a
narrow circle of relatives. In it egoistic calculations and hypochondriac complaints are
opposed to an inflexible will of the Tzar. Kurakin complains of his diseases, laments for
the lack of attention from the direction of Peter, resents the actions of his enemies at
court, but he does not try to present himself as a courageous and firm person conflicting
with the mighty or resisting numerous diseases [Zitser 2011].
Of course, it is incredible that e.g. an exceptional courage of Stepan Glebov
would be disregarded by witnesses of his torments; such endurance commands respect
in any society. But the notion of high value of firmness, of its importance for ones
appreciation seems to absent in the Russian culture. People of that epoch could speak
about bravery, courage, manhood of a certain person, mostly a military man who
showed those qualities in a certain situation or in a certain area. There was a solid
tradition of laudatory usage of these words in the warlike narrative. However people
were not inclined to praise anyone for his/her inner courage.
V. Formation of the concept of manhood
The Russian society overcame that trauma by 70-year rule of women, out of canon,
out of tradition, the unique period in Russian history, having no analogues till now. The
women occupying the Russian throne became examples of new, inner courage. The
church orators, preachers of course, after victory praised them not only for their
righteousness, but also for their strength of mind. I give but a single example from
Amvrosij Jukevis sermon dedicated to Elizabeth of Russia (Elizaveta Petrovna),
Peters daughter:
Thus, the bitter tears were for you the sweet joy, the inner heartache was hidden
under the constant gladness and what is worth regret and grief that gave you major
hope for God And as she firmly believed in God and relied upon him without
doubt, so God gifted her accordingly to her faith: he gave her manly heart, inspired
her with Peters spirit, granted Judiths courage, with which being excited and by
her Lord as by invincible weapon being defended, she went to her trusty soldiers
who desired her orders and declared her intention and briefly said: hey, lads! you
know who am I? And whose daughter am I? [Jukevi 1741]
It is reasonable that the preacher used the word manly to describe the womans
readiness to her deed. It is not only about the pun, though of course the preacher played
on words intentionally. It is about the potential of the word manhood. By that time it
was used almost exceptionally in war narratives. But it contained the important
connotations due to its etymology. Because of that it also refers to a wider horizon of
maturity in general to wisdom, sense of responsibility, talent for making hard but
331
required decisions etc. It is the perfect time to remember Lipsius who understood well
the capacity of the man metaphor. Facing arbitrariness, the woman searched for the
decision and found it in manly deed. It was the birth of manhood as an existential
category in the Russian political narrative.
In the end of the 18th century the Russian literature underwent the influence of the
Western literary movements. The sentimentalist introspection implied the thorough
analysis of emotional experience and the impulse to share ones feelings. These
principles of new literature were superimposed on a certain peculiarities of the ethos
of the Russian nobility which, in particular cases, included ethical radicalism.
Alexander Radiev could be striking example of such an amalgamation of
sentimentalism, radicalism and class consciousness of a nobleman.
In his Life of Fedor Vasilevich Ushakov (1789) he told about his fellow student
who exerted strong influence on him and his friends. In the first part of this narrative
(while the second part consists of the works of Ushakov) Radiev focuses on two
episodes. The first episode concerns the fight between the Russian students living and
studying in Leipzig (Ushakov was their informal leader) and their despotic supervisor
major E. F. Bockum. The second episode concerns the illness and the death of Ushakov.
The detailed critique of this remarkable tale goes beyond the present paper, but I want to
draw attention to an important place of the concept of manhood in Radievs account.
Ushakovs firmness on his sickbed confronts with his decisive resistance to despotism
and lawlessness. Extraodinary manhood of the Russian student is considered as an
evidence of his rightfulness in the context of his whole life. Therefore it is necessary to
prove Ushakovs superiority in this respect:
Compare him who dies on the scaffold or him who kills himself and him who dies
intrepidly on his bed at the end of a prolonged disease; then tell who behaves more
manly breathing his last bravely? [Radiev I: 184]
We can see that in that period of history manhood remains a demonstrative, visual
characteristic but in the same time becomes a category of introspection. This conclusion
is proved by distinction between inner and visual characteristic: one dies bravely, but
our final estimation of him depends upon his inner manhood.
Thus, by the end of the 18th century the word manhood designated not only a visual
characteristic, but also category of psychological analysis, category of introspection,
category of education and self-education. It became an object of analysis, an object of
discussion, became a problem. This allow us to consider manhood as an
anthropological concept sui generis. This concept proved to have an exceptional
discursive potential. It refers simultaneously to images of firmness, bravery,
determination and to the horizon of maturity, self-fulfilment, moral integrity. The
Russian culture needs such a concept, because, on the one hand, the ideal of moral
(self)education implies empathy and social activism, and, on the other hand, the
traumatic character of badly organized social life (and life in general) is not overcome.
332
This predetermines an important role of the concept of manhood in the further history
of the Russian discourse.
REFERENCES
Journal de la sant 1862 : Journal de la sant du roi Louis XIV crit par Vallot, D'Aquin
et Fagon tous trois ses Premiers-Mdecins, avec introduction, notes, rflexions
critiques et pices justificatives par J.-A. Le Roi. P., 1862.
Jushkevitch 1741: AMVROSY JUSHKEVITCH. Slovo v vysoajij den rodenija
imperatricy Elisavety Petrovny. Saint Petersburg, 1741.
Kagarlitskiy 2010: YU. V. KAGARLITSKIY. Muestvo kak istoriko-semanticheskaja i
istoriko-kulturnaja problema, in: Imenoslov. Istorija jazyka. Istorija kultury. Moscow,
2010, pp.206227.
Koselleck 1988: REINHART KOSELLECK. Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the
Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought).
Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1988.
Lipsi Politicorum 1589: JUSTI LIPSI. Politicorum: Sive Civilis Doctrinae Libri Sex.
Leiden: Plantijn, 1589.
Loyola 1990: El peregrino: autobiografa de San Ignacio de Loyola; introduccin,
notas y comentario por Josep M Rambla Blanch, S.I. Bilbao: Mensajero; Santander: Sal
Terrae, 1990.
Nordberg 1748 : GRAN A. NORDBERG. Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Sude, The
Hague, 1748.
Radiev IIII: A. N. RADIHEV. Polnoe sobranie coinenij. Moscow; Leningrad,
19381952. Volumes IIII.
Ustrialov IVI: N. G. USTRIALOV. Istorija carstvovanija Petra Velikogo. Saint
Petersburg, 18581863. Volumes IVI.
Voskresensky 1894: G. A. VOSKRESENSKY. Pridvornaja i akademieskaja propoved v
Rossii poltorasta let nazad. Moscow, 1894.
Zitser 2011: ERNEST A. ZITSER. The Vita of Prince Boris Ivanovich Korybut-Kurakin:
Personal Life-Writing and Aristocratic Self-Fashioning at the Court of Peter the Great,
in: Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas , Band 59 (2011), Heft 2, pp.163194.
333
The Catholic King and the Ottoman Sultan. The Metaphor of the Turk
in the Transnational Discourse on the Crisis of the Spanish Monarchy
in the Early Nineteenth Century
Juan Luis Simal (juanluis.simal@gmail.com)
Universitt Potsdam, Germany
Darina Martyknov (darinamartykanova@yahoo.es)
CSIC, Spain
ABSTRACT:
During his life, the Spanish king Fernando VII (1784-1833) was often compared to the
Ottoman sultan by different critics in Spain and beyond. In our paper we examine the
multiple dimensions of this comparison, that linked two Empires that had been rivals for
centuries and were both simultaneously considered to be in decline. To what extent was
it a reaffirmation of the construction of the Turk as a radical other? This was a rhetoric
operation that continued a long tradition in Western Christendom by which Christian
rulers were compared to Oriental despots not because they were considered to be equal
to them, but to show how far astray from the ideal of good government they were.
However, were there radical new elements in this metaphor of the Turk which should be
interpreted as produced from the universalist discourse that emerged with the French
Revolution, a discourse that opposed the tyrants to the oppressed peoples across cultural
and religious barriers, appealing to universal values? Our examination will lead to a
theoretical reflection on the transnational character of the discursive frameworks in
which the metaphor of the Turk was built and rebuilt, on its circulation and limits, and
on its specific uses.
(The first version of this paper will be presented in June 2013 at Roma
Sapienza. The second version, to be presented in Bilbao, will build on the comments
received in Roma and will focus specifically on the themes outlined in the
line1.Political-discoursive struggles, translations and semantic transfers both between
countries, civilizations and cultures; border areas, exchanges and cultural mediators;
translingual practices and conceptual entangled histories)
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
334
En su vida, Fernando VII fue a menudo comparado con el sultn turco por sus
diferentes crticos en Espaa y ms all de sus fronteras. En nuestra ponencia queremos
examinar las mltiples dimensiones de esta comparacin. Hasta qu punto se trataba de
una reafirmacin de la construccin del Turco como el Otro radical, una operacin
retrica que enlazaba con una larga tradicin en la Cristiandad occidental que asemejaba
a los gobernantes cristianos al dspota oriental no por verlos como iguales a l, sino
para mostrar hasta qu punto se desviaron de lo que los crticos en cada momento
entendan por el buen gobierno? O es que haba elementos de novedad radical y la
metfora del Turco se puede interpretar tambin en el marco del discurso universalista
surgido de la Revolucin francesa, discurso que opona los tiranos a los pueblos
oprimidos a travs de las barreras religiosas y culturales, apelando a los valores
universales propios de la Humanidad? Nuestra examinacin nos llevar a la reflexin
terica sobre el carcter transnacional de los marcos discursivos en los que se construy
y reconstruy la metfora del Turco, sobre su circulacin y sus lmites, sobre sus
plasmaciones especficas.
335
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
By the end of the 16th century, Siberia was a terra incognita, and at that time,
Western European maps mentioned Siberia not by its real name, but as the "Great
Tartary". The geographical designation lasted until the 18th century, and therefore, the
idea of the Wild Siberia and its nomadic peoples derived from the medieval
traditional image of the wild Tatar. Not until the 16th century, after the first contact
between Europeans and Russians with the indigenous population, did its history begin.
The Russian impact on the Siberian population had previously been limited only to
subjecting the latter to a tribute, the so-called Jasak, paid mainly in sable fur. From the
16th century on, the Siberian population was forced to deliver another benefit to the
Russian Empire; they were required to be loyal to the Russian government and not only
to deliver furs. This was followed by a Russification of the so-called savages and
barbarians, as the different peoples of Siberia were forced to adopt Christian religion,
to learn Russian language and to adopt Russian culture.
Since the beginning of the 18th century, during the reign of Peter I, the Russians
made the first attempt to impose a systematic civilizing mission. At this time,
Christianity was associated with European civilization and, therefore, the adoption of
Christianity meant both an increase of education and a further intensification of the
Russification. In 1700, Peter I. issued a law which provided for the "Europeanization
and Russification of Siberia" by means of a mass Christianization. Basing themselves
on the assumption that Christianization was the only possible way of civilization,
Russian authorities destroyed violently the sanctuaries of indigenous population. For
almost a century, secular and ecclesiastic authorities were trying to christianize the
native population of Siberia with the help of preaching and the law".
The historiographic view of Siberia and its population may be called a colonial
or imperial image. The imperial dimension of Russian history is primarily a multi-ethnic
empire. The Siberian region was not only a historical and geographical or politicaladministrative reality, but also a mental construction of dynamic boundaries difficult to
define. The division of Russia into European and Asian parts (in the discourse of
"Europe-Russia-Asia) was due to the Westernization initiated by Peter I after he had
proclaimed the necessity to catch up to the European countries. It was the desire to
have its own European metropolis and its own Asian periphery within the proclaimed
empire.
336
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
A land without want or famine, ruled by a leader who saw his subjects as fellow
members of a single family An imperial network of emergency collective
granaries that stocked the excess produce of a land of farming families, none of
whom lacked for land, for land was redistributed annually on the basis of need.
The name of the leader of this utopian land? The Inca.
From the conquest of the Incas by a band of Spanish conquistadores led by
Francisco Pizarro, Europeans noted that a peculiar and fascinating form of social order
had been lost. Montaigne revered them as the greatest engineers of all time;
Enlightenment economists such as Franois Quesnay celebrated their property laws as a
model of the first magnitude. As A. Flores Galindo demonstrated in his celebrated
Buscando un inca: identidad y utopa en los Andes of 1986, this sense of loss has
continued up to the present day in Peru, where public sentiment longs forever after an
unsurpassed Golden Age of the Incas.
The power of the Inca past however has not been restricted to the realm of
identitarian historical memory. Starting in the Renaissance, but actualised in full force
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Incas were found to be a
riveting example of the possibility and feasibility of an alternative order of property
relations. The legitimacy of the truth claims of this legend need not concern us here:
though the perception of its historical veracity indeed bolstered its lustre. In an era
revolutionised by the political reorientation towards futurity, reformers stretching
from the German Cameralist J.H.G. von Justi in the second half of the eighteenth
century to the utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century mined all possible
sources of inspiration in their projection of a new destination for society.
These actors understood in an Atlantic sphere stretching from Quebec to
Patagonia, and from Mexico to Germany developed a new use for history and the
practice of history writing. History no longer projected models of ideal behaviour, but
rather models of social progress as an empirical source of inspiration. That is, history
itself, and particular stylised representations of historical societies, could be made to
project visions of the future. This dynamic will be illustrated in this paper through the
case study of the image of the Incas in the development of Cameralist economic theory
and early socialism.
337
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper explores the uses of "barbarians" in early modern Portuguese
chroniclers, focusing in the contradictory dynamics between moments of radical
breakdown in previous experience and conceptual change. In order to detect structures
of change and motives for resilience, a broad chronological span (c. 1500-c. 1800) will
be used.
Descriptions of the encounter with African, Asian and American peoples
previously unknown to Europeans have attracted the attention of a wide public since
their first publication. Encounter narratives have always puzzled historians, but since
the consolidation of multiculturalist and postcolonial perspectives in the 1990s,
historians and anthropologists have repeatedly tried to denounce in various forms and
with varied objectives the European categories employed in these descriptions.
Classical example was obviously one of these frameworks that were used to construct
the representation (both written and in images) of "encountered" peoples. More
recently, however, stress has been put on the "narrative" conventions and the rhetorical
functions explicit and implicit in descriptive texts. Europeans were aware of the
"novelty" of what they described, but they were not completely blind to the conventions
they were using to do so. Differences between the actual perceptions of Europeans and
the represented ones have also been investigated, helping understand better the
conventional uses of classicism in representations of extra-European peoples.
Classic historians provided early modern Portuguese chroniclers with the
concept of barbarian, and prompted them to see barbarians in the lands conquered and
exploited by the Portuguese crown. The concept, drawn from Greek and Roman
"ethnographic" description was used as a fixed and well-established category (although
applied to ever-changing recipients). However, since Roman descriptions of ancient
European peoples recurred often to the concept of "barbarian", classical textual
strategies led to contradictory heritages. The situation was similar in other parts of
Europe such as England, Scotland, Germania, or the Low Countries: early modern
historians had to make a choice between qualifying those depictions and assuming them
as a founding part of their past.
The first approach is exemplified by authors like Brito, whom argues against
Florus and Orosius and defends Viriato of the accusations of being a thief. According to
338
Brito, the activities carried by the Portuguese were then highly esteemed and could not
be compared to those of any fronteiro in Africa. In his Monarchia Lusytana Brito,
significantly enough, does use the concept of barbarians only to refer to ancient peoples
who fought against the Portuguese, but never to the Portuguese themselves. The second
approach emerged only progressively. Comparisons with non-European societies helped
to introduce important changes both in the conception of "barbarians" and of Portuguese
ancestors. In his Epitome de las historias portuguesas, Manuel de Faria e Sousa
compared the boats of ancient Lusitanians to the juncos of the Indians. This kind of
comparison, innocent as it may seem, marked a new path in the re-creation of world
history. Interaction with other peoples helped to reformulate ideas on the historical
development of society. "Noble savages", whose role in the political thought of the
moment is of crucial importance, were also discovered in Euorpean pasts, and the
concept of "barbarian" was consequently reformulated.
339
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The paper addresses the use of the concept fatherland in Swedish (fdernesland,
fosterland) around the turn of the century 1800 among intellectuals in bo (Fi. Turku)
and Helsingfors (Fi. Helsinki). It argues that Finnish intellectuals developed a sort of
complementary patriotic rhetoric by using two parallel vernacular forms for describing
the fatherland (patria).
In Swedish fatherland could be described as fdernesland (land of our fathers)
or as fosterland (native land). Fdernesland was the traditional translation regarding all
patria vocabulary. For instance, Bible translations included fdernesland as a term. In
the eighteenth century krlek till fderneslandet was the standard translation for love
of country (or patriotisme, or Liebe des Vaterlands). By the 1760s, however, fosterland
gained currency as a translation of fatherland. Both terms were used side by side up
until the late nineteenth century, when uses of fdernesland became more and more
scarce.
The parts of Finland that are closest to Stockholm and are commonly known as
Finland proper, with bo as its main city, belonged to the core areas of the
multiethnic and constitutionally diverse Swedish realm. However, towards the end of
the eighteenth century intellectuals in bo developed a way of diversifying their
patriotic rhetoric by fdernesland in addressing the whole Swedish realm, in particular
with reference to the king. It denoted abstract goods and the affection for law and order.
In describing local patriotic efforts and the business of economic improvement,
however, the word fosterland was increasingly used. Foster land gained a closer
connection to geographic regions. Fdernesland had a more solemn ring to it than
fosterland, but the words were in general compatible and used in parallel. In the
political language of the intellectuals a distinction was needed between regional
loyalties and loyalty towards the whole realm, but these remained complementary in the
sense that regional improvement supported the common good of the realm.
In the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars Finland was seceded in 1809 to the
Russian Empire. Consequently, speaking of fatherland gained a much more narrow
meaning. It lost the duality present during the so-called Swedish Era.
340
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
As a bioscience, the rise of western psychiatry is tightly interwoven with one particular
definition of its object: insanity as it is observed in the patient by the psychiatrist, and
treatment according to what he knows will serve the patient best. However, more than
most disciplines in the life sciences, psychiatry has in recent decades become
challenged. A contestation of the concept the psychiatric patient is a key part of this
challenge, and the focal point of my paper.
Psychiatry is anchored in a structural asymmetry in the sense that the statuses
between psychiatrist and patient are different and hierarchical. Related to this is another
asymmetry, based on identity and in correspondence with Reinhart Kosellecks notion
of asymmetric counterconcepts. They are labels put on persons, but labels of a particular
kind: they are conflicting labels, employed in one direction and in an unequal fashion
(1979/2004: 155). They are labels that people do not recognize themselves by.
Historically, the asymmetry to be examined here has become more intensified
and the psychiatric patient the definite article denoting a political and social
singularization has emerged. The notion was a particularly stable construction in the
early post world war 2 years, with the advent of new pharmaceutical drugs and the
father of lobotomy winning the Nobel Prize.
However, with antipsychiatry and most notably the civil rights movement of the
1960s, instability was introduced into the concept. Its neutrality was increasingly
contested. Some mental sufferers started to ask the question: Am I that name? They
refused to recognize themselves by the label psychiatric patient and initiated activist
organisations. Among the key actors in the processes which eventually led to
conceptual transformations, were the various organisations in the mental health branch
of the international human rights movement, and, since the turn of the century also parts
of the UN-system.
The paper will examine the processes of politicisation and democratisation
involved in the transformations, and traces the emergence of the psycho-socially
disabled citizen as a struggle concept in competion with the psychiatric patient.
341
TEXT/TEXTO:
I
One topic currently discussed in conceptual history relates to the observation that
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe and also more recent collaborative projects have tended
to ignore the twentieth century. In the context of the fundamental conceptual changes
that occurred in the last century, it has been suggested that it might make sense to speak
of a second Sattelzeit - of transitions within modernity itself.1 My focus of interest in
these matters is psychiatry and concepts relating to it. I am asking, somewhat
rhetorically, if there are traces here of a new Sattelzeit? If yes, what are the most
important features of the new developments? Psychiatry is a good case when trying to
comprehend current conceptual changes, as it was borne as a modern science in the
course of the some hundred years embraced by the very concept Sattelzeit. Like many
other social and political concepts, it came rather directly out of the aftermath of the
great revolutionary and enlightenment transformations, which in the period around 1800
brought about accelerated conceptual changes.2 Psychiatry, like other sciences, aimed
at developing a universal language, in the sense that there was an ambition to describe
appearances crystallized into the increasingly more elaborate classifications of
symptoms and diseases with concepts that knew no national borders.
An increasing number of conceptual struggles, I would contend, pertain to
psychiatry today. One of the most controversial relates to the naming of its object: the
person described by psychiatry as the mental patient. The paper will examine how in
recent decades new linguistic figures have appeared on the global stage, bringing about
substantial changes in the psychiatric discourse. Unlike some recent publications on
conceptual history in the twentieth century, I will not suggest additions or substitutions
to the process categories elaborated by Reinhart Koselleck, but rather consider
processes of a somewhat more specific kind. My focus is on the post-world war two
period and some processes of particular relevance to psychiatry.
Another much debated topic in conceptual history has a special bearing on
psychiatry and concerns the relationship between concept and discourse. In his very last
publication Koselleck wrote about concepts that they are always embedded into nets of
other concepts, Begriffsnetze. Therefore, he states, the so-called discourse analysis is
the self-evident result.3 Whether nets of concepts also called semantic fields should
1
342
Folie et Draison. Histoire de la folie l'ge Classique, 1961. Unabridged English translation
2006, History of Madness.
343
power and knowledge with regard to his illness. The doctors absolute right to
intervene, diagnose and treat made the patient unlike other patients. He became a
mental patient,9 seen as a child not knowing his own best. Classifications of mental
illness based on observation of behavior and the concept of necessary treatment
necessary because the doctor said so and the asylum as its necessary site emerged.
This involved coercion and involuntary treatment and is today one of the most
controversial issues in psychiatry.
Foucault did not specifically examine the concepts at work. He does however
show how the emergence of the psychiatric discourse was closely connected to the
shaping of a number of conceptual oppositions: patient/ mental patient, nonmadness/
madness, sanity/insanity, reason/ unreason, normality/ abnormality. Those concepts
linked up with the psychiatric discourse have for the most part one thing in common:
they are what conceptual historians would call asymmetric counter concepts. It is thus
easy to agree with those suggesting that the works of Foucault can be read as conceptual
history.10
III
The reign of classical psychiatry, based on a perceived true discourse, lasted for
almost a century. Scattered critical voices had surfaced, first of former patients not
mentioned by Foucault - and then of doctors. For instance, in the late nineteenth century
suspicions raised that (the great French psychiatrist) Jean-Martin Charcot in fact
produced the hysterical fit he described.11 As a systematic criticism, however, Foucault
dates antipsychiatry in France to around 1930-1940.12 It started from objections to the
asylum institution; from a perception of what he describes as the violence of medical
power exercised within it and its distortion of the supposed truth of the medical
discourse.13 The key actors were psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who in the 1930s
wanted to dissociate the notion of mental illness from the context of the asylum. In
the 1940s, according to Foucault, criticism took another direction. A small fraction of
the profession started seeing the asylum not only as hospital for the insane (alins),
but that it is itself alienated (alin).14 As in France, dominant opposition was in the
Anglophone world a critique springing from the inside of psychiatry. Actually, the term
antipsychiatry was coined by the British psychiatrist David Cooper in 1967, in his book
titled Psychiatry and Antipsychiatry. Thus, antipsychiatry emerged as a counterconcept
to psychiatry after the Second World War. Influenced by existentialist philosophy and
a strong leaning on left wing politics it elevated madness to a status of a liberating
force. Concepts such as therapeutic community and lived experience came into use,
as conceptual oppositions to the asylum and the doctors experience in observing
the mad. The prominent psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing, for instance, illustrates the
9
Psychiatric Power, p.? The Norwegian term is psykiatrisk pasient, cf Anne Botslangens doctoral
research on the history of the concept in the context of a Norwegian asylum.
10
Christian Geulen, Reply, CHC, 2012, pp 1012: 122.
11
MoH, p.341.
12
MoH, p.39.
13
Psychiatric Power, p.39.
14
PP p. ?
344
claiming of validity for another concept of experience than that of orthodox psychiatry.
In his extensive writings he took a particular interest in psychosis, where his views ran
counter to the mainstream, in seeing patients expressed feelings as valid descriptions of
lived experience, rather than as symptoms of some underlying disorder.
I have not traced what happened to the term antipsychiatry. It emerged from
inside psychiatry, seen very much as a political term as many important voices were
those of Marxist psychiatrists. Most likely a change occurred as the revolutionary
sentiments of the 70s waned in the west and the human rights language gained strength.
IV
In The Last Utopia. Human rights in History Samuel Moyn puts forward the
hypothesis that the emergence of human rights as a global, individualized concept, did
not happen until after the collapse in the late1970s of promises of future revolutionary
change.15 In the first decades after the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the concept
took in his understanding on a collective meaning, emphasizing colonial liberation, selfdetermination and the creation of emancipated nations. The conceptual transformation
that occurred later emphasized individual protection against the state.16 Rather than
being a collective concept furthering the independence of new states after colonialism,
its meaning tended to be individualized and eventually stretching out beyond the nation
state, as a global and utopian concept. However interesting, mental health activism is
not a very good fit to this hypothesis.
In the 1960s, perhaps inspired by antipsychiatry, and most certainly by the civil
rights movement, some objects of the psychiatric science started to voice protests by
seeking together with equals. For the first time criticism was something taking place
outside the doctor-patient relationship, and beyond the sites of dialogue and equality
created by antipsychiatry practices. An early effort was We Shall Overcome in Norway,
established in 1968. The very name of the group indicates from where inspirations
came. We Shall Overcome alludes to the unofficial hymn of the civil rights movement,
which was used, for instance, by Martin Luther King when he preached for the very last
time prior to his assassination in 1968. According to Moyn, the civil rights movement
did not find much inspiration in the human rights declaration. Only once did King, for
instance, invoke human rights.17 It is the slogans of the early revolutions, and the 1863
Emancipation Proclamation of slaves freedom, justice, and constitutional rights which fueled the language of King and other prominent figures of that movement.
The Norwegian group used a similar language, but in combination with explicit
reference to human rights and the UN Declaration. Like many other mental activist
groups of the early 1970s it fought against coercion and ill-treatment of individual
inmates in psychiatric institutions.18 Many did not recognize themselves as mental
15
345
patients. Examples are the Danish Galebevgelsen (transl. Mad Movement) and the
Canadian and subsequently international Mad Pride. The self-naming shows how
groups reclaimed for themselves terms that have a long history of being negatively
laden and applied as other-naming, starting perhaps with the black is beautiful
slogan of the civil rights movement. Many individuals organizing the early groups saw
themselves as psychiatric survivors working against what they held as illegitimate use
of power and outright force by the state and psychiatry. The names of groups such as
Insane Liberation Front, Network Against Psychiatric Assault and MindFreedom
are all indicators to that effect.
From around 1990 they came to see themselves as part of a psychiatric
survivors movement. By the term psychiatric survivor they meant to highlight that
they were individuals who identified themselves as having experienced human rights
violations in psychiatric treatment. The term has of course a strong symbolic
connotation and alludes to Holocaust survivors. Gradually, many of the local advocacy
groups had come together in an international network which initially named itself the
World Federation of Psychiatric Users (1991), perceiving user as a more neutral and
psychiatry-independent term than mental patient. Following what is said to be heated
discussions19, however, the name was in 1997 changed to the World Network of Users
and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP). By this move the psychiatric survivor
movement gained more strength and a global foothold was established for a conceptual
struggle over the mental patient.
A next step was taken when around the turn of the century the network started
collaborating with other global initiatives in the field and, most notably, with groups of
the physically disabled. By this move they started identifying themselves as disabled,
and as part of a global movement of people with disabilities. This movement
participated actively in pushing to get preparations for a United Nation convention on
the rights of persons with disabilities out of the backwater it had been in since the late
80s, due to lack of consensus between the member states20. From an ad hoc committee
was created and had its first session in 2002 through the adoption of the completed text
in 2006, an international team of users and survivors participated actively in the
negotiations at the United Nations in New York.
The global network (WNUSP) describes the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a major victory for users and survivors of
psychiatry all around the world, seeing it as a paradigmatic shift from a model based
on paternalism to one based on respect for our human rights.21 In the interpretation of
the network, the convention speaks against any forced intervention and necessary
treatment without consent. Recently, the survivor movement has started campaigning
to get involuntary interventions defined as torture. This is still a very controversial
issue, even though the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture declares in a statement of
March 2013 that the doctrine of medical necessity is outdated and that provisions
19
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
21
WNUSP 2008 (implementation manual) :4
20
346
Statement of Mr. Juan E Mendez Special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degradading treatment or punishment (4 March 1913: 2).
23
(http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/global/crpd/senate-fails-crpd
24
Citation of Aslak Syse. in NOU 2011: 9, p. 73. My translation.
25
Postoutenko p. 94 in Kay Junge and Kiril Postoutenko, Asymmetrical Concepts after Reinhart
Koselleck. Historical Semantics and Beyond. 2011.
26
Cf. Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity. Ed. Vere Chappell, 1999.
27
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1958, chapter 2.
347
however, in recent decades been used as a language which brings together very different
groups in their political struggles to be accepted as full citizens. In the name of human
rights they have joined hands in their struggles for freedom, equality and selfdetermination. In the course of this process human rights have been turned into a global,
political concept. The concept has entered the center stage of emancipation struggles of
people seeing themselves as discriminated against.
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Designed academic cycles that repeat conference themes, job announcements, museum
exhibitions, and organization foundings are congenial for tenured career professors
because of departmental budgetary constraints and their consequential circuitous
politics but detrimental for history as a discipline. Ordering, constructing, and scripting
these periodic cycles involve private profit-driven interests that occupy operational parts
of academic calendars and absorb tenured committees. Eric Blairs famous axiom,
Who controls the present, controls the past. Who controls the past, controls the future
reminds that practicalities of homogenizing historicism and compromising history into
monotone culs-de-sac depend on power and institutional hierarchies that ultimately aim
to control concepts. Engaging esoteric studies, metaphysical approaches, and falsified
histories signify a generalized lethargy voiced in the separation of academic historians
into two differentiated groups based on activity: teachers and researchers. This division
nominally represents the dual need for messages to be relayed to university-academic
audiences and the inventors of those messages. The result is a closed discourse,
directed by and through mediatized channels, that privilege relevant meta-narratives
and prescribed issues over independent historical methods. Absent are Braudelian
historical conceptualizations of the three interrelated speeds of time as are open,
contextual historiographical models that could lead the discipline out of
periodicity. This cyclical linearity even confounds mythologists of progress. Thus,
materialism and material historicism have taken a back seat to post-structural and postmodern historicity; recent intellectual currents have mirrored not only institutional
socio-politics but more significantly macroeconomics, making for predictable cyclical
impasses. The teacher-researcher dualism has deprived the discipline of the archival
richness that require discovery by historians at an early stage of their career. This paper
proposes that adopting a new materialism is most effective beyond the cultural turn
348
in order to reorient the discipline of history away from departmental politics and once
again toward the archives. More importantly, it employs the study of early-modern
medical practitioners, the concepts associated with them contemporaneously and
retrospectively, and the ontological impossibility of conceptualizing them as specialists,
experts, and scientists outside an historical context. This impossibility is not unrelated
to the limitations of epistemology conceptualization outside regimented perspectives,
for example, the concepts that are based upon the indubitability of the advancement of
the medical sciences since the early-modern period.
TEXT/TEXT:
It gives me great pleasure to be presenting this paper under the auspices of the History
of Concepts Group (HCG) especially since we are in Bilbao! My concerns today are
not so different from my concerns a few years ago when I noticed that conference
themes, job announcements, even museum exhibitions repeated every so often and that
codicology was required to understand the whys and hows of the repetitions. Further
ponderance led me to the logic behind the repetitions that I initially justified in
conditioned Cartesian intellectual fashion.
Having taught at both Canadian and US universities, I realized how these
academic events were not just invented ex nihilo but designed by committees that
included many individuals and involved more than one university, not to mention their
budgets that provided for repeating the events. The committees happen to be composed
of tenured professors and driven by their own particular politics. After all, the events,
whether conferences or exhibitions, are money generators.
But how do repeating job announcements figure into the periodicity? And why
do they fit into the cycles? Why are the same universities and departments posting the
same job announcements every so often? Is it professional attrition or because the
temporary positions never turn into permanent posts?
The repeating cycles themselves disallow free exchange of information as the
effects of the closed and unified discourse is homogenizing, reinforces power dynamics
and internal institutional hierarchies.
I say this with more confidence than in 2008 because of my newest discoveries
at the archives: this new corpus of documents breaks the perceived monopolies over
knowledge that these designed cycles perpetuate.
It was the 1761-1762 naval blockade of the port of Havana by the British that
was designed to break the Spanish monopoly on trade in the Americas. Today, we
witness an analogous situation in the exchange of ideas. The lethargy in academia
could be attributed wholly to these contrived and artificially perpetuated cycles that
initially were designed to attract and propel students into careers, now just serve to
obstaculize.
The manner to break this intellectual monopoly, its contiguous pre-scripted and
circular rhetoric, is through new knowledge. I am reminded of the 1984 film the Gods
Must be Crazy when the Kalahari village was inundated with problems that affected not
349
only their social relations but their economic production as well after the glass CocaCola bottle was introduced. Can we attribute the burst of post-world war historical
activity to the rediscovery of the archives after the foundations laid by Lucien Febvre
and Marc Bloch? Can Braudels and Chaunus archival diggings have also produced, as
Paul Virilio has theorized, the accident of post-structuralism and resultant esoteric
discourse?
This new knowledge is gleaned from prolonged and regular, almost religious
visits to the archives!
It is from archival records that we can understand the past and reconstruct
concepts that may escape us because they no longer exist. It has become fashionable to
justify the present in the past as a natural development or continuity of past trends.
After all, it is the present that is based on the past (and not vice-versa) and provides
clues about the past.
Members of the Generacin of 1898, Miguel Unamuno and Pablo Picasso
unearthed concepts about the Spanish Empire that either had ceased to exist or were
fading away. The concepts about which I am speaking today involve professionals. In
the sixteenth century, medical practitioners of the Spanish Empire included surgeonbarbers (barbero-cirujanos), toothpullers (sacamuelas), and bonesetters (algebristas)
who drew from relatively the same customer base as the ones tapped by physicians. It
remains to be proven what percentage or which segments of society actually patronized
which types of medical practitioners.
The concept, for example, of the bleeder today exists in a very specialized niche
of the phlebotomist for which licenses are granted by state approved medical boards
based on proficiency tests. But in the sixteenth century the medical profession could
not be understood without their existence.
A completely extinguished type of medical practitioner that can only be found in
the archival record is the surgeon-barber that practiced his profession on ships. Its
closest homologue today would only be found on navy vessels, since even medical
practitioners on contemporary holiday cruise ships serve as poor comparisons.
So outside of the economic aspects of archival research and the associated
politics of obtaining funding, it seems as if the barriers to exploring these types of
medical practitioners on ships are just administrative - access to the repository -- and
paleographic -- access to the document.
In another conference paper I presented at the Freie Universitat in Berlin under
the auspices of the Third Reformation Research Consortium Conference (The Medical
Profession during the Sixteenth Century: Formations, Transformations, and
Reformations), I discussed six of these types of medical practitioners that include:
physician of the armada, barber of the vessel, surgeon-physician of the vessel,
surgeon-barber of the vessel, chief surgeon of the armada, surgeon of the vessel.
These cases bring to light the existence of medical practitioners from the
margins of their profession, as well. The intricacies of these unimaginable spheres
(practitioners on ships) further illuminate their material circumstances through close
readings of the court cases. For example, when in 1632 Simn de Aguilera, mdico y
cirujano de la nao capitana, appears in the legal record, we get a glimpse of his social
350
relations because of the witnesses his wife called before the Casa de la Contratacin to
recover her husbands wages after he drowned at sea. The three witnesses, barber
Enemegildo de Ruiz, a property owner (vecino) in the Calle Santo Domingo of Triana
who signed his own statement as testimony to his literacy, forty-five year old Josef
Naranjo de Vera, also a literate vecino in Triana next to the Candelaria, and another
vecino in the parish of the Iglesia Mayor, twenty-five year old Mauricio Salgado de
Acosta demonstrated that their local relationships in Sevilla weighted toward Triana, an
area across the Guadalquivir River heavily populated with Moriscos and the working
class. The reference to his service on the flagship of the fleet (nao capitana) is also
significant because it indicates his level of seniority among medical practitioners that
served on ships.
In another document from 1573, mdico y cirujano mayor de nao, Sevillan, and
vecino Alonso Snchez de Herreras wifes successful attempts to recover her deceased
husbands wages uncovered legal departure recordings bearing his fathers name (Juan
Snchez de Porras), his physical stature (mediano), his age (thirty years old), his facial
description (de buen rostro), the scars on the knuckles (artejos) of his right hand, and
that he had been paid 8,976 maraveds in San Lucar de Barrameda before departure.
Though seemingly unimportant at first glance, these details allow further research about
the same person that can be confirmed by local parish archival records and even lead the
research to where his death took place, San Juan de Ulloa. Further research can also
uncover contemporary (Siglo de Oro) literary concepts about the significance of river
drownings: after having phlebotomized the general of the fleet, Juan de Allega, whom
he was hired to personally serve, Alonso Snchez de Herrera died in the river of
Veracruz, Mexico.
Although he served on the flagship (nao capitana), his witnesses distinguished
him as a more important member of society than Simn de Aguilera. His three
witnesses consisted of 1) Beatrz del Espirit Santo, a vecina in the parish of San
Vicente and lay sister (beata) in the convent of Nuestra Seora del Carmen who
recognized her ten-year relationship with the couple, 2) guida de Vergara, twenty-two
year old vecina in the parish of San Vicente and wife of scribe Luis Jimenez, also
confirmed a thirteen-year relationship with Alonso Snchez de Herreras wife and a tenyear relationship with the mdico y cirujano mayor de nao but did not know how to sign
her name, and 3) Mara de Cabre, forty-year old wife of mason Alonso Martnez vecino
in the parish of San Vicente, identified a twenty-year relationship with Alonso Snchez
de Herreras wife and her presence at the couples wedding in the neighborhood parish
church but she also did not know how to sign her name. The document even indicates
the duration of his post, 9 months and 12 days: between 7 June 1572 and 19 March
1573, for which he received a salary of 8 ducados per month or 28,200 maraveds pro
rata minus what he had received prior to departure. The 19,224 maraveds that his
widow, Beatrz de Herrera, recuperated could by no means be considered a fortune for
her and her daughter but does provide a barometric reading when compared to the cost
of certain commodities or other professionals and artisans salaries. Just this six-folio
case serves to reinforce our notions that a socio-economic hierarchy of sixteenthcentury Sevilla would be enriched by archival details. What was the social range of the
351
medical practitioners that served on ships when they were on tierra firme? What types
of company did they keep? How did they compare in terms of wealth and status with
medical practitioners that never left the city? For instance, we know from the AGIs
Contratacin branch that another medical practitioner, Diego de Talavera, a barbero de
nao capitana, received 4 ducados per month.
Most revealing are last wills and testaments from which we understand the range
of possessions of these types of medical practitioners. Is there a way to conceptualize
practitioners of medicine through the objects they possessed? Can we reconstruct a
social economy from the types of possessions they owned? A document from 1617 in
which the chief surgeon of the flagship (cirujano mayor en el galleon almiranta)
Clemente de Mirandas belongings were being recovered by his twenty-eight year old
widow, vecina Leonor Lpez, we encounter a trunk of clothing that contained 33 reales
(de a ocho), and material objects related to his profession. His vestment collection
consisted mostly of used, Spartan articles: 7 nightshirts (camisones), 2 pairs of canvas
trousers (calzones); 4 cotton doublets (jubones); 30 pairs of linen stockings (calcetas); 6
handkerchiefs of different sizes; 12 single-soled/single-seamed shoes (escarpines); 2
used canvas wool-filled pillows (almohadas); 1 pair of silver-embroidered/woolen
socks (medias); 2 pairs of black silk socks (medias); 1 short cape (ferreruelo) and
cassock (sotanilla) of coarse mohair silk or grogram (gorgarn/gorguern); 1 pair of
damask trousers (calzones), 6 books on surgery and literature; 1 small box with a
smaller interior box of medication pills; 1 small box with surgical tools and stones for
sharpening scissors; 1 large box specific to barbering (caja de barbero) with 2 pairs of
scissors, 4 knives, 1 mirror, 2 combs; 1 small case with some scissors and 6 lancets; 1
hair brush (escobilla de cabeza); 1 handsaw (serrucho), 1 box of knives, 1 dagger; 1
barbers basin (baca), 1 brush to dust off clothes, 3 pairs of old shoes; some strips of
gauze; 2 old black sombreros; 1 sword.
Needless to say aside from their salaries, other points of comparison in the
direction of producing materialist histories are the quality and quantity of their clothing,
the types of their professional instruments, and their medical books (i.e., whether
published in Latin or Romance).
Two witnesses corroborated the deceased Clemente de Mirandas background:
1) thirty-six year old joiner-carpenter (ensamblador) Diego Ramrez, vecino in the
parish of Santa Mara la Mayor knew the couple for sixteen years; and 2) thirty-two
year old carpenter Pedro Bautista, also a vecino in Santa Mara la Mayor identified their
social relations as local, specific to their own generation, and working-class. Both
witnesses were able to sign their statements. Together with his list of possessions, we
surmise that Clemente de Mirandas social status depended more on his professional
training than any other criteria: not having the university education that a mdico
possessed affected his salary which would have been 4 ducats a month (instead of the 8
ducats a month accorded to Alonso Snchez de Herrera), and would have landed him in
the lower rungs of medical practitioners serving on ships.
Another case from 1582 involved an inheritance of 26,017 maraveds and the
inheritors of a deceased barbero de nao, vecino and native of Segura in Guipuzcoa.
Barber Domingo de Aguirres brother and sister, Joanes and Catalina de Aguirre,
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1850-1950: the laboratory and disease in German and English; 5) 1900-1950: clinical
recording and scientific publication in German and English. In evaluating why
concepts associated with medical practitioners are not being researched effectively, we
can scrutinize the first period although the research is focused on elite physicians that
left a paper trail. Elite physicians only constituted a small minority of early-modern
medical practitioners because they were approved by the governing class and they
possessed privileged socio-economics. So the research would intrinsically generate a
skewed idea of what medical practice generally involved and who the most visible
medical practitioners were in the early-modern period.
Other examples of History-of-Science funding opportunities that do not include
an archival research component or foster historical research in the archives include
Cornell Universitys Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Scientific Ambiguity and its
Consequences, focused on public and policy-oriented communication, cognitively
structuring organizational programming. Although it involves a multi-country field
that eventually could influence NAFTA politics, under the pretense of addressing
previously held notions of environmentalists and conservation groups about declining
monarch butterfly populations, the opportunity nominally is designed to research how
the fellows think about the issues and seems geared towards area studies.
The Max-Planck Institut funding opportunity, The Construction of Norms in
th
17 - to 19th- Century Europe and the United States, also directed at developing the
History of Science sub-discipline, requires research activities to be conducted in situ
(Berlin). The time period, the general themes (deafness, hysteria, or any medical
category), as well as the subfields considered relevant (history of psychology, legal
history, history of medicine, technological studies, disability studies, linguistics,
comparative literature, history of philosophy) are well-defined enough to allow archival
research. But instead the focus is on the available published material at the institute.
The University of Leuvens four-year funding opportunity at the Ph.D. level is
defined as a research project about the diachronic changes to the prestige, importance,
and authority-legitimacy of human anatomy in Belgian medicine and culture between
1780 and 1930.
Investigational methodologies into the circulation of
medical/anatomical knowledge are unspecified but one would hope that it would
include archival study of medical practitioners. However, that possibility is not
excluded and archival research, although not explicitly encouraged, is not precluded,
overtly or otherwise.
But does the diverging path differentiating researchers and teachers, begin at this
stage of academic careers and thereafter blocked?
354
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
In this paper the study is focused on the particular ways language, or more precisely
concepts are used by actors; a historical fact that plays fundamental role both in the
distinction of scientific from non scientific knowledge, while at the same time it is a
crucial factor that mediates, categorizes and shapes the relation between the natural and
the historical world. Through the study of the antagonism between Thomas Hobbes and
John Wilkins, I will try to identify the ways in which a certain kind of scientific
knowledge was shaped while it kept distinct from other ways of doing natural
philosophy during the mid-17th century. The shape and the categorization of knowledge
are primarily performed within language, and that's the central concern of this paper:
How the study of concepts can contribute to the study of knowledge shaping? In
addition, the case study will be focused on the analysis of the concept of incorporeality
that appears in Hobbes Leviathan and Wilkins An Essay towards a Real Character
and Philosophical Language in order to identify the connections the concept develops
within the sociopolitical tensions of the period.
355
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN
In todays world, corporation tends to be upheavedcommonly calling to mind
business organisations conceived of in terms of fixed sum investment, the separation of
ownership and control, and limited liability. As such corporation tends to be associated
with a juridical, non-living or artificial persona, with such persona constituting a certain
entity distinct from its individual members or shareholder-owners, devoted to the
pursuit business profit.
Historically, however, more emphasis has rested on the socio-political area. In
this context, corporation has inter alia been construed as a social aggregate, comprising
several individuals, such as the mayor and burgesses of a particular town, or as a sole,
consisting of one person and this persons successors, such as the monarch, bishop, or
the parson of a parish. Moreoverakin to contemporary images of profit-seeking
business organisationsthe notion of legal persona has been influential. It is at this
juncture that theorists urged for the State to be approached as a corporation, seen as a
legal persona.
Based on the idea that the corporation constitutes a legal person, Quentin
Skinner, devised the fictional theory of the State, according to which the State is to be
conceived beyond ownership and constitution on the part of rulers and those being
ruled. This stands in contrast to so-called populist and absolutist theories of the State,
which centre either on people as owner-cum-constituents, or on the sovereign having
the authority and duty to tend and protect the people.
Introducing the notion of de-republicisation and placed in Skinners slipstream,
we discuss the State as a corporation, shedding light upon a relative shift in focus from
the common to the limited. In doing so, we seek to extrapolate the historical rearticulation of social responsibility and state which can be thought to have opened out
into todays managerial, late capitalist welfare regimes.
356
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El concepto de estado de naturaleza es un buen ejemplo de un concepto que se ve sometido
a cambios desde, al menos, tres puntos de vista: temporal, espacial y de objeto. Desde la
perspectiva temporal, cada poca ha tenido su propia interpretacin de un estado originario
de la humanidad, empezando por el mundo clsico y alcanzando hasta nuestros das; entre
ambas, no se pueden olvidar las transformaciones que sufre su significado en la poca
medieval y moderna, donde su tratamiento desvelar una fertilidad que lo convertir
definitivamente en una nocin fundamental del pensamiento poltico. Tambin es
apreciable su variabilidad segn las sociedades en las que se ha utilizado, no siendo de
despreciar la carga ideolgica y valorativa implcita en su aplicacin a unos grupos por
parte de otros. Por ltimo, el objeto al que remite ha sido, asimismo, modificado para
designar desde grupos del pasado a comunidades contemporneas y desde situaciones
imaginadas a referentes concretos.
Todos estos cambios y adaptaciones permiten dar cuenta de un concepto que ha
sido tan utilizado para cuestionar la forma del Estado como para otorgarle legitimidad,
para justificar la libertad del hombre como su sometimiento a la autoridad. Estos usos y
otros muchos que podran citarse, avalan el carcter revolucionario del trmino en la
misma medida que su raz conservadora, pero, sobre todo, a travs de los supuestos en los
que se asienta, de los casos que lo ejemplifican y de los autores que lo han manejado,
permite dar cuenta de nuevos modos de concebir la sociedad y a los individuos que la
integran.
Con lo dicho no slo es evidente que todos los cambios a los que se ve sometido el
concepto tienen su inters terico sino que contribuyen a forjar (a la vez que a desvelar)
mentalidades y maneras de pensar que ejercen una enorme influencia en la legitimacin de
formas polticas, acciones de gobierno y experiencias de dominio.
El mismo carcter fundante que se otorga al concepto de estado de naturaleza hace
que se den en el mismo todas las condiciones para explicar y justificar lo que ha de venir;
en ese sentido, se muestra como un laboratorio privilegiado en el que observar con la
claridad y pureza propias de un experimento lo que en la sociedad civil y en la historia se
357
presenta rodeado las ms de las veces de oscuridad y confusin. Todo ello justifica la
necesidad de su anlisis.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
Tres son los cambios fundamentales del concepto de estado de naturaleza:
temporal, espacial y de objeto. Temporalmente el estado originario de la humanidad del
mundo clsico se transforma con el cristianismo, para convertirse, en la poca moderna, en
una nocin bsica del pensamiento poltico hasta nuestros das. Tambin es apreciable la
variabilidad en su uso, con una importante carga ideolgica y valorativa al aplicarlo unos
grupos sobre otros. Por ltimo, su objeto abarca desde comunidades del pasado a
colectivos contemporneos y desde situaciones hipotticas a referentes concretos.
Estos cambios y adaptaciones muestran un concepto que cuestiona la forma del
Estado y le otorga legitimidad, justifica la libertad del hombre y su sometimiento; se trata
de usos que avalan tanto su carcter revolucionario como su raz conservadora, pero, sobre
todo, a travs de los supuestos en los que se asienta, de los casos que lo ejemplifican y de
los autores que lo han manejado, permite aproximarse a nuevos modos de concebir la
sociedad y a sus individuos. Por eso, no slo todos los cambios que afectan al concepto
tienen su inters terico sino que contribuyen a forjar y a desvelar mentalidades
enormemente influyentes en la legitimacin de acciones polticas, formas de gobierno y
experiencias de dominio.
El mismo carcter fundante del concepto de estado de naturaleza hace que se den
en l todas las condiciones para explicar y justificar lo que ha de venir; en ese sentido, se
muestra como un laboratorio privilegiado en el que observar con la claridad de un experimento lo que en la sociedad y en la historia se presenta rodeado de oscuridad y confusin.
Todo ello justifica su anlisis.
Edad Antigua
La idea segn la cual al principio de los tiempos existi un estado de naturaleza con
un modo de vida diferente e incluso contrapuesto al actual, est muy arraigada. En la
literatura occidental es el relato de la Edad de Oro el que ms influencia ha tenido al
describir esa situacin originaria. En este estado, la felicidad no admite sombras1, por lo
que hay que pensar en Hesodo como primera fuente del concepto: el oro es una expresin
358
simblica para designar una raza2 que vive privilegiadamente; sobreviene un proceso
degenerativo cuyo final son los hombres de la estirpe de hierro3; desaparecen la autosuficiencia y cierta comunidad de bienes pero, sobre todo, ser imposible salir de la
degradacin moral. Virgilio4, Ovidio5, Sneca6, incluso satricamente Luciano7, se harn
eco de la irreparable prdida de la armona que asola a los humanos.
El mito se adapta a las necesidades de cada lugar8: Virgilio no slo sustituye a
Cronos y Zeus por los ms locales Jpiter y Saturno, sino que lo que en Hesodo daba
cuenta de la obligacin de trabajar y soportar las penalidades de la vida9, pasa a convertirse
en una manera de ensalzar la paz y la estabilidad encarnadas en el emperador Augusto10.
Tambin es obra de los autores romanos la conversin de la raza de oro de Hesodo en la
edad de oro que alcanzar la universalidad11.
No todos los autores vieron al hombre sometido a un proceso de degeneracin.
Tambin aparece tempranamente una visin de los orgenes catica, asocial y llena de
injusticia12. Esta tradicin (Cicern13, Lucrecio14, etc.), no es menos poderosa que la de la
edad dorada ni su influencia es menor. Este dualismo de los orgenes llega hasta hoy,
2
H. C. Baldry, Who Invented the Golden Age?, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, 2 (1952),
pp. 83-92; J. Gwyn Griffiths, Did Hesiod Invent the "Golden Age"?, Journal of the History of
Ideas, 19, 1 (1958), pp. 91-93.
3
Hesodo, Trabajos y das, 111-12 y 177-179: nunca durante el da se vern libres de fatigas y
miserias ni dejarn de consumirse durante la noche. Vase 90-92 y 109-20.
4
Virgilio, Buclicas, IV, 18-46 y Gergicas, I, 125-28 y II, 140-76; Eneida, VIII, 314-29
proporciona un esquema en el que el salvajismo inicial, pleno de ignorancia, da paso a la Edad de
Oro y sta a una edad de hierro caracterizada por el frenes guerrero y el afn de poseer (326);
vase M. E. Taylor, Primitivism in Virgil, The American Journal of Philology, 76, 3 (1955), pp.
261-278.
5
Ovidio, Metamorfosis, I, 89-150. Su esquema reduce a cuatro las edades de Hesodo (no incluye
la Edad de los Hroes) y hace ms hincapi en el contraste entre la Edad de Oro y la de Hierro que
en los pasos intermedios.
6
Sneca, Epstolas morales. A Lucilio, epstola XC, 4 y ss. Vase Fedra, 525-44 y Medea, 329-34.
En Sneca la Edad de Oro ofrece ms sombras que en los anteriores: Eran inocentes a causa de su
ignorancia (epstola XC, 46).
7
Luciano, Obras III. Las saturnales, 20.
8
R. Evans, Searching for paradise: Landscape, Utopia, and Rome, Arethusa, 36, 3 (2003), pp.
285-307.
9
H. C. Baldry, Who Invented the Golden Age?, art. cit., p. 91.
10
I. Scott Ryberg, Vergil's Golden Age, Transactions and Proceedings of the American
Philological Association, 89 (1958), pp. 112-131 (129); A. Wallace-Hadrill, The Golden Age and
sin in Augustan ideology, Past and Present, 95 (1982), pp. 19-36 (25).
11
H. C. Baldry, Who Invented the Golden Age?, art. cit., p. 88: These Greek authors, like
Hesiod, all refer to a golden race. It is only in Latin poetry that this is sometimes replaced by a
golden age, and here careful examination of the relevant passages suggests that aurea saecula and
aurea aetas, usually translated 'golden age', were often intended by the poets as equivalents of
Hesiod's cruseov gevos. The transition to 'golden age' may well have been facilitated by the
ambiguity of aetas and saecula.
12
Platn, Protgoras, 322a2-b. Vase El poltico, 271d-272b; Crtilo, 397e-398a; Timeo, 22c;
Critias, 109d-e; Leyes, 677a.
13
Cicero, De officiis, II, 11-14. Vase C. J. Nederman, Nature, sin and the origins of society: the
ciceronian tradition in medieval political thought, Journal of the History of Ideas, 49, 1 (1988), pp. 3-26.
14
Lucrecio, De rerum natura, V, 925-1457; vase M. Taylor, Progress and Primitivism in
Lucretius, The American Journal of Philology, 68, 2 (1947), pp. 180-194; P. Merlan, LucretiusPrimitivist or Progressivist, Journal of the History of Ideas, 11, 3 (Jun., 1950), pp. 364-368, y D.
R. Blickman, Lucretius, Epicurus, and Prehistory, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 92
(1989), pp. 157-191.
359
A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins
Press, 1935.
16
I. Scott Ryberg, Vergil's Golden Age, art. cit., pp. 115-16; A. Wallace-Hadrill, The Golden
Age and sin in Augustan ideology, art. cit., pp. 20 y 32-36.
17
J. Delumeau, Une histoire du paradis. Le Jardin des dlices. Paris. Fayard, 1992, pp. 21 y ss.
18
Saint Jrme, Chronique continuation de la Chronique d'Eusbe, annes 326-378. Texte latin de
l'dition de B. Helm. Traduction franaise indite, notes et commentaires par Benot Jeanjean et
Bertrand Lanon. Suivie de quatre tudes sur les Chroniques et chronographies dans l'Antiquit
tardive (IVe-VIe sicles): Actes de la table ronde du GESTIAT, Brest, 22 et 23 mars 2002.
Rennes. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004, pp. 62-69.
19
San Agustn, La ciudad de Dios, XXII, 30, 5.
20
Suma Teolgica, I, qq. 94-102.
21
C. J. Nederman, Nature, sin and the origins of society: the ciceronian tradition in medieval political
thought, art. cit., pp. 10-26.
22
F. Castilla Urbano, El concepto de estado de naturaleza en la escolstica espaola de los
siglos XVI y XVII, en Anuario de Filosofa del Derecho (Madrid), XII, 1995, pp. 425-445, que
resumo a continuacin.
23
No parece acertado Q. Skinner (Los fundamentos del pensamiento poltico moderno. II. La
Reforma. Mxico. F.C.E., 1986, p. 16l) cuando afirma que los escolsticos espaoles poseen el
concepto del estado de naturaleza aun cuando no posean la frase.
24
Una naturaleza frtil produca los alimentos necesarios para el hombre por s sola o con muy
poco cultivo (D. de Soto, De la Justicia y del Derecho. Madrid. I.E.P., 1967-68 (1556), p. 296).
25
La misma condicin humana permita prescindir de alimentos durante un cierto tiempo, sin
percibirlo como una privacin (T. de Mercado, Suma de tratos y contratos. Madrid. I.E.F. del M
de Hacienda, 1977 (1569-7 l), p. 65).
26
D. de Soto, o. cit., p. 290.
27
T. de Mercado, o. cit., pp. 64-65: no exista la propiedad privada, ni el mo ni el tuyo. La
nica excepcin a este comunismo que reconocieron los escolsticos fue la comunidad de mujeres
(D. de Soto, o. cit., p. 296: era conforme con el estado de inocencia la posesin en comn de
360
361
Adn y Eva. Le siguieron los husitas y los taboritas de Bohemia, Thomas Mntzer en
Alemania, los anabaptistas en el centro de Europa y, en la segunda mitad del siglo
XVII, los diggers y los ranters en Inglaterra34. Todos ellos intentaron restaurar el
estado de naturaleza originario.
De forma alternativa numerosos pensadores medievales y renacentistas pusieron el
mximo empeo en justificar la situacin actual de la humanidad 35 . Actuaron
convencidos de que el estado de naturaleza volvera al final de los tiempos, como
consecuencia de la redencin de los justos (no slo de los pobres). Estos autores
estimaron que tanto el origen del gobierno, la propiedad privada e incluso la esclavitud,
como su mantenimiento estaban esencialmente unidos a la situacin en que haba
quedado la naturaleza humana tras el pecado. Por eso, siguiendo a Aristteles y su
cristianizacin tomista, consideraron que no eran instituciones artificiales o
convencionales, como haban mantenido muchos Padres de la Iglesia, sino naturales,
aunque de una naturaleza distinta a la del estado de inocencia36.
Edad Moderna
Las teoras contractualistas modernas encuentran en el estado de naturaleza su
origen, legitimidad, finalidad y limitaciones; el concepto sirve para pensar el origen de
la sociedad civil, origen que es a la vez una descripcin del momento anterior a su
comienzo y, sobre todo, una explicacin de su causa o fundamento37. De ah que en el
estado de naturaleza est prefigurado todo lo que ha de ser: la maldad o la bondad humanas, la
de la sociedad y la de sus tendencias e ideales, as como el pacto o contrato que constituye el
Estado, la configuracin que ha de adoptar y la distribucin del poder en funcin de aqullos.
El carcter real del estado primigenio no desaparece en la Edad Moderna, pero, sobre
todo, es pensado como un experimento mental e invariablemente como el presupuesto
de la sociedad poltica. Sus contenidos cambian respecto a la etapa anterior: el estado de
naturaleza ser un lugar de guerra de todos contra todos, de degeneracin, de
perfeccionamiento e incluso, sucesivamente, paradisaco y de inseguridad, pero siempre
profano. Los filsofos modernos, como sus predecesores, situaron el estado de naturaleza
al principio de la historia, pero, a diferencia de stos, rechazaron cualquier posibilidad de
volver al mismo excepto de manera accidental y momentnea; incluso para Rousseau, el
ms afecto a una visin beatfica de los orgenes, resultaba irrecuperable. Estas diferencias
revelan a su vez otra modificacin: los pensadores de la Edad Moderna compartan el
deseo de transformacin social de los milenaristas aunque sin ese afn apocalptico de
poner fin a las jerarquas, las leyes y la propiedad privada, y coinciden en la labor
legitimadora de los escolsticos, aunque no se dirigiera a las instituciones existentes,
sino a las de una nueva sociedad basada en el individualismo.
34
Ch. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.
London, 1972, pp. 121-47.
35
M. Eliade Mito y realidad. Barcelona. Labor, 1981, p. 73.
36
D. E. Luscombe, The state of nature and the origin of the state, en N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny y
J. Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. C.U.P., 1984, pp. 757-70.
37
P.-F. Moreau, Naturaleza, cultura, historia, en F. Chtelet y G. Mairet (Eds.), Historia de las
ideologas. De los faraones a Mao. Akal. Madrid, 1989, p. 442.
362
J. Dunn, La pense politique de John Locke. Une prsentation historique de la thse expose
dans les Deux traits du gouvernement. Pars. PUF, 1991, pp. 106, 112, 119, 121, etc.; F. Castilla
Urbano, El indio americano en la filosofa poltica de John Locke, Revista de Indias, XLVI, 178
(1986), pp. 421-451, y Una teora del origen y desarrollo de la sociedad: el estado de naturaleza
en John Locke, en S. Vegas, dir., En torno al Segundo Tratado del Gobierno Civil de John
Locke. MEC-CEP. Alcal de Henares, 1994, pp. 135-163
39
J. J. Rousseau, Discurso sobre el origen y los fundamentos de la desigualdad entre los hombres,
en J. J. Rousseau, Discursos. Prlogo, traduccin y notas de M. Armio. Madrid: Alianza, 2003, p.
195.
40
S. Pufendorf, The law of nature and nations. N. York. Oceana Publications, 1964, p. 162:
nunca existi en realidad un estado de naturaleza, excepto en forma alterada o parcial, como
cuando unos hombres se unieron con otros para formar un estado civil o un organismo semejante,
pero conservaron una libertad natural contra el resto de la humanidad; cit. en R. L. Meek, Los
orgenes de la ciencia social. El desarrollo de la teora de los cuatro estadios. Madrid. Siglo XXI,
1981, p. 18.
41
I. Hont, The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the theoretical
foundations of the "Four Stages Theory", en A. Pagden, ed., The languages of political theory in
early-modem Europe. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 253-276 (p. 256).
42
D. Hume, Del contrato original, en Ensayos polticos. Estudio preliminar de J. M. Colomer.
Trad. de C. A. Gmez. Tecnos. Madrid, 1987.
43
G. F. Hegel, Filosofa del Derecho. U.N.A.M., Mxico, 1975, Primera parte, parg. 49, pp. 69-70
(la igualdad es un ideal moral que difcilmente se concilia con la realidad); ibdem, parg. 75, pp. 9192 (el contrato social es una ficcin que no da lugar al Estado ni explica el poder del gobernante).
Vase, asimismo, el parg. 258 de la Tercera parte; ibdem, Tercera parte, parg. 194, pp. 202-3 (y en
el estado de naturaleza no existe la autntica libertad).
44
Montesquieu, Del espritu de las leyes, trad. de M. Blzquez y P. de Vega, prlogo de E. Tierno
Galvn, Madrid, Tecnos, 1980; libro I, cap. II, p. 53: El hombre en estado natural tendra la
facultad de conocer, pero no conocimientos.
45
J. W. Gough, The social contract. A critical study of its development. Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 47;
F. Palladini, Pufendorf disciple of Hobbes: The nature of man and the state of nature: The doctrine of
socialitas, History of European Ideas, 34 (2008), pp. 2660, muestra el cambio que se produce en
Pufendorf de una doctrina de la sociabilidad a otra de los derechos individuales.
363
sin otra autoridad que l mismo y guiado por su egosmo, a los que hay que recurrir para
analizar la gnesis y la evolucin de esa sociedad. sta se deconstruye de forma similar
a como la epistemologa de la poca vena postulando para las realidades fsicas46, y ello
requiere de un segundo momento en el que sus elementos se unan para dar cuenta de la
constitucin de lo anteriormente descompuesto. El estado de naturaleza se revela
entonces como el fundamento de un Estado dotado de una legitimidad basada en la
propia capacidad humana, individualmente considerada, para decidir su propio destino.
En las teoras contractualistas el pacto legitimador, en estricta coordinacin con la
concepcin del hombre en el estado de naturaleza, va a revestir formas muy diversas;
diversas son tambin las expresiones del poder poltico que surgen de dicho pacto. Ms
all de estas diferencias, se ponen en primer plano los derechos individuales (a la vida,
libertad, propiedad, etc.) que el hombre posea en el estado de naturaleza, los fines
(seguridad, libertad, igualdad, etc.) que el poder poltico ha de garantizar para evitar la
reproduccin de ese estado de naturaleza, y los lmites excedidos los cuales los
individuos recuperan el derecho a desobedecer o resistir los mandatos de la autoridad
poltica (por reproducirse el estado de naturaleza)47. En definitiva, la ficcin del contrato
que pone fin al estado de naturaleza servir para equiparar cualquier organizacin
poltica que no cuente con el consentimiento, la libertad y la igualdad de derechos de
sus miembros a un orden obsoleto, cuando no al desorden impuesto y que reclama su
superacin.
La sociedad civil aparece con los atributos por los que mayor aprecio ha sentido el
pensamiento occidental desde el siglo XVII: ejercicio de la autoridad, imperio del
orden, jerarqua social, leyes positivas, renuncia a la prctica de la violencia como
fuente de resolucin de los problemas internos y dominio de la razn como fundamento
ltimo de las conductas humanas. Por el contrario, del estado de naturaleza era
necesario escapar por la lucha de todos contra todos que en el mismo tena lugar
(Hobbes, Pufendorf, Spinoza), por la situacin de amenaza e inseguridad colectiva
cuando apareca el dinero (Locke), por su misma degeneracin (Rousseau) o por la
fragilidad de la vida humana (Montesquieu, Kant). El paso de un estado a otro se
concibe como una suma de voluntades guiadas por la razn, que pactan entre s para
instaurar una sociedad administrada por un gobierno civil o un monarca absoluto. La
estrategia de situarlo en el pasado y otorgarle carcter natural obedece a la propia forma de
la persuasin poltica que busca beneficiarse de la autoridad de lo que fue.
Edad Contempornea
La ausencia de propiedad privada y el trabajo social fueron la alternativa de
algunos igualitaristas de finales de la Ilustracin, como Babeuf, y los socialistas utpicos
46
J. J. Rousseau, Sobre el origen y los fundamentos de la desigualdad entre los hombres, ed. cit.,
pp. 233-34.
47
E. Fernndez, El contractualismo clsico (siglos XVII y XVIII) y los derechos naturales
(1983), en Teora de la justicia y derechos humanos. Madrid: Debate, 1987, pp. 127-173.
364
365
K. Marx, Manuscritos: economa y filosofa. Ed. de F. Rubio Llorente. Alianza Ed., Madrid,
1995, p. 175: "la vida humana necesitaba de la propiedad privada para su realizacin" como "ahora
necesita la supresin y superacin de la propiedad privada".
57
L. Krader, Los apuntes etnolgicos de Karl Marx. Ed. Pablo Iglesias/Siglo XXI. Madrid, 1988.
58
Tal vez esta actitud permita explicar el cambio de postura a favor de una revolucin en Rusia sin
una base proletaria que fuera capaz de llevarla a cabo. La hiptesis del comunismo primitivo materializado en algunas instituciones contemporneas, como el mir ruso, permiti a Marx suponer que era
posible; vase L. Kolakowski, Las principales corrientes del marxismo. II. La edad de oro. Alianza
Ed., Madrid, 1985, pp. 319-320 y A. Gouldner, Los dos marxismos. Contradicciones y anomalas
en el desarrollo de la teora. Alianza Ed., Madrid, p. 265.
59
No obstante, si algunos aspectos de la divisin del trabajo sobrevivirn en la sociedad comunista
(J. M. Maguire, Marx y su teora de la poltica. FCE. Mxico, 1984, p. 254), se hace difcil creer
que la alienacin ser definitivamente superada.
60
F. Castilla Urbano, El estado de naturaleza, la posicin original y el problema de la memoria histrica,
Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofa, 24 (2007), pp. 171-192, que resumo a continuacin.
61
Dado nuestro inters comparativo no importa que, en respuesta a las crticas y comentarios
recibidos por su Teora de la justicia (Mxico: F.C.E., 1985 (1971)), Rawls llegara a la conclusin
de que la idea de una sociedad bien ordenada de la justicia como equidad, tal como se utiliz en
la Teora, es irrealista (El liberalismo poltico. Barcelona: Crtica, 1996 (1993), p. 12), y que,
acorde con ello, la pretensin de establecer la moral necesaria que guiaba aquella obra ceda paso a
la bsqueda ms modesta de una concepcin exclusivamente poltica, no metafsica, de la justicia:
Lo verdaderamente crucial es reconocer siempre los lmites de lo poltico y de lo practicable
(ibdem, p. 215). Cambian los objetivos pero se mantienen los mtodos, como sealan C. Kukathas
y P. Pettit (Rawls. A Theory of Justice and its Critics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, p. 143), para
la etapa que lleva a El liberalismo poltico: El recurso contractualista de la posicin original es
reinterpretado ahora por Rawls como una solucin al problema de encontrar una concepcin
convenientemente factible. Lo importante de esta posicin original es que no slo no desaparece,
366
367
sus miembros. Tambin desde esta perspectiva, el imaginario rawlsiano entronca con
los contractualismos modernos.
Frente a estas coincidencias probablemente no deseadas ni beneficiosas para la teora de
Rawls, hay otras comparaciones claramente desfavorables para la misma. As, el paso del
estado de naturaleza al estado poltico del contractualismo clsico, supona un avance en
los derechos individuales al ser garantizado por el Estado lo que antes era fruto de la
arbitrariedad69; se comprende as que, incluso en un absolutista como Hobbes, se pueda
ver al autntico fundador del liberalismo70. Sin embargo, a pesar de la importancia
que Rawls otorga a la libertad como constitutiva del primer principio de la justicia, no
resulta claro qu aporta a la libertad existente.
Adems, Rawls considera que los acuerdos adoptados en la posicin original
comprometen a quienes los suscriben71; pero, nada en su construccin garantiza ese
cumplimiento por los ciudadanos ni por los gobernantes. Los primeros, al encontrarse en
una posicin ms favorable que la estimada, pueden considerar que vale ms ser
inconsecuente con lo decidido en la posicin original, que cumplir unos principios
contrarios a sus intereses 72 . Los gobernantes siempre pueden argumentar que la
redistribucin de los beneficios de la cooperacin social sugeridos por la teora generar
problemas ms graves. Ambos podran ser calificados de injustos, pero eso no soluciona el
conflicto. Sin una teora del Estado, inexistente en Rawls73, que detalle cmo imponer los
principios de la justicia, se corre el riesgo de que queden convertidos en mera hiptesis.
Rawls tampoco acaba de resolver el carcter constituyente de la posicin original. Los
ms favorecidos de la sociedad no aceptaran sta si no hubiera una previa consideracin
de su conveniencia; pero si existe tal sentimiento, lo decidido a favor de la justicia slo es
un procedimiento para la accin74: la voluntad, autnticamente moral, de ayudar a los ms
necesitados ya existe75. Esto vendra a significar que la posicin original no es la situacin
de partida sino que se asienta sobre una decisin previa76.
En definitiva, aunque pretende ser un sustitutivo del estado de naturaleza moderno, la
posicin original parece haber perdido buena parte de sus posibilidades fundamentadoras
sin ganar en las aspiraciones de cambio social de aquel, mientras que plantea problemas
cuyas consecuencias no parecen favorecer la justicia perseguida por Rawls.
69
J. J. Rousseau, Del contrato social o Principios del derecho poltico en Discursos, ed. cit., II,
IV, p. 57.
70
J. Habermas, Teora y praxis. Madrid: Tecnos, 1987 (1963, 1971), p. 73.
71
Teora de la justicia, ed. cit., p. 173. Vase M.A. Rodilla, Buchanan, Nozick, Rawls:
variaciones sobre el estado de naturaleza, Anuario de Filosofa del Derecho, II (1985), pp. 229284, in p. 279.
72
R. P. Wolff, Para comprender a Rawls. Una reconstruccin y una crtica de la teora de la
justicia, ed. cit., pp. 158-159.
73
Ibdem, p. 181; F. Vallespn Oa, Nuevas teoras del Contrato Social: John Rawls, Robert
Nozick y James Buchanan. Madrid: Alianza, 1985, p. 124, y J. Bidet, John Rawls y la teora de la
justicia, ed. cit., p. 115.
74
B. Barry, Teoras de la justicia. Barcelona: Gedisa, 1995 (1989), p. 355: la prioridad de la
justicia est basada en el derecho desde el comienzo, con la condicin de que las personas para
quienes se han de elegir los principios tengan el deseo dominante de ser justos.
75
J. I. Martnez Garca, La teora de la justicia de John Rawls. Madrid: C.E.C., 1985, p. 143.
76
M. H. Lessnoff, Justice, Social Contract, and Universal Prescriptivism, Philosophical
Quarterly, 28 (1978), pp. 65-73.
368
369
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La tradicin europea entendi en un principio el orden poltico como algo natural.
Aristteles consideraba que el gobierno de unos hombres sobre otros y el
establecimiento de normas y mandatos generales tenan el mismo carcter natural que la
unin del hombre y la mujer para la procreacin. Ms tarde, y tras la reinterpretacin
cristiana de la naturaleza en forma de un sistema querido por Dios y regulado por Su
Providencia, la Edad Moderna invent una nueva fundamentacin del orden poltico
sobre la base de un pacto entre los propios hombres que legitimaba la institucin estatal
estableciendo sus funciones, as como los lmites de la vida en sociedad. El concepto
moderno de Estado se converta, de este modo, en algo artificial, un artefacto mecnico
construido para la consecucin de determinados fines. La posicin de vrtice ocupada
por el Estado como cima de la sociedad consagraba la separacin de lo poltico con
respecto a lo natural y el desplazamiento de las diferencias culturales, tnicas y
religiosas a un mbito privado.
TEXTO/TEXT:
En este trabajo proponemos revisar sucintamente la configuracin bsica del Estado que
realiza Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) en su obra mayor, el Leviatn. El autor ingls
expuso una teora del Estado inaudita hasta entonces en respuesta a los tericos
parlamentaristas y a las doctrinas absolutistas fundadas en la metfora segn la que la
societas o universitas constitua un torso acfalo dependiente de la cabeza de un
monarca que pudiera dirigirla1.
El primer trabajo de Hobbes en el que podemos encontrar esta nueva
conceptualizacin de la relacin entre sbditos y soberanos se encuentra en los Elements
1
La teora absolutista fue defendida con vigor durante las primeras dcadas del siglo XVII, pero
tambin fue objeto de enconados ataques. Los crticos coincidan en considerar que la palabra
estado significaba un cuerpo o sociedad de personas unidas bajo un gobierno a quien corresponda
la soberana. La confluencia de las objeciones de dos corrientes principales, los anatomistas
polticos y los publicistas hugonotes que haban reinterpretado las discusiones sobre la summa
potestas especialmente en los trminos en que fue planteada por luminarias de la Segunda
Escolstica como Vitoria, el Cardenal Bellarmino y Surez dara lugar a la teora populista del
estado. Los argumentos a favor de los estados libres reclamaban los derechos de soberana para la
universitas del pueblo o el cuerpo del estado.
370
La obra, que anticipa los temas centrales que preocuparan al autor en sus trabajos posteriores,
qued completada y comenz a circular en la primavera de 1640. El objeto del tratado no fue otro
que proponer una justificacin del absolutismo a la luz de los primeros principios y ofrecer una
serie de consejos sobre administracin poltica a un rgimen monrquico que estaba a punto de
sucumbir en Inglaterra. El mismo Hobbes huy a Pars ese mismo ao temeroso de que sus
inclinaciones realistas pudieran desencadenar una violenta represin contra su persona y poner en
peligro su vida. En 1642 estallaba en Inglaterra la Primera Guerra Civil que desembocara en la
derrota definitiva del bando monrquico en la batalla de Marston Moor (1644) y la decapitacin de
Carlos I. Con la implantacin del rgimen parlamentario otros abanderados de la causa realista
buscarn tambin refugio en Francia, donde Hobbes asume el cargo de tutor del heredero de la
Corona, el Prncipe de Gales y futuro Carlos II. El resto de la obra del ingls se escribir en
Francia, prcticamente sin interrupcin, entre 1640 y 1650.
3
Tras la recuperacin de una ardua enfermedad y libre ya de obligaciones de tutora cuando en
1648 el Prncipe Carlos traslad su residencia a Holanda, el autor se sumergi en la conclusin del
Leviatn. En la revisin del libro, cuando el nuevo estado de cosas se haba afirmado ya en
Inglaterra y la esperanza de una victoria realista inmediata resultaba quimrica, Hobbes aadi al
tratado la seccin titulada Repaso y conclusin, en la que, con sentido pragmtico, se plantear en
qu condiciones le est permitido a un sbdito renunciar a su obligacin de obediencia a su
antiguo soberano cuando sta ha perdido la soberana de forma irreversible.
4
HOBBES, Thomas (2009): Leviatn o la materia, forma y poder de un Estado Eclesistico y
Civil, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, Epstola Dedicatoria, p. 11.
5
Op. cit. Lev, 13, p. 115.
371
372
captulo el filsofo explica Cmo una multitud de hombres es una persona11, es decir,
cmo se produce el trnsito de una multiplicidad de individuos a una persona jurdica
civil nica:
Una multitud de hombres deviene una persona cuando estos hombres son
representados por un hombre o una persona; esto puede hacerse con el
consentimiento de todos y cada uno de los miembros de la multitud en cuestin.
Pues es la unidad del representante, y no la unidad de los representados, lo que
hace a la persona una; y es el representante quien sustenta a la persona, slo a
una persona. Hablando de una multitud, la unidad no puede entenderse de otra
manera.
El pensador ingls oriundo de Westport 12 formula as la teora de la
representacin, subordinndola a una teora de la autorizacin. Este fundamento le
permitir justificar la transferencia de derechos al soberano absoluto por medio de un
pactum unionis mediante el que la pluralidad de voluntades individuales se reduce, por
consentimiento de la totalidad o mayora de la multitud, a una voluntad o persona. La
sociedad civil, as constituida, se apropiar de sus palabras y actos como si fueran suyos
porque proceden de quien la representa. Es decir, una vez que los miembros de la
multitud se han sometido al soberano designado en virtud del pacto o convencin social,
siguen siendo autores de los actos que el Estado adopte con posterioridad.
Hobbes no se pronuncia en ningn momento en defensa de la doctrina del
derecho divino de los reyes ni se refiere a los reyes como ungidos del Seor o viceregentes del Dios en la tierra, depositarios de un poder absoluto e incuestionable sobre
el cuerpo de la repblica13. Muy al contrario, sostiene que el estatuto de un monarca
absoluto nunca puede ser mayor que el de un representante autorizado. As, cuando se
refiere a Carlos I en el Leviatn le atribuye el ttulo de representante soberano absoluto
de su pueblo14, dedicando el Captulo 30 a la descripcin de las obligaciones y deberes
especficos atribuidos al cargo.
poltica y social moderna al aplicar a la psicologa y la antropologa los principios de la ciencia
fsica que gobiernan el mundo de la materia.
11
As presenta el prrafo el autor en la nota marginal correspondiente. Vase HOBBES, Thomas
(2009): Leviatn o la materia, forma y poder de un Estado Eclesistico y Civil, Alianza Editorial,
Madrid.
12
Hobbes naci en esta aldea inglesa, prxima a la villa de Malmesbury, en el condado de North
Wiltshire, el 5 de abril de 1588, el ao del temor en Inglaterra a la invasin de la Armada
Invencible.
13
Sir Robert Filmer fue, en Inglaterra y a principios del siglo XVII, el ms renombrado paladn de
la teora del derecho divino de los reyes, la otra gran corriente, ms influyente que la Segunda
Escolstica, que aliment la teora absolutista. El rey Jacobo I sola hablar en trminos similares en
sus arengas al Parlamento sobre el alcance de sus derechos soberanos. Vase James VI y I, King
(1994): Political Writings, Cambridge, London (edicin de Johann Sommerville).
14
Op. cit. Lev, 19, p. 170. El ingls de Malmesbury dice: [] los hombres [] pueden sujetarse,
si les parece conveniente, a un monarca, de manera tan absoluta como a cualquier otro
representante. [] Es inexplicable que en una monarqua en la que quien disfrutaba de la
soberana por una descendencia de seiscientos aos era llamado soberano, tena el ttulo de
Majestad, reciba este ttulo de todos y cada uno de sus sbditos y era aceptado por ellos, sin
discusin, como su rey, no fuera, sin embargo, considerado como representante suyo [].
373
El contrato social representa un concepto fundamental del pensamiento poltico moderno que eleva a
Thomas Hobbes al altar de precursor de las teoras contractualistas. En la estela del filsofo ingls
destacan las figuras de John Locke (1632-1704) y Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), en cuyo Du
Contrat Social alcanza su ms reconocida formulacin la doctrina contractualista. La teora del contrato
social constituye un fundamento del movimiento constitucionalista y deja sentir su legado en autores
contemporneos como Carl Schmitt, John Rawls o Jrgen Habermas.
16
Op. cit. Lev, 18, 4, p. 162.
17
Op. cit. Lev, 18, 5, p. 162.
18
Op. cit. Lev, 30, p. 285.
19
Op. cit. Lev., Cap. 16, p. 145.
374
375
dos personas que no haban nacido en el estado de naturaleza. Una es la persona jurdica
civil a la que autorizamos a hablar y actuar en nuestro nombre, es decir, el soberano. La
otra es la persona a la que damos existencia cuando adquirimos una sola voluntad y una
sola voz autorizando a un hombre o a una asamblea como nuestro representante:
Una vez hecho esto, una multitud as unida en una persona es lo que llamamos
ESTADO, en latn CIVITAS. 24
Concluimos, pues, que el soberano legtimo representa al Estado. As lo
manifiesta con claridad el pensador ingls cuando define la esencia del Estado en el
Captulo17:
Pues es gracias a esta autoridad que le es dada por cada hombre que forma parte
del Estado, como llega a poseer y a ejercer tanto poder y tanta fuerza; y por el
miedo que ese poder y esa fuerza producen, puede hacer que las voluntades se
dirijan a lograr la paz interna y la ayuda mutua contra los enemigos de fuera. Y
es en l en quien radica la esencia del Estado, al que podramos definir as: una
persona de cuyos actos, por mutuo acuerdo entre la multitud, cada componente
de sta se hace responsable, a fin de que dicha persona pueda utilizar los
medios y la fuerza particular de cada uno como mejor le parezca, para lograr la
paz y la seguridad de todos.
Esta persona del Estado est encarnada en lo que se llama el SOBERANO, de
quien se dice que posee un poder soberano; y cada uno de los dems es su
SBDITO.25
24
bid., 17, p. 156-157. De manera muy similar, bid., 18, p. 159: Se dice que un Estado ha sido
instituido cuando una multitud de hombres establece un convenio entre todos y cada uno de sus
miembros, segn el cual se le da a un hombre o una asamblea de hombres, por mayora, el derecho
de personificar a todos, es decir, de representarlos. Cada individuo de esa multitud, tanto el que
haya votado a favor, como el que haya votado en contra, autorizar todas las acciones y juicios de
ese hombre o asamblea de hombres, igual que si se tratara de los suyos propios, a fin de vivir
pacficamente en comunidad y de encontrar proteccin contra otros hombres.
25
bid., 17, p. 157. Thomas Hobbes distingue en el Leviatn entre dos grandes formas a travs de
las que puede alcanzarse el poder soberano: la adquisicin, que da lugar al Estado por adquisicin,
y la institucin, que da lugar al Estado poltico o por institucin. El punto de referencia de este
trabajo no es el Estado que se constituye por la fuerza natural o la conquista sino el Estado poltico
por excelencia, que se instituye cuando los hombres acuerdan entre ellos mismos someterse
voluntariamente a algn hombre o a una asamblea de hombres, confiando en que sern protegidos
por ellos frente a los dems.
376
TEXTO/TEXT:
Las cuestiones de la construccin socio-histrica y de la visin de mundo y de la
sociedad abordados en sta comunicacin hacen parte de una reflexin ms general
sobre el concepto de ciencia(s) social(es), de la cual se ha publicado un texto que abarca
un conjunto de elementos sobre la clasificacin de las ciencias, las diferentes
caracterizaciones de las ciencias sociales y de las disciplinas cobijadas por dicha
denominacin segn las reas culturales y las escuelas de pensamiento, la cuestin de la
definicin como problema terico, entre otras (ORTIZ, 2012).
La expresin ciencia social adquiere una condicin central en la Francia del
perodo revolucionario. El Abate Sieys genera el neologismo en la primera edicin de
Qu es el Tercer estado?. Como indicador de la interrelacin del proyecto terico del
abate con el ambiente poltico existente, en las ediciones siguientes l lo modifica por el
concepto de ciencia del orden social, acentuando as el carcter socio-poltico del
concepto.
Los miembros de La Sociedad de 1789, entre ellos Condorcet y Sieys, lo utilizan
en sus escritos en la forma de ciencia social prctica. Durante la repblica
Termidoriana la expresin se utiliza de una manera amplia e influyente. La
institucionalizacin avanza cuando la Academia de Ciencias Morales y Polticas crea
una seccin denominada Ciencia Social y Legislacin, cuyo enunciado indica
explcitamente la perspectiva propuesta. Sin embargo, no existe el proyecto de
sistematizar los conocimientos y constituir una disciplina, aun cuando se utiliza la
categora de ciencia.
Lo que caracteriza sobretodo sta nocin de ciencia social es la variedad de
apropiaciones y de usos de los cuales ella es objeto. Para los actores de la poca, el
problema no es tanto llegar a conciliarse conjuntamente sobre lo que es exactamente la
ciencia social sino construir, por la agitacin de la nocin misma, un escenario
justificador de un espacio poltico indito. Enunciado colectivo, la ciencia social
engrana procesos de legitimidad poltica, productos surgidos de la hibridacin de lgicas
que se enfrentan pero tenindola como su reivindicacin comn. En otros trminos, la
referencia a la ciencia social es el operador que mancomuna prcticas divergentes y
suscita, sin incluirla, la accin poltica de sus protagonistas. Comprometerse con sta
bandera de la ciencia social pone de manifiesto una voluntad de regeneracin poltica y
social. La ciencia social es, a pesar de un proceso de conversin en ciencia seguramente
incompleto, una ciencia de la organizacin social, una ciencia al servicio de la edificacin
de instituciones adaptadas a los usos y costumbres. (AUDREN, 2006, p. 8)
378
En el siglo XVIII, las dos expresiones, ciencia social y ciencia del hombre,
aparecen en singular. En el caso francs, las dos estn ligadas al proceso revolucionario,
de manera protagnica durante la Repblica Termidoriana. Los Idelogos, toman una u
otra de las expresiones como smbolos tericos y socio-polticos. Todos son, a la vez,
coparticipes de los gobiernos de ste perodo y contradictores en sus proyectos de
sociedad. Este movimiento intelectual, como todo movimiento social, no es homogneo.
Chapey seala que el trmino de ciencia del hombre se encuentra en concurrencia con
la expresin de ciencia social.
Desde los orgenes de los conceptos, los debates y las querellas polticas entre
los crculos expresan concepciones tericas divergentes. En la actualidad,
aparentemente, los conceptos de ciencias sociales y ciencias humanas aparecen como
intercambiables o como sinnimos. Solamente, algunos tericos, epistemlogos o
379
380
381
REFERENCIAS:
AUDREN, Frdric. Explorer les mondes de la science sociale en France. En :
Revue dhistoire des sciences humaines [RHSH]: Naissances de la science
sociale, 1750-1855 N 15. Paris, novembre 2006. pp. 3-14.
BEDESCHI, Giuseppe, dir.
Enciclopedia delle scienze sociali.
Roma, Instituto
della enciclopedia italiana, 1997. 8 v.
BERTHELOT, Jean-Michel, dir. pistmologie des sciences sociales. Paris, PUF,
2001.
________. pistmologie des sciences humaines En: Sylvie MESURE et Patrick
SAVIDAN, dirs. Dictionnaire des sciences humaines. Paris, QuadrigePUF, octobre 2006. pp. 378-382.
BLANCKAERT, Claude et al. Lhistoire des sciences de lhomme. Trajectoire, enjeux
et questions vives. Paris, LHarmattan, 1999.
382
383
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Las metforas del vnculo social y poltico tienen una larga historia. Basta pensar en el
recorrido histrico de la ms conocida de ellas, la del cuerpo poltico, que arranca con el
organicismo poltico de la filosofa griega y conserva su efectividad hasta el siglo XIX.
Precisamente el umbral que separa ese siglo del anterior se utiliza como parteaguas de
dos pocas con formas de vida social, poltica y econmica muy distantes. Tambin la
forma que adquiere la expresin lingstica parece transformarse aceleradamente en un
corto espacio de tiempo. Cmo participan de esos cambios las metforas sociales que
se erigen en clave de bveda de la comunidad humana? Resultara cuanto menos
sospechoso que se hubiesen mantenido ajenas a los cambios en medio de un autntico
vendaval. Y lo cierto es que no lo fueron. Su capacidad expresiva y cohesiva y, por
tanto, su efectividad se vio modificada, lo que afect a su naturaleza, a la forma que
adoptaban y a su funcin.
384
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La investigacin doctoral que estoy llevando a cabo en el proceso de fe de Joaqun
Muoz Delgado y procesos similares nos demuestran que hubo un cambio en la cultura,
el pensamiento y la axiologa de la sociedad espaola de finales del siglo XVIII. Dicho
cambio se vio reforzado por nuevos conceptos transferidos desde las diferentes ciencias
y los progresos tecnolgicos del siglo. La botnica, medicina, ptica, hidrulica,
metalurgia y los avances en automtica y maquinaria ayudaron a modular el
pensamiento de personas y profesionales que utilizaban conocimientos tecnolgicos.
Estas personas imbuidas en los principios del discurso ilustrado que se difunda
por la vasta extensin de las fronteras de la Monarqua espaola, no tenan ms arma de
defensa que su ingenio y sus palabras ante los tribunales de la Inquisicin. Palabras que
constituyeron verdaderos ensayos filosficos y fueron los instrumentos en los que
apoyaron sus alegatos de defensa.
La asimilacin de conocimientos cientficos y la utilizacin de procedimientos
tecnolgicos les hizo conseguir nuevos avances materiales que transformaron su manera
de pensar desarrollando as una nueva identidad que les hizo ms seguros de si mismos,
soberbios y descredos, libres de pensamiento y predispuestos al uso de la razn crtica.
El denominador comn que los animaba era la independencia de pensamiento, la
libertad de fe y la libertad sexual. Conceptos tales como: maravilla, utilidad y
progreso fueron los arietes en que basaron sus alegatos de defensa y sus discursos los
instrumentos desarrollados gracias a un pensamiento moderno basado en la razn.
El 26 de enero de 1787, ante la Inquisicin de Mxico, el reo Joaqun Muoz
Delgado, maquinista, relojero, cirujano y mdico solicitaba papel para exponer su
defensa y exigir su absolucin y la restitucin de su honor y sus bienes.
Doce mquinas, describe Muoz, que traern la gloria a la nacin por su gran
provecho y facilsima ejecucin y la gran utilidad que aportarn al fomento y la
modernizacin de Espaa. En todas las mquinas se percibe la idea de progreso
tecnolgico, de sencillez, utilidad, economa y bien pblico.
385
Muoz empleara toda la potencialidad del discurso ilustrado, toda la fuerza del
discurso modernizador que se ampara en los conceptos tecnolgicos ms avanzados del
momento y en metforas como el microscopio de la razn utilizada por uno de los
grandes divulgadores ibricos de la ciencia: Teodoro de Almeida, el ilustrado Valentn
de Foronda y el poltico Antonio Alcal Galiano.
386
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Esta comunicacin analiza el proceso de construccin de los conocimientos mdicos en
Buenos Aires prestando especial atencin a la recepcin de la Idologie a partir de la
incorporacin de las nociones de Destutt de Tracy y Pierre-Jean-George Cabanis. Los
saberes derivados de la Ideologa, corriente francesa tardo-ilustrada, se difundieron en la
escena local a partir de las obras y las lecciones de ciertos profesores que apropiaron
estos conocimientos y los difundieron a travs del mbito acadmico superior.
El proceso mediante el cual la Ideologa tuvo una incidencia significativa en la
gestacin de una cultura cientfica a fines del siglo XIX en la Argentina ha sido tratado
por varios autores. No obstante, al profundizar esta cuestin, se observa que la
recepcin de dichos saberes aparece, en primer lugar, en el espacio de la filosofa, en
especial en la ctedra de Ideologa inaugurada junto a la flamante Universidad de
Buenos Aires en 1821. Esta peculiar situacin surgiere un proceso de retroalimentacin
y una transferencia de saberes que va desde una filosofa de matriz ideologicista al
espacio mdico reflejando puntos de conexin entre ambas disciplinas.
Asimismo, se advierte que la recepcin de la Idologie se enlaza con el proceso
poltico transformador llevado a cabo por la gestin rivadaviana. Estas reformas
buscaron renovar las prcticas y los imaginarios coloniales en su conjunto. En el mbito
cientfico y acadmico, la medicina deba ser una pieza modificada y adaptada a los
lineamientos del rgimen republicano de gobierno, lo cual provoc un incipiente
proceso de profesionalizacin de la actividad y la necesidad de delimitar la medicina
dentro de los parmetros de la ciencia moderna.
En especial, nos interesa aqu resaltar una cuestin de este proceso de
profesionalizacin. Me refiero a la introduccin y al uso de un determinado lenguaje
que operar como forma de diferenciacin y de bsqueda de legitimidad cientfica. De
esta manera, existi una propagacin de un lenguaje fisiologicista e ideologicista, nuevo
y moderno, que comienza apropindose desde el mbito acadmico en funcin de
constituir un insumo para la especializacin de los conocimientos y prcticas mdicas
respecto de los saberes anteriores.
387
Praxis-speculatio: dos conceptos entre el pensamiento cientficomatemtico y su manifestacin visual en el siglo XVII en el frontispicio
del Mathesis Biceps de Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz
Fabin Valdivia Prez
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Es entre el siglo XVI y XVII cuando vemos aparecer magnficas obras cientficas con
gran cantidad de ilustraciones y con frontispicios alegricos que funcionan a manera de
estatuto visual y espejo de conceptos, a partir de una serie de alegoras y de juegos
emblemticos que dialogan con el lector/espectador, siendo representaciones del
conocimiento que han tenido en la ilustracin la salida natural del pensamiento en su
manifestacin visual. Estas funciones pueden ser analizadas en el frontispicio alegrico
de la obra Mathesis Bceps (1670) del cisterciense Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz.
La lectura de los elementos que componen los frontispicios de libros del siglo
XVII, como los del Mathesis, a travs de lecturas emblemticas, iconogrficas o
compositivas, todas dentro de un contexto histrico, deben, entonces, ser referenciados
y estudiados a partir de su capacidad para ampliar los horizontes visuales y
epistemolgicos, y de la vinculacin simbitica entre informacin, conocimiento e
imaginacin. Por lo tanto la funcin ms ambiciosa de estos frontispicios era transmitir,
a partir de diversas frmulas de composicin y de retrica visual, una intencionalidad
epistmolgica que buscaba transmitir conocimiento en torno a la naturaleza del texto
que preceda o establecer una relacin entre conceptos que en la imagen encontraban su
vehculo de transferencia.
Bajo estos supuestos, el discurso visual del frontispicio del Mathesis Biceps se
vuelve una epifana de la nueva matemtica, con sus antiguos presupuestos, y su
capacidad ascensional hacia el conocimiento divino, bajo el precepto de Dios como el
gran matemtico del universo.
La lectura del discurso visual del frontispicio del Mathesis Biceps es el objetivo
principal de esta pltica, permitiendo tener un acercamiento a la relacin entre las
representaciones plsticas contenidas en algunos libros de matemticas impresos entre
los siglos XVI y XVII y la creacin de un concepto visual en torno al valor equitativo
entre la teora y la prctica.
388
TEXTO/TEXT:
390
391
Puerto, Javier & San Juan, Carlos: La epidemia de clera de 1834 en Madrid, Estudios de Historia
Social, n 15, 1980, p. 9-48.
393
la lnea del Caspio. A partir de 1829 la segunda epidemia asola las capitales europeas y
americanas: Mosc y Berlin (1830), Londres (1831), Pars (1832), finalmente Madrid
en 1834.
Dolencia aguda provocada por la infeccin intestinal de la bacteria Vibrio
cholerae, se caracteriza por vmitos repetidos y abundantes deposiciones biliosas.
Algunos mdicos constatarn muy pronto que los sntomas son los de una gastrenteritis
muy aguda, con el momento lgido en la estacin clida; y dado que la epidemia tarda
cinco aos en llegar a Madrid, en 1834 ya existe una copiosa literatura al respecto. Pero
el paradigma miasmtico sepulta estas observaciones bajo cientos de estudios que,
fijndose en epifenmenos del mal, apuntan a miasmas que entraran en el cuerpo a
travs del aparato respiratorio, sanguneo o cutneo, y que una vez all procederan a
envenenar el sistema nervioso o el sistema sanguneo. Consecuentemente los galenos
propoponen medidas contraproducentes, como sangras (que debilitan al enfermo) o
hacer vomitar y beber, lo que facilita la resiembra de grmenes.
La epidemia no alcanza la gravedad de males contemporneos como el tifus, la
gripe o la tuberculosis, endmicos y por tanto ms letales. Pero el clera supone la
concentracin de las muertes en pocas semanas, como en Pars, donde fallecen ms de
18.000 personas. El mal se manifiesta de forma dramtica: los enfermos se paran
repentinamente a vomitar en plena calle y frecuentemente mueren en el curso de unas
horas. Dadas las vas de contagio, la dolencia ataca tambin a los ricos, aunque se cebe
en los pobres, que no pueden huir ni pagarse atencin a domicilio. Por todas partes las
poblaciones constatan la incapacidad de mdicos y poderes pblicos para frenar el mal,
con sangras o cuarentenas. En el curso de los aos 1831-1832 se suceden ataques
contra mdicos, cirujanos y boticarios o asaltos a hospitales, en San Petersburgo,
ciudades hngaras y polacas, en Londres o Pars.7 An aceptando que los amotinados
incurren en desvaro, resulta llamativa la universalidad con que las poblaciones
identifican que el clera se comporta como lo que hoy llamaramos una gastroenteritis
aguda, y sealan como vehculo de transmisin el agua potable. Los miedos apuntan al
envenenamiento de los pozos por agentes desconocidos y se producen linchamientos en
Pars o San Petersburgo. En Manila, en 1820, la poblacin local acusa a los residentes
extranjeros de haber envenenado las aguas y se produce una masacre.
4.- Clera de dios
La primera medida de las autoridades en Madrid ante la invasin de Andaluca
por el clera fue de naturaleza religiosa: el 19/IX/1833 ordenaron que se realizaran
rogativas, pblicas y privadas. Tambin la ltima: el Te Deum de accin de gracias por
el fin de la epidemia, el 1/XII/1834.
Esto nos obliga a examinar dos rasgos, pragmticos, que los cientficos sociales
han identificado como caractersticos de la religin: el mito, la construccin de un
marco de interpretacin que hace comprensible la plaga; y la accin ritual, dirigida a
erigir barreras frente a la epidemia o acelerar su fin. La confluencia entre saber religioso
7
Delaporte, Franois & Goldhammer, Arthur: Disease and Civilization: The Cholera in Paris, 1832, Mit
Press, 1989.
395
396
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El presente ensayo tiene por objetivo presentar cmo el trmino economa verde
propuesto como etiqueta de la nueva poltica ambiental de la ONU desde la Cumbre de
la Tierra Rio +20 (2012) supone una apropiacin discursiva de los conceptos propios de
las reivindicaciones polticas ecologistas con el fin de neutralizarlas.
Tratar de mostrar que bajo esta etiqueta se esconden polticas de explotacin y
mercantilizacin de la naturaleza que nada tienen que ver con el trato propuesto desde la
ecologa poltica. Sin embargo, el uso del concepto verde evoca un respeto por la
naturaleza que invita a pensar en una revolucin ecologista de las polticas
medioambientales globales, tratando de anular as las demandas de los grupos
ecologistas. Mi objetivo es analizar qu estrategias lingsticas potencian esto,
especialmente, las estrategias de contraste y la metaforizacin.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
La presente comunicacin persigue analizar cmo el trmino economa verde de la
nueva poltica ambiental de la ONU desde la Cumbre de la Tierra Rio +20 (2012),
supone una apropiacin discursiva de los conceptos de las reivindicaciones polticas
ecologistas con el fin de neutralizarlas. Tratar de mostrar que bajo esta etiqueta se
esconden polticas de explotacin y mercantilizacin de la naturaleza que nada tienen
que ver con la ecologa poltica. Sin embargo, el uso del concepto verde evoca un
respeto por la naturaleza que alude a una revolucin ecologista de las polticas
medioambientales globales, tratando de anular as las demandas de los grupos
ecologistas. Mi objetivo es desvelar qu estrategias lingsticas potencian esto,
especialmente, las de contraste y metaforizacin.
397
Jacobs, Michael, La economa verde. Medio ambiente, desarrollo sostenible y la poltica del
futuro, Barcelona, Madrid, 1996, p. 14-15.
2
Roca Jumset, Jordi La economa verde: trminos y contenidos en Revista de Ecologa poltica.
Cuadernos de debate internacional., Economa verde, n44, Icaria, Barcelona, 2012, p. 10.
3
Jacobs, Michael, La economa verde, p.125.
4
Ibd., p.124.
398
Tema que fuera utilizado como pantalla verde para seguir como siempre 5 el
gobierno britnico haba declarado que su poltica econmica se ajustaba a l. Jacobs,
conocedor de las polticas britnicas, lo rechazaba y abogaba por concretar qu se quera
significar exactamente con este concepto y por sospechar sistemticamente de tales
usos.
Frente a la economa verde de Jacobs encontramos la economa verde
propuesta en 2012 por el informe del PNUMA, Hacia una economa verde: Gua para
el desarrollo sostenible y la erradicacin de la pobreza. Con la economa verde
sucede algo similar a lo que Jacobs denunci para el desarrollo sostenible: puede tener
muy diversas acepciones () existe un conflicto sobre cmo darle contenido6.
El documento relaciona la economa verde con la integracin de los procesos
biofsicos en el ciclo del capital; concibe el crecimiento y la tecnologa como
herramientas contra la pobreza y los problemas ecolgicos; e impulsa la privatizacin de
la naturaleza.
El informe pide incluir la naturaleza en las cuentas de las economas de los
7
pases y destaca que el enverdecimiento genera () una mayor tasa de crecimiento
del PIB8, una medida que se emplea tradicionalmente para evaluar el rendimiento
econmico 9 . Junto a estos cambios, impulsa la privatizacin de derechos sobre
servicios ecosistmicos el mantenimiento de la pluviosidad, las reservas de agua y
carbono, la moderacin del clima. Con la compra de estos derechos se crean luego
hipotecas, environment mortage, que se ofrecen a las sociedades que vivan en un
territorio. En caso de no reembolsarse lo prestado, los territorios pasan a manos de los
inversores10.
En los mercados de carbono, los pases ricos compran derechos de
contaminacin a los agricultores de los pases pobres a quienes previamente se ha
vendido tecnologa y asesoramiento para implantar tcnicas que absorban el carbono de
la atmsfera. El Proyecto del Fondo BioCarbono del Banco Mundial en Kenia
presupuesta un milln de dlares e implica a 60.000 agricultores, a quienes
corresponder apenas a un dlar por campesino y ao11.
Estas prcticas avaladas por la llamada economa verde benefician a los
inversores privados, fomentan la especulacin con el medio ambiente, incrementan las
desigualdades sociales imposibilita a los pases pobres desarrollarse a cambio de
5
Ibd., p.125.
Roca Jumset, Jordi La economa verde: trminos y contenidos, p. 7.
7
La alteracin de las reservas de capital natural debera evaluarse en trminos monetarios e incorporarse
a
las
cuentas
nacionales
Hacia
una
economa
verde:...
http://www.pnuma.org/eficienciarecursos/economia.php, p.12.
8
Los problemas de medicin del PIB han sido apuntados por las teoras de las capacidades y las
necesidades bsicas como las de Nussbaum o Doyal y Gough, respectivamente. El PIB reduce el
bienestar humano a una sola faceta, la econmica, ignorando que est compuesto por otras
mltiples facetas polticas y sociales. El ndice de Desarrrollo Humano (IDH), el ndice de
Desarrollo Humano Relativo al Gnero (IDG) y otros mejoran las mediciones, pero elementos
como las posibilidades de ocio o las facilidades para construir vnculos sociales deberan ser
incluidos en los ndices que midan el bienestar humano entendido en un sentido ms holstico.
9
Ibd., p.13.
10
ATTAC FRANCIA, La naturaleza no tiene precio, p. 96.
11
Ibd., p. 99.
6
399
ventajas insignificantes, y evitan que los pases desarrollados reduzcan sus emisiones
contaminantes y cambien sus modos de vida.
La nueva economa verde contradice a Jacobs: aboga por la inclusin de la
naturaleza en el ciclo econmico y su privatizacin, al margen de su valor tico y de
lmite a la economa; y otorga protagonismo a entidades privadas que causan
desigualdad.
Ahora bien, lo verde evoca el respeto al medio ambiente y, por su vnculo
discursivo tradicional, la equidad social. Sin embargo, bajo la economa verde se
esconden acciones exactamente contrarias. Sugiero que la apropiacin del trmino
propuesto por Jacobs tiene dos objetivos: disfrazar polticas de mercantilizacin de la
naturaleza anti-sociales, al tiempo que se neutralizan las reivindicaciones de los sectores
ecologistas. Mas, qu mecanismos discursivos actan en esta estrategia?
Cuadrado ideolgico del discurso: Nuestra verdad dominante y Sus mitos
minoritarios
Una estrategia ideolgica frecuente en los discursos polticos consiste en poner
el nfasis en los rasgos positivos de Nuestra posicin y quitarlo de Nuestros rasgos
negativos, mientras se resaltan los rasgos negativos de Su posicin y se eliminan Sus
rasgos positivos12. Van Dijk la denomina cuadrado ideolgico13. Este atraviesa los
discursos sobre la economa verde del documento de la ONU, que establece una
confrontacin soterrada entre sus propuestas de economa verde y la ecologa poltica
tradicional. Veamos:
A lo largo de los dos ltimos aos, la idea de una economa verde
ha abandonado el reducto especializado de la economa ambiental para
penetrar en el discurso poltico dominante14.
400
Pues,
la alegada disyuntiva entre el progreso econmico y la
sostenibilidad ambiental es un mito17.
O, tambin:
Otro mito es que la economa verde es un lujo que solo se pueden
permitir los pases ricos o, lo que es peor, que se trata de una
imposicin con la que el mundo desarrollado pretende impedir el
desarrollo y perpetuar la pobreza de los pases en desarrollo.
Contrariamente a esta idea, existe una pltora de ejemplos de
transiciones verdes que se estn produciendo en distintos sectores en
el mundo en desarrollo que merecen ser imitadas y copiadas en otros
lugares18.
Este prrafo es elocuente. En lugar de apuntar las responsabilidades que se han exigido
a los pases desarrollados en la lucha contra el cambio climtico se habla de lujo para
ricos, cambiando el sentido de las reivindicaciones ecologistas.
Frente a estos mitos, se encontrara la verdad de la economa verde: que los
pases en vas de desarrollo impulsan tambin las transiciones verdes y que los pases
desarrollados deben imitarlos, contrariamente al nfasis mticamente puesto en los
pases desarrollados. Inaceptable de creer que la desigual distribucin de poderes y
saberes conduce a responsabilidades tambin desiguales: cunto ms puede y sabe uno,
mayor responsabilidad hemos de atribuirle, y viceversa19.
El objetivo que persiguen las estrategias discursivas del cuadrado ideolgico y
de contraste, junto con la de apropiacin discursiva, es neutralizar las reivindicaciones
ecologistas y ensalzar la economa verde propuesta.
El papel de la metfora y la metonimia: lo verde y lo amigable
La estrategia de la metfora es utilizada como maquillaje discursivo de las
polticas de la llamada economa verde. Como Lakoff y Johnson mostraron, la
metfora no es una herramienta slo potica sino el mecanismo por el cual pensamos la
15
401
Lakoff, George y Johnson, Mark, Metforas de la vida cotidiana, Ctedra, Madrid, 1991, p. 39.
Ibd., p. 48.
22
Lakoff, George, No pienses en un elefante, UCM, Madrid, 2007, p. 17
23
nuestros marcos conforman nuestras polticas sociales y las instituciones que creamos para
llevar a cabo dichas polticas, Lakoff, George, No pienses en un elefante, p. 17.
24
Ibd., p. 24.
25
Frank Luntz es asesor poltico del Partido Republicano en EEUU, y es llamado por Lakoff el
hombre del lenguaje correcto, pues aconseja a los polticos republicanos sobre cmo utilizar el
lenguaje en sus discursos.
21
402
403
De esta manera aunque encubierto por un lenguaje muy similar al del campo
opuesto, con promesas de legitimidad, rendicin de cuentas, equidad y hasta altruismo
(), no se asumen compromisos reales con tales objetivos32. Y peor an, mediante
estos mecanismos se frena la presin social de los grupos ecologistas, acalladas sus
reivindicaciones polticas por un discurso dominante que absorbe sus trminos y que,
evocando sus marcos, transmite la apariencia de mejorar ecolgicamente las polticas
globales. El discurso de la economa verde obedece a un doble juego del poder:
acallar los discursos de resistencia y disfrazar sus polticas interesadas como beneficios
para la sociedad.
32
404
PARALLEL
SESSIONS
V
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
In this paper, I assert that particularly when examining conceptual change over time or between
synchronic discourses, metaphoricity of a concept may act as a key marker of semantic
cha(lle)nge. On the other hand, conceptual metaphor theory has in recent years broken out of the
confines of cognitive linguistics and psychology, and may both contribute to and gain from
historical semantics.
TEXT/TEXTO:
1. The burden of metaphors
Begriffsgeschichte has had considerable problems with a parallel line of inquiry, that of
metaphors. In 1967, outlining the Richtlinien of the upcoming Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe (GG), Reinhart Koselleck considered metaphoric dimensions as pertinent
to investigation of concepts, particularly in light of the path-breaking essay Paradigmen
zur eine Metaphorologie (1960) by his colleague Hans Blumenberg. Yet, in his final
Vorwort in 1992 of volume 7 of the magisterial work, he conceded that such added
inquiry would have been too much of a burden berfordert.2
Until this day, theoretical and methodological challenges of history of metaphors
have rarely been addressed.3 This is peculiar, considering that in recent years there has
been a movement to expand Begriffsgeschichte towards more general historical
1
This text is a DRAFT, please circulate only with direct consent of the author.
2
It is interesting that he should choose exactly the same word that Joachim Ritter had used 21
years earlier, when he explained why metaphors were left out of his Wrterbuch der Philosophie in 1971.
See Frank Beck Lassen, Metaphorically Speaking Begriffsgeschichte and Hans Blumenbergs
Metaphorologie, Archif fr Begriffsgeschichte, Sonderheft 7 (2010): 53-70. Reinhardt Koselleck:
Vorwort, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in
Deutschland. Bd. 7. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze & Reinhart Koselleck (eds., Stuttgart 1992): V-VIII.
3
See, however, Rieke Schfer, Historicizing strong metaphors: A Challenge for Conceptual
History, Contributions to the History of Concepts, vol. 7:2 (2012): 28-51.
405
Willibald Steinmetz,Vierzig Jahre Begriffsgeschichte The State of the Art, in: Heidrun
Kmper & Ludwig M. Eichinger (eds.) Sprahce-Konginiton-Kultur, (Berlin: W. De Gruyter,
2008): 174-197.
5
Ibid: 185; 177-178: Noch nicht oder nicht mehr begrifflich gefassten Weltwahrnemung.
6
Brunner, Conze & Koselleck, op. cit.: XII. There is a notable reorientation by Koselleck between
the two essays Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte (1972) and Sozialgeschichte und
Begriffsgeschichte (1986).
7
Steinmetz, op. cit.: 185
8
Ibid.: 187
9
Max Black, Models and Metaphors. Studies in Language and Philosophy. (Ithaca. N.Y.,
Cornell University Press, 1962): 37
10
Friedrich Nietzsche: ber Wahrheit und Lge im auermoralischen Sinne, (1873): http://
gutenberg.spiegel.de /buch/ 3243/1
406
Blumenberg, in his most famous quote, claims that metaphors have a history in
a more radical sense than concepts, for the historical transformation of a metaphor
brings to light the metakinetics of the historical horizons of meaning and ways of seeing
within which concepts undergo their modifications. In relation to concepts, metaphors
present the substructure of thinking (Substrukture des Denkens), and serve as the
nutrient solution of systematic crystallisations (i.e. concepts), but also reflect a more
general historical framework in which the mind preempts itself in its images.11
The philosophical understanding of metaphors as unique agents of meaning
formation has gainede currency in an entirely separate scientific tradition, that is,
cognitive linguistics. In 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson presented their groundbreaking hypothesis that conceptual metaphors are the underpinnings of human
cognition. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we think and act, is
fundamentally metaphoric in nature.12
Language, and meaning, consists of a web of thousands of correlative structures,
or conceptual metaphors. [M]any of the most basic concepts in our conceptual systems
are also normally comprehended via metaphor concepts like time, quantity, state,
change, action, cause, purpose, means, modality, and even the concept of category. The
strong claim of metaphor theory is that abstract thought is only possible through the use
of metaphors. 13 The source domain is always a more familiar, concrete realm of
experience, against which more abstract target domains can be mapped.
Roughly speaking, the theory has diverged somewhat in recent decades. The
strong claim of the cognitivist theory is that thought and language are embodied in
the biological, and nowadays more specifically, in the neural system. Human cognition,
based on conceptual metaphors, is essentially independent of its surroundings. Hence
the universalist, if not totalizing tendency of the theory which Lakoff revealingly
called The modern theory of conceptual metaphor that has been duly criticized by
later practitioners as reductionist. Critics point out that The Theory disregards the
influences of community, society, culture, history, communication, politics and
ideology that shape, develop and transform metaphors.
In recent years, however, conceptual metaphor theory has gone through its own
linguistic turn: a line of inquiry that is critical of the original theory has been
concerned with actual usages of language, and increasingly, with the social and
historical requisites of conceptual metaphors.
Although the insight of an underlying, collective system of conceptual
correlations remains important, several unresolved methodical issues and theoretical
problems have directed interest away from the original, problematic proposition that
11
Hans Blumenberg Paradigmen zur einen Metaphorologie,. (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1998
[1960]):13 translated as Paradigms for a Metaphorology, (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press and
Cornell University Library, 2010): 5
12
George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2003 [1980]): 3
13
Andrew Goatly, Washing the Brain: Metaphors and Hidden Ideology (Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 2007):14
407
408
will indicate shifts in power relations in a given time frame. In the process of
domesticating to the new domain of discourse, a metaphor will eventually lose its
figurativeness, it will de-metaphorize, and become a conventionalised, or dead
metaphor. In terms of critical discourse analysis, however, a commonplace is anything
but dead. According to Norman Fairclough, when ideology becomes common sense, it
apparently ceases to be ideology; this is itself an ideological effect, for ideology is truly
effective only when it is disguised.19
In the event of semantic change, metaphors perform a unique task, as indicated
by many instances in the canon of Begriffsgeschichte, although never thoroughly
thematized. In his entry of Krise in GG, Koselleck describes how this term, previously
associated exclusively with the domains of medicine, law and theology, expands from
the 17th century onwards into politics, economics, history and psychology, used as a
metaphor. In the eve of the French revolution, Crisis becomes a catch-word, because
of its metaphorical flexibility.20 Today, in the everyday talk of crisis, the metaphorical
nature of the word has evaporated, but for a context-conscious historian of France in the
1760s, a novel, striking metaphor should stand out as an evident marker of conceptual
change.
Although concepts and metaphors are interwoven in the fabric of meaning, they
perform very different tasks. Concepts consist of true propositions; otherwise
contestations and redefinitions and would be meaningless. In contrast, metaphors can
neither be true or false; according to Max Black, such an assignment is a violation of
philosophical grammar.21 Paul Ricoeur states: The place of metaphor, its most
intimate and ultimate abode, is the copula of the verb to be. The metaphorical is at
once signifies both is not and is like. If this is really so, we are allowed to speak of
metaphorical truth, but in equally tensive sense of the word truth.22
Consequently, metaphors are absolute la Blumenberg. They resist
conceptualisation, which can never exhaust its autonomous and irreducible relation to
language and truth.23 Plurivocality of a concept is a historical product, the contingent
result of sedimentation of meanings generated through time, whereas plurivocality as
such is the essence (or definition) of a metaphor. As summarized by Elias Jos Palti,
Unlike a concept, a metaphor does not have a referential but a pragmatic function its
value does not lie in what it indicates, but what it does.24
19
Norman Fairclough, Language and Power, 2nd Ed. (London, UK: Longmans, 2000): 89
Reinhardt Koselleck: Crisis. Journal of the History of Ideas, 67:2, 2006 [1982]): 358. Italics
added.
21
Max Black, More on Metaphor. In: Andrew Ortony (ed.): Metaphor and Thought. 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993 [1979]): 39
22
Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010 [1975]): 6
23
Blumenberg (1998), 11: sie sich gegenber dem terminologischen Anspruch als resistant
erweisen
24
Elias Jos Palti, From Ideas to Concepts to Metaphors: the German tradition of intellectual
history and the complex fabric of language. History and Theory vol. 49:2 (2010): 205
20
409
On the other hand, absolute metaphors name phenomena that are too abstract,
large or intimate to deal with concepts, such as the World, the Life, the Truth.25 This
naming of the unconceptualisable, allows us to symbolically control the inexpressible
object and thus to retain a sense or semblance of structure.
Next, I will have a closer look at metaphoricity in action, in situations of
semantic cha(lle)nge.
4. The metaphor moment
Steinmetz presents three forms of semantic change:
Words or manners of speech (Redeweisen) lose their plausibility following
unanticipated incidents and upheavals;
The increase or decrease of strategic use value (Gebrauchswert) of words or manners of
speech increase or decrease in recurrent communication situations; and
The irritation of the economy (Haushalt) of words and meanings in a language caused
by word imports.
The classic case of the first instance is a sudden, unheard-of incident. One
realizes that previous manners of speaking [Redeweisen] neither capture the new
circumstances [Sachverhalt] nor allow for successful negotiation [Handeln] in the
newly emerged situation; and subsequently one changes ones manner of speaking.26
Typically, a crisis or a war would also lead to a crisis of credible expressions for
the experience. During the Swiss peasant uprising in 1653, the authorities experienced
increasing difficulties in defining the event, upgrading die Unruhen (disorder) to
Generalverschwrung (general conspiracy), and to what certainly was a conceptual
innovation at the time: Revolution.27
But why was the word revolution used instead of something else, to describe
the novelty of the experience, needs further and complimentary explanation provided by
the second form of semantic change, which focuses in transformations, expansions and
shifts in meaning. Obviously, Revolution had some kind of added value (Mehrwert)
compared to older terms in the given situation. Steinmetz: Generally it can be
speculated that the higher degree of abstraction contained in the image of revolutio was
a factor in the choice of this particular (metaphoric) expression.28
Although a metaphor avails itself as a meaning-constructing tool, it never
pretends to fix the meaning by providing an undisputable definition. It is openly an
open-ended construction. By the very virtue of its equivocal nature, metaphor presents
itself as an ideal candidate in moments of semantic challenge, as described by
Blumenberg: There is not sufficient room for manoeuvre [Spielraum] in the process, as
25
Rdiger Zill, Substrukturen des Denkens. In: Hans Erich Bdeker (ed.) Begriffsgeschichte,
Diskursgeschichte, Metapherngeschichte, (Gttingen: Wallstein, 2002): 231. Und das Begriffsresistente
begreifbar zu machen, suchen wir uns ein Hilfsmittel: die absolute Metapher. Note, however, that many
usages we currently cannot but conceive as metaphorical, may in their historical particularly religious
context have been meant quite literally.
26
Steinmetz, op. cit.:188-189
27
Ibid: 188.
28
Ibid: 189
410
29
Hans Blumenberg, Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben, (Stuttgart, 1981): 116, cit. in Zill, op. cit.: 245
Steinmetz, op.cit: 189-190
31
Donald Schn, Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy, in
Ortony, op.cit.137-163
32
F.R. Ankersmit: Metaphor in Political Theory, in in F.R. Ankersmit & J.J.A. Mooij (eds.),
Knowledge and Language, Vol 3: Metaphor and Knowledge. (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1993):.: 162-163
33
Testimony in U.S. Congress, Oct. 23, 2008.
30
411
Amy Koritz & Douglas Koritz, Adventures in the metaphorical marketplace. In:
Woodmansee & Osteen (eds.) The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the intersection of literature and
economics. (London, UK: Routledge, 1999): 409-411.
35
George Lakoff, The contemporary theory of Metaphor, in Ortony (ed.) op. cit.: 209.
Lakoff & Johnson termed metaphor themes metaphors proper and what is usually referred as
metaphors, metaphoric expressions. To avoid unnecessary confusion, later practitioners have
yielded to more conventional usage. Of the predicate, cf. fn. 21.
36
Examples from Goatly, op.cit.
37
Lakoff & Johnson (1980), pp. 14-15, They present this metaphor theme as HAVING CONTROL or
FORCE IS UP; BEING SUBJECT TO CONTROL or FORCE IS DOWN.
38
A reverse spatial metaphorical expression for revolution is kansannousu, popular uprising,
mostly seen as justifiable action, reflecting the metaphor theme IMPROVE STATUS IS RAISE. All
metaphor themes are from Goatly, op.cit
39
Goatly, op. cit.: 166-167.
412
413
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The paper presents a category, mask, which can be used to study and historically
narrate socially constructed identity references of persons in western modernity,
following in the tradition of history of concepts as proposed by Reinhart Koselleck. In
spite of free will, the meaning of individual decisions and individuality is somewhat
collectively determined and, therefore, it is constrained in virtue of existing social rules.
It argues that the category mask offers a better framework to explain the nature of the
institutional reality created by these rules.
TEXT/TEXTO:
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players
Shakespeare, As you like it.
I present in this paper a category, mask, which could be used to narrate historical
events through the study of the meaning of practices and the rules that are constitutive
of them, enabling the study of certain concepts. Ill adopt a definition of rules and
institutional reality presented by John Searle and with this framework I propose to study
what masks can represent.
This paper presents an alternative method of historical analysis of the set of
institutional rules that exist in the societies and that create what I call masks, concepts
that define how someone is perceived in a given context and how the rules restrict ones
liberty to be. But what does it mean to be forced to play this type of language game?
How can this violence be studied with the framework of the history of concepts?
Categories
I assume the distinction presented by Reinhart Koselleck between categories
(Kategorien) and concepts (Begriffe)1. Categories are not found in the research of
1
Der Historiker, der ber seine eigenen Erlebnisse und Erinnerungen hinweg, geleitet von Fragen
oder auch von Wnschen, Hoffnungen und Sorgen, in die Vergangenheit zurckgreift, steht
zunchst vor den sogennanten berresten, die noch heute mehr oder minder zahlreich vorhanden
sind. Wenn er diese Uberreste in Quellen verwandelt, die von der Geschichte zeugen, um deren
414
sources. They are theoretical frameworks that enable the historical study, analysis,
description and narrative.
Mask is a category that can be used for historical narratives of social identities
or the paradigms of identification of persons at a given time, how these paradigms shift
and how these political and social changes manifest themselves as concepts.
Institutional reality
Institutional reality is the name John Searle gives to things that exist only
because we believe them to exist. Some examples are money, property, governments
and marriages 2.
These institutional facts are different from other facts such as that it rained
because the fact that rained is not an observer-relative fact. This means that the only
reason why it is possible to say that things like money exist is because human beings
with conscience and intellect are capable of interacting through language and play the
game of currency.
Furthermore, Searle discusses the assignment of function, collective
intentionality, and constitutive rules as characteristics of institutional reality3.
A function is an observer related quality that a certain object, word or some
symbol acquires in virtue of the assignment made by a group of persons. A possible
example is a door in a class room and how it functions as a wall when a teacher closes it
in an act as to forbid students to leave the room until the class is over.
The collective intentionality is the sharing of intentional states such as beliefs,
desires, and intentions. One of Searles examples is a if I am a violinist in an
orchestra I play my part in our performance of the symphony. Throughout his
argument, he explains why the we-intentionality, or collective intentionality, is not
reducible to an I-intentionality. In the end, an individual that acts accordingly to a
collective intentionality acts on the belief that we-intend to do something.
Constitutive rules are rules that create the very possibility of an activity to
exist. One example of activity and its rules is chess. Heir to Wittgensteins theory of
language games, Searle theorizes about rules that create the possibility of human action
with meaning that can be socially comprehended.
The Geschichtliches Grundbegriffes and person as a cluster concept
In the Geschichtliches Grundbegriffes the concepts Menschheit, Humanitt,
Humanismus are presented. Human nature and all of mankind are the components
Erkenntnis es ihm geht, dann bewegt sich der Historiker immer auf zwei Ebenen. Entweder
untersucht er Sachverhalte, die bereits frher sprachlich artikuliert worden sind, oder er
rekonstruiert Sachverhalte, die frher sprachlich noch nicht artikuliert worden sind, die er aber mit
Hilfe von Hypothesen und Methoden aus den Relikten herausschlt. Im ersten Fall dienen ihm
berkommene Begriffe der Quellensprache als heuristischer Einstieg, die vergangene Wirklichkeit
zu erfassen. Im zweiten Fall bedient sich der Historiker ex post gebildeter und definierter Begriffe,
wissenschaftlicher Kategorien also, die angewendet werden, ohne im Quellenbefund aufweisbar zu
sein KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Vergangene Zukunft: zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. 3.
Aufl. Frankfurt Am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. pp. 349, 350.
2
SEARLE, John. The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press, 1995. pp. 1.
3
Ibid. pp. 13 29.
415
Der Terminus 'Menschheit' (ahd. 'mennigskeit', mhd. 'menscheit') - vom 14. bis zur Mitte des
18, Jahrhunderts tritt 'Menschlichkeit' (mhd. 'menschlichheit', 'menschlichkeit') wie 'Menschheit'
auf - hat im wesentlichen zwei Bedeutungskomponenten. Zum einen bezeichnet er die "Natur" des
Menschen, zum anderen die Gesamtheit aller Menschen BRUNNER, Otto, CONZE, Werner,
KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: historisches Lexikon zur politischsozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Stuttgart : Klett-Cotta, 2004. Band. 03. pp. 1063.
5
Ibid. pp. 1064.
6
OHLIN, Jens David. Is the Concept of Person Necessary for Human Rights? in Columbia Law
Review, Vol. 105, No 1, pp. 209 249.
7
The term person does not stand for a single concept but rather for a cluster of ideas. Ibid. pp.
230.
8
WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. Philosophical investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1958.
416
external to their wills, and that should be studied as concepts, not as forms or
manifestations of individual choice.
Human beings are self-interpreting animals that make moral decisions9 and can
be viewed as a single self, even if this self is represented in a multifaceted manner in
modernity10. The concept of person also represents such a unity. The proposed study
of masks as concepts does not undermine this assertion, but depends on it. Because
persons are individuals greater than what others think of them that humans are not
reducible to its roles, as one might interpret the Shakespearean passage.
In August of 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. stated in the beginning of his most
famous speech11: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow
we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. (...) But one hundred years
later, the Negro still is not free. Is Negro, besides being considered today a racist and
extremely offensive word when used as reference to a person, a concept?
Due to discrimination and segregation laws people were not free. But to what
extent can this be understood? Can this freedom be reduced to underlying facts such
as people with distinct physical characteristics being physically separated from each
other? Can it be reduced to legal obligations?
In early twentieth century USA, to be recognized as a negro is to be forced to
wear a mask of oppression. But how can this be explained and why should it be in these
terms?
In Countee Cullens Incident, a poem written in early twentieth century12, a
ballad mimics a children song that can be interpreted as a song that parents were forced
to sing to their offspring in an attempt to teach them how the world would treat them. In
the poem the use of the offensive slur defines a period of the childs life and, why not
his identity, at least as socially perceived?
Identity matters. The metaphysical question who are you can have a social and
politically significant answer and it is not necessarily about the subjectivity of the
individual observed. Nonetheless, masks represent a framework that could enable a
different way to study freedom, historical limitations and conquests.
As objective13 institutional facts, following Searles philosophy, masks have
function, depend on collective intentionality and are constituted by rules.
The function of the mask is to substitute a persons individuality, making that
person be recognized by features that are socially ascribed to him or her. Usually, as
means of perpetuating some kind of violence, masks function as a way to disregard an
9
TAYLOR, Charles. Human agency and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985.
10
TAYLOR, Charles, Sources of the self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
11
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm (last visited in 07/02/2013)
12
Once riding in old Baltimore,/ Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,/ I saw a Baltimorean/ Keep
looking straight at me./
Now I was eight and very small,/ And he was no whit bigger,/ And so I smiled, but he poked out/
His tongue, and called me, Nigger.
I saw the whole of Baltimore/ From May until December;/ Of all the things that happened there/
Thats all that I remember.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171327 (last visited in 07/02/2013)
13
The question of objectivity is addressed in Searles work, Ibid. pp. 7 9.
417
important feature of the individual, restricting ones judgment and perception. Masks
depend on collective intentionality because they are rule-governed and rule-constituted
ways of identifying persons and are restrictions that one has to bear in mind when acting
in a given context. The difference from considering people as wearing masks and not
being merely players is that actions are intentional in social rule-governed
circumstances that are not chosen, but which antecede the individuals that are born in
them.
Masks can be used to tell tales of violence and oppression, but also of
freedom. The study of these masks can complement the study of human rights
movements, especially in the twentieth century, revealing from another point of view
what it means to be oppressed. But, even more importantly, masks can help to narrate
events from a human perspective, from the perspective of persons who play the game of
being and acting in society.
REFERENCES
BRUNNER, Otto, CONZE, Werner, KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe: historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland.
Stuttgart : Klett-Cotta, 2004.
KOSELLECK, Reinhart. Vergangene Zukunft: zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. 3.
Aufl. Frankfurt Am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995
OHLIN, Jens David. Is the Concept of Person Necessary for Human Rights? in
Columbia Law Review, Vol. 105, No 1
SEARLE, John. The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press, 1995.
TAYLOR, Charles. Human agency and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.
TAYLOR, Charles, Sources of the self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. Philosophical investigations. Translated by G. E. M.
Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958.
418
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This paper makes a contribution to the metaphor history of theatre, by addressing its
thought guiding function for the political concept of representation.
Up to the 20th century, the metaphor of theatre has served above all as a figure
of inauthenticity. That is, it has been used to draw a modal distinction between a visible
sphere of unreality, and a hidden sphere of authentic reality. This distinction has
allowed for three different rhetorical uses: a/ to stabilize a certain societal structure (for
instance in the baroque age), b/ to articulate a critique of social reality (for instance by
French moralism), or c/ to defend a position of resignation (especially by nihilistic
voices in the 19th century). The first part of this paper will show how the particular
temporality of metaphorical speech has enabled these three paradigms to travel through
different historical and linguistic contexts. It will do so by presenting three examples,
which show how each paradigm has been picked up in non-contemporary contexts, in
order to think and argue about political representation.
Against this background, the second part of the paper will take a closer look at
important transformations in the 20th century. Indeed, innovations in the cultural
practice of theatre, prepared by artistic avantgardes in the early 20th century and
popularized around the middle of the century, produced conceptual shifts within the
semantic field of theatre. In accordance with the peculiar rhythms of metaphor history,
these semantic transformations became effective for the figural use of theatre towards
the end of the 20th century. This paper argues that in the course of these conceptual
travels, the theatre metaphor does no longer necessarily function as a metaphor of
inauthenticity, but acquires a genuinely new meaning: It becomes a metaphor of the
possible. The conditions and consequences of this reactivation of the metaphor of
theatre are brought to the fore through the analysis of its impact on contemporary efforts
to rethink the political concept of representation.
419
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The main aim of the paper is to give a diachronic analysis of the Lithuanian national
independence movement while concentrating on the concept of an empire. During 20th
century (in the beginning and in the end of the 20th century) Lithuania has experienced
two national awakenings which led to a creation of independent nation-state. Both of
them were directed against political entities which are considered to be empires czarist
Russia and USSR and in both cases attempts to communicate differences between
present (imperial and colonial) and future (independent) political status were among the
most important tasks for a national movement leaders. While analyzing the most
important newspapers and speeches of that time it is possible to see, that the concept of
empire was among key concepts for interpretation and description of political life. So
analysis can show several things.
Firstly, what discourse practices were and could be used to describe the idea of
empire. Along the description of secular and sacred understanding of empire, which
could be seen as important element of modern political thinking, Ill also argue, that its
possible to name several different interpretations (economical and cultural to name just
a few) of the secular understanding of empire.
Secondly, its important to stress differences between two time periods. The
beginning of the 20th century is interesting because it is possible to look for the logic of
concept-making the new concepts were introduced (for example valstija and valstyb
to describe a state) and the old one changed there meaning (viepatyst and imperija,
both could be interpreted as empire). While the end of the 20th century is interesting
because it is possible to trace changes in Lithuanian political self-perception as the
nation state which competes with imperial structures. Answering this question could
help to understand what are the main differences between the nature of two national
awakening projects and were there any changes in the way the imperial polity is seen by
there colonial parts.
Thirdly, one can see what counter-concepts are used to legitimize alternative
polities. The question is closely related to a process of conceptualization and reconceptualization of other political terms, such as state, republic and federation. In both
cases its possible to find different arguments not only against or for the empire, but
also different interpretations about what does it mean to be out of the empire.
420
TEXT/TEXTO:
Among all political concepts the ones describing polity as a specific form of a social
organization, can be treated as the most important ones. From Greek polis to modern
nation-state or post-modern network-state it is crucial keyword for explaining a social
human condition, domination of power structures, interrelations with other political
entities etc. The concept of empire is one among few with such a big explanatory
potential. But as it is from the very beginning embedded in the political discourse (it is
almost impossible to imagine a non-political usage of the concept of empire), it also
gives a very wide range of possible interpretations and modes of usage.
The main goal of this paper is to give one possible perspective on the concept of
empire, which is important for a broader understanding of phenomenon I define as a
non-imperial interpretation of empire. To clarify my statement let me shortly describe
two main trends regarding how it is possible to speak about the concept of empire. The
first way to speak about the empire can be called scientific, using strictly positivistic
interpretation of this term. It is based on a assumption that it is possible to coin a transhistorical concept of empire, which would help to describe and analyze all political
entities labeled as empires. This venture of purification of at least scientific language
can be helpful for sociological knowledge and discussions, but misleading if we are
trying to trace political functions of the concept of empire. In other words, besides
having endless debates about criterions and parameters of the state it is equally
important to understand the meaning of the empire for everyday political and social
practice: instead of asking how empire functions?, we should ask why was it
meaningful to speak about empire and what did it mean at all?. So first of all we have
to step over this hegemonic positivistic imperative about how to understand empire.
On the other hand, as there are trends of speaking about empire in trans-historical
manner, it is also a great temptation to speak about empire in a trans-social manner as if
there was a universal criterion for speaking about empire. Even if hermeneutic and
interpretative approaches are used, empire is usually seen from the point of view of
imperial powers, the ones that have a potential to describe social and political reality.
The subjects of imperial politics are usually left silent. It is true at some point it can be
seen as marginal, non-dominant, oppressed and unimportant for a better understanding
of great political shifts or social revolutions. But it is wrong from both theoretical and
practical point of view. It gives us a false assumption about the nature of imperial polity
it is not as dominant and repressive as we tend to see. I would like to claim that it is
possible to speak about the debate not only between different ideologies but also
between different political entities which have different understanding of empire. The
language of the oppressed not only adopts new political meanings, but also modifies
them, try to compete with them.
The object of my analysis is two national anti-imperial movements of Lithuania.
During the 20th century (at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century) Lithuania
experienced two national awakenings which both led to a creation of independent
421
nation-state. Both of them were directed against political entities which are considered
to be empires now and also then czarist Russia and USSR. And in both cases attempts
to communicate differences between present (imperial and colonial) and future
(independent) political status were among the most important tasks for a national
movement leaders. Also there are several important differences, for example, the first
movement could be seen as nation and state building, while the second one staterebuilding and nation-consolidation movement, it is still quite typical which
represent quite a typical case for Eastern and Central Europe.
This diachronic analysis can show several important things. Firstly, Id like to
demonstrate, how discourse practices were and could be used to describe the idea of
empire. Along the description of a secular and sacred understanding of empire, which
could be seen as important element of modern political thinking, I will also argue, that it
is possible to name several different interpretations (e.g., economical and cultural, to
name a few) of the secular understanding of empire.
Secondly, its important to stress differences between two time periods. The
beginning of the 20th century is interesting because it is possible to look for the logic of
concept-making; while the end of the 20th century is interesting for concept- remaking
after severe ideological indoctrination. So it is possible to trace changes in political selfperception in the nation state which competes with imperial structures. Answering this
question could help to understand the main differences between the nature of two
national awakening projects.
Thirdly, one can see what counter-concepts are used to legitimize alternative
polities. The question is closely related to a process of conceptualization and reconceptualization of other political terms, such as state, republic and federation. In both
cases it is possible to find different arguments not only against or for the empire, but
also different interpretations about what it mean to be out of the empire.
So there are three important tasks for this kind of analysis. First of all we should try
to understand the context in which all these debates appeared. To narrow my
investigation I will concentrate specifically on political discourse practices which
described empire as a polity. Secondly, I will look at the most intense periods of
national awakening process the year 1905 and 1988. Both periods came after a
relative liberalization of the regime and were specific because of intensive debates
regarding political issues and further reforms of the political system. Thirdly, its
possible to see the most important aspect of criticism towards empire and counterconcepts used for describing required political conditions.
To provide some answers to the questions raised above, I will make some references
to vocabularies, tutorials, handbooks and encyclopedias used at that time by the leading
Lithuanian intellectuals whom I will also treat as the most prominent independent
political thinkers regarding political issues. Most of the conclusions about the dominant
understanding of empire will be made by analyzing the most important newspapers of
those years Vilniaus inios (Vilnius news) and Atgimimas (Awakening) both edited
by well-known leaders of national movements.
First of all Ill divide two imperial discourses: the first one used in the second half
of the 19th century and the other one post-World War II communistic used in Soviet
422
Union. Similarly to most of political concepts in modern times, the concept of empire
experienced deep transformations, even though it remained as of the main political
concepts. According to French political and juridical philosopher Emmanuelle Jouannet
The political reality of empire has almost ceased to exist in this [17-18th century]
period in Europe; instead, what continues to subsist is above all the imperial impulse,
the desire to build anew a fantasised empire1. Let me stress the main character of this
transformation by citing another Frenchmen Michel Foucault: there is nothing like an
imperial structure which it has to merge with or submit to at a more or less distant point
on the historical horizon and which would in some way represent Gods theophany in
the world, leading men to a finally united humanity on the threshold of the end of the
world2. Traditional understanding of empire was strongly linked with a sacred meaning
of emperor as a representative of Gods will. He was the one responsible for attempts to
establish a divine kingdom, embodiment of divine ideals of peace and justice. At the
same time emperor was the only servant of the Church, obliged to the only true
sovereignty of God. Secularization of political thinking led to a sharp division between
secular and sacred powers and thus emperor became liberated from church and divinity
as the universal principal, but also remained the one true center of political power acting
on his own will and understanding of the right matters. Even though there is a clear
division between Western and Eastern empires as well as Orthodox and Catholic
churches, this principal of imperial power could be applied as rightfully Russian tsar
is glorified not because of quantity of his power, but because of quality. This kind of
sacralization of the secular power in Russian empire remained crucial and had a clear
expression in the 19th century czarist ideology describe by Sergey Uvarov as
Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. The first two principles should be treated as the
main pillars of the strong imperial power as church gives a symbolic support for the
ruler, while a ruler does everything to preserve the one true religion.
But what relation could have been established between main imperial nation and the
one which have distinct self-understanding of their national, religious and political
belonging? That was one of the most important questions for awakening nation and
the answer to it was not outright antagonistic as it may seem. First of all, the national
interest wasnt so clearly expressed at the middle of the 19th century. Even when it
became lively discussed at the end of 19th and beginning of 20th Russian officials were
encouraged to be given more autonomy, but not drastically change imperial structure.
After all, empires were always known for managing different gentes, while Lithuanians
saw a much dangerous cultural enemy in the presence of Polishness, then political
enemy in a presence of Russia. Secondly, even after the nation was recognized as
political entity, which had some political claims, there was still an understanding that
the holder of sovereign power should be incarnated in a person of monarch. This
personalized understanding of polity was represented in Lithuanian word viepatyst
1
Emmanuelle Jouannet, The disappearance of the Concept of Empire. Or, The Beginning of the End
of Empires in Europe from the 18th Century., p. 4 from <http://cerdin.univparis1.fr/IMG/pdf/The_Disappearance_of_the_Concept_of_Empire_E._Jouannet-2.pdf>
2
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: lectures at the College de France, 1978-79, New York:
Palgrave Macmilan, 2008, p. 5
423
and had connotation with supreme order of God, viepats. But the clearest shift (still not
a separation) between the dominant imperial and non-dominant peripheral power was
represented in the actions of Catholic Church. As Orthodox religion became the one
officially and un-officially propagated by the imperial rule, Catholics instead of obeying
to an actual political ruler became extremely critical of czarist rule. This trend also
manifested itself on rhetorical level. For instance, in the works of an influential
Lithuanian bishop Valanius the concept used for the description of Russia shifted from
the imperia, empire, towards much formal ciecoryste, czardom. So the concept of
empire almost disappeared from Lithuanian discourse and only latter it re-appeared as
the concept of viepatyst.
Totally different meaning of empire could be found in a de-sacralised Soviet union.
Empire and its derivatives officially was recognized as important political concepts, but
used in a totally negative way. Let me give several typical examples taken from the
Soviet Lithuanian Encyclopedia. According to it, empire is (a) Monarchy, which is
ruled by emperor. Usually this kind of monarchy is big and composed of several state or
national territories (mostly occupied); (b) big state, consisting of metropolis and its
colonies3. Among examples of empires was named Great Britain before 70s of the 19th
century, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia before WW I. The concept was treated
as alien to soviet reality, because officially there was no difference between republics
and autonomous regions and no concurring of neighboring states. But of course the
main paradigm explaining most of the social concepts was neither political nor juridical,
but economical all political reality was treated in accordance with understanding of
historical materialism and radical ideologization of all social processes. Thus it was not
the political form which was mostly criticized, but ideological mode of imperial
thinking. And the main concept to explain it was imperialism monopolistic capitalism,
the highest and last stage of capitalism, from the point of view of historical development
eve of the social revolution4. In total accordance with Lenins description of it in the
book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism it was described as having: high
concentration of production and capital, which creates a monopoly in economical life;
merging banking capital with industrial financial capital, which lead to oligarchy; outflux of capital; the creation of international capitalistic system, which dived the world;
the division of Earths territory between biggest capitalist states5. So before we proceed
with a critical evaluation of these perceptions of empire let me conclude several things:
in both cases empire was clearly understood as important political concept; in both
cases it was understood in accordance with dominant discourse structures in the first
case post-sacred and secularized political theology and in the second in the postpolitical economical paradigm; in both cases it was perceived negatively either reality,
which did not correspond with the real goal of empire; or theoretical constructions,
which perceived imperialism as oppressive and exploitative politics.
3
424
Now take a brief look at the beginning of the 19th century and first awakening of
Lithuania. There were three clear trends. Firstly, the concept of empire wasnt
dominant, but changed into ciecoryste, czardom, while viepatyst became a concept to
describe any modern state with sovereign powers. Secondly, as czardom was legitimate
concept in Russia and it was natural thing to use it in everyday polemics meaning
simply a current state ruled by czar or any other emperor (that explains why it is popular
to speak about German or Japanese czardom). In other words, empire and czardom in
secular thinking, which stressed the form of rule but not its divine principals, was
synonyms and was covered by the concept of absolute monarchy. In the first Lithuanian
handbook of political science, a translation from Russian handbook of Chizhniakov is
stated, that: [absolute monarchy] is such a form of state, where head of the state, a lord
(monarch, also called king, emperor, tsar etc.) has all the power; by his own will he
gives and repeals laws [] he is a self-ruler, that is without restrictions of any other
powers hes ruling the state, that is in an absolute way. The examples of such a state can
be found in Turkey, China and for the time being in Russia.6 It shouldnt be surprising
that in a more moderate and popular thinking empire was almost the same as the
kingdom, only bigger7. And finally, as the deadly sin of empire was absolutism, the
main aim of the movement of the awakening was seen in democratization or rather
republicanization of empire. This goal was expressed in two a bit different manners:
(a) giving wider autonomy to nations; (b) releasing a constitutional law, which would
suppress powers of monarchs.
A bit different story happened almost a century later. Sjdis sprang out as a properestroika movement, but quite quickly declared his pro-independence stand. At least
this is a short version of the story. But what is more important in this case how was
this imperial reality perceived and interpreted? Id say that we can speak at least about
three main trends. Firstly, concepts of empire and imperialisms were used as a rhetorical
tool to criticize soviet reality and perceived in a totally negative manner. It wasnt just
big multi-ethnic polities, but also hegemonic, oppressive, Byzantine and
represented all the historical un-justice done in Stalinist period.
Secondly, what could be treated as a small paradox of transition period, empire was
interpreted in the same manner as in Soviet times. For example, the objective and unavoidable principle of history was used to explain past and future change the eventual
fall of the empire was unavoidable historical law. Soviet system is perceived as
historical anomaly all other colonial empires were gone, while the USSR still ruled
over ethnically different republics and exploited them economically. But historians
described how empires grow and fall [] there is a law of history, that an empire lives
for two or three hundred years, and after that dies as every living organism. This has
happened and will happen with all empires8. Another important aspect of imperial
structure in the case of it colonial parts were so called imperial consciousness. It didnt
6
Chiniakov Vasilij, Politikos mokslo pradia [Beginning of the Political Science], Vilnius:
Vilniaus ini spaustuv, 1906.
7
Svetim ir nesuprantam odi odynlis [Book of Foreign and Incomprehensible Words],
Til: Jagomasto spaustuv, 1907.
8
Demokratija ir tauta [Democracy and Nation], Atgimimas [Awakening], 1988, issue 10
425
mean oppressive consciousness, but rather oppressed and servile consciousness. Also as
in Marxist theory it didnt leave place for autonomous and self-conscious person, but
rather was unavoidable reality of imperial structure: "Unfortunately, in some Soviet
Republics there is still convenient imperial consciousness present from the feudal times
and its uneasy to overcome it even for brightest minds [] it is led by conformist,
hypocrite, servile consciousness, which cant be easily vanquished9.
And finally as empire was discredited in a negative way by all parties, official and
oppositional, it was very important to present alternative anti-imperial counter-concepts
polities which should follow imperial reality. Shortly it could be described as
democratic and sovereign state, but both of these concepts also should be perceived in
soviet manner. Democratization in this case should be treated as decentralization: first
of all economical (having independent republic, local or even private companies),
national (letting every nation deal with its culture as it is pleased) and only then
political. In this case concept of sovereignty was used as the main one. But even then,
while having a bonding concept, we should speak about bounding meaning: sovereignty
could be seen both as a total/complete independence and as subordination to communist
party; as a counter-concept and as integral part of debate about Soviet empire.
To conclude Ill just like to stress/emphasize several/a couple of important points: the
first one is an important similarity and the second one difference. The similarity could
be described as uncritical critics of imperial structure. On the one hand, in both
awakenings we can find examples of harsh critics towards current imperial structure.
But, on the other one, the language used by critics mostly repeats the dominant
discourse of the empire. Speaking about differences we can trace conscious creation of
original political language in the first awakening and pluralization of terms in the
second one. Seems like if at the beginning of the 20th century we can speak about clear
division of the political sphere (concept of empire described political regime), at the end
of the 20th empire became a synonym of any oppression or exploitation, thus eventually
politicizing all aspects of social life.
426
La puesta en valor de los mltiples niveles discursivos dentro de las entidades jurisdiccionales
de la Monarqua Hispnica ha sido una de las lneas ms activas de la Historiografa modernista
reciente, v. X. Gil Pujol, Del Estado a los lenguajes polticos, del centro de la periferia. Dos
dcadas de Historia poltica sobre la Espaa de los siglos XVI y XVII, J.M. de Bernardo ares
(ed.), El Hispanismo Anglonorteamericano. Aportaciones, problemas y perspectivas sobre
Historia, Arte y Literatura espaolas (siglos XVI-XVIII). Actas de la I Conferencia Internacional
Hacia un nuevo Humanismo, Crdoba, 9-14 de septiembre de 1997, Crdoba, 2001, pp. 883919.
11
La tensin entre ambos elementos, precisamente a partir del estudio del consensus populi, ya la
desarroll en Thories et pratiques de la souverainet dans la Monarchie Hispanique: un conflit de
juridictions Cambrai, Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales, 2000, n 3, pp. 55-81.
12
El corpus (al que por falta de espacio no se puede hacer referencia puntual) sobre el que se
construye el anlisis de esta comunicacin rene los documentos inditos conservados en los
Memoriales vistos por el Consejo de Estado en las dcadas de 1580-1620, como por la
documentacin diplomtica reproducida por los especialistas de las relaciones entre el mundo
britnico, francs y griego; como por ejemplo J. M. Floristn Imizcoz, Carta del clero de la
Morea a Felipe III, Erytheia: revista de estudios bizantinos y neogriegos, 2008, n 29, pp. 83-112.
La bibliografa es, por lo tanto, inabarcable aqu por lo que se remite a J. N. Hillgarth, The Mirror
of Spain, 1500-1700- The Formation of a Myth, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor,
2000, al aparato crtico presentado en mi artculo Inventar una monarqua doblemente catlica.
Los partidarios de Felipe II en Europa y su visin de la hegemona espaola, Estudis. Revista de
Historia Moderna, 2008, n 34, pp. 87-109; y a los trabajos recientes des Natividad Planas sobre la
negociacin de en el Norte de frica.
428
Sobre las construcciones conceptuales y los conflictos ulteriores sobre su interpretacin remito
al excelente trabajo de Pedro Cardim, Portugal unido e separado. Filipe II, a unio de territrios e
a condio poltica do reino de Portugal; que aparecer publicado en la coleccin del Sntesis de
la Ctedra Felipe II de la Universidad de Valladolid, por gentileza del autor.
14
V. Soen, Reconquista and Reconciliation in the Dutch Revolt. The campaign of GovernorGeneral Alexander Farnese in the Dutch Revolt (1578-1592), Journal of Early Modern History,
2012, n 16 2012, pp. 1-22.
15
Entre Aguirre y el gran rey. Los discursos de la eleccin de Felipe II al trono de Francia en
1591, Alberto Marcos Martn (ed.), Hacer Historia desde Simancas. Homenaje a Jos Luis
Rodrguez de Diego, Valladolid, Junta de Castilla y Len, 2011, pp. 661-685.
429
polticos del momento de lo que la visin tradicional tan cara a la historiografa liberal
(juristas y politiques partidarios de la soberana en sentido moderno versus clero
fundamentalista y ultramontano) insiste en ofrecer. La misma reserva se debe aplicar a
los otros territorios.
Haba, en todo caso, problemas comunes a los mltiples espacios donde se
desarrollaba la hispanofilia. Uno de los ms significativos, con el que chocaba toda
negociacin, era la base jurdica sobre el que se sostenan las propuestas de
incorporacin. Si lo que se ofreca a los soberanos espaoles era la asuncin de
entidades polticas ya existentes, dicha oferta no poda desconocer la existencia de
derechos jurdicos, expresados bien por la herencia, bien por la dependencia feudal (en
el sentido amplio del trmino, incluyendo el derecho a la investidura) del territorio
respecto a un soberano superior, un prncipe que en no pocos casos poda ser el propio
pontfice mximo. Una parte importante, aunque desde luego no tanto como se ha
venido considerando, de los ttulos de dominio sobre los reinos americanos del rey
catlico era la bien conocida donacin alejandrina 16 , algo que no pareca poder
reeditarse en un momento de relaciones tan complicadas con la Santa Sede como fue el
periodo que se inicia con Sixto V y, sobre todo, con Clemente VIII.
La Monarqua deba enfrentarse a una contradiccin: se le ofreca la
incorporacin de entidades polticas sin tener en cuenta, o contra los deseos mismos, de
quien en teora podra investirlas. Era pues preciso buscar otras formas de justificacin
de la apropiacin del territorio, con la esperanza stas por separado o, ms eficazmente,
de manera combinada sumaran potencia suficiente para anular o al menos reemplazar a
la va ordinaria; la tradicin ofreca dos vas: la conquista (interpretada como liberacin
sobre la dominacin de la hereja o el Islam) y la donacin efectiva por la poblacin que
se incorporaba. Llegar a ser emperador de Bizancio, rey efectivo de Jerusaln, rey de
Chipre, de Tesalia, de Morea, de Albania, de Irlanda, de Inglaterra, de Francia
significaba contar con las fuerzas para derrotar (apoyado en la poblacin local) a los
potentados que usurparan en ese momento dichos ttulos y contar con la dignidad
suficiente para merecer reemplazarlos como un prncipe legtimo. A partir de ah se
podra definir un lazo de fidelidad con los nuevos sbditos17.
Las mltiples ofertas de apropiacin de la soberana eran a la vez expresin de la
fragmentacin del mundo poltico mediterrneo y atlntico y el reconocimiento (o al
menos apreciacin subjetiva) de que slo el rey catlico tena el poder suficiente para
oponerse a los poderes que tiranizaban a los pueblos. Pero la simple potencia no
bastaba, dado que ese argumento por s slo condenara a la hipottica nueva
dominacin a contar con el estigma de ser una tirana de origen. Por el contrario, se
haca preciso argumentar que si le se ofreca una corona determinada era por preexistir
una serie de elementos que definan como candidato imperativo a Felipe II, o de forma
16
O. Mazn, Estudio Introductorio, O. Mazn y J.J. Ruiz (eds.), Las Indias Occidentales.
Procesos de incorporacin territorial a las Monarquas Ibricas, Mxico, El Colegio de Mxico,
2012, pp. 7-40.
17
Xavier Gil Pujol, The Good law of a Vassal: Fidelity, Obedience and Obligation in Habsburg
Spain, Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos, Cuadernos, n 5, 2009, pp. 83-106.
430
431
432
Orgenes y evolucin del concepto de imperio en Hispania: el reinoimperio leons (ss. X XII)
Dolores Mario Veiras (marinod@unican.es)
Universidad de Cantabria, Spain
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La monarqua germnico-visigtica desembocar en la temprana constitucin de un
reino-imperio, cuyos pilares se sustentan:
-En la destreza militar del portador de la dignidad de rex-imperator que le
permite ocuparse de la dilatatio Christianitatis en calidad de potens vellator; magnificus
triunphator de brbaros; esforzadsimo luchador contra los moros...
-En fundamentos poltico-religiosos que justifican la unidad entre trono y altar
en la Iglesia regia o del regnum-imperii, gracias al carcter sacro de la dignidad
imperial. En ejercicio de sus funciones de patronus/defensor ecclesiarum se ocupa de
restaurar sedes episcopales, proveer de oficios y cargos eclesisticos, de participar en la
traslacin de reliquias, de conceder licencias para la instalacin de nuevas ordenes
monsticas Acta a favor de colectivos diversos como padre de los pobres,
peregrinos consolator viduarum, gubernator orphanorum, protector clericorum.
-En las cualidades que adornan la persona del rex.imperator: vir pium et
mgnum y las virtudes: misericordia, prudencia, entendimiento, rectitud de espritu
orientadas a alcanzar la verdad y la justicia, y a corregir los abusos o malos fueros
-En la incorporacin de colectivos, naciones y reinos con sus propias costumbres
judiciales y particularismos jurdicos y religiosos. Se anexionarn al ttulo imperial que
termina por quedar vinculado a la totalidad de la Hispania cristiana: en calidad de gratia
Dei Ispanorum imperator, Dei gratia totius Ispanie imperator gratia Dei totius
Esperie imperator imperante Imperator in Toleto et in Legione et in tota urbe
Spanie totius Hispanie imperatoris. El conde, dux, obispo lideran los grupos
nacionales formando el ejercito de leoneses, castellanos, gallegos que acuden a la
llamada del imperator constitutus super omnes Hispanie naciones.
El uso del ttulo de rex-imperator constituye un mecanismo de apropiacin y
concentracin del poder ad imperandum por parte de las proles regias que fluye hacia
los obispos, condes, dominus et potestas en calidad de personas interpuestas, dotadas
por el monarca de un cargo u oficio sobre el populus.
Este trabajo llegar hasta finales del s. XII en que, tras la exaltacin de la idea
imperial leonesa con Alfonso VII (1126-1157), comienza a debilitarse en sus
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descendientes por ms que se atribuyan esta dignidad. Sin embargo, la idea de unidad
en la diversidad se mantiene en la expresin colectiva de la Hispania de los Cinco
Reinos que fue creada y difundida en los crculos eclesisticos de principios del s. XIII.
434
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Desde el mundo antiguo los centros de poder buscaron de expandirse territorialmente a
partir de un ncleo central, mediante anexin de unidades polticas establecidas con
estructuras sociales, culturales y religiosas, por medio de alianzas voluntarias o
mediante el sometimiento por la fuerza o la amenaza. Tambin y en mayor medida fue
la conquista de territorios adyacentes o necesarios, mediante asentamientos humanos,
para incrementar los recursos, defender espacios o regular el nmero de habitantes,
donde la metrpoli era la principal interesada y provea de defensa y transporte, as
como todo lo necesario, para llevar a territorios yermos a su propia gente con sus
mismas formas de vida y cultura, llamndoles colonia, gozando este vocablo de una
connotacin positiva y polticamente inocua.
Sin embargo, en el siglo XVIII irrumpe en el escenario de la monarqua espaola
una nueva forma de ver la relacin con sus respectivos reinos, en especial, y a la que
nos referiremos, con los reinos americanos como Per y Nueva Espaa, producto de una
visin distinta de dominio venida de los anglosajones y franceses, que entienden la
relacin con reinos americanos como unidades dependientes, cuyo fin es ser expoliadas
por la metrpoli, como ellos hacan con los dominios fuera de sus territorio,
principalmente en Amrica. As como una voluntad de romper los lazos entre Espaa y
Amrica, que no eran convenientes a los intereses de las dems potencias europeas.
Estos factores empiezan a cambiar el valor axiolgico de colonia producto de la
reaccin y rechazo hacia esa nueva forma de relacin llamndola colonial, que
finalmente originara la separacin de los reinos americanos de la monarqua castellana,
con lo que pervierten el vocablo, que por otro lado, al tener ya una connotacin poltica
se convierte en concepto bajo los cnones de la historia conceptual, ingresa nuevas
capas semnticas como explotacin, exaccin, dominio, abuso, sojuzgamiento, etc., que
luego tendr que ver entre con los conceptos de emancipacin e independencia, para
sustantivar el proceso de ruptura entre la Monarqua espaola y los reinos americanos,
que se convertiran en repblicas independientes.
Es en el lenguaje de los operadores polticos del siglo XVIII podemos encontrar
las variaciones semnticas de los conceptos colonia y virreinato, por lo que la presente
ponencia es fruto de la investigacin del uso de estos conceptos, principalmente el
primero, en el lenguaje de importantes personajes que influyeron en las decisiones
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TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
La mayora de los reyes de las monarquas europeas que gobernaron la Europa
moderna tuvieron serias carencias, que menoscababan o en casos extremos eliminaban,
el ejercicio del poder por el propio rey, lo que permiti la existencia de personajes que
en los siglos XVI y XVII se les conoci como validos, favoritos o privados, actuando de
manera paralela al orden poltico, pero en el siglo XVIII el mayor cambio poltico
antes de la revolucin liberal fue la aparicin de ministros responsables en sus
correspondientes reas lo cual se produjo en Espaa con Felipe V (CASTRO,
Concepcin de, 2004: 7), ubicndose en el escalafn de la administracin pblica,
principalmente como Secretarios de Estado.
Estudiar el lenguaje de estos personajes permite entender las repercusiones
histricas de su tiempo, como el significado de los conceptos que el lenguaje atrapa y
comprime. Si bien, Koselleck plantea para la lengua alemana el tiempo de aceleracin,
el Sattelzeit,1 fijndolo entre 1750 y 1850, este arco histrico no necesariamente es el
mismo en otros espacios, esto se observa, cuando temporalizamos la presencia europea
en Amrica, relacionando el de Espaa a finales del siglo XV y el siglo XVI, con los de
Inglaterra y Francia del siglo XVII, que no concuerdan con el tiempo, forma y objeto,
como bien apunta Alberto Tenenti:
Queda el hecho de que las primeras colonias inglesas de la costa atlntica
norteamericana no se parecan en casi nada a los organismos estructurados de los
virreinatos espaoles de Amrica Central y del Sur. Durante todo el siglo XVII
dichos asentamientos estaban muy lejos de mantener con Inglaterra la relacin
amplia y orgnica que los virreinatos ibricos mantenan con Espaa y viceversa.
(TENENTI, 2011: 418)
La monarqua francesa en la primera dcada del siglo XVII bajo el reinado de
Enrique IV y luego de la consolidacin de los borbones a fines del siglo anterior, marca
un cambio en su gobierno, mostrndose conceptos como centralismo y absolutismo, que
se trasladarn a Espaa conjuntamente con los borbones en el siglo XVIII, empezando
un cambio vertiginoso reflejado tambin en el lenguaje castellano, entre ellos el
concepto que nos ocupa Colonia, Colonos, Colonizacin, ingresando capas
1
Periodo de honda mutacin conceptual, entre 1750 y 1850, que establecera las grandes
coordenadas polticas, sociales e intelectuales de la modernidad. (PALTI 2004:1)
436
semnticas para significar, ya no una mera ocupacin territorial, sino una fuente de
explotacin y sojuzgamiento como finalidad conceptual y meramente utilitaria en el
trfico comercial, llegando a nuestros tiempos como proceso histrico e inserto en el
discurso poltico y en la historiografa como poca colonial bajo el concepto
colonialismo.
Los albores de este cambio los encontramos en operadores del siglo XVII en
Francia con Richelieu y Mazarino, que van a generar un nuevo modelo poltico de
gobierno monrquico, contrapuesto al modelo de monarqua conglomerada, compuesta
o cualquier otro nombre que utilicemos para significar una especie de federalismo
contemporneo 2 . Como ocurrir en Espaa, a pesar de la expresa disposicin
testamentaria de Carlos II3 : y se le de luego (a su heredero) y sin la menor dilacin, la
posesin actual, precediendo el juramento que debe hacer, de observar las leyes, fueros
y costumbres de dichos mis reynos y Seoros. Este modelo poltico francs tuvo su
correspondiente modelo econmico creado por Jean B. Colbert y un soporte militar en
Franois Michelle Le Tellier de Louvois.
Esta nueva concepcin de gobierno monrquico no se inici slo en territorio
francs4, la Inglaterra de Cronwell y Buckingham caminaban en el mismo sentido, al
igual que en Espaa con Olivares5, pero sin lograr la consolidacin francesa. Sin
embargo, as como cada una de las potencias tiene un espacio propio, con el tiempo
sucede lo mismo. Hay una conexin con una correa de transmisin de las ideas y
conceptos, que no necesariamente se dan al mismo tiempo en espacios distintos.
Este artculo, es parte de un trabajo mayor que comprender varios conceptos
fundamentales como Nacin, Estado, Pas, Absolutismo, Centralismo, Colonia y otros
en el lenguaje de los operadores polticos en tiempos de los reyes borbones en la Espaa
del siglo XVIII. En tal sentido por su extensin, se concreta al concepto Colonia y a
dos personajes, que entendemos fueron de los mayores impulsores de las profundas
2
437
reformas que marcaron el siglo XVIII, Aranda y Jovellanos, dejando a otros operadores
importantes por razn de espacio.
Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, conde de Aranda (1719 1798)6
Aranda luego de la independencia norteamericana avizor un proceso similar en
Amrica, proponiendo al rey Carlos III crear tres monarquas (Mxico, Per y Costa
Firme), como medida para atenuar las insurrecciones y no prescindir de estos espacios
territoriales, logrando un futuro comn. Conceptualmente
demuestra que los
operadores polticos espaoles, inclusive en este ltimo tramo del siglo XVIII, usan la
voz reino, sin embargo, la facilidad con que se usa el vocablo colonia, significa que este
concepto haba incorporado la nocin de dependencia gubernativa, pero lo que emerge
es el concepto nacin7, que se quiere incorporar en la relacin Espaa- Amrica. La
propuesta de Aranda era coincidente con Campomanes y Floridablanca.
En el Dictamen reservado que el excelentsimo Seor Conde de Aranda dio al
Rey Carlos III sobre la independencia de las colonias inglesas despus de haber hecho
el tratado de paz ajustado en Pars en el ao 1783, cuyo contexto histrico es post
independencia del actual Estados Unidos de Amrica, Aranda se refiere como colonias
americanas (LUCENA 2003:76) para identificar al conjunto de las colonias
norteamericanos: Las colonias Americanas que han quedado independientes: este es mi
dolor y recelo (ARANDA 1783:1), de cuya frase se desprende su preocupacin por la
repercusin en la relacin de Espaa con Indias.
En este documento es rescatable el anlisis premonitor de Aranda respecto al
nuevo mapa geopoltico de Amrica luego de 1776 que fluye de la cita siguiente:
Maana ser gigante, conforme vaya consolidando su constitucin y despus un
coloso irresistible en aquellas regiones. En ese estado se olvidar de los
beneficios de ambas potencias (Espaa y Francia) y no pensar ms que en su
engrandecimiento. (Id.: 3). Y en su preocupacin menciona que las miras de la
potencia anglo-americana se cifrarn en dominar territorios de las Floridas en
Mxico y aspirar a la conquista de aquel vasto imperio.
En este lenguaje notamos la distincin que Aranda hace entre colonia y reino:
cmo es posible que las colonias americanas cuando se vean en estado de poder
conquistar el reino de Mxico se contengan y no dejen en pacfica posesin de aquel
pas. (id. 3). Sin embargo la referencia a los territorios del dominio de Espaa no es
uniforme, debiendo recordar que ya estamos en la penltima dcada del siglo y
podemos observar en este prrafo: Que no pudiendo nosotros surtir aquellas colonias
de los artefactos que necesitan para su uso, sea la Francia, nuestra aliada, la que provea
de cuantos artculos no podemos nosotros suministrarlas, con exclusin absoluta de la
6
Secretario de Estado (1792) en tiempos de Carlos IV. Personaje que vivi los tiempos de todos los
reyes espaoles del siglo XVIII.
7
Fernn Altuve seala que la idea de nacin, es un elemento muy importante a tener en cuenta a partir
del XVII. Antes de esa poca, nacin era slo la expresin de la Natio latina, esto es, un origen comn,
ms no una comunidad de carcter homogneo y totalizadora como lo ha concebido su desarrollo
posterior en el siglo XIX y XX. (ALTUVE, 1999: 42)
438
Inglaterra. (ib. 4) Pero en las siguientes lneas se refiere como reinos: que la poblacin
del reino (Espaa) se aumentar sin la emigracin continua de gentes que pasa a
aquellos dominios; que establecidos y estrechamente estos tres reinos (Mxico, Per y
Tierra Firme), bajo las bases que he indicado, no habr fuerzas en Europa que pueda
contrarrestar su poder en aquellas regiones (id. 5).
Este uso revela la concepcin francesa respecto de los dominios de ultramar y
nos recuerda la cita de Jacques Turgot (Pars, 1727-1781), el influyente hombre en la
poltica francesa de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII y abanderado del libre comercio
de granos, que escribi en su libro Discurso sobre el progreso humano de 1750 acerca
del significado de las colonias:
Las colonias son como los frutos que no dejan el rbol hasta su madurez. Una vez
suficientes a s mismas, hicieron lo que hizo Cartago, lo que har un da America.
8
(Maysculas nuestras)
En esta cita notamos que el significado colonia tena implcita una dinmica o
desarrollo, que de cumplirse como lo indica Turgot, Amrica se estaba convirtiendo en
un monstruo poltico-econmico incontrolable y en camino de colisin con los
intereses de la metrpoli espaola. Ortega Martnez resalta que esta posicin sera en
muy poco tiempo retomada y elaborada por Adam Smith en su obra La Riqueza de las
Naciones de 1776. Esta posicin de Turgot llevaba inevitablemente a la separacin de
las colonias y propona la creacin de monarquas americanas independientes aunque
unidas por lazos dinsticos. (ORTEGA, 2011: 10).
Estas referencias indican que avanzado el XVIII ya se ha inoculado una nueva
concepcin en los operadores polticos, respecto del concepto colonia. Finalmente no
est dems mencionar a Jos de balos, primer intendente de Venezuela y uno de los
primeros en llegar a Amrica, que propone al rey: se digne resolverse con su regia
generosidad a desprenderse de las provincias comprendidas en los distritos a que se
extienden las audiencias de Lima, Quito, Chile y la Plata, como asimismo de las
Filipinas y sus adyacentes, erigiendo y creando de sus extendidos pases tres o cuatro
diferentes monarquas. (LUCENA, 2003: 67), que citamos para apuntalar la posicin
de Aranda que propona la formacin de monarquas americanas. (BALOS, 1781).
Cita recogida de ORTEGA 2011: 10, tomada de Jacques Turgot,: Cuadro filosfico de los
progresos sucesivos del espritu humano, Madrid, Tecnos, 1991, p 46
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cualquier asturiano que sea digno de alguna recompensa por su celo, por su aplicacin o
por sus buenas costumbres (JOVELLANOS, 1781: 12). Tambin encontramos en su
Memoria menciones para referirse al nuevo continente como las Amricas.
(JOVELLANOS, 1809)
Pero donde ms hemos encontramos menciones al tema en estudio es en el
Informe sobre la Ley Agraria (JOVELLANOS, 1820), elaborado en 1784, que es un
derroche de liberalismo y defensa de la propiedad privada y el individualismo, pero al
margen de ello destacan los vocablos que utiliza para referirse a varios asuntos. Al
sealar las etapas histricas de Espaa previas a la reconquista expresa: Tal es la breve
historia de la agricultura nacional, y tal el progreso que ha tenido en sus diferentes
pocas (Obra. Cit. 2/13), y las divide segn la etnia o grupo humano dominante: Su
primera poca debe referirse al tiempo de la dominacin romana. (Obra cit. 1/31), ms
adelante seala: mucho menos se podr citar la agricultura de la poca visigoda (id.:
2/31), luego analizando esta actividad dice: Tal cual fue, toda pereci en la irrupcin
sarracena. (d.). No se le ocurre, como en nuestros tiempos denominar poca colonial,
por razn del dominio extrao a la pennsula, a pesar que utiliza los conceptos
territorio, nacin y nacional: Cuando por medio de ellas hubimos recobrado una gran
parte del territorio nacional, Las guerras extranjeras distantes y continuas, que sin
inters alguno de la nacin agotaron poco a poco su poblacin y su riqueza , Todas
ellas concluyen que el cultivo se ha acomodado siempre la situacin poltica que tuvo
la nacin coetneamente (id.) (Negrita nuestra).
Deja claro, al no utilizar nada cercano al concepto colonia, que est reservado
para guardar el significado tradicional de espacios de labranza y de trabajo rural
especial, como que a lo largo de todo el texto cita el vocablo colono para referirse a los
labradores rurales. As se desprende de muchas citas: desde entonces los productos de
la tierra ya no fueron una propiedad absoluta del dueo, sino partible entre el dueo y
sus colonos. (Ob. Cit.: 3/31). An para lograr una cosecha anual tendrn los colonos
que alternar las semillas dbiles con las fuertes, y ms adelante en particular a la
agricultura andaluza: En ella, aun supuestos grandes fondos en el propietario y colono,
se cultiva poco y se cultiva mal. (Ob. Cit.: 9/31) (negritas nuestras)
Podramos extendernos con un nmero considerable de menciones al vocablo
colono, sin embargo, con los ejemplos dados es suficiente para demostrar que en el
lenguaje de Jovellanos el significado colono es al labrador y agricultor directo, dentro
de la estructura agraria de la pennsula.
En el lenguaje de Jovellanos se aprecia la consolidacin de la nueva divisin
poltica del territorio, que aunque sigue en varios casos mencionando reino mayormente
se refiere a provincias: As tenemos que a las colonias de Estados Unidos ya
independizadas las refiere como: Las Provincias Unidas de Amrica. (Ob. Cit.:
16/31), pero luego dice: No se puede atribuir los climas el presente estado de la
agricultura de nuestras provincias. Ms adelante vuelve a repetir: Este raciocinio es
tanto ms cierto cuanto nuestras provincias agricultoras (ob. Cit.: 17/31). Y de manera
sostenida se referir como provincias a las demarcaciones territoriales, peninsulares por
cierto, ya que cuando se refiere fuera del espacio territorial del conjunto de provincias
que integran la monarqua, utiliza el vocablo colonia, lo que debemos advertir cuando
440
trata de las condiciones de una ley que prohba la exportacin de nuestros granos y
permita la importacin de los extranjeros bajo las siguientes modificaciones:
Tercera: Que no se entienda con las harinas destinadas a nuestras colonias, las cuales
pueden ser exportadas en todo tiempo y por todos los puertos habilitados. (ob. Cit.;
29/31).
Esta es la nica referencia a colonia, pero denota, que para los aos finales del
siglo XVIII, post independencia de las trece colonias y previa a la revolucin francesa,
ya el concepto colonia haba recibido las capas semnticas de dominio y sojuzgamiento,
dependencia y sujecin, sin embargo conviven con las capas tradicionales, como
apreciamos en el uso del vocablo colono, que hemos detallado. No hay que olvidar que
la presencia poltica de Jovellanos llega hasta la primera dcada del siglo XIX. Sin
embargo resaltamos la convivencia con las capas semnticas tradicionales del concepto
colonia, como se advierte en el Elogio a Carlos III que data de 1788 en que se aprecia
esta participacin conjunta, cuando manifiesta:
La ereccin de nuevas colonias agrcolas, el repartimiento de las tierras
comunales, la reduccin de los privilegios de la ganadera, la abolicin de la tasa y
la libre circulacin de los granos con que mejor la agricultura, la propagacin de
la enseanza fabril, la reforma de la polica gremial, la multiplicacin de los
establecimientos industriales y la generosa profusin de gracias y franquicias sobre
las artes en beneficio de la industria, la rotura de las antiguas cadenas del trfico
nacional, la abertura de nuevos puntos al consumo exterior, la paz del
Mediterrneo, la peridica correspondencia y la libre comunicacin con nuestras
colonias ultramarinas en obsequio del comercio . (JOVELLANOS, 1788: 3/14)
Sin embargo, aunque referidas al siglo XIX, que escapa en algo el arco histrico
de este trabajo, no deja de ser importante dos frases que denotan ya una definicin
respecto a colonia y provincia. En sendas cartas que le dirige a Lord Holland (17731840), la del 5 de julio de 1809, se refiere a Asturias y Galicia como las pobres
provincias y la del 8 del mismo mes sobre la composicin de la representacin en la
futura asamblea para Cdiz, expresando: Ruego, por tanto, a nuestro mister Allen y
pido a usted que le ruegue tambin a su nombre, que acabe de completar sus
apuntamientos sobre el mtodo de elecciones y la representacin de las colonias
(JOVELLANOS, 1809: 13 y 18 respectivamente).
Conclusiones
A travs del lenguaje de dos operadores polticos, podemos explicar cmo el
concepto colonia incorpora nuevas capas semnticas para ampliar el campo de su
significado y su polisemia. Para el caso del concepto colonia podemos remontarnos a
una nueva forma de gobierno monrquico, centralista y absolutista, aparecida en la
Francia de Luis XIV del Cardenal Richelieu con la continuidad y complemento que
tuvo en Mazarino para la estructura poltica y en Colbert y Louvois para el campo
econmico y militar, permiti a Francia entrar al siglo XVIII con un Estado
debidamente estructurado, cuyo formato es llevado a Espaa y Amrica por Felipe V y
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su corte al asumir la corona peninsular. Proceso que no fue extrao en Espaa, ya que
con Olivares empieza de manera similar, pero no tuvo la continuidad de Francia.
Estas reformas modifican las expectativas sobre los dominios ultramarinos, entre
ellos, no los concibe como reinos, a pesar de ser tales, no slo por lo retrico, sino por
su envergadura y progreso que generaron una economa propia y autnoma, como John
Lynch ha sealado, lo que en el criterio reformista va en detrimento de la economa del
conjunto de los reinos europeos. En tal sentido Francia haba advertido este asunto, por
lo que su penetracin en Amrica no tiene por objeto formar reinos y evangelizar, como
fue la finalidad espaola un siglo antes, sino ponerlas al servicio de su nacin y
rentabilizar en trminos econmicos siguiendo las ideas de Colbert, que son llevadas a
Espaa por Jean Orry y Amelot, quienes en las primeras dcadas disean el nuevo
modelo poltico y econmico que los borbones implementarn a lo largo del siglo,
fijando en los tiempos de Carlos III (1759-1788) que estas reformas se imponen,
primeramente a los reinos peninsulares mediante el centralismo y concentrando el poder
absoluto, y luego en los virreinatos americanos, intentando modificar la naturaleza
poltica que como reinos conglomerados haban gozado con la casa real anterior, lo que
le va a costar la separacin de esos territorios. Pero en adicin a ello juega un papel
importante la independencia de las trece colonias norteamericanas, ya que las luchas
independentistas en el resto de Amrica tendrn como referente este hecho,
protagonizado por unas colonias, que homologa la voz al asociarlo al proceso
separatista. En otras palabras las voces se asocian en colonia-independencia. 9 Para
demostrarlo hemos seguidos el lenguaje de los operadores polticos precisamente de los
tiempos de cambios, Aranda y Jovellanos, para evidenciar los cambios que ocurren en el
concepto y ver como sus capas semnticas conviven no slo en ese tiempo, sino hasta
los nuestros.
REFERENCIAS
Fuentes
BALOS, Jos de (1781) Representacin del intendente de Venezuela, Jos de balos,
dirigida a Carlos III, en la que pronostica la independencia de Amrica y sugiere la
creacin de varias monarquas en Amrica y Filipinas (1781). Archivo General de
Indias, Caracas, 477. Extrado de Premoniciones de la Independencia Americana: las
reflexiones de Jos de balos y el Conde de Aranda sobre la situacin de Amrica
espaola a finales del siglo XVIII. Estudio de Manuel Lucena Giraldo. Madrid:
Fundacin Mapfre Tavera, 2003.
ARANDA, Conde de (1783) Dictamen reservado que el excelentsimo Seor Conde de
Aranda dio al Rey Carlos III sobre la independencia de las colonias inglesas despus
de haber hecho el tratado de paz ajustado en Pars en el ao 1783. Archivo General de
9
442
Bibliografa
443
445
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En su monumental Historia rural del Uruguay moderno, los historiadores Jos Pedro
Barrn y Benjamn Nahum demostraron que hasta el ltimo cuarto del siglo XIX,
Montevideo era simplemente la capital de una federacin de regiones constituida por
las autoridades de los departamentos, estudiando los elementos socio econmicos y la
infraestructura de comunicaciones como condicionantes de tal situacin.2
La ponencia propone una aproximacin al tema desde la Historia conceptual. Se
inscribe en el trabajo del Grupo Territorio y Soberana de la fase III del Proyecto
Iberconceptos, que estudia desde una perspectiva lingstica y conceptual los procesos
de construccin territorial de los Estados iberoamericanos, abordando las
transformaciones de los conceptos que permitieron pensar y significar las complejas
relaciones entre el poder representativo y los territorios. Concretamente, la ponencia
plantea algunas lneas para abordar las formas de ordenamiento territorial y los
conflictos jurisdiccionales y de poder de las autoridades locales enfrentadas a los
impulsos centralizadores del gobierno de la capital a travs del anlisis de la
resignificacin de las antiguas demarcaciones como el departamento, el municipio o
el partido, y el choque entre instituciones de rango local, herederas del antiguo
rgimen, con la nueva institucionalidad propuesta por el naciente Estado Oriental. La
investigacin supone la consulta de un amplio repertorio de fuentes -disposiciones
normativas, discusiones parlamentarias, actas de cabildos y juntas econmico
administrativas, expedientes judiciales, prensa peridica y representaciones
cartogrficas del territorio- cuyo relevamiento se encuentra en una etapa inicial.
446
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En esta propuesta, se trata de probar que la idea/metfora del mundo como texto, central
en el postmodernismo, cuenta con una larga tradicin. Para hallar sus orgenes
intelectuales, hay que remontarse a la afirmacin de un doble sentido (literal y
espiritual) en las Escrituras formulada ya desde los inicios mismos del cristianismo por
San Pablo. La posibilidad del sentido literal de servir al mismo tiempo de anuncio
(sentido espiritual) de realidades ms elevadas descansaba en el hecho de que Dios,
Maestro del Texto Sagrado, era al mismo tiempo el Maestro de la Historia. Solo l
poda servirse de los acontecimientos como de una escritura. San Agustn escogi la va
de una interpretacin simblica, casi generalizada, del Antiguo Testamento. En lo
sucesivo, para la teologa agustiniana, el sentido espiritual primar sobre el literal: a los
judos la Palabra divina les haba sido comunicada de forma velada. De la misma forma
que la concha protege a la perla de las impurezas, un sentido aparente vela y protege un
sentido oculto, en el que se enuncia en su pureza la Revelacin.
La teora agustiniana del doble sentido fue afinada, o complicada, desde el siglo
V, y la fascinacin por las interpretaciones espirituales pervivir durante siglos. Obra de
un Autor infinito, las Escrituras encierran una riqueza inagotable, objeto de un
desciframiento naturalmente interminable. A partir del XVII, se desarrolla una
tendencia a hacer proliferar de manera anrquica los sentidos espirituales en una
corriente llamada figurismo, que manifiesta, en estos agustinianos, que lo esencial, en
la relacin con la Biblia, es la fecundidad mstica de lo escrito. La interpretacin
calvinista sola scriptura, por su parte, no observa otro principio que la verificacin
interna al texto, profundizando as en el camino de la interpretacin alegrica y
metafrica de la Biblia (en cuanto una expresin resulta difcil de entender como
cosa, se recurre enseguida al sentido de signo).
A partir del siglo XIX, pero sobre todo a partir de comienzos del XX, los hechos
se suceden con rapidez. La hermenutica protestante dar origen, a travs de Dilthey, a
la hermenutica contempornea y a las diversas corrientes y escuelas que en el siglo XX
adoptarn, con mayor o menor grado de intensidad, la tesis cardinal de que la realidad
es un texto que hay que descifrar.
447
TEXTO/TEXT:
La idea/metfora del mundo como texto, central en el postmodernismo, cuenta con una
larga tradicin. Para hallar sus orgenes intelectuales, hay que remontarse a la
afirmacin de un doble sentido (literal y espiritual) en las Escrituras formulada ya desde
los inicios mismos del cristianismo por San Pablo.
En muchas ocasiones, los autores de la Biblia dicen que no hablan por ellos
mismos, sino que es Dios quien los inspira. Las Escrituras, pues, siempre han sido
consideradas textos fruto de la Revelacin divina. Segn esta visin, un variado cortejo
de escritores humanos cooper con un mismo y nico Autor eterno. Animados por este
convencimiento, los cristianos descubrieron en muchos episodios o personajes antiguos
los anuncios, las figuras, de realidades futuras, vitales.
La posibilidad del sentido literal de servir al mismo tiempo de anuncio (sentido
espiritual) de realidades ms elevadas descansaba en la conviccin de que Dios poda
servirse de los acontecimientos como de una escritura. Dios, Maestro del Texto sagrado,
era al mismo tiempo el Maestro de la Historia. Acontecimientos histricos (el xodo, la
marcha al desierto), instituciones (el sacerdocio israelita, los sacrificios, la fiesta de la
Pascua), objetos (el Templo)..., completamente reales en su materialidad (sentido literal),
haban sido dispuestos por Dios en el Antiguo Testamento como prefiguraciones,
anuncios de Cristo y de la Iglesia. San Pablo formular de manera lapidaria esta
concepcin: Todas estas cosas que les sucedan eran figuras (1 Cor 10, 11).
El velo permanece en la lectura del Antiguo Testamento sin ser alzado, porque
se quita en Cristo, dice San Pablo (2 Cor 3, 14). Frente a los acontecimientos narrados
en el Antiguo Testamento, en el Nuevo Testamento resplandece la verdad y la autntica
realidad sin velos: la palabra divina no tiene ya el carcter de figura que s tenan los
acontecimientos, instituciones y objetos del Antiguo Testamento. El propio Verbo de
Dios se manifiesta en la carne y se expresa de modo literal en el Nuevo Testamento.
La Iglesia, ya en los tiempos apostlicos, y despus constantemente en su
tradicin, esclareci la unidad del plan divino en los dos Testamentos. En relacin con
los libros del Nuevo Testamento, los del Antiguo presentan un carcter pedaggico y
preparatorio. De una manera imperfecta, los libros veterotestamentarios iluminan y
explican los neotestamentarios, los cuales, al hablar en sentido literal, manifiestan en
toda su plenitud el sentido que en aquellos estaba solo implcito. En su labor de poner
de relieve la unidad de las Escrituras, la Iglesia catlica obr con prudencia y sobriedad,
conservando slo las prefiguraciones indicadas por Jesucristo mismo, por el Nuevo
Testamento, o por un amplio consenso de los Padres. As, el man, el alimento
milagroso que Dios concedi a los israelitas en el desierto, anunciaba el verdadero pan
del cielo, la Eucarista (Jn 6, 31-35), y el diluvio y el paso del mar Rojo prefiguraban
el bautismo cristiano (1 Pe 3, 20-21; 1 Cor 10, 1-2). Jons en el vientre de la ballena
anticip la sepultura de Jess (Mt 12, 40); la serpiente de bronce que hizo Moiss y que
puso sobre un estandarte es la figura del Salvador (Jn 3, 14); el cordero pascual (Ex 12,
448
46) lo es de Cristo inmolado (Jn 19, 36; 1 Cor 5, 7); Adn es as lo expresa San Pablo
figura de Cristo (Rom 5, 14)
*
Sin embargo, se planteaba un problema derivado del desprecio que inspiraban
los hechos y costumbres de los antiguos judos. El viejo fondo semtico de la Biblia
con sus ritos extraos, la circuncisin, los incestos, las violaciones, los homicidios, las
represalias, las promesas de victorias militares, los festines, la poligamia practicada por
los patriarcas, sus mentiras y artimaas, el que los jefes judos no vacilaran en perpetrar
los horrores ms sanguinarios no poda por menos que asombrar. Pero, sobre todo, es
posible conciliar y si lo es, cmo el Dios terrible del Antiguo Testamento, muchas
veces inmisericorde y vindicativo, con el Dios del Nuevo Testamento, que es Dios de
amor, bondad y perdn? La cuestin es crucial y no se puede obviar, porque el Hijo de
Dios vino a este mundo, no a desautorizar el Antiguo Testamento, sino a completarlo
(Mt 5, 17).
En esta encrucijada, se presentaron diversas soluciones para reducir la
disonancia. Una de ellas fue el rechazo del Antiguo Testamento. El marcionismo, desde
el siglo II, y los maniqueos, desde el siglo III, haban optado por ella, una solucin por
disolucin que se declarara hertica. La segunda respuesta al problema que suscitaba la
cuestin de la conciliacin del Antiguo con el Nuevo Testamento vino dada por la teora
agustiniana del doble sentido: la interpretacin simblica, casi generalizada, de las
Escrituras. La regla general para discernir sentidos propios y figurados establece que el
sentido espiritual prevalece sobre el literal. San Agustn, en De doctrina christiana,
prescribe: todo cuanto en la divina palabra no pueda referirse en un sentido propio a la
bondad de las costumbres ni a las verdades de la fe, hay que tomarlo en sentido
figurado (De doct. chr. III, 10).
En el siglo XIII, Santo Toms establecera el primado del sentido literal para
toda la Biblia: Nada en la Escritura se presta a confusin, puesto que todos los sentidos
parten de uno, el literal (S. Th. 1, q.1, a.10, ad 1). El doble sentido con el primado del
sentido literal ha sido uno de los principios tradicionales, vigente hasta hoy, de la
exgesis catlica. Pero la corriente agustiniana impuso tambin, al menos durante algn
tiempo, la supremaca del sentido espiritual sobre el literal. Para los agustinianos, la
Palabra divina les fue comunicada a los judos de forma velada. De la misma forma que
la concha protege a la perla de las impurezas, un sentido aparente vela y protege un
sentido oculto, en el que se enuncia en su pureza la Revelacin. En el siglo XVII,
profundamente influido por San Agustn, fue considerable el peso de las
interpretaciones agustinianas, que espiritualizan el Antiguo Testamento. Tomemos
como ejemplo los salmos llenos de imprecaciones contra los enemigos de los judos (Sal
108). La teologa catlica actual, de inspiracin tomista, los leera en su literalidad y
dira, entre otras cosas, que la moral del Antiguo Testamento era an imperfecta; en
cambio, la interpretacin espiritualizadora, siguiendo la norma agustiniana, observara
que, como ese pasaje en su sentido aparente no muestra caridad, ha de ser
necesariamente figura: en tal caso, los enemigos (de los hombres) no son los egipcios ni
los babilonios, sino sus propias pasiones.
449
Est corriente est integrada por el telogo holands Cox y el abate Du Guet, y su representante
ms destacado es el abate dtemare (1682-1770).
2
Sacra Scriptura principalius est in corde Ecclesiae quam in materialibus instrumentis scripta.
450
*
Frente a la doctrina tridentina de la inseguridad hermenutica de la Escritura y
de la autoridad complementaria de la tradicin, los protestantes trataron de hallar un
mtodo hermenutico que contuviera el conjunto de las reglas interpretativas conocidas
hasta el momento. Tal mtodo deba configurar un sistema doctrinal que permitiera
lograr una comprensin de validez universal. De este modo surge Clavis scripturae
sacrae (1567), de Matthias Flacius Illyricus, que jalona los hitos capitales para la
hermenutica protestante posterior. Frente a la interpretacin catlica, que es controlada,
sometida a controles, la protestante estar regulada, sometida a reglas.
El racionalismo traer consigo cambios definitivos. El racionalismo niega toda
verdad que exceda la razn humana; consiguientemente, niega la Revelacin y tiende a
reducir la Biblia a realidad meramente humana. Es significativo que las estructuras
fundamentales de la exgesis bblica catlica no fueran afectadas por el impacto del
racionalismo. En el mundo protestante, por el contrario, ocurri algo muy distinto. A
finales del siglo XVIII, el estudio racionalista de la Biblia se haba desarrollado
enormemente en esos pases. En ellos fue donde se dio un paso decisivo: la ciencia
bblica de inspiracin racionalista, al encontrarse con la hermenutica protestante, dio
lugar al protestantismo liberal, que tuvo como principal representante a Schleiermacher3.
A partir de ese momento primera mitad del siglo XIX , el precepto luterano de que
las Escrituras deban ser interpretadas por cada fiel sufre un giro radical. Con la teologa
protestante liberal desaparece, o se difumina, el principio del carcter inspirado de la
Biblia y de la accin del Espritu Santo en cada fiel. Por influencia de Hegel, la
inspiracin divina es sustituida por el espritu o sentimiento religioso de la
comunidad, y el libre examen es reemplazado por el estudio, mediante la metodologa
propia de la ciencia histrico-literaria, de los textos en que histricamente se ha
manifestado el espritu cristiano. Probablemente, era la deriva inevitable y natural. La
ciencia histrico-literaria se presentaba como el nico sistema capaz de alcanzar cierto
grado de verdad una vez negada la accin carismtica del Espritu Santo. Filologa y
filosofa convergen, y desplazan a la creencia en la accin de lo sobrenatural en la
interpretacin de la Biblia.
La lenta evolucin esbozada muestra que, en el mundo protestante, dado que no
haba autoridad ni tradicin que impusieran la interpretacin bblica como en el mundo
catlico, fue primero la razn (con minsculas), en forma de reglas y acompaada de la
fe, y luego, a partir del siglo XVIII, la Razn (con maysculas: sin tutelas), las que
ocuparon su lugar.
Dilthey encauzar su hermenutica en la direccin que le marc la teologa
protestante liberal y la enseanza de Schleiermacher. Solo Schleiermacher consigui
reconocer en el proceso creador de una obra literaria el otro proceso, el que, a partir de
signos escritos, comprende el todo de una obra y, a partir de ese todo, la intencin y la
ndole espiritual de su autor (Dilthey, 1900: 61). La hermenutica engloba el arte
3
Schleiermacher significa en alemn fabricante de velos, irnico nombre para quien, quiz sin
pretenderlo, desgarr los velos en torno a los misterios ms sagrados.
451
*
452
453
454
El hipottico seguidor de Derrida explicara que droulement, igual que evolutio, remite a la
accin de desenrollar un libro, que, como es sabido, en la antigedad, se presentaba en forma de
rollos.
455
REFERENCIAS:
Agustn, San (1957) [396-426]. De doctrina Christiana. Obras de San Agustn, vol. XV.
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos.
Bunge, Mario (1999) [1996]. Buscar la filosofa en las ciencias sociales. Mxico: Siglo
Veintiuno.
Derrida, Jacques (1967). De la grammatologie. Paris: Minuit.
Dilthey, Wilhelm (2000) [1900]. El surgimiento de la hermenutica. En: Dos escritos
sobre hermenutica. Madrid: Istmo.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1977) [1960, 19754]. Verdad y Mtodo. Fundamentos de una
hermenutica filosfica. Salamanca: Sgueme.
Heidegger, Martin 2000 [1947]. Carta sobre el humanismo. Madrid: Alianza.
Koselleck, Reinhart (1997) [1987]. Histrica y lenguaje: una respuesta. En: Koselleck,
Reinhart / Gadamer, Hans Georg. Historia y hermenutica. Barcelona: Paids.
Toms de Aquino, Santo (1988) [1258-1265]. Suma de Teologa, vol. I. Madrid:
Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos.
Woolgar, Steve (1986). On the Alleged Distinction between Discourse and Praxis.
Social Studies on Science 16. 309-317.
456
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Dice una leyenda que el juego del Go fue inventado por el mtico emperador Yao (s.
XXII a. C.) para educar a su hijo Dan Zhu; otra leyenda vincula su origen a unos
astrlogos que dibujaron en una tabla sera nuestro tablero de Go un rudimentario
mapa celeste para interpretar y predecir el futuro. Este juego milenario naci en China
con el nombre de Wei-Chi pero fue en Japn donde se hizo famoso con sus escuelas de
Go (s. XVII). Form parte de los Cuatro logros junto con la pintura, la poesa y la
msica, artes que deban dominar los intelectuales. En Occidente se conoce gracias al
impulso que le dieron los japoneses. Su importancia actual queda reflejada en la gran
cantidad de estudios sobre el Go a menudo en comparacin con el ajedrez, desde
disciplinas muy variadas, y de representaciones artsticas en las que aparece.
En el juego complejo y simple, dos jugadores colocan alternativamente
piedras blancas y negras sobre las intersecciones libres de un tablero de 19x19 lneas. El
objetivo es controlar una porcin ms grande del tablero territorio que el oponente.
Hablar de Go es como hablar del Universo, como tratar de explicar la
complejidad del tiempo y el espacio con palabras. Por ello, se presta a numerosas
alegoras y metforas. En el tablero hay nueve puntos destacados que reciben el nombre
de hoshi, estrellas, al central se le llama tengen, cnit. Las cuatro esquinas del
tablero representan las cuatro estaciones del ao y los setenta y dos puntos del permetro
las correspondientes semanas del ao lunar. Las piedras blancas y negras representan la
dualidad, smbolo del yin y yang.
Uno de los nombres metafricos del Go, quizs el ms popular, es shudan,
trmino japons que se traduce habitualmente como conversacin de mano, y se
utiliza para dar idea de la profundidad y sutileza del Go. Dos jugadores pueden entablar
una conversacin jugando una partida de Go sin articular una sola palabra. Cada jugador
va colocando las piedras una por una como palabras de un debate. Cada jugada es una
respuesta inteligente a lo expresado anteriormente por el otro.
El Go es como un lenguaje oral que se manifiesta visualmente quedando
registrado por medio de las disposiciones de las piedras en el tablero. En l est el
pensamiento oriental.
457
TEXTO/TEXT:
459
El juego1
Con reglas extremadamente sencillas pero de gran
complejidad estratgica comparable a cuatro
partidas simultneas de ajedrez sobre un mismo
tablero, el Go es un juego de territorios. Se juega
sobre un tablero en el que hay dibujado una rejilla
formada por 19 lneas horizontales y 19 verticales
a veces se emplean tableros de 9x9 y 13x13 para
aprendizaje y partidas rpidas. Hay 361 piedras
180
blancas
181
negras
tantas
como
En este apartado nicamente pretendo transmitir una idea general del juego con la finalidad de
poder entender algunos conceptos estratgicos del mismo, objeto de esta comunicacin. Cualquier
explicacin de las reglas para poder ser comprendidas resultara imposible en una presentacin tan
breve.
460
Captura de piedras
Una piedra o un grupo de piedras se captura cuando se queda sin libertades,
retirndose del tablero.
Los ojos
Pueden formarse grupos de piedras imposibles de capturar, fortalezas
indestructibles.
Aji
Aji, literalmente sabor, sabor en el sentido de comida. Una de las
caractersticas del sabor es que permanece y es esta cualidad la que hace referencia al
concepto aji en trminos de Go.
En Go, aji hace referencia a una condicin, buena aji ga ii, buen sabor o
mala aji ga warui,mal sabor, que permanece inherentemente en un grupo de
piedras las cuales ofrecen potencial para el futuro. Generalmente este potencial latente
no debe ser usado inmediatamente porque entonces el resultado es aji keshi, es decir,
eliminacin de aji. Hay que esperar y ver el desarrollo del juego y las diferentes reas
que se forman para utilizar el aji en el momento adecuado y con el mejor efecto.
En otras palabras, aji no es exactamente un camino definido de juego con un
resultado fijo sino un potencial futuro que puede o no ser materializado.
Su permanencia y su aspecto molesto para el oponente hace que los
profesionales eviten las jugadas que como hemos dicho resultan en aji keshi,
eliminacin de aji. La sentencia no quemes tus puentes detrs de ti puede ser
aplicada al Go en el sentido de dejar todas las posibilidades de aji abiertas.
Kikashi
Un kikashi es una jugada que obliga a responder y produce un efecto.
Normalmente la respuesta es nica. El intercambio de un kikashi y la respuesta son de
algn modo tiles para el que lo juega. El kikashi se aplica a jugadas que son ms o
menos accidentales en la corriente principal del juego, una vez jugadas, estas piedras
pueden ser abandonadas generalmente sin una gran prdida.
El manejo de los tiempos es importante al jugar kikashi. Generalmente hay un
momento correcto para jugar kikashi con la mxima eficacia. Como sugiere el refrn,
golpe mientras el hierro est caliente, esto significa que podemos moldear el grupo
adversario si el kikashi es utilizado en el momento preciso, obligando al rival a jugar
donde queremos que lo haga.
Atsumi
Atsumi es aproximadamente sinnimo de fuerza, de solidez. Un grupo de piedras es
slido si contiene pocos o ningn punto dbil, de modo que no es vulnerable de ser
atacado. Ser fuerte es bueno ya que da a un grupo la libertad para atacar teniendo la
ventaja en la lucha.
463
464
465
ABSTRACT:
Various contemporary Spanish novels are coming to terms with history, or rather
histories of the civil war, the postwar years and Franco dictatorship. These novels, the
majority of whose authors did not experience the war or the postwar (although some
may have experienced the last years of the dictatorship), relate and configure in fiction
the experiences of defeated republicans, making visible the valour and the dignity of
their lives and actions after decades of official silence regarding their fate. They thereby
enhance the ethical value of concepts such as freedom, human rights and gender roles
during and after the conflict. La voz dormida, for example, is about women who keep
up feminist work while imprisoned in a most violent and manly environment. In
Soldiers of Salamin the narrator seeks to reconstruct the story of an unknown hero and a
known historic figure. In both novels understandings of liberty, human rights and
gender roles are configured according to discourses prevalent at the time but also today.
With the help of Bourdieus theories on field and habitus as well as some
historiographic definitions, I study how the concepts of liberty, human rights and gender
roles are configured in these two contemporary novels.
RESUMEN:
Varias novelas espaolas contemporneas hacen un ajuste de cuentas con la historia, o
mejor dicho las historias de la guerra civil, de la posguerra y de la dictadura franquista.
Estas novelas, escritas en su mayora por autores que no vivieron personalmente ni la
guerra ni la posguerra (aunque posiblemente los ltimos aos de la dictadura), relatan y
configuran mediante la ficcin las experiencias de republicanos vencidos, reivindicando
el valor y la dignidad de sus vidas y acciones despus de dcadas de un silencio oficial
sobre la suerte de ellos. Al hacerlo, resaltan en particular algunos conceptos valorados
hoy da como la libertad, los derechos humanos y los papeles de hombres y mujeres
durante y despus de la contienda. "La voz dormida", por ejemplo, trata de mujeres
presas que mantienen una labor feminista siendo presas polticas en un ambiente
sumamente varonil y violento. En "Soldados de Salamina" el narrador busca reconstruir
466
TEXT/TEXTO:
Introduction
Collective memory in Spain is and has been an issue of major debate in recent years,
particularly during the first decade of our present millennium. Collective memories as
well as identity issues are viewed within regional, national or ideological frameworks.
Oftentimes memory and identity are the themes of novels, films and documentaries and
are presented in ways in which one party is enhanced, or victimized, and the other is
denigrated, or made a culprit. Collective identity necessarily includes some while
excluding others. Hence, identity issues acquire ethical dimensions insofar as the
discourses indicate how the self and the other are valued. Who is approved of and who
isnt? How nuanced are the descriptions?
Moreover, the concepts freedom, human rights and gender roles enter into
the issues of identity. Although the novels in question deal with historical events that go
back to the Spanish Civil war, the perspectives on matters such as identity, freedom,
human rights and gender roles appear to be those of present times. It is obviously
difficult to ascertain how such concepts were understood by people in general at the
time of the civil war. My objective is not to draw conclusions about earlier
understandings of these concepts, but rather to investigate how such issues are
configured in the novels in question. My hypothesis is that although they are not
explicitly articulated in the texts, they may be perceived as implicitly conveyed in the
novels in question.
As Ricoeur (1996:166) pointed out, no text is ethically neutral since its
discourse necessarily indicates a point of view, or stance, on the matter dealt with. That
is naturally the case also in Spanish texts that deal with such controversial questions as
Spains conflictive past. However, ethics are not once and for all given norms. They are
void until they are filled with contents given by individuals, groups, institutions or
authorities. Ethics basically deal with value-laden questions such as: what is good?,
what is evil?, what is just and unjust? (Heberlein, 2008:103). The answers given to these
questions differ over time and space depending, i.a., on norms, cultures, religions,
traditions and other circumstances. The same applies to ideological concepts such as
freedom, human rights and gender roles: the discourses in which they are expressed
indicate an ethical stance on the matter.
467
468
Lpez-Saenz, M.; Morales, J.F.; Lisbona, A., Evolution of Gender Stereotypes in Spain: Traits
and Roles. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 2008, vol. 11, no.2, p. 610.
7
http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/3210/3210_lectures/habitus_field.html
469
By applying Bourdieus principles of field here we can identify the two fields
or sides that are opposed to one another in the novel: the victorious nationalists on the
one side and the defeated republicans on the other. The kinsfolk of the defeated are
incarcerated so as to eliminate any form of opposition, even from those republicans who
are still at large. The force of the nationalist victors greatly outweighs and practically
annihilates that of the republicans. This imbalance of power or influence, prevalent in
the macrocosmos of Spain at the time, slightly shifts toward the end of the novel within
the microcosmos of the prison when some inmates succeed in organizing the excape of
two women.
Hortensia and her fellow inmates are deprived not only of basic human rights,
but also of their dignity as human beings. They are systematically subjected to physical
and mental torture, starvation, lack of health-care and a number of other sufferings. The
prison guard, headed by the implacable and macho-like nun sister Maria of the
Seraphims, humiliates the imprisoned women, inflicts random punishments on them and
forces them to perform infantile acts of religious devotion, such as kissing the feet of a
baby-Jesus doll. In doing so, she enforces the regimes insistence on the so-called
national Catholicism (a blend of nationalism and traditional catholic practices) and
exemplifies that the former freedom of religion (which included the right to abstain
from religion), given by the Republican Constitution of 1931, was no longer in force.
One womans refusal to kiss the doll results in her being left to die of starvation and
isolation in a dundgeon-like space. She survives, however, thanks to the help of her
comrades.
The incarcerated women represent, as far as values are concerned, the good
people in the sinister prison environment governed by nationalist women. A strong
sense of solidarity and sharing binds them together. They teach their illiterate comrades
to read and write. In doing so they realize the ideals of several feminist movements of
that time to eradicate illiteracy (Nash 2008:134). Moreover, they encourage each other
to remain strong and resilient. They show concern and care for each other and their
families. In short, they are unselfish, patient, kind-hearted and brave. Examples of moral
values articulated by Christians and others throughout the ages, but ironically not
practiced by those in power under a Christian banner.
Once Hortensia has given birth she is executed. She faces the firing squad
without fear, having refused to go to confession in the early hours of the night before
her execution, thereby marking her personal freedom and her resistance to the
authorities oppression. The child is given to be reared by her sister, who names her
Hortensia in honor of her mother. Following the death of the protagonist, other women
come to the fore in the novel, all supporters of clandestine republicans who operate in
and outside Spain. Together they set up a seemingly innocent theater play, con the
guards and organize the escape of two of the women. In doing so, they reveal a sense of
humor which also holds ethical value in the novel as it enhances their dignity and
intelligence.
Although the father of the child is still alive, albeit a fugitive in hiding, there is
no discussion of who is to take care of the child. The fathers circumstances obviously
make it impossible for him to take on the role of an active parent. Nonetheless, it is
470
noteworthy that in the novel it appears wholly natural that women should assume the
traditional role of parenting. This state of affairs may be seen as a habitus if we, once
again, borrow Bourdieus terminology, that is a (unconscious) structure of the mind
based on acquired dispositions and social structures. But it may also be seen as an
example of the gender roles explicitly advocated by feminists during the years of the
republic. For instance, the
AMA (Agrupacin de mujeres antifascistas) stressed the separation of gender roles and
the identification of women with their traditional function as mothers and caretakers.
Women were not seen as individuals nor addressed as such, but as beings that naturally
(?) identified themselves with womens traditional roles. An example may be given
from the membership folder of the AMA:
la caracterstica de la mujer es su espritu de construccin y su amor
maternal; [...]La guerra le destruye el hogar que cre con tanto cario; le
asesina a su compaero y a su hijo. Y el fascismo le arrebata algo que vale
ms que la vida que es la libertad y el ansia de mejoramiento que toda
madre anhela para sus hijos.8
Motherly love and concern are central to this discourse. Although freedom
is mentioned, it is placed within a sentence that focuses on the future of the children, not
on the present of the women. Motherhood, be it real or symbolic, remained the main
characteristic of women, republican or nationalist, during the armed conflict. Mary Nash
(2008:143) relates how a few women joined armed militia bands at the start of the war
but were soon relegated to serve as cooks, nurses, cleaners and the like to their male
comrades. Gender roles had not been questioned at the time and, according to the
aforementioned survey of Lpez-Saenz i.a., are still not very much questioned in Spain.
In all, La voz dormida explores the conditions of republican women in the first
years after the Civil War. Deprived of their freedom and basic human rights, the women
manage nonetheless to maintain their self-esteem and their hopes. They are given heroic
attributes such as courage, fearlessness, solidarity and patience. Yet despite their
republican ideals of gender equality they assume roles of mothers and caretakers
without question. In doing so they configure traditional gender roles that were (and are)
largely taken for granted in Spain. In summary, the historical memory of republican
women as it is presented in La voz dormida informs the ethical perspective of women as
being strong and good; women who, due to their oppressed condition during the Franco
regime, were doomed to silence for several decades.
Contrary to La voz dormida, Javier Cercas novel Soldiers of Salamin (Soldados
de Salamina, 2001) is dominated by men. Here the narrator, who bears the name of the
author, investigates the fate of Rafael Snchez Mazas, one of the founders and
ideologists of the fascist movement in Spain. Again we have a historical setting, this
time with a particular focus on a relatively unknown historical figure. The novel is
divided into three parts in which the circumstances and investigation of the narrator are
8
471
intertwined with the story of Sanchez Mazas close call with death and with that of an
unknown republican militiaman who saved the life of this nationalist and fascist
ideologist. As we shall see, ideas or concepts of freedom, human rights and gender roles
may be discerned in this contemporary novel as well.
Facing a firing squad in the woods of Catalunya, Sanchez Mazas and another
nationalist captive belonging to a group of war prisoners succeed in hiding in the bushes
as the republican militia prepares to shoot the group. One of the militiamen tracks down
Sanchez Mazas but decides to let him go. This act of altruism is presented as an
enigmatic and at the same time heroic choice on behalf of the soldier to have mercy on a
fellow human being during the final, dramatic days of the war. Sanchez Mazas wanders
and gets lost in the woods but finds help among a few locals, who foreseeing the defeat
of the republican armed forces, had deserted.
Enigmatic acts of heroism are recurrent in novels of Javier Cercas9 and convey a
sense of ambiguity with regard to ethical stances. Did the militiaman let Sanchez Mazas
go so as to give him his freedom and let him live, or had he simply lost the motivation
to continue fighting as the nationalists were winning the war anyway? The answer is not
given. However, the militiaman is presented as a free man, not a member of a group
subjected to the ideas or ideals of others. As such it may be said that he represents
Bobbios understanding positive freedom as the right to make decisions without being
subjected to the will of others. Also, he embodies ideals of freedom that go beyond the
belligerent circumstances in which he is living, allowing a death-sentenced enemy to get
away.
Once the war is over Sanchez Mazas is made a minister in Francos first
government and, in that capacity, on one or two occasions he helps the locals who had
helped him, as they risked imprisonment and execution because of their former
allegiance to the republican government. This act of gratitude does not, however, render
Sanchez Mazas any noteworthy values. On the contrary, he is depicted in the novel as
an anti-hero, a cowardly figure and a representative of the oppressive, self-righteous
Franco regime.
His counterpart, on the other hand, embodies the attributes of a hero who, at the
time in question, transcends the rules of his ideological community by letting an enemy
live. Moreover, this character, who eventually is given the name Antonio Miralles, is
presented as a simple man, a carpenter who after the war enters the Foreign Legion and
fights one war after another in Africa, only to end up in his old age in a home for the
elderly run by nuns in Dijon, France. As a mercenary he does not fight for any
particular cause nor represent a particular ideology, quite the contrary. The reader does
not learn of other possible acts of compassion on his behalf nor even if this character, in
fact, really existed. His actions configure to some extent the negative freedom of
Bobbio, i.e. he is free to act or not to act without being subjected to obligation or
hindrances.
In Anatoma de un instante (2009), for instance, the seemingly heroic posture of Prime Minister
Adolfo Surez during the attempted coup dtat in 1981 is analyzed.
472
Although republican heroism may be said to be the main theme in the novel,
freedom is another theme that is very much present. Three characters occupy central
positions within the plot: the narrator, Sanchez Mazas and Miralles. Each one of them is
free in pursuing individual goals. In the novel the narrator freely chooses to investigate
a story from the civil war; Sanchez Mazas freely embraces fascist ideas during his youth
in Italy and freely helps those who helped him during the war, and Miralles freely
chooses to let this enemy live, to engage as a mercenary in other armed conflicts and
finally to refrain from confirming if he indeed was the militiaman who saved Sanchez
Mazas life. Freedom of thought and of action thus informs characteristics of these
characters as human beings.
Subsequently, freedom is an idea or concept that is configured in Soldados de
Salamina. The fact that the characters, separated in time and space, act freely further
enhances their individualism. Nonetheless, preference is given to the freedom shown by
Miralles: ethically speaking he is the hero of the story whereas Sanchez Mazas the
antihero. The narrator, as a bystander, considers them in the light of his ethical and
political preferences, enhancing one while vilifying the other.
As regards gender roles, of the two female characters in the novel, Conchi, the
narrators girlfriend, is an outspoken woman whose discourse and appearance are hardly
feminine. This punk-like figure without underwear has an unrefined, vulgar speech that
contrasts with the more cultivated discourse of the narrator. Nonetheless, she is a
character with power to carry the story forward and who consequently holds an
important role in the narrative. She is the one who coarsely comments on the narrators
progress or lack of progress in his investigation, reproaching him for studying a fascist
and encouraging him to study a communist instead. In so doing she boosts the
ideological and ethical framework of the novel.
The other woman in Soldados de Salamina is Maria Ferr, one of the Catalan
characters who gives Sanchez Mazas temporary refuge following his escape from the
firing squad. Just as Miralles contrasts in character from Sanchez Mazas, so does
Conchi from the traditional woman role embodied by Maria Ferr who feeds and cares
for her household, including her temporary guest.
Notwithstanding the influence of Conchi, the dominance of men in Soldados de
Salamina is striking. It is the men who think and act and whose discourse fills almost
the entire novel. Besides the three main characters other men, usually intellectuals and
writers (Sanchez Ferlosio, Roberto Bolao i.a.) are given ample space and voice.
Hence it may be said that the discourse is patriarchal in the sense that the men carry
intellectual weight while the two women are portrayed either as a colorfully rude punk
rocker or as a meek traditional housewife. In summary, the gender perspectives
configured in the novel make women into inferior beings placed in the shadow of the
men. As far as current understandings of human rights are concerned, it may be
questioned if men and women are given the dignity of being considered equal in this
novel, in which the narrative alternates between present and past times 10.
10
Interestingly, in the filmatized version of the novel, the narrator is a woman. This woman is
given ample voice and space in the movie and thus creates a greater gender balance in the
narrative.
473
REFERENCES
Acosta Bono, G.; Ro Snchez, A; Valcuente del Ro, Jos M.;, La recuperacin de la
memoria histrica: una perspectiva transversal desde las ciencias. Centro de Estudios
Andaluces. Consejera de la Presidencia, (2007).
Bobbio, Norberto, Igualdad y libertad, Madrid: Paids Ibrica (1993).
Burguera, M.; Schmidt-Novara, C. (eds),Historia de Espaa contempornea. Cambio
social y giro cultural. Publicaciones de la Universidad de Valencia, (2008).
Cercas, J., Soldados de Salamina, Barcelona: Tusquets (2001).
Chacn, D., La voz dormida, Madrid: Santillana (2002).
Cuenca Gmez, P., Mujer y Constitucin: los derechos de la mujer antes y despus de
la Constitucin de 1978. Universitas. Revista de Filosofa, Derecho y Poltica, no. 8,
julio 2008.
Heberlein, A., Det var inte mitt fel. Om konsten att ta ansvar. ICA bokfrlag (2008).
http://hispanidad.info/texto8.htm. Retrieved 22.08.2013
http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/3210/3210_lectures/habitus_field.html.
Retrived
25.08.2013
Jutglar, A., Ideologas y clases en la Espaa contempornea. Aproximacin a la
historia social de las ideas. Tomo II. Madrid: Edicusa, (1968).
Lpez-Saenz, M.; Morales, J.F.; Lisbona, A., Evolution of Gender Stereotypes in
Spain: Traits and Roles. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 2008, vol. 11, no.2.
Morant, I., Historia de las mujeres en Espaa y Amrica Latina. Del siglo XX a los
umbrales del XXI, Madrid: Ctedra (2008).
Nay, Olivier, Histoire des ides politiques. Paris: Editions Arnaz,(2004).
Paredes, J., Historia de Espaa contempornea. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, (2010).
Pozuelo Yvancos, J.M., Historia de la literatura espaola. 8. Las ideas literarias 12142010. Ediciones Crtica, (2011).
Ricoeur, P., S mismo como otro. Madrid: Siglo XXI de Espaa Editores, (2006).
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La comunicacin intenta aproximarse a otras formas de aprendizaje de la poltica, en
concreto a aquellas que tienen en lo visual y en lo oral su punto de unin. En una poca
como la de la primera mitad del siglo XIX, con unas elevadas tasas de analfabetismo, lo
visual y lo oral ocupan un lugar preferente en los procesos de transmisin de ideas y de
conceptos de marcado carcter poltico. En las formas de la poltica tradicional, la
imagen y la palabra ocuparon un lugar destacado, y lejos de quedar relegadas a partir de
1798 mantienen una vitalidad derivada tanto de su efectividad como por basarse en unos
cdigos reconocibles para las poblaciones. Es, en suma, otro elemento procedente del
Antiguo Rgimen que se adapta a las necesidades de la poltica moderna. Exhibiciones
de retratos, procesiones, alegoras visuales, construcciones efmeras, banderas, himnos,
lecturas colectivas (formales y, sobre todo, informales) y un largo etctera conforman
un universo alejado, en buena medida, tanto de la prensa escrita ms seria como de la
poltica de gabinete y de discusin ms o menos razonada, con la ventaja de que la
participacin popular en estos actos permite lanzar la hiptesis de una politizacin,
siquiera sea superficial, de la gente del comn. Buena parte de los elementos que
conforman la nueva cultura poltica liberal (y de la carlista) se transmiten de esta forma,
en lo que configura una semntica de lo visual (y de la escucha) que a da de hoy
estamos lejos de conocer y, sobre todo, de poder interpretar en lo que tuvo de
asimilacin de nuevos conceptos por parte de los sujetos populares.
TEXTO/TEXT:
En una publicacin reciente, G. Palacios seala como una de las caractersticas de la
renovacin en la historia poltica la nueva atencin prestada a ingredientes de la realidad
social hasta entonces subestimados, y entre ellos indica las prcticas de lectura, la
476
Palacios, G., Introduccin, en Id. (coord.), Ensayos sobre la nueva historia poltica de
Amrica Latina, siglo XIX, Mxico, El Colegio de Mxico, 2007.
12
Martnez Martn, J.A. (ed.), Historia de la lectura, monogrfico de Ayer, 58 (2005).
477
No es una casualidad que la legislacin liberal fuese mucho ms restrictiva respecto de las
tertulias patriticas (asquerosas reuniones para el marqus de Miraflores: Apuntes histricocrticos para escribir la Historia de Espaa de la poca desde 1820 a 1823, Londres, Ricardo
Taylor, 1834, p. 49) que de la prensa: en las tertulias se lea, pero sobre todo se peroraba, se
escuchaba y se discuta, un ejercicio que garantizaba la socializacin de las ideas expuestas.
Tampoco es un capricho el obligar a leer a los prrocos determinadas disposiciones
gubernamentales, caso de la que en 1813 abole el tribunal de la Inquisicin: no slo se hace para
demostrar la superioridad del poder civil en la misma casa del contrario, sino porque se garantiza
su conocimiento por un auditorio muy difcil de reunir de cualquier otra forma. No extraa que
varios prelados prefiriesen el destierro antes que aceptar la lectura: el de Compostela marcha al
exilio portugus luego de prohibir efectuarla a sus subordinados (Veiga, X.R., Mi reino s es de
este mundo. Altar y poltica en Galicia, 1808-1833, comunicacin al Congreso de la Asociacin
de Historia Contempornea, Granada, 2012: actas en proceso de edicin).
14
Una pastoral del arzobispo compostelano en 1852 (Garca Cuesta, M., Carta pastoral, Santiago
de Compostela, Jacobo Souto e Hijo, 1852, pp. 43-48) clama contra el comunismo y la tirana
estatal, sin olvidar que el socialismo y el comunismo son la irreligin, el libertinaje y el robo y
que la propiedad y la desigualdad de fortunas son naturales. Sus prrocos la leen y comentan
durante tres domingos consecutivos en todas las parroquias del arzobispado.
15
Reguero Argelles, J., Apologa del justo medio, Toledo, Imprenta de Cea, 1836, p. 81; El
Herclito Espaol y Demcrito Gallego, 4.07.1820; Boletn Oficial de la Provincia de Lugo
(BOPL), 23.12.1841, 20.09.1854. Sin olvidar los vivas y mueras salidos de miles de gargantas
en pocas en que resultan toda una declaracin de principios que dejan a sus autores expuestos y
retratados ante el conjunto de la comunidad, mxime en sociedades de interconocimiento como la
gallega decimonnica (los vivas gritados en la ciudad de Lugo en noviembre de 1820 tienen
como objetivo aterrar a todos los disidentes del nuevo sistema y penetrarlos de la imposibilidad
de destruirlo: Arquivo Municipal de Viveiro [AMV], Goberno, Disposicins recibidas, legajo
286-15, 24.11.1820). Otro tanto cabe afirmar de los juramentos pblicos (de reyes, constituciones,
478
entre docenas posibles, hay que valorar la prohibicin en 1815 de hacer corrillos en
calles y plazas porque generan males pblicos, religiosos y polticos, de hablar de
poltica, de religin o de los actos de gobierno en establecimiento pblicos que recoge
una circular de 1825, o la amenaza de prisin para cualquiera que extienda rumores
subversivos, un campo este, el de la rumorologa poltica, tan inmenso como
desconocido y que tanto nos dira sobre la asimilacin popular de conceptos generales y
de actuaciones concretas (desde los ejrcitos rusos que amenazan Galicia en 1821,
hasta la flota yanqui presta a bombardear sus costas en 1898)16.
De lo dicho se desprende que para participar en poltica no se necesita saber leer
sino querer escuchar. Especialmente cierto en el caso de las msicas y canciones
populares 17 . Quizs sea exagerado afirmar que el Trgala hizo ms por la
popularizacin de una cultura poltica liberal que cientos de discursos en las Cortes,
pero lo cierto es que su difusin y su utilizacin en los aos del Trienio es espectacular,
al igual que los himnos patriticos que acompaan proclamaciones constitucionales,
visitas reales, juramentos de todo tipo o comidas cvicas18. Lo mismo cabe afirmar
respecto del Himno de Riego, el smbolo popular por excelencia de la rama ms
exaltada del liberalismo, en algunos momentos himno nacional oficioso en competencia
mal conocida con la Marcha Real. A los sones del Himno entran los soldados
espaoles en Tetun en 1860 (es el himno nacional [...], es el himno de la patria, se
dice en la velada potica de 1860 celebrada en el Liceo de Pontevedra), y con sus
de servicio en la Milicia Nacional...) realizados a la vista del conjunto de la comunidad,
generadores de un doble compromiso (ante Dios y ante la sociedad) y cargados de simbolismo
poltico. Por poner un ejemplo bien temprano, en enero de 1811 las alarmas gallegas (cuerpos de
civiles armados) juran obediencia a las Cortes y a la constitucin que decreten, as como defender
la independencia de la nacin, la religin y luchar por el restablecimiento de Fernando VII
(Arquivo Municipal de Mondoedo [AMM], Seguridade cidad, Alarmas, leg. 2758, 17.01.1811).
Todo un programa poltico. Que las juras no son actos insubstanciales lo demuestran las fuertes
resistencias a hacerlas de determinados colectivos, por ejemplo de la constitucin de Cdiz en
1812-14 y en 1820-23, o que se establezcan en 1820 penas de destierro para los no juramentados.
16
Arquivo Histrico Provincial de Lugo, Actas do concello de Lugo (AHPL, CL), leg. 99,
28.01.1815; Regalado, P., Bando, Santiago de Compostela, 31.05.1825; Subdelegacin especial de
Polica de Orense, Circular, Ourense, 16.03.1827; Diario Constitucional de La Corua,
7.02.1821.
17
O del teatro, otro canal privilegiado de socializacin poltica que las autoridades intentaron
promover tanto como controlar. Ver, Campos Prez, L., La escuela ms enrgica del pueblo.
La circulacin de un ideario liberal entre Espaa y Mxico a travs de actores y de obras de teatro
durante el primer tercio del siglo XIX, Ariadna histrica. Lenguajes, conceptos, metforas, 1
(2012), pp. 223-243 (http://www.ehu.es/ojs/index.php/Ariadna; consultado el 16.01.2013). Por lo
dems, ni siquiera es imprescindible disponer de un edificio y de una compaa formal, porque
nunca faltaron aficionados bien dispuestos a poner en escena obras tan modestas en su concepcin
y en sus medios como difanas en sus mensajes. Es lo que hacen, por ejemplo, jvenes de la villa
de Viveiro que en 1821 representan la clebre pieza de Martnez de la Rosa Lo que puede un
empleo, que les vali la amonestacin del obispo de Mondoedo (Puente, J.M., Manifiesto,
Madrid, Imprenta del Imparcial, 1821, p. 44).
18
Como el Isabel en los sacros pendones, / Libertad, libertad proclamando, / Cual el grito repite
asordando, / ISABEL, libertad, libertad! (Avecilla, P.A. de la, Canciones guerreras con motivo
del armamento de los voluntarios de Isabel II, Badajoz, Imprenta del Boletn, 1834, p. 24). Del
temor a los efectos polticamente movilizadores de la msica, hablan los bandos de gobierno que
sealan los bailes autorizados y que fijan las piezas a interpretar, as como los que prohben las
canciones insultantes (AHPL, CL, Ordes e instrucins, leg. 940, 1.02.1822; AMM, Concello,
Actas, leg. 960, 21.04.1823).
479
Corona cvica (...) dedicada al ejrcito espaol en frica... Ao de 1860, Pontevedra, Jos
Vilas, 1860, p. 18; Balaguer, V., Memorias de un constituyente. Estudios histricos y polticos,
Madrid, Medina y Navarro, 1872, p. 133; El Centinela de Galicia, 27.11.1843; Zepedano, N. y
Neira de Mosquera, A., Relacin de la llegada, permanencia y salida de SS.AA.RR. los
serensimos duques de Montpensier en Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, 1852, p. 5; Acta regia de
la visita con que S.M. la Reina nuestra seora Doa Isabel 2 de Borbn (Q.D.G.), su augusto
esposo Don Francisco de Ass de Borbn, y SS.AA.RR. el serensimo Prncipe de Asturias, Don
Alfonso, y la infanta Doa Mara Lusa, honraron a este municipio, Santiago de Compostela, Jos
Rodrguez Rubial, 1859, p. 10; Barral, M., A visita de Isabel II a Galicia en 1858, Santiago de
Compostela, Sotelo Blanco-Consorcio de Santiago, 2012.
20
AHPL, CL, leg. 95, 24.10.1807; leg. 97, 24.06.1813; leg. 113, 13.06.1833; AMM, Concello,
Actas, leg. 956, 26.11.1803, 12.11.1807; leg. 959, 8.03.1817; leg. 965, 13.02.1854, 5.02.1855.
21
AHPL, CL, leg. 115, 18.04.1834; leg. 117, 18, 20 y 25.08.1836; 26.06.1837; leg. 118,
6.09.1841; leg. 119, 29.11.1843; AMM, Concello, Actas, leg. 961, 22.11.1843.
480
AHPL, CL, leg. 98, 16 y 20.05.1814; leg. 105, 29.05.1824; leg. 117, 26.06.1837; leg. 119,
29.11.1843; leg. 122, 25.01.1860; AMM, Concello, Actas, leg. 963, 22.11.1843; AMV, Concello,
Actas, leg. 733-3, 14.11.1843; leg. 734-2, 26.10.1846; Estafeta de Santiago, 10 y 20.05.1814,
14.06.1814; El Sensato, 16 y 23.06.1814; Fernando VII en Espaa, Santiago de Compostela,
Manuel Antonio Rey, 1814; BOPL, 7.05.1834; Fernndez de Crdoba, F., Mis memorias ntimas,
Madrid, Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1886, t. I, p. 36; Alonso, J., Un veterano de la Guerra de la
Independencia, Ciudad Real, UCLM, 2008, p. 63; Reyero, C., Pintar a Isabel II: en busca de una
imagen para la Reina, en Prez Garzn, J.S. (ed.), Isabel II. Los espejos de la reina, Madrid,
Marcial Pons, 2004, pp. 231-246.
23
El Ciudadano por la Constitucin, 28.04.1813, 20.03.1814; Posse, J.A., Memorias del cura
liberal Don... con su discurso sobre la Constitucin de 1812 (edicin de R. Herr), Madrid, CISSiglo XXI, 1984, p. 172; El Conciso, 3.07.1837; El Sensato, 26.05.1814, 23.06.1814; Estafeta de
Santiago, 7.06.1814, 20.05.1814. Quemas tambin de esfinges de hombres pblicos
representativos de lneas polticas determinadas, como la de Agustn Argelles en la localidad
orensana de Ribadavia en 1814 (El Sensato, 30.06.1814) o la de Moscoso de Altamira en la
Zaragoza de 1822 (Miraflores, Marqus de, cit., p. 134). El fuego como elemento destructor y
purificador a un tiempo.
24
AHPL, CL, leg. 97, 11.08.1813; leg. 98, 16.05.1814; leg. 105, 5.08.1823, 20.09.1823,
4.10.1823; Ibidem, Ordes e instrucins, leg. 940, 13.05.1822; Libro de varias notas que da
principio en el ao 1814 (manuscrito annimo); Madrazo, F. de P., Las Cortes espaolas, Madrid,
A. Andrs Bab, 1857, p. 47; Estafeta de Santiago, 13 y 20.05.1814, 7 y 14.06.1814; El Sensato,
19.05.1814, 23.06.1814; Alaiz, H., Manifiesto del brigadier Don..., comandante militar que ha
sido de la provincia de Lugo, en aclaracin de su conducta durante el corto tiempo que ha
desempeado dicho destino, A Corua, Iguereta, 1823, p. 23; Diario Constitucional de La Corua,
6.07.1820.
481
AHPL, CL, leg. 116, 26.05.1835; leg. 118, 21.11.1840 y 29.05.1841; leg. 121, 6.03.1855;
Arquivo Provincial de Lugo, Actas da Deputacin (APL, AD), leg. 3967, 25.01.1841; AMM,
Concello, Actas, leg. 961, 28.09.1824; leg. 962, 25.05.1835; leg. 963, 8.02.1844; Varela de
Montes, J., Defensa del pauperismo, Santiago de Compostela, Juan Rey Romero, 1849, p. 48.
Abanicos y pauelos con emblemas revolucionarios que difunden la corrupcin con disculpa de
las modas, cintas verdes, escarapelas, gorras cachucas y otros signos anarquistas que portan
los liberales, escarapelas pero de realistas..., demuestran el valor poltico de prendas que definen a
sus portadores porque su significado simblico es conocido de todos (AHPL, CL, leg. 115,
18.01.1834; AMM, Concello, Actas, leg. 961, 12.04.1824; Moliner, A., La Guerra del Francs a
Catalunya segons el diari de Raimon Ferrer, Barcelona, UAB, 2010, p. 149; Miraflores, Marqus
de, cit., pp. 76-77; Fernndez de Crdoba, F., cit., p. 36).
26
Reglamento de la Milicia Nacional, Madrid, 1820 (en AHPL, CL, leg. 104); Prontuario de la
Milicia Nacional, Valencia, Domingo y Mompi, 1821; El Conciso, 31.07.1837; Eco de la
Revista, 22.07.1852; Zepedano, N. y Neira de Mosquera, A., cit., pp. 4, 11, 19, 40; AHPL, CL, leg.
121, 21.12.1854, 14.07.1855; leg.122, 10.09.1858, 31.12.1860; Resea crtica de los festejos con
que la ciudad de La Corua obsequi a SS.MM. y AA. durante su permanencia en ella, A Corua,
Domingo Puga, 1858, pp. 6, 9, 16; Corona cvica..., cit., p. 5.
27
AMV, Concello, Actas, leg. 733-1, 20.08.1841.
482
civiles28. Alguien puede ofrecer una mejor metfora visual de lo que supone el nuevo
orden constitucional?
28
483
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Desde hace algunos aos, las indagaciones realizadas en la lnea de historiografa de la
formacin artstica en Mxico con colegas procedentes principalmente de las artes
escnicas, nos ha confrontado, de manera recurrente, con una constelacin semntica
articulada en torno al concepto arte artista, artesano, artesana, artificio, artes, bellas
artes, talleres, academias, conservatorios,. Dichos conceptos, en el curso de la
historia, han experimentado sucesivas transformaciones, resignificaciones, derivaciones,
fracturas, reposicionamientos, que con el paso de los aos continan impactando
agentes, prcticas, instituciones e imaginarios respecto al mundo de los artistas y de los
artesanos, al campo de las artes tiles y las artes que producen placer, a los deslindes
entre las artesanas y las bellas artes.
En este sentido, la historia conceptual nos aporta herramientas para incursionar, en
una perspectiva de tiempo largo, en esa gran matriz que es la modernidad occidental
desde donde sea posible construir nuevas coordenadas de inteleccin que den visibilidad
a la lgica propia del campo artstico y a reposicionar su papel en las instituciones
educativas modernas, cuyo principio de legitimacin ha sido la habermasiana
racionalidad funcional. Todo ello nos ha llevado a acercarnos con mayor profundidad a
los legados y los cruces de fronteras disciplinares que se infiltran en instituciones,
prcticas y agentes, traslapndose en el curso del tiempo y resistindose a desaparecer
del todo. De tal modo, el propsito de esta ponencia es plantear algunos de los nudos
conceptuales en movimiento, que devienen prcticas discursivas1 y hacen las veces de
clave para comprender algunas facetas de la insercin y despliegue de la formacin
artstica en las universidades mexicanas.
1
En la perspectiva del anlisis de los sistemas de pensamiento, Foucault se remite
al anlisis de las prcticas discursivas para acotarlas como una organizacin sistemtica
que no se reduce a un evento lgico o lingstico, sino que se caracterizan por la
delimitacin de un campo de objetos, la definicin de la legtima perspectiva para el
agente del conocimiento, el establecimiento de normas para la elaboracin de conceptos y
teoras. Las prcticas discursivas no son meras abstracciones, sino que cobran cuerpo en
procesos, instituciones, comportamientos, formas de transmisin que las conservan o
modifican. No dependen de un sujeto histrico trascendental, sino ms bien del sistema
de relaciones en que se inscriben. Vase Michel Foucault, History of Systems of
Thought, en Donald Fernand Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice.
Selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault, Londres, Cornell University Press,
1977, p. 199 y ss.
484
TEXTO/TEXT:
Los legados
Nuestros conceptos sobre el arte y la formacin artstica, surgen en Europa en el mundo
de la antigedad clsica: la filiacin de arte con respecto a tcnica es clara: arte procede
del latn ars2 el cual, a su vez, es la traduccin del griego tchne. Se refera a cualquier
actividad humana que requiriera habilidad, destreza, tanto manual como mental (siglo
VI a. C.), que implicaba un saber razonado, conforme con una cierta preceptiva.
Implicaba la puesta en prctica de conocimientos y habilidades en mbitos tan distintos
como la medicina, poesa, navegacin, cacera, herrera. La techn no fue ajena a la
reflexin de los filsofos en la Grecia clsica: desde los sofistas se establecera una
clasificacin inicial que distingua entre las tchnai, en relacin con su sentido de
utilidad, y las tchnai que producan placer.3
Tambin de los debates propios de la alta antigedad procede la distincin entre
las tchnai manuales e intelectuales, que derivaran en las artes liberales o liberadas,
acordes con la organizacin social aristocratizante que prevaleca entre los griegos,
donde unos, liberados de toda carga, tenan el tiempo, los recursos y el don para
dedicarse a las actividades propias del intelecto, en tanto que otros requeran trabajar en
actividades manuales por las que obtenan una remuneracin, las artes propias de los
siervos.
Del paso por la larga Edad Media, para los fines de nuestra ponencia, resulta
importante destacar la progresiva diferenciacin y distanciamiento de las Artes
Liberales, finalmente organizadas en el Trivium y el Cuadrivium,4 con respecto a las
Artes Mecnicas, cuyas clasificaciones fueron muy variadas y, por ltimo,
forzadamente las clasificaron en siete.5
En ambos casos, los modelos formativos fueron muy diferentes: las Artes
liberales, para su enseanza, recurran a los libros, a la autoridad del Magster, a la
palabra y a la escucha; las Artes mecnicas, remitan a los aprendizajes realizados en la
prctica, que se regulan por el estilo de vida de los gremios y se llevaban a cabo en los
talleres artesanales.6 Se trata de un camino arduo, que, por lo general, empezaba a muy
temprana edad (8 9 aos), cuando los padres delegaban al nio con la familia del
2
Resulta sugerente mencionar que otros trminos que comparten la raz ar con
ars. Estos son artus, articulacin; armus, hmero que implica movimiento; tambin
ayuda a esclarecer el significado de arte sealar que ars, arte, es lo contrario de iners,
inerte; es decir, uno se vincula con la capacidad de producir algo y el otro con su
negacin. Vase Antonio Santoni Rugiu, Nostalgia del maestro artesano, p. 83. Esta
obra constituye, desde mi punto de vista, una referencia obligada para el estudio del
campo artstico.
3
Idem, p. 82.
4
Vase Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Historia de seis ideas. Arte, belleza, forma,
creatividad, mimesis, experiencia esttica, Madrid, Tecnos, Metrpolis, 1987, p. 87.
5
Idem.
6
Vase Antonio Santoni Rugiu, Nostalgia del maestro artesano, p. 69 y ss.
485
maestro artesano, por lo regular contrato de por medio, a ensearle el oficio durante una
cierta cantidad de aos, adems de vestirlo, alimentarlo, darle casa. La convivencia al
interior de los talleres era sumamente formativa. Haba distintas, por as decirlo,
especialidades: quien trabajaba la arcilla, quien mezclaba las tinturas, quien manejaba la
madera, etc., pero era el maestro el responsable de coordinar el trabajo de todos y de la
obra que saliera de su taller. La vida de los talleres, consecuente con su espritu
medieval, estaba minuciosamente regulada y no gozaba de grandes mrgenes de
libertad.
Ser el Quattrocento italiano, el que nos aproxime al moderno concepto de arte:
existi un sector de artistas-artesanos7 que logr conservar una relativa autonoma de las
redes comerciales de los mercaderes, mantenindose en contacto directo con los
clientes, principalmente de la Iglesia y de la nobleza, para satisfacer sus demandas. Esto
les requerira diversificar sus arsenales y desarrollar una gran perspicacia e inventiva
para romper con los cnones de la produccin en serie, pero tambin deberan
desarrollar ciertas habilidades para atraer al posible cliente y colocar sus propias obras.
Esto les plante otras exigencias.
Con el tiempo, el alejamiento entre los artistas que trabajaban sobre pedido y
entre los artesanos, que continuaban produciendo artculos de consumo generalizado fue
cada vez mayor, al grado que unos continuaron fabricando mercancas
fundamentalmente tiles, como haba sucedido anteriormente, en tanto que los otros
buscaban, adems de la utilidad, la belleza de los objetos o bien exclusivamente la
belleza.
El impulso de artesanosLen Battista Alberti (1404-1472), Leonardo (14521519) y Miguel ngel (1475-1564), cuya actividad se perciba, sobre todo, vinculada
con el esfuerzo fsico, fue decisivo al respecto. Su apuesta se dirigi a evidenciar que
el artista no era simplemente un artesano, puesto que su trabajo no se limitaba a echar
mano, de manera repetitiva, de los procedimientos tcnicos, y a dar la batalla porque lo
que se englobaba como artes del dibujo (pintura, escultura, arquitectura), mejorara el
estatus de sus practicantes resitundolas dentro de las artes que requeran del
pensamiento, donde la pericia tcnica necesariamente se sustentara en el razonamiento
de la prctica, en el recurso de la matemtica para calcular tanto las proporciones como
la perspectiva. Y, declarando la autonoma de las artes, clamaban por la belleza como su
finalidad, independientemente de su sentido de utilidad o de placer, 8 con lo que
lograban, de paso, dignificar su imagen pblica a travs de su obra y de los tratados
razonados sobre su arte.
Asistimos as, a un nuevo horizonte del campo artstico, cobijado por el
humanismo, en el que se vislumbrara la necesidad de reorganizar el saber y de resituar
a los artistas quienes, rompiendo vnculos con los artesanos, se aventuraban a proponer
otros estilos formativos asentados en otras instituciones, nacidas de su propia
experiencia, tales como el Studio y la Academia.
7
Hasta aqu empleo indistintamente artfice, artista y artesano.
8
Vase Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Historia de seis ideas, p. 114.
486
Se trata de nuevas prcticas que tendrn, por lo menos, dos implicaciones muy
importantes para nuestro universo de estudio: por un lado, se establece un deslinde
significativo entre los artfices, del que derivaron nuevos sentidos para el artista. Por
otro lado, el nuevo estatus del artista se proyecta en la reubicacin de las Artes, en el
espacio de las Artes Liberales
Por otra parte, conforme avanzaba el Renacimiento iba quedando claro que las
Artes eran algo diferente de las ciencias, pero que tambin se queran percibir distintas
de los oficios. Estos deslindes sern definitivos en la medida en que se avance el
pensamiento ilustrado, tan ocupado por ordenar y clasificar todo a la luz de la razn, y
en la medida en que las sociedades se vuelven ms complejas y especializan sus
funciones cada vez ms.
Me parece relevante sealar que otro problema relacionado con la topografa del
territorio de las Artes, fue lo que se incluy y lo que se excluy en distintos momentos y
por motivos tambin diversos. Por ejemplo, la Msica y la Poesa no encontraban un
lugar propio, pues result muy difcil desprenderse de la tradicin griega de la Msica,
como arte de las Musas, vinculado a las tradiciones pitagricas de los saberes
matemticos y aun a la teora de la armona y sus efectos sobre el alma humana, as
como tambin resultaba difcil aprehender la Poesa de manera diversa a su condicin
de filosofa o bien de arte adivinatorio y proftico.
Nociones tan comunes y corrientes en nuestros das, como la de escultor, por
ejemplo, tard ms de dos siglos en formarse, pues en un principio las destrezas
similares que variaban en el empleo de cierto tipo de materiales y en el uso de tcnicas
especficas, reciban diferentes denominaciones, como es el caso de statuarii, referido a
la escultura en piedra; caelatores, en metal; sculptores, en madera; fictores, en arcilla;
encausti, en cera.9 En este contexto, la aportacin de los franceses ser fijar el concepto
de Bellas Artes.
Desde el siglo XV se venan ensayando diversas denominaciones que trataban de
resaltar la cualidad de este sector de las Artes: hubo quienes las llamaron Artes
Musicales apelando a la inspiracin de las Musas (Marsilio Ficino, siglo XV); otros se
refirieron a ellas como Artes Ingeniosas, puesto que apelaban al intelecto y al ingenio
(Giannozzo Manetti, siglo XVI), Artes Nobles, en la medida en que convocan nuestros
sentimientos ms elevados (Giovanni Pietro Capriano, siglo XVI). Tambin se
conocieron como Artes Memoriales, puesto que apoyan el recuerdo de cosas y eventos
importantes (Ludovico Castelvetro, siglo XVI) y, a la vuelta de los siglos, Artes
Elegantes y Agradables (Giambattista Vico, 1744). De modo que si la nocin de Bellas
Artes no constitua una absoluta novedad, pues ya se haba anticipado hacia el siglo
XVI, fue mrito del abate francs Charles Batteaux (17131780), con su libro Les
beaux arts reduits un mme principe (1747),10 la aceptacin de este concepto y su
pronta difusin en diversas lenguas y su introduccin en diversos diccionarios. Su gran
9
Idem.
10
Para ello, distingui entre las Artes Mecnicas, orientadas por el principio de utilidad,
las Bellas Artes, cuyo propsito era el placer msica, poesa, pintura, escultura, danza y las
que combinaban el placer con la utilidad elocuencia y arquitectura. Vase Paul Kristeller, El
pensamiento renacentista y las artes, Madrid, Taurus, 1986.
487
acierto fue, acorde al signo de los tiempos, integrar bajo la misma gida, un sistema de
prcticas que compartan su distancia con respecto a las ciencias positivas, cuyo campo
se haba enriquecido y fortalecido enormemente, y los oficios artesanales, con respecto
a los cuales se quera poner tierra de por medio.
Pudiera decirse que establecer la nocin de Bellas Artes llev casi trescientos
aos, hecho que no carece de importancia, puesto que nos remite a la nueva
organizacin del conocimiento que se vena visualizando, acorde con las
transformaciones de la vida social y el avance de las ciencias experimentales: el giro era
decisivo: las Bellas Artes quedaran libradas a s mismas, independientes y lejanas de
las ciencias y de las manufacturas por igual, aun cuando las diferencias entre lo que se
integrara bajo ese concepto no resultara totalmente ntido.11
Aqu se pone en juego el problema del gusto buen gusto, gusto refinado-,
vinculado con el modelo de refinamiento al que accedan tanto los crculos
aristocrticos como los burgueses, que habra de ser imitado por los dems sectores
sociales, lo que incidir en la emergencia del concepto de pblico y de prcticas que se
asentaran en la creacin de instituciones tales como el museo, el teatro, la sala de
conciertos, otros espacios formativos, propicios a la adquisicin de comportamientos ad
hoc.
Ahora si bien, la nocin de Artes a secas, despojada desde finales del siglo
XVIII del calificativo bellas, frente a los oficios y las ciencias, remitir directamente a
este nuevo campo, dominio exclusivo de las representaciones sociales que ahora
suscitara el artista.
Huellas de las tramas conceptuales en instituciones de formacin artstica
La persistencia de los legados antes sealados, en el entramado de nuestras
instituciones de formacin artstica, da cuenta de la orientacin de los procesos
formativos, de las jerarquas que se han construido entre los campos de saberes, de los
dilemas en las soluciones que se han dado al asunto de la profesionalizacin de los
artistas.
Me limito a sealar algunos casos mexicanos, similares a otros ocurridos en
Amrica Latina, que involucran los sistemas conceptuales de referencia:
Por razones histricas, tal parece que el concepto de artista se lo adjudicaron los
artistas plsticos, pues si bien msicos, actores, escritores y otros, se reconocen como
artistas, en cuanto estn dedicados a este campo, no pocas veces se escapan de ser
circunscritos a este concepto. Es decir, antes que como artistas, se reconocen como
msicos, como actores, etc.
Si bien el concepto de Bellas Artes en general tiende a desaparecer hacia finales
del siglo XVIII, persisti a lo largo del siglo XX y an en nuestros das. En 1905 se
fund la Secretara de Instruccin Pblica y Bellas Artes; en 1947, el Instituto Nacional
de Bellas Artes y Literatura, etc.
11
Vase Paul Kristeller, The Moderne System of Arts, en Journal of the History of
Ideas, XIII, 1952.
488
489
490
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El uso del lenguaje visual para la transmisin de conceptos polticos acompa la
propaganda tanto como las proclamas o canciones mientras algunos acontecimientos
histricos se produjeron. Sin embargo, la educacin para la ciudadana una vez formado
el Estado Oriental requiri de una traduccin visual del lenguaje poltico en la
construccin de la nacin. La pintura histrica dialog, sustituy u olvid la
iconografa preexistente o inexistente, construyendo de por s un relato visual de la
nacin. La repblica y el pueblo se representaron poltica y pictricamente, en un
lenguaje naturalista o alegrico, pero legible y convencional al gnero y, sobre todo
adecuado a un proyecto de estado-nacin, a un modelo de ciudadana y funcional al
estado del conocimiento histrico en el contexto cultural en el que fueron producidas.
Esta ponencia se pregunta acerca de la posibilidad de esta transferencia de lenguajes y
bucea en algunos ejemplos de la representacin visual del concepto de repblica entre la
recreacin de los hechos polticos y la alegora.
491
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En ese artculo se hace una reflexin acerca de la recepcin de los conceptos polticos y
jurdicos de la Ilustracin europea y de la Revolucin Americana en Brasil. En efecto, la
Capitania de Pernambuco tuvo un caudal de transformaciones de su realidad poltica y
social desde finales del siglo XVIII y principios del siglo XIX, en el contexto de un
movimiento autonomista y republicano. Los revoltosos intentabn una independencia
poltica e econmica ante la Corona portuguesa. Los tierratenientes pernambucanos
deseavam la permanencia de la monarqua, aunque bajo un ropaje constitucional.
La Revolucin del 1817 tuvo incontables causas polticas, econmicas y
sociales: la recesin econmica, los conflictos entre el monopolio econmico portugus
y brasileo, las deudas de los terratenientes para con la extinta Companhia de Comercio
General de Pernambuco y una costosa carga fiscal.
Los sentimientos antilusitanos y nacionalistas en Pernambuco desde la guerra
contra los Pases Bajos, se convertiern con el tiempo, en pretensiones anticoloniales y
autonmicas. El ideal de un gran imprio luso-brasileo, idealizado por el Conde de
Linhares, dio lugar a la bsqueda de sistemas polticos basados en las ideas
revolucionarias americanas y francesas. La Revolucin del 1817 intent crear un
regimn poltico en el cual las Capitanias tenan ms autonoma en las cuestiones
locales y regionales, las cuales se hacin presentes presentes en el lenguage polticojurdico constante del manifiesto Preciso e de la Ley Orgnica del 1817, firmada por
la Junta de Gobierno: la igualdad de derechos, la tolerancia religiosa, la libertad de la
prensa y de conciencia.
Ms que uma simples insurreccin, La Revolucin del 1817 permiti que en
Brasil se empezara um profcuo debate entre los revolucionarios y los monrquicos
sobre los significados de los mismos conceptos e ideas (republicanismo, libertad,
pueblo, soberania) para calificar y describir los acontecimientos en el orden de su
aparicin y segundo a su contenido simblico. En los nuevos espacios revolucionarios
la confrontacin entre la lengua de la revolucin y la lengua tradicional del imperio se
puede notar en los textos integrantes de la defensa legal de los rus en la Devassa.
Otro ejemplo de las diferencias entre las visiones del mundo Europea y
Brasilea em la Revolucin del 1817, es la ausncia de una total recepcin de los
492
493
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Las repblicas latinoamericanas constituyeron puntos de referencia para los
republicanos espaoles decimonnicos desde su aparicin en la esfera pblica hacia
1840. Se trat, por lo general, de contramodelos frente a las imgenes virtuosas que se
proyectaban de los modelos de Estados Unidos o de Suiza. Aun as, a partir,
aproximadamente, de los aos 1850, el concepto de democracia latina empez a ganar
terreno en el republicanismo espaol. Se trataba de un concepto integrador de
imaginarios y esfuerzos activistas y organizativos de los republicanos de Europa del Sur
y de los latinoamericanos en un proyecto comn que se contrapona al de la
democracia anglosajona y al de la democracia eslava. La comunicacin examinar
las imgenes de las repblicas latinoamericanas en el republicanismo espaol, la manera
en que de una visin negativa de las mismas se pas al proyecto de la democracia
latina y los significados y rasgos ms caractersticos de este ltimo concepto.
494
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Durante el ltimo tercio del siglo XIX, el federalismo sera la corriente republicana
peninsular ms abierta a establecer una relacin poltica de igualdad entre las diferentes
nacionalidades espaolas y los territorios de ultramar. Los trminos en que se
propugnaba la articulacin poltica de Cuba en la futura repblica espaola cambiaron
con las dinmicas polticas del Sexenio y la Restauracin, pasando de la extensin de
las libertades setembrinas, a la autonoma y, finalmente, a la aceptacin por los
federales de la inexorable independencia de Cuba.
En esta comunicacin se tratarn de confrontar las concepciones polticas de los
republicanos peninsulares fundamentalmente federales y de los cubanos
especialmente la figura de Jos Mart en torno a cuestiones como la democracia, la
ciudadana, las concepciones sociales y la articulacin institucional de la Repblica
espaola. Se analizarn similitudes y diferencias doctrinales en busca de posibles
transferencias discursivas entre republicanos de ambos lados del Atlntico. Igualmente
se intentar prestar atencin a la percepcin del otro y de su accin poltica, buscando
comprender cmo se interpretaron los republicanos de la Metrpoli y la colonia.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
El presente trabajo quiere aproximarse al estudio comparativo de las concepciones
polticas del republicanismo espaol, del autonomismo y del independentismo cubano
en el ltimo cuarto del siglo XIX. Tratar de reflejar las similitudes y diferencias
ideolgicas, de lenguajes compartidos, as como las distintas interpretaciones de la
accin poltica propia y ajena que todos ellos realizaron. Mi hiptesis principal sera que
es posible evidenciar una cercana conceptual muy relevante entre sectores del
republicanismo especialmente la corriente federal y del independentismo cubano. Sin
perder de vista los claros condicionantes de la distancia geogrfica y cultural, incluso
cabra plantearse la posibilidad de definir un republicanismo transatlntico hispanocubano.
495
Nacionalistas, militaristas, colonialistas e, incluso, tan racistas como los monrquicos. Carlos
Dard, La larga noche de la Restauracin, 1875-1900, Nigel Townson (ed.), El republicanismo
histrico espaol, 1830-1977, Alianza, 1994, 123.
2
Por culpar a la Monarqua de todos los males. Rafael Nez, Los intelectuales espaoles ante
la Guerra de Independencia cubana en Consuelo Naranjo y Toms Mallo (coords.), Cuba, la
perla de las Antillas, CSIC, Madrid, 1994, 287.
3
Ins Roldn, El republicanismo espaol y el problema colonial del Sexenio al 98, Ayer, 39
(2000), 38.
4
Javier de Diego, Imaginar la Repblica. La cultura poltica del republicanismo espaol, 1876
1908, CEPC, Madrid, 235-249
5
Josep Pich, Francisco Pi y Margall y el problema cubano, Martn Rodrigo (ed.), Cuba: de
colonia a repblica, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 2006, 299.
6
En1899 Labra recuerda la ninguna participacin que en los ltimos desastres han tenido los
republicanos, Cfr. Rafal Labra, El Partido Republicano Espaol, Madrid, 1900, 19.
7
Javier de Diego, op.cit, 247.
496
Rafael Labra, Cuestiones palpitantes de poltica, derecho y administracin, Madrid, 1896, 234.
En 1880, Cnovas. Al ao siguiente, el liberal Len y Castillo. Marta Bizcarrondo, El
autonomismo cubano 1878-1898: las ideas y los hechos, Historia contempornea, 19, 1999, 75.
10
dem, 84.
11
dem, 79-80.
12
Patria, 14 de julio de 1894, en Obras Completas, tomo 4, 1963, Editorial Nacional, La Habana,
474.
13
Mart calificaba la independencia como Guerra necesaria y justa, impuesta ante la
intransigencia del poder colonial. Paul Estrade, Jos Mart. Los fundamentos de la democracia en
Amrica, Doce Calles, Madrid, 2000 (1987), 379.
9
497
Luis Garca de la Mora, Un nuevo orden colonial: del Zanjn al Baire en Consuelo Naranjo
(coord.), Historia de Cuba, CSIC, Madrid, 1994, 332.
15
Javier de Diego, op. Cit., 345.
16
Clebre expresin de Mart en sus discursos neoyorkinos.
17
Todos los republicanismos participan en la Sociedad Abolicionista creada en Madrid en 1865.
18
Ramn de Armas, Jos Mart: su repblica de mayora popular en Consuelo Naranjo y Toms
Mallo (coords.), op. cit, 263.
19
Jos lvarez Los amantes de la libertad. La cultura republicana a comienzos del siglo XX. en
Nigel Towson, op.cit., 275.
20
Patria, 16 de abril de 1892.
21
Juan Marinello Prlogo a Jos Mart, Nuestra Amrica (1891), Ayacucho, Caracas, 2005,
XXIII.
22
Jos Mart, La republica espaola ante la revolucin cubana, Imprenta Segundo Martnez,
Madrid, 1873, 6.
23
Francisco Pi y Margall, La Repblica espaola de 1873. Apuntes para escribir su historia.
Vindicacin del autor, Madrid, 1874 100.
24
Paul Estrade, op. Cit, 255.
25
Artculo de Mart en el diario argentino La Nacin, 3 de junio de 1883.
498
26
499
500
defienda47. Mart plantea y Labra le da la razn que Cuba pidi a Espaa su libertad
y su honra antes de 1868. Y que la insurreccin era una revolucin causada dice a
los espaoles septembristas al tiempo que apela a su honra porque vuestra crueldad
lo hizo necesario 48 . Es obvio que Mart tiene presentes los argumentos de la
Revolucin Americana contra Inglaterra.
Si los espaoles haban logrado su libertad con la Repblica Cmo ha de haber
republicano honrado que se atreva a negar para un pueblo derecho que l us para s?
Y afirma La Repblica niega el derecho de conquista. Derecho de conquista hizo
Cuba de Espaa. La Repblica condena los que oprimen. Derecho de opresin y de
explotacin vergonzosa y de persecucin encarnizada ha usado Espaa perpetuamente
sobre Cuba49. Sin embargo, las denuncias del colonialismo opresor de la Monarqua
espaola no impidieron a Mart reconocer a los espaoles buenos, que compartan el
aborrecimiento de la tirana50 y reconocan que el deber de hombre es superior al
deber de espaol51.
Conclusiones
En estas pginas he tratado de mostrar la amplitud del tronco comn entre
republicanos espaoles y cubanos. Todos defienden el rgimen democrtico y las
libertades; aceptan la autonoma para Cuba con ms o menos vacilaciones y la
excepcin de Mart; y comparten la denuncia del colonialismo reaccionario y la
ceguera de los gobiernos espaoles.
El lder revolucionario cubano y los republicanos de izquierda espaoles
comparten la inmensa mayora de su pensamiento: su conviccin democrtica e
igualitarista; la raz tica del combate contra la opresin y la discriminacin; la
centralidad de la lucha poltica, el rechazo a la guerra, al militarismo y a la violencia
internacionalista; sus concepciones sobre el papel del Estado como garante de la
igualdad efectiva, transformando la propiedad rural y legislando entre capital y trabajo.
La diferencia mayor estriba en que Mart aplic el credo republicano con mayor
coherencia. Probablemente la experiencia del sufrimiento de los cubanos oprimidos
desconocida para muchos republicanos espaoles o cubanos acomodados y de la
sordera de la Metrpoli, grabaran en l su conviccin revolucionaria. Las ms tranquilas
existencias de unos lderes republicanos de clases medias y la menor dureza del
gobierno espaol con los peninsulares explicaran, en mi opinin, que slo los ms
lcidos comprendieran que Mart tena razn, hablando desde el republicanismo.
El combate por la independencia fue visto por los republicanos de derecha entre
la comprensin instrumental denuncia de la opresin ms centrada en combatir la
Monarqua borbnica y el apoyo genrico a sus peticiones de libertad. El centro
aada que la Isla poda autogobernarse bajo la Soberana espaola.
47
dem, 5.
Jos Mart, El presidio poltico en Cuba, op. Cit, 32.
49
Jos Mart, La republica espaola ante la revolucin cubana, op. Cit., 6.
50
Patria, 16 de abril de 1892.
51
Patria, 4 de mayo de 1892.
48
501
502
PARALLEL
SESSIONS
VI
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine is still a contested territory in
terms of geopolitics, inner divisions, and national identities. In my presentation I am
focusing on the conceptualization of Ukrainian history and geography in respective
historical narratives, first of all in the textbooks, produced in the course of the recent 25
years. Im analyzing how contemporary historians are mapping Ukraine in space and
time, coping with ever shifting Ukrainian boundaries, regional divisions, and nested
identities, in an attempt to re/createa national space within current political borders.
Mental mapping, historical legacy, and national identity concepts are in the center of my
analyses.
In dealing with Ukrainian mental mapping I pay attention mostly to the
Europe-Asia, East-West, and Eurasia symbolical frameworks. I go beyond the
historical narrative toward Ukrainian public geopolitical rhetoric which is riddled with
metaphors like vagueness, in-between, grey zone, and paradox. Ukrainian
regionalism and inner divisions are analyzing through interchangeable names of
historical regions; they reflect dialectic of regional and national features and are
accompanied by respective metaphors like kaleidoscope orpatchwork.
Ukrainian historical legacy/ies, real or imagined, create the main foundation for
the national space/s. Contemporary Ukraine could be seen as a by-product of Soviet
modernization and controversial national policy aimed to transcend modern national
doctrine by utilizing its rhetoric and categories. Ukrainian intellectuals are trying to
overcome Soviet legacy by activating some other, pre-Communist historical legacies in
an attempt to prove either Russian or European geopolitical identity of post-Soviet
Ukraine. Im analyzing the conceptual tools by which different Ukrainian regions are
integrated into or separated from the national narrative.
Various interpretations of Ukrainian space and time are resulted with different
concepts of national identity. In this part of my representation I am analyzing texts
503
504
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
In Finnish historical textbooks, the peace treaties between Russia and Sweden are often
presented as miles stones in the definition of the borders of Finland. As many historians
have pointed out this pattern is in sharp contrast with the way Finland is referred to in
the texts of the agreements. Matti Klinge has e.g. famously emphasised the fact that in
the text of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn concluded between Sweden and Russia
September 1809, it is not Finland but six Swedish provinces on the eastern side of the
Gulf of Bothnia that are named and ceded to Russia - and that it is only later that they
came to constitute an administratively separate, territorially clearly defined Grand
Duchy of Finland in the frame of the Russian Empire.
In my paper, I will study in detail what kind of references to Finland as a
separate geographical unit or political space can be found in the texts of the peace
treaties. My analysis is based on critical rereading of the peace treaties between Russia
and Sweden, from the so-called Treaty of Nteborg (1323) till the Treaty of
Fredrikshamn (1809). I approach the question from the perspective of conceptual
change. My starting point is that in order to interpret the status given to Finland in
different treaties, it is necessary to analyse simultaneously broader changes in the
understanding of basic political concepts, such as state, territoriality, sovereignty and
nationality.
In my paper, I will examine how a concept of state separated from the person of
the ruler takes form in mediaeval and early modern peace treaties and how estates of the
ruler gradually gain status as political units. Secondly, I will explore the development of
the notion of territorial state and linear state border and especially how notions of a
Finland were attached to the negotiation and definition of linear state borders. Finally,
Im interested in how and at which political junctures new understandings of
sovereignty are adopted as part of international relations. How ideas of international
recognition of territorial integrity, sovereignty and rights of the citizen and groups
appear in the treaties between Russia and Sweden? And what kind of legacy the treaties
leave for conceptualizing Finland in terms of political space within the Russian empire.
The broader aim of the paper is to contribute to comparative discussion on how
state-making and bordering processes in Central Europe and within the Russian empire
were linked to political modernization: How and to what degree redefinition of borders
505
TEXTO/TEXT:
In Finnish historical textbooks, the peace treaties between Russia and Sweden are often
presented as miles stones in the definition of the borders of Finland. As many historians
have pointed out this pattern is in sharp contrast with the way Finland is referred to in
the texts of the agreements. Matti Klinge has e.g. famously emphasised the fact that in
the text of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn concluded between Sweden and Russia in
September 1809, it is not Finland but six Swedish provinces on the eastern side of the
Gulf of Bothnia that are named and ceded to Russia - and that it is only later that they
came to constitute an administratively separate, territorially clearly defined Grand
Duchy of Finland in the frame of the Russian Empire (Klinge 1975).
In my paper, I will study in detail what kind of references to Finland as political
space or a separate geographical unit can be found in the texts of the peace treaties. My
analysis is based on critical rereading of the peace treaties between Russia and Sweden,
from the so-called Treaty of Nteborg (1323) till the Treaty of Fredrikshamn (1809). I
approach the question from the perspective of conceptual history. My starting point is
that in order to interpret the status given to Finland in different treaties, it is necessary to
analyse simultaneously broader changes in the understanding of basic political concepts,
such as state, territoriality, sovereignty and nationality.
I will examine how a concept of state separated from the person of the ruler
emerges in mediaeval and early modern peace treaties and how estates of the ruler
gradually gain status as political units. Secondly, I will explore the development of the
ideas of territorial state and linear state border and especially how notions of a Finland
were attached to the negotiation and definition of linear state borders. Finally, Im
interested in how and at which political junctures new understandings of sovereignty are
adopted as part of international relations. How ideas of international recognition of
territorial integrity, sovereignty and rights of the citizen and groups appear in the
treaties between Russia and Sweden? And what kind of legacy the treaties leave for
conceptualizing Finland in terms of political space within the Russian empire?
The broader aim of the paper is to contribute to comparative discussion on how
state-making and bordering processes in the European North were linked to political
modernization: How and to what degree redefinition of borders and territories were
connected to new kind of conceptualizations of state, nationality and sovereignty
characteristic to modern politics?
506
about state and nation formation in the European North. In terms of conceptual history,
all the particles of this equation need to be put under careful conceptual analysis: What
kind of conceptualizations of statehood, territoriality, nationality and sovereignty do we
actually find in the medieval and early modern peace treaties and what kind of notion of
a Finland was connected to them?
As the British historian Quentin Skinner has famously shown it is highly
questionable whether it is possible to identify in Medieval times a concept of the state
that would be clearly separate from the persona of the ruler and his personal estates and
possessions (Skinner 1989). Secondly, from the recent research on early Nordic stateformation we know that it is only at the time of the birth of modern centralized state
apparatus in the late Middle Ages and Early modern period that a new understanding of
territoriality in terms of strict border lines is born (Katajala 2006).
The third problem of the text book maps is the projection of the modern nation
and nation state back in history. While we can certainly identify in early modern Europe
a push towards centralized territorial states the idea of a Finland as separate political
space under Swedish rule was not part of the self-understanding of the contemporaries.
As e.g. Osmo Jussila and Matti Klinge have shown the idea of Finland as a state and as
a nation brightened in the minds of the leading Finnish elite first during the 19th century
(Jussila 1968, Klinge 1975). In the sense of a modern nation or political community, the
formation of a Finland started first during the latter part of the 19th century when civic
organizations and newspapers activated broader elements of population within a shared
political and social arena (Stenius 1986, Liikanen 1995, Pulkkinen 2001).
Fourth and maybe the most difficult problem of the maps is connected to the
concept of sovereignty. Following the criticism against the Myth of the Treaty of
Westphalia, the notion of the Westphalian age characterised by fixed territorial
notion of sovereignty and the integrity of borders can be seen as severely biased
(Osiander 2009). Instead of a fixed Westphalian notion of sovereignty, modern
political language is obviously characterised by competing conceptualisations of
borders that represent political innovation intimately associated with the revolutionary
political movements of the modern period. In the course of these struggles the concept
of sovereignty became an elementary part of the new political discourse that challenged
existing notions of the legitimation of power and introduced revolutionary claims for
reframing and recasting political landscapes (Kalmo & Skinner 2010, Ball, Farr &
Hanson 1989).
This politicisation should, however, not be understood simply in terms of
emerging hegemony of ethnic-national claim for self-government. Rather, as a form of
political innovation for reframing political arenas the notion of popular sovereignty
reflects the contested nature and internal contradictions of the democratic principles
(Rosanvallon 2009). Evidently, there is a deep antagonism between principles of
dynastic sovereignty (personified by the ruler and the idea of the integrity of his
estates) and popular sovereignty (we, the people as the ultimate source of power
and the principal nominator for sovereign territory). In this sense sovereignty belongs
obviously to the so-called movement concepts that with the breakthrough of modern
508
the treaty. In this sense, the concept of state is obviously not separated from the person
of the ruler. Treaty does not define the border of the state territory of Sweden or
Novgorod not to speak about Finland. Indeed, Finland is not even mentioned in the
text of the treaty.
From Teusina (1595) to Stolbova (1617): recognizing autocratic rule or territorial
states?
When coming to the time of the next Peace treaty signed in Teusina 1595, it is
obvious that a clear change had occurred in terms of understanding statehood. Already
in the description of the parties, states are mentioned on side of the rulers, although in
the case of Russia subjugated to the ruler. The agreement was signed by plenipotentiary
envoys on behalf of Great Lord King Sigismund and the Swedish realm (rike) and
Fjodor Ivanovits, autocrat of all Russia. However, as in the case of Nteborg, the
position of the rulers was extremely vague and they were in need of support and
recognition. Sigismund, King of Sweden from 1592, was fighting over the crown with
his uncle until deposed in 1599. Fjodor was holding the crown 1584-1598 but with
Boris Godunov as the de facto ruler. In regard to sovereignty, it can indeed be asked
whether we can talk about de facto sovereign rulers. In more broad terms it seems
almost as an illusion to think of some kind of original absolute sovereignty of the ruler
which is later fragmented (cf. Kalmo & Skinner 2010). On bases of the first treaties
concerning the European North it is possible to conclude that this kind of fixed
sovereignty concept maybe never existed.
In terms of understanding territoriality, Teusina Treaty does not indicate clear
changes to thinking modes of earlier times. Finland is, however, now explicitly
mentioned as a geographical entity but not as a political unit with its defined borders. In
fact, in terms of demarcation of borders this concerns also Sweden and Russia. The
border is again defined in terms of ceded counties not as an agreement of state
boundary. This seems to verify the conclusion of recent research that territorial control
of space was in fact less important to the partners than control over water routes and
trade (Korpela 2008, Katajala 2006).
What comes to state and territoriality, we can recognize a more clear change in
thinking modes with the Treaty of Stolbova (1617). Swedish and Russian states are now
both explicitly mentioned as partners of the treaty (Sveriges Chrono and Ryske Rijket).
There seems to be also a more unambiguous understanding of territorial control
attached to the concept of state. Ceded areas are still defined in terms of County borders
but these are obviously understood to form at the same time more undeviating state
borders. The concept of border is used in this new way e.g. in connection to ceding of
Kexholm county to Sweden as well as when ceding back numerous castles and their
surrounding territory back to Russia.
Also Finland is referred to in the document as a political unit but only in the title
of the King of Sweden which includes the Grand Duke of Finland. In the text Finland is
mentioned several times as a geographic concept in matters of trade and there is e.g. a
reference to the towns of Finland but in explicit terms the territory of Finland is not an
issue agreed in the treaty.
510
In more broad terms, the treaty has, however, been seen as a turning point from
traditional pursuits of controlling trade and water routes towards control of territory.
Stolbova meant great victory for Sweden but at the same time it marked an end for
control pursuits over Russian trade. It is said that when Gustav II Adolf gave an account
to the estates of the Diet about the victorious peace with Russia he referred only briefly
to the plans concerning the trade politics that had for centuries been in the centre of the
animosity between the parties and instead concentrated on strategic border issues
(Attman 1948).1
This might be understood as part of the forming of a new kind of sovereignty
concept connected to strengthening central government and autocratic administration.
Still even at this point we should perhaps talk only about seemingly strong autocratic
rulers: the titles of Gustav II Adolf and Fjodor Ivanovits cover the first page of the
treaty, but their positions were far from stable and in need of both internal and external
recognition. Gustav was 23 year old and he had been six years in power after dynastic
struggles between his father Charles and Sigismund (of Poland) with competing internal
candidates for the Crown as well. Michael Romanov was 20 year old, and it was first
his recognition in the agreement as the rightful tsar of Russia that put an end to Swedish
claims to the Crown of Russia - and finally ended the Time of Troubles with no
recognized Tsar between 1610 and 1613. In this sense the sovereignty concept of the
treaty was perhaps not only connected to strengthening notion of territorial state but also
an instrument of legitimizing dynastic rule and autocratic administration.
Nystad (1721) a treaty over political space?
In terms of shifting understandings of the concept of state, the treaty of Nystad
seems to be a product of conflicting tendencies: it was an agreement between powerful
rulers with strong absolutist ambitions, and at the same time it was a treaty between
states in a new broad sense that concerned not only administrative institutions but also
their citizens. In the document the parties gave mutual guarantees to one another in the
name of the powers, countries, subjects and inhabitants.
This concerned now also the Grand Duchy of Finland which was explicitly
mentioned as a political territorial unit: The Tsar granted that he or his heirs and
successors would forever abstain from claims on the Grand Duchy that was restored to
Sweden after Russian occupation during the war. A significant reservation to this
recognition of Finland as a political unit was, however, made by adding that this applied
to the now restored Grand Duchy under what form or name it happened to have. What
was new and exceptional in the treaty was that the definition of state border was not
based on boundaries of the old counties but was drawn consciously across them.2
1
Nr Gustav II Adolf infr stnderna redogjorde fr den vunna freden med ryssarna, uppehll han
sig endast flyktigt vid de handelspolitiska planerna och anlade i stllet gransstrategiska synpunkter.
2
restituera och ter inrymma Storfurstendmet Finland/ frutan den dehlen/ som hr nedanfre uti den
beskrefne Grntze skilnaden r undantagen. ... at Hans Czariske Maj:t/ des arfwingar och effterfljare i
ewighet eij skola ga eller kunna pst fr sig ngon rttighet eller ansprk/ under hwad sken och namn
det hlst wara m p detta nu restituerade Storfrstendmet
511
It can be interpreted that the new definition of Finland as separate political space was in
the first place connected to the return of the occupied areas. It had maybe been easier
for Sweden to negotiate over the restitution of the occupied areas as one territorial unit and to get guarantees over the future territorial integrity of the area. In this sense the
treaty also introduced and recognized in explicit terms the notion of territorial
integration. With clear references to the rights of the citizens of the ceded areas it at the
same time represents a more general shift in European political thinking in regard to
understanding political space.
Treaty of Fredrikshamn 1809: Finland in a European frame
Concerning the idea of a Finland as a recognized political space, the text of the
Treaty of Fredrikshamn seems to represent partly return to earlier bordering practices.
Definition of the border is done mainly in a manner similar to the medieval fashion of
ceding counties. Finland or the Grand Duchy are not mentioned in this connection and
the area to be ceded is defined in the form of counties listed: Kymmenegrds Ln,
Nylands och Tawastehus, bo och Bjrneborgs med de lndska arne, Sawolax och
Carelen, Wasa och Uleborgs Ln
On the other hand when the border is defined in geographical terms, there is an
explicit reference to state border between Russia and Sweden although Finland or the
Grand Duchy are not mentioned. ART. V. landshaf, Bottniska Wiken samt Torne och
Muonio Elfwar skola hdanefter utgra Grnsen mellan Ryska och Swenska Rikena. In
this sense we can recognize a return to earlier bordering practices which is, however, in
contrast with the general line of conceptualizing state and sovereignty in the treaty.
In many parts of the agreement, a broad concept of state is used, and the parties
of the treaty are e.g. defined in a broad sense. Treaty is between us, our states and
subjects (emellan Oss, Wrt Rike och Understare ena, samt Hans Majestt Kejsaren
af Ryssland, Des Rike och Understare andra sidan). The rights of the subjects are,
however, not part of the agreement as broadly as in the Treaty of Nystad, and it seems
to be utmost limited space that is given for negotiation over the issues that concern the
states and their citizen.
The formulations concerning political space and the right of the citizen within a
given political space might be connected to the utmost unequal positions of the partners:
Alexander I was negotiating with Napoleon over the future of whole Europe, whereas
the Swedish army was defeated and Swedish territory was occupied far beyond the
Finnish speaking areas on the eastern side of the Gulf of Bothnia. This imbalance was
manifested in the treaty e.g. in the title of Alexander I which was half a page long and
included already the title of the Grand Duke of Finland (StorFurste til Smolensko,
Lithauen, Wolhynien, Podolien och Finland). The fact the emperor had taken the title of
the Grand Duke of Finland already before the agreement in January 1809 can be seen as
a symbolic gesture to mark that key matters of the treaty were considered not to need
negotiation with or consent of Sweden.
This might partly explain the much discussed problem why the matters
concerning the future of Finland are not settled in the treaty along the lines of the
promises that Alexander I had made to Finnish estates in Borg during the war. In there,
512
at least according to the later Finnish interpretation Alexander had guaranteed the status
of Finland as a nation and confirmed it a constitution. Be the interpretation of what
happened in Borg as it may, it seems that Alexander held these as matters to be
organized in a broader European frame not in negotiation with Sweden. After all, the
agreement was to a high degree a European peace treaty. The interests of Napoleon and
the allies of Russia were an outspoken priority signaling a new kind of broader
geopolitical context for understanding sovereignty.3
Systme Continental, the forcing of Sweden to join the blockade against Britain
was an indisputable key issue. 4 In fact, in the treaty the dictates that concerned
European level politics were recorded in the articles II and III and thus preceded matters
of ceding areas and defining borders that took place in articles IV and V. In this manner
it was made clear that the decisions of Tilsit between Alexander and Napoleon
concerning the political map and the future of Europe were not negotiated but dictated
to Sweden (Klinge 2010). In this sense, the peace treaty should not be read in terms of a
return to earlier notions of state, territoriality and nationhood. Perhaps the visions
Alexander presented in Borg concerning status and constitution of Finland were part of
bigger plans of constructing a new European state system along the lines that Alexander
and Napoleon had designed in Tilsit a system that the parties were in the end never
able to agree on in practice.
Conclusions: From mutual recognition of rulers towards fragmented European
sovereignty concepts
Although the notion of Grand Duchy of Finland disappears from the last treaty
between Sweden and Russia, it is obvious that looking at the concept of state in a longer
time frame we can recognize a trend towards a territorially more strictly defined frame
of government which in the end included even the idea of the guaranteed rights of the
inhabitants (which can be seen as a step towards constitutional thinking). In the first
treaties state exists in a sense of a power sphere of the ruler defined in terms of regions.
In the last treaties there is a clear idea of state borders between countries with
centralized administrations. In terms of changing significance of territoriality there is a
line of development from competing strategies of controlling trade and tribute gathering
towards territorially strictly defined centrally governed political space - the integrity of
which is given international recognition. Lastly, in terms of nationality, we may
conclude that for all of the period nationality or ethnicity were not regarded as bases for
negotiating borders. However, it is obvious that from the 18th century on we can identify
conceptual change that turned the Grand Duchy of Finland from a titular symbol of the
might of the ruler towards an institutional frame of politics. Finland was referred to as a
territorial political unit and the rights of its citizen were discussed and designed
according to the dominant political ideas within the European state system.
3
Art. II. - fresats at ej frn sina Bundsfrwandters interessen skilja Sina Egna et skyndsamt
fredsslut med Deras Majestter Kejsaren af Frankrike, Konungen af Italien, samt Konungen af
Dannemark och Norge.
4
Art III. at Sweriges Rikets Hamnar m fr Stor-Britanniske, s Krigs- som Handelsfartygs
anlpande wara tilslutne.
513
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Pulkkinen, Tuija (2001) Valtio, in Hyvrinen et al. (eds) Ksitteet liikkeess, pp. 248249.
Rosanvallon, Pierre (2007) Democracy Past and Future, ed Samuel Moyn, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Skinner, Quentin (1989) The State. Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (ed.
Terence Ball et al.). Cambridge.
Snow, D. A., and Benford, R. D. (1988). "Ideology, frame resonance, and participant
mobilization". International Social Movement Research, 1, 197217.
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ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This presentation will address the question of Europeanisation and its impacts on
Hungarys (geo)political identity by focusing on the understandings of borders that have
emerged in the countrys political language of cross-border cooperation. Hungary has
been characterised as a European borderland and a laboratory of Europeanisation,
for example in terms of the local adaptation of EU norms and practices, progressive
legislation regarding minority rights and practices of cross-border co-operation. The
sizable Hungarian ethnic minorities in neighbouring counties and the loss of major
second-tier cities after WWI partly explain Hungarys interest in more dynamic crossborder relations. Having championed a spritualisation of the borders well before the
end of the Cold War, the country has advocated greater political and cultural opening
a goal not always equally shared by its neighbours. However, as Batory (2010) has
indicated, Hungarian political interpretations of European integration (and
Europeanisation) are rather formal and statist whereas Hungarys political identity with
regard to its neighbours is seen in affective, i.e. ethnic, cultural and historic terms. The
present national conservative government of Hungary explicitly understands its political
mission in terms of nation-building within a wider European political and social
context - a political project that has many potential consequences for relations with
neighbouring states
The research I will present thus reflects debate about Hungarys role in Europe
and the relation between Hungary as a territorial state and an ethnic nation issues with
obviously deep historical roots. In more concrete terms the research involves studying
tensions between normative elements of European policy agendas as they apply to
borders and cross-border co-operation and Hungarian understandings of the same. This
is partly a matter of interrogating the significance of Europeanisation in the political and
strategic framing of Hungarian territory, Hungarys neighbouring relations and
Hungarys role vis a vis the sizable Hungarian populations outside its borders. This
raises a number of questions: what tensions emerge between different EU-European and
Hungarian discursive strands regarding cross-border co-operation? How do
contemporary representations of European borders relate back to historical arguments
and positions in the Hungarian case? How is the significance of national borders and
their genesis framed in wider European terms? Similarly, an objective is to study
change and continuity in concepts of border by detecting different historical layers in
present day conceptualisations of internal and external borders of the EU based on the
Hungarian case.
515
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The paper explores the ways in which expelling policy in 20th century Finland and
Denmark has reflected changing conceptions of nationhood and borders. Deportations
of non-citizens can be seen as one of the most basic and heavy handed tools at the
disposal of the modern social regulatory state. Contrary to common preconceptions,
both Denmark and Finland have long immigration histories, and have also expelled
unwanted non-citizens throughout the 20th century. What kind of concepts of
nationhood and borders have been used in legitimizing this? To what degree have ideas
of ethnic, racial or social hierarchies affected contested deportation decisions, and how
has the development of allegedly universalistic welfare states changed the conceptual
framing of expulsion policies? Paraphrasing U.S. debates, can 20th century Finland and
Denmark be seen as nations by design, or even as deportation nations? The paper is
based on 1) case studies of individual border cases, in which different level
authorities and other policy actors were forced to explicate the logic of particular
expelling decisions 2) parliamentary and public debates on expulsion policies in Finland
and Denmark.
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517
TEXT/TEXTO:
Problematizing the Elements of Law
In seeking a sure foundation for his political absolutism Thomas Hobbes was the first
major British thinker to turn to the continental Roman and Civil Law tradition, which
had already swept away indigenous, and particularly Germanic, law in most of Europe
(Gilmore 1941). The late medieval Glossators and Postglossators of Roman Law were
not only harbingers of Renaissance political thought, but they had crafted concepts of
sovereignty and political obligation that were to underpin the early modern state.
Hobbes shows himself attuned to their debates, and specifically the debate over the
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merum imperium which was to feature so large in the thought of the French jurist Jean
Bodin, whom he carefully references (Hobbes 1969, II 8.5). It perhaps not so strange
then, that Hobbes should have proven to be an opponent of Classical Republicanism, or
Roman concepts of liberty, the case that Quentin Skinner (1998, 2008) has made so
well; and yet Hobbess theory of liberty remains one of the most enduring paradoxes in
an apparently systematic thinker.
Hobbess Elements of Law has recently seen renewed interest as the first of the
three successive statements of his system but standing in a problematic relation to the
other two, De cive and Leviathan. Deborah Baumgold (2004) has raised again the
question whether Hobbes might not have had a substantial text already prepared when
the Earl of Newcastle called upon him to produce a brief in support of undivided
sovereignty, the matter under debate in the Short Parliament of 1640, and the subject of
the policy document which we now know as the Elements. To answer this question she
has undertaken an analysis of the text in terms of those parts that appear more complete,
and might well have been written in advance, and those that Hobbes seems to have
prepared in the heat of the moment. The unevenness of Hobbess text, Baumgold (2004)
argues, is due not only to its being a pice doccasion, but also to Hobbess method of
serial composition and his tendency to lay out a skeleton argument (in the case of the
Elements, indicated by headings in bold) and then elaborate it by inserting material,
often in the form of notes made while walking. Curiously, it is the sections of the text
on undivided sovereignty, the very topic upon on which he was called upon to write,
that in Baumgolds view are the least thought through, while the more fundamental
elements of his theory, the sections Concerning men as persons natural and
Concerning men as a body politic, on the power of masters and fathers and of the
patrimonial kingdom are more coherent and more complete. Hobbes, in his hurry,
almost does not get to his subject, the Elements of Law, and then has little to say about
it, she concludes.
Baumgolds is a fertile approach and by introducing the history of the book, it
is indispensable. It brings to the analysis of Hobbess substantive arguments critical
contextual considerations about his method and manner of composition as sources of
ambiguity and inconsistency. It advances the early work of Karl Schuhmann, the great
Hobbes scholar who, having turned from the critical editions of Husserl, applied his
insights to working out how Hobbes cobbled together manuscripts to produce texts that
would impress the philosophers on the Continent, Mersenne and Gassendi, into whose
company Hobbes in effect successfully insinuated himself. Noel Malcolm, often in
response to Schuhmann, has greatly advanced the history of the book approach and so
has Jeffrey Collins, but Baumgold is the first to come up with a specific set of proposals
about Hobbess manner of composition and to test them against the texts themselves,
first with the Elements, and now more recently with all three works (Baumgold, 2008).
The method is not easy to apply, however, due to the paucity of evidence. Hobbes
destroyed most of his correspondence, and many of his manuscripts have still not been
given the careful scrutiny they require. There is not yet an intellectual biography of
Hobbes or even a definitive account of his intellectual development. Nor are there
critical editions of his major works that would set out their textual basis and the relation
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between them. But even granted these deficiencies, and accepting Baumgolds
methodology, I think it is possible to show that there are factors over and above his
writing technique that generate inconsistency in Hobbess thought.
Hobbes is a deeply paradoxical thinker, due in part to the fact that he was
fighting battles on all fronts. He both belonged to circles in which the new science was
being propagated, on the basis of a new Epicurean metaphysics and atomistic physics,
but as a man of action and secretary to a powerful baronial family, he was engaged in
the immediate political debates of his day. At the level of metaphysics, his first
philosophy, Hobbes was committed to a form of determinism that put him at odds with
the prevailing Aristotelianism but, at the same time, did not allow a lot of scope in
resolving most of the immediate questions with which he was required to deal
(Springborg, 2009, 2010). Furthermore, Hobbes, who was an Englishman and
nominally an Anglican, had sympathies that lay clearly with cosmopolitanism and
empire, the Continent and the transmontani, and these are also a source of ambiguity. In
the famous debate between Harvey and Spencer on the kingdom of our own language,
Hobbes would clearly have come down on the side of empire and cosmopolitanism for
instance, and against gothic localism and the vernacular for this precise reason he
either translated himself, or had his works translated, into Latin. Richard Helgerson,
who has addressed the Harvey-Spencer debate respectively in terms of an emerging
British sense of Nationhood, and defence of the vernacular, both in language and law,
versus subscription to the Continental Latin and Roman Law traditions, summarizes his
thesis as follows (Helgerson 1992):
I suggest that Spensers exclamation, Why, a Gods name, may not we, as else the
Greeks, have the kingdom of our own language, expressed an uncertainty about
English as a medium for verse; that the solution Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and some of
their friends were then pushingthat is, the adoption of Greek and Roman measures
bore a striking likeness to the absolutist politics of monarchic consolidation; and that
Gabriel Harveys response revealed the outlines of an oppositional politics based on
common law and the ancient constitution.
Consistent with this cosmopolitanism and predilection for empire, I argue, it was
to the Continental legal, and specifically Roman Law, tradition that Hobbes naturally
turned for his theory of sovereignty and political obligation. But the peculiar syncretism
of his arguments, both at the metaphysical and political levels, gives a shock to our
expectations, sometimes leading to confusion, and the same was true for his
contemporaries (see Parkin 2007). Sometimes this is because Hobbes intends to shock
us, but at other times it simply registers the fact that he himself finds this syncretism
difficult to manage. There is a certain amount of telling slippage, both in his
terminology and his arguments, that leads to further ambiguity and inconsistency. For
instance, Hobbess commitment to Epicurean atomism and determinism leaves little
scope for free will, a doctrine to which he is not disposed to be favourable for other,
mainly religious or anti-religious, reasons. In his debate with Bramhall, conducted in
1645, but published only in 1655, he makes this clear. But as one who dedicated his life
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to the rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics and the doctrine of essences, the mainstream
metaphysics of Catholic Europe, Hobbes nevertheless allied himself with Continental
thought on the issues of sovereignty and law.
These considerations may go some way to explaining why Hobbes seems not to
address the specific topic he set himself, the Elements of Law, in Baumgolds view,
because immediate demands pushed it aside. I suggest rather that Hobbes probably did
consider that he had discussed the Elements of Law, by letting the title stand in the
published version, if it was he who was responsible for the publication, and if not,
whoever published it also believed so. Hobbess treatment of sovereignty and law may
appear sketchy, and it is indeed likely that it was at the point of writing less well
developed than his metaphysics and physics and even than his psychology. But in
retrospect, when it came to publication, to quote Hobbess own words: the little treatise
in English that circulated among the gentlemen of the Short Parliament, wherein he
did set forth and demonstrate, that the said power and rights were inseparably annexed
to the sovereignty (Hobbes 1840, 414), was seen to be the vehicle that first introduced
the topic that took the scope of his entire project to treat. Hobbes addresses undivided
sovereignty in the Elements, as Baumgold and Skinner have noted, with a rare
acknowledgement to Jean Bodin (Skinner 2008, 38), and Bodinian sovereignty is nested
in a Civil Law context. Bodin drops out of the later works, but the Civil Law context
remains. No one to my knowledge has made the case that Hobbes is a civil lawyer in his
loyalties, but I believe it to be true. It was not just that he bore antipathy to common
lawyers as a constituency issue for their support of the parliamentary party. It was rather
because undivided sovereignty was best articulated in civil law contexts that Hobbes
appears ready to abandon indigenous customary law for the law of empire and the
Transmontani.
Sovereignty and the Elements of Law
Hobbes, who often stepped back from local debate in favour of grand theory,
was more committed to the Roman Law and civil law traditions than is usually credited.
He formulated a systematic rebuttal of the Greek and Israelite traditions of democratic
republicanism in favour of the Roman Law tradition of dominium, and he had his work
translated into Latin to gain maximum impact in Continental Europe where the civil law
tradition thrived. Like Machiavelli he was an anti-humanist, concerned with dominium
(Skinner 1991, 2). He defended absolute monarchy against all forms of
constitutionalism, Bodinian constitutional monarchy and especially the mixarchy of
Great Tew, as allowing citizens retain their liberty even as subjects of sovereign power
(Tuck 1992, 272, 305; Parkin 2007, 24-5; Skinner 2008, 105). He out-Bodins Bodin in
his claim to be the first to see the state as a species of corporation, but at the same time
disallows Bodins distinction between lawful and lordly monarchy (Skinner 2008,
78) that would permit men to distinguish between lawful government and tyranny.
Bodins Republic was a Roman Law corporation, but he allowed that natural
liberty was compatible with absolutism as long as absolutism was consistent with the
law, which Hobbes denied (Skinner 2008, 38-9; see also Springborg 1976 on Hobbes
and Roman Law corporation theory). In so doing Bodin had targeted Machiavelli,
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whose Principe is a tyrant by another name (Bodin, 1576, 2.1, 219; Skinner 1980, 68).
It may also have been Machiavelli whom Hobbes had in mind, but this time with
reference to the Republican Discorsi, when he noted in The Elements, that there were
political writers who believe that there is one government for the good of him that
governeth, and another for the good of them that be governed, insolently declaring that
only the latter can be termed a government of freemen (Hobbes 1969, 22.1, 138;
Skinner 2008, 68). Consistent with Baumgolds thesis (2005), Hobbes places himself
firmly on the side of him that governeth as compard with him that be governed.
Hobbes rejects Bodins distinction between lawful and lordly monarchy as
simply incoherent: if the people are genuinely sovereign no command can be a law
unto them; and if that is so: How can he or they be said to be subject to the laws which
they may abrogate at their pleasure, or break without fear of punishment? (Hobbes
1969, 27.6, 172; Skinner 2008, 78). In fact, Hobbes declares in The Elements, the
subjection of those who institute a commonwealth is no less than that of servants
(Skinner 2008, 88) and the subjection of servants is no less than that of slaves. It is a
feature of monarchies, not only of tyrannies (pace Bodin), that rulers have property in
their subjects: Propriety, being derived from the sovereign power, is not to be
pretended against the same (Hobbes 1969, 24.2, 140; Skinner 2008, 79). Protests or
projects to turn absolute monarchy into constitutional are either demands by subjects to
have the sovereignty, or to have monarchy changed into a democracy (Hobbes 1969,
27.3, 170; Skinner 2008, 79). And Hobbes at this point is among the most intransigent
proponents of divine right.
In the Elements Hobbes specifically resorts to Bodin against the constitutionalists
of the Tew Circle and their representatives in the Short Parliament (Parkin 2007), who
were in favour of the mixed constitution of classical republicanism, noting (Hobbes
1969, II 8.5; Tuck trans., 173):
If there were a commonwealth, wherein the rights of sovereignty were divided, we must
confess with Bodin, Lib II. Chap. I. De Republica, that they are not rightly to be called
commonwealths, but the corruption of commonwealths. For if one part should have
power to make the laws for all, they would by their laws, at their pleasure, forbid others
to make peace or war, to levy taxes, or to yield fealty and homage without their leave; and
they that had the right to make peace and war, and command the militia, would forbid the
making of other laws, at their pleasure, forbid others, and they that had right to make
peace and war, and command the militia would forbid the making of other laws, than
what themselves liked.
Hobbes makes the bold boast to be the first to apply Roman corporation theory,
based on the union of the represented personified by a representative, to the
Commonwealth as a whole, a boast on which he only fully delivers in Leviathan
(Hobbes 1969, II 8.5; Tuck trans., 173):
The error concerning mixed government hath proceeded from want of understanding
what is meant by this word body politic, and how it signifieth not the concord, but the
union of many men. And though in the charters of subordinate corporations, a corporation
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Richard Tuck is right to see elements of radical democratic theory in this, the first
theory of the General Will of the early modern era, and certainly the precursor to
Rousseaus more famous version. (Rousseaus theory owes more to his careful reading
of Hobbes than is customarily acknowledged.) The transition from the state of nature to
society takes only one route, by the creation of a people out of a multitude, and the
vehicle of that union is popular consent producing a single will out of many. Hobbes
stated his position nowhere more clearly than in De cive where, addressing Aristotles
argument that in a tyrannical or extreme democracy the people was prince (princeps
populus sit), whereas in a true commonwealth the king is the people, he insisted
(Hobbes, De cive, XII.8; Tuck trans., 183):
[M]en do not make a clear enough distinction between a people and a crowd. A people is
a single entity, with a single will; you can attribute an act to it. None of this can be said of
a crowd. In every commonwealth the People reigns; for even in Monarchies the People
exercises power [imperat]; for the people wills through the will of one man. But the
citizens, i.e. the subjects, are a crowd. In a Democracy and an Aristocracy the citizens are
a crowd, but the council is the people; in a Monarchy the subjects are the crowd, and
(paradoxically) the King is the people.
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becomes subject to the union it has contracted to bring into being, that is to say to a
single will exercised by a representative (or council of representatives).
Tuck had already prefigured his argument about Hobbes and popular sovereignty
in his book on natural rights (Tuck 1979), when he noted that Hobbess doctrine, like
that of Grotius, and Locke in the Second Treatise, on the popular origins of power put
them closer to the late scholastics than to the humanists, the latter for the most part
servants of absolute princes. But the case of Hobbes, I believe, is argued the wrong way,
and Hobbes, the courtiers client, is ultimately closer to the humanists than the second
scholastic, to the extent that this comparison holds at all. Tuck is right to claim that
Grotius and Locke followed the path of active natural rights theory established by
Gerson in Paris (Tuck 1979, 46-7) that was later to spread to centres of Gersonian
nominalism like Tbingen (Tuck 1979, 27). Gerson, like Ockham, saw mans dominium
as an extension of Gods, which meant that the freedom of God and the freedom of man
were continuous rather than in conflict (Tuck 1979, 30). Perhaps this could be construed
as the source of Hobbess mortall God. It was a freedom for which in the case of
mortal men there was no possible ontology. But it might characterize the Leviathan, that
artificial person who inhabited a timeless zone as sovereign inaugurated in perpetuity
and whose immortality, as an institution given life by its incumbents, allowed it to
escape the ontological constraints of mortal men, to whom freedom is in Hobbess view
denied. Ius, for Gerson, Tuck argues, was dispositional, a facultas or power in
accordance with right reason, whereas the Romans saw libertas conflicting with ius
(Tuck 1979, 25). But Hobbes, in his effort to break with scholasticism and as part of his
strategy of applying Occams razor to superfluous entities, tried to avoid ascribing
faculties to human beings; not always successfully, as we shall see.
Liberty is sovereigntys flip side, and it is almost certainly in the context of
Roman Law and its reformulation in national civil codes that the question of liberty, this
concept which his metaphysics does not allow, first comes up for Hobbess attention.
Hobbess theory of liberty in the Elements is, I suggest, a highly original, but still
recognizable, gloss on Civil Law, and in particular the development of the theory of
sovereignty that dates from the merum imperium debate between the Glossators and
Postglossators, to which Bodin had so significantly contributed.
Sovereignty and Liberty
It is my general thesis that, just as Hobbess commentary on Thomas Whites De
mundo was designed to insinuate himself into the company of the French savants as a
philosopher, so the point of De cive, and Hobbess translation of The Elements into
Latin is a bold bid to be the new Bodin with a civil science that is Roman Law, or civil
law, based. Hobbess theory of freedom is much closer to the civil law conception of the
Digest than is usually understood. It represents a close reading of the maxim liber non
servus which was precisely designed in Roman Law to contest the notion of freedom as
freedom from domination, the basis of what the Romans termed the freedom of the
Greeks, or the idea of direct or plebiscitary democracy. Hobbess ruling dichotomies:
protection/obedience, and freedom/slavery are precisely consistent with Roman Law
They simply follow from the principle liber non servus of the Law of the Twelve
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Tables, which went on to specify all relations between liberi homini as governed by a
grid of patron/client relations, which at the same time were relations of
domination/subordination.
The Elements of Law, a work intended to reorient the constitutional debates of
the Short Parliament concerning the royal prerogative, was perhaps unsurprisingly also
Hobbess first, and in some ways most startling, work on liberty. Hobbes treats liberty
in the framework in which it is most tractable, and that in which both Bodin and Grotius
treat it, namely Roman of civil law. Roman Law distinguished between the condition of
natural liberty enjoyed by all human beings regardless of status, age, race, or gender, ius
naturale, compared with his condition under civil law and the regimes of ius gentium.
The distinction between freemen and slaves is of paramount importance in Roman Law,
like the earlier Law of Twelve Tables, designed for a society divided by rigid class
orders. Hobbes restates the primary distinction of the Digest, liber non servus, as his
point of departure, locating the in-principle natural freedom of Roman Law, ius
naturale, in the state of nature, departure from which by way of contract, is necessarily
to enter a state of subjection and the regime of national lex in Roman Law, ius
gentium.
By conquest and by contract, the sovereign acquires a right of absolute
dominion over the conquered [and] may say of his servant, that he is his, as he may of
any other thing (Hobbes 1969, 22.2, 128; Skinner 2008, 52). He says of the state of
subjection enjoyed by the vanquished, in the case of subjects by contrast with slaves,
two elements of natural liberty remain (Skinner 2008, 53): 1) freedom of movement, so
that the vanquished should not be imprisoned or confined with the difficulty of ways,
and want of means for transportation of things necessary; and ought to be provided
with commodious passage from place to place (Hobbes 1969, 28.4, 180; Skinner
2008, 53). 2). Residual rights to the satisfaction of basic needs that follow from
covenanting for peace comprise: rights to all things necessary for life: fire, water, air,
and place to live in (Hobbes 1969, 17.2, 88; Skinner 2008, 54).
In De cive Hobbes takes an even tougher line. While acknowledging in The
Elements in remarkably respectful tones (according to Skinner 2008, 107), that
Aristotle saith well that the ground or intention of a democracy, is liberty in De cive
he claims this to be a categorical error of giving the name of liberty to what is in fact
sovereignty (libertatem pro imperio nominans, Hobbes 1983, 10.8, 176; Skinner
2008, 107). Aristotles claim that in a popular state there is liberty by supposition (in
statu populari libertas est ex suppositione, Hobbes 1983, 10.8, 176; Skinner 2008,
107), was in fact no more than the uncritical acknowledgement of the customs of his
day (ipse quoque conseutudine temporis, Hobbes 1983, 10.8, 176; Skinner 2008, 107).
Hobbes, with the importation of the Roman Law terminology of ius and lex,
employed in the long history of debate about constitutionalism between the Glossators
and Postglossators in France, had shifted specific English parliamentary debate about
the kings prerogative, cast in the language of Common Law and historical
constitutionalism, to a higher plane of abstraction, opening up possibilities dangerous
even for him. Arguing against divine right, Hobbes had set out the distinction most
clearly at the end of Part II of The Elements (Hobbes 1969, 2.10.5; Parkin, 2007,30):
525
The names lex, and jus, that is to say, law and right, are often confounded; and yet scarce
are there any two words of more contrary signification. For right is that liberty which the
law leaveth us; and laws those restraints by which we agree mutually to abridge one
anothers liberty. Law and right therefore are no less different than restraint and liberty,
which are contrary.
Dudley Digges (1644, 14; Parkin 2007, 30-1), for instance, was willing to employ
the same distinction as Hobbes in The Elements between ius and lex in his campaign
against Henry Parker, also building his position on consent theory, but in a manner
compatible with divine right theory, as Parkin (2007, 31 notes: it is God who validates
that consent and God alone who can impart to the magistrate the jus gladii, or the right
to take away life.
Jus gladii, the right to punish or, in the last instance, to take away life, follows
from the distinction between a free man and a slave, which is the first principle of
Hobbess doctrine of liberty and, by De cive, he has adopted an extreme view of the
restrictions that absolute sovereignty can place on citizens, whose scope for movement
is only superior to that of slaves in that they are not shackled, and who are still
technically free as long as they are not imprisoned. As Skinner notes, the freedom of
free men is scarcely greater than that of slaves, and the unfreedom of slaves is scarcely
greater than that of citizens (Skinner 2008, 122, citing Hobbes 1983, 9.9, 167). Skinner
finds Hobbess doctrine of liberty in De cive a more palatable doctrine than the version
that precedes it in The Elements, but I cannot agree. What is unique and problematic is
Hobbess adaptation of this civil law tradition of freedom to a notion of freedom as
unrestricted bodily movement governed by the will understood as the last appetite
catalysing action. As Bramhall astutely observed, Hobbes believed himself to have
found a Stoic reconciliation of freedom and necessity in the notion that no act is
uncaused. Consent is critical in the demarcation between the submission of the
vanquished and the slave to a master: the consent of the subject to sovereign power
means that there is no restriction on his natural liberty (Skinner 1990, 135-6, citing
Leviathan, 269). But this puts a burden on consent that Hobbess ontology does not
allow. More importantly, it allows freedom to cohabit with coercion. The development
of Hobbess theory was in the direction of ever greater scope for coercion under the
rubric of freedom, which turns on the right to punish.
The right to punish, or ius gladii, was the very fulcrum on which merum
imperium, the sovereignty of the princeps, rested, as established by the prehumanist
Glossators and Postglossators, who employed Roman Law to establish the powers of the
Holy Roman (German) Emperor against the Pope, and against the lesser powers of
vassal princes (Gilmore 1947). Accordingly, by the time he comes to writing De cive,
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his reformulation of the Elements in Latin for a continental audience, Hobbes is already
insisting that the sovereign must ensure the punishments ordained for every individual
breach of the laws are so great as to make it obvious that greater evil will arise from
breaking them than from not breaking them (Hobbes 1983, 6.4,138; Skinner 2008,114).
This way the sovereign ensures that we are coerced by our common fear of punishment
in such a way that we are prohibited by fear from disobedient and defiant acts (Hobbes
1983, 5.4,132; Skinner 2008, 114), in the same way that the schedule of rewards and
punishments attached to divine law prevents us from disobedience because our freedom
to resist is taken away (Hobbes 1983, 15.7, 223: libertas tollitur; Skinner 2008,
115).
Although the apparent rationale for civil law is to make possible the conditions for
the maximization of self-preservation and the right to bodily freedom, this is not the
reason why the generality of men obey the law, moved as they are by considerations of
wealth, command or sensual pleasure. The only mechanism by which they can be
brought to obey is by making them more terrified of the consequences of disobedience,
Skinner observes, citing Leviathan, 196, where the common Power of the state is
said to be capable of compelling by force, and 269, where the sovereign is described as
authorizing assault (Skinner 1990, 135, and notes,: for Covenants without swords are
but words, without a visible Power to keep them in awe, and tied them by fear of
punishment (Skinner 1990, 135, and notes, citing Leviathan, 223, c.f., also 343, 355).
Conclusion
Scholars continue to debate whether or not Hobbess concept of natural rights
(as a translation of Roman Law ius naturale) was primarily indebted to the Frenchman,
Bodin, or the Dutchman, Hugo Grotius (Tuck 1993, 304-6, Skinner 2008, 39), but more
important is the fact that Jean Bodin and Hugo Grotius were both civil lawyers, and this
is the tradition to which Hobbess notion of liberty owes the most. It seems likely that it
was Bodin who introduced Hobbes to the long tradition of the Glossators and
Postglossators, focussed on addressing the famous question debated between Aso and
Accursius, to whom belongs merum imperium (Gilmore). But we have compelling
evidence that Grotius was the one who put the question on the table for early modern
empires, and he even spoke of a natural right to punish (Tuck 1979, 62). A recent
essay by Dieter Huening (2007) on Hobbes on The Right to Punish, demonstrates that
Hobbess construal of this right, as transmitted by Pufendorf, is the version that stands
in the German civil code to this day, flagging the centrality of the right to punish to
the concept of sovereignty in Roman Law.
If The Elements was written as a brief for the Earl of Newcastle in the
circumstances of the Short Parliament, De cive was probably written for Hobbess
charge in Paris, the Prince of Wales and future Charles II. It tested the limits of
absolutism as a policy manual for the Prince, and what he might learn about the
advantages a Civil Law based system could furnish him. That is precisely what
Hobbess system comprises, and its development from The Elements to De cive to
Leviathan is always in the direction of testing the limits of restrictions upon liberty
consistent with the status of the freeman as opposed to the slave, which become more
527
and more extreme. I believe that my interpretation can be vindicated in terms of the
increasing outrage with which Hobbess doctrine was received as it progressed through
the three works.
Context is of paramount importance in reading Hobbes on liberty. For Hobbes
himself belongs to the grid of patron/client relations familiar from Roman Law, and
both Hobbes and Locke, as baronial secretaries, were essentially writers of policie,
and that means that it is from the point of view of the governor and not of the governed
that they write. Deborah Baumgold (2005, 294-6), discussing Hobbess and Lockes
theories of social contract, argues that they were political rather than metaphysical.
Hobbes and Locke were still preoccupied with ancient regime questions about
resistance, despite their universalist rhetoric, she declares, and so for instance, Hobbess
concept of author was no more than a fiction to maintain sitting governments
(Baumgold 2005, 295).
This essay seeks to develop this thesis by specification, to argue that Hobbes, the
courtiers client, who spent his entire career in the service of the baronial Cavendishes
of Derbyshire, was occupationally disposed to be as trimming as Lasletts Locke, the
Whig pamphleteer who wrote to promote Shaftesburys purposes (Baumgold, 2005, 305
n. 18). Specifically, I hope to show that the very power and urgency of Hobbess
theorization of human nature, responded to specific, but changing, circumstances and
their challenge. But even if Baumgolds thesis is generally true that Hobbess doctrines,
like Lockes, were political rather than metaphysical, it must be pointed out that
Hobbess mechanistic ontology was probably worked out before his politics took their
final form. And always with the stated purpose of demonstrating the fundaments of
human behaviour, necessary for any statesman to understand. So Baumgolds thesis
(2005), is complicated by the fact in the case of Hobbes his metaphysics is privileged,
formed under the early impact of Galileo and Mersenne, as we know from his poem and
prose Vitas, as well as from secondary sources.
REFERENCES:
Primary Sources (London unless otherwise indicated)
Bodin, Jean, 1576. Les six livres de la republique (Paris). Richard Knolles translation,
Six Bookes of the Republique, (London, 1606)
Bramhall, John, 1655. Defence of True Liberty, in Hobbes, The Questions Concerning
Liberty, Necessity, And Chance, in The English Work of Thomas Hobbes, ed.
William Molesworth (London, 1841) 11 vols (henceforth EW), vol. 5.
Bramhall, John, 1842-5. The works of the most reverend father in God, John Bramhall,
D. D. sometime Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Primate and Metropolitan of All
Ireland, 5 vols, ed. J. H. Parker (Oxford).
Digges, Dudley, 1644. The Unlawefulness of Subjects taking up Srmes against their
Soveraigne. Oxford.
Eachard, John, 1673. Some opinions of Mr. Hobbs considered in a second dialogue
between Philautus and Timothy.
528
Hobbes, Thomas, 1840, Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners and
Religion of Thomas Hobbes (EW, 5).
Hobbes, Thomas, 1969, The Elements of the Law Natural and Politic, ed. Ferdinand
Tnnies, 2nd edn, ed. M. M. Goldsmith. London.
Hobbes, Thomas, 1983, De Cive: The Latin Version, ed. Howard Warrender, Oxford,
Clarendon edition, vol. 2.
Hobbes, Thomas, 1983. De cive: The Latin Version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford,
Clarendon edition of Hobbess complete works, vol. 2.
Hobbes, Thomas, 1996, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme & Power of a Common-wealth
Ecclesiasticall and Civill, ed. Richard Tuck, revised students edn, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press.
Hobbes, Thomas, 1998. On the Citizen, ed., and trans. Richard Tuck and Michael
Silverthorpe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Justinian 1985. Digest, ed. Theodor Mommsen and Paul Krueger, 4 vols (Philadelphia,
1985)
Tennison, Thomas, 1670. The creed of Mr. Hobbs examined in a feigned conference
between him and a student in divinity.
Secondary Sources
Baumgold, Deborah, 2004, The Composition of Hobbess Elements of Law, History
of Political Thought, vol. 25, 1, 16-42.
Baumgold, Deborah, 2005, Hobbess and Lockes Contract Theories: Political not
Metaphysical, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy,
vol, 8, no 3, 289-308.
Baumgold, Deborah, 2008, The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation, Political
Theory, 36, 827-55.
Dzelzainis, Martin, 1984, Marvell Transposed, English 33, pp. 140-7.
Dzelzainis, Martin, 1989, Edward Hyde and Thomas Hobbess Elements of Law,
Natural and Politic, Historical Journal 32:2, pp. 303-17.
Dzelzainis, Martin, 1990, Undoubted Realities: Clarendon on Sacrilege, Historical
Journal 33:3, pp. 515-40.
Gilmore, Myron, 1941, Argument from Roman Law in Political Thought 1200-1600,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Giorgini, Giovanni, 2008, The place of the Tyrant in Machiavellis Political Thought
and the Literary Genre of The Prince, History of Political Thought, 29, 2: pp.
230-56.
Helgerson, Richard, 1992. Forms of Nationhood. Reply to Frank Kermode. New
York
Review
of
Books,
September
24,
1992:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1992/sep/24/forms-of-nationhood.
Huening, Dieter, 2007. Hobbes on the Right to Punish, in The Cambridge Companion
to Hobbess Leviathan, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 217 -40.
Mommsen, Theodore, 1876, Rmisches Staatsrecht, 2nd edition, Leipzig.
Pacchi, Arrigo, 1998, Diritti naturali e libert politica in Hobbes, Scritti hobbesiani
(1978-1990), ed. Agostino Lupoli, Milan, pp. 145-62.
529
530
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The paper will explore the conceptual and rhetorical influences of the French Nouvelle
Droite movement within the contemporary Finnish radical right and populist party the
True Finns. The Nouvelle Droite, the New Right, is here broadly understood as the
GRECE movement founded in France in 1968 and associated with Alain de Benoist.
The paper focuses on the premises of the anti-immigration discourse of the True
Finns party and analyses how they reflect the Nouvelle Droite strategically and
ideologically. What kinds of conceptual transfers and rhetorical turns can be detected in
the contemporary party discourse compared to the earlier Nouvelle Droite discourse?
What has changed and what has remained the same in this rhetorical transfer from one
national, temporal and intellectual context to another one?
One faction from the True Finns party, the so-called immigration critics, bases
its anti-immigration stance largely on the moderate New Right themes including
defence of cultural differentialism and hostility towards multiculturalism and
egalitarianism. Even if some important ideological differences between the New Right
and the True Finns must be recognised, some similar rhetorical strategies exist between
the two, e.g. the use of reverse rhetoric in which the concepts of political opponents,
such as totalitarianism or racism, are redefined for ones own purpose. Overall the
modern xenophobic discourse echoes in many respects the ground that the New Right
has once made. Therefore the analysis of the True Finns party can be viewed as an
example of how these rhetorical strategies and conceptual innovations still affect the
contemporary European radical right ideology.
The True Finns party gained a victory in 2011 election and got 39
representatives to the Finnish Parliament. The party is now divided into two main
factions which are increasingly in competition with each other. One faction is
comprised of the immigration critics with their highly exclusive ideology. The other
incorporates old populists around the party leader Timo Soini who defends the little
people against "the big ones", the EU etc. and thereby continues the traditional populist
call to the people.
531
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The discipline of International Relations (IR) has long been debating the ways of
accommodating intellectual history in its political and research agenda. In this paper, I
focus on history of concepts as one of contextualist approaches to intellectual history
and political thought and its complicated reception within the IR literature. More
specifically, I discuss Quentin Skinners approach to the history of concepts, as one of
the most prominent within contextualism, and the use that historically sensitive IR
approaches can make of it. This approach was rejected by many IR scholars for various
reasons, partly due to an overall confusion about the nature and scope of contextualist
approaches. In this paper, I investigate the nature of the scruples that contextualistfriendly IR scholarship has with Skinners contextualism and the reasons for its more
serious critics to reject it altogether. I suggest that the focus on Skinners more recent
rhetorical writings and his re-focusing on genealogy can pave the way for new
methodologically rigorous historical research in IR and political theory. I will proceed,
firstly, by outlining some of the major problems in the understanding of context and
Skinners early writings on linguistic theory and action that baffled many scholars. I
briefly examine the promise of the Skinnerian approach to overcome the fallacy of
presentism in traditional history of political thought, which, allegedly, lapsed into a
similar problem due to the under-theorization of the notions of meaning and concept.
Secondly, I demonstrate that some of these problems may remain hidden in Skinners
shift towards the study of rhetoric as a theory of conceptual change. Thirdly, I argue that
issues related to presentism and the understanding of meaning can be better accounted,
if not sorted out entirely, by examining and further expanding Skinners genealogical
agenda.
532
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Quentin Skinner teaches us useful lessons on the analysis of conceptual change:
political concepts mostly are used with a purpose, they do not change accidentally but
as results of conceptual debates, and these debates are fuelled by often deliberate
rhetorical moves of interpreting, re-interpreting and re-evaluating political concepts.
These ideas help to analyse what I would like to call the micro-politics of conceptual
change.
The paper will deal with the possible uses of the methodology of rhetoric and the
rhetorical perspective on conceptual change as offered by Skinner for the analysis of the
micro-politics of conceptual change with regard to European integration. Micro-politics
of conceptual change (short-term processes, detailed analysis) are seen as one
dimension of conceptual changes related to European integration, while macro-politics
(long-term processes, overviews) can be seen as the other dimension. It is argued that
a) conceptual history of European integration is a field requiring further research
b) both approaches (micro-politics and macro-politics) represent useful and
complementary perspectives
The paper will end with some examples of analyses.
TEXT/TEXTO:
There is a notorious difficulty of scholars in political science and related areas to
understand the EU polity otherwise than by the excusing term sui generis (for a
discussion of this see Lietzmann 2011). This state of affairs refers to the EU practice of
creating institutions that try to combine different modes of operation and legitimisation.
In terms of classical political systems analyses the EUs regime indeed is not easy to
categorise, it may even be termed a hybrid combining elements of presidential, semipresidential and parliamentary systems (Tiilikainen and Wiesner i.E.).
I argue that besides classifications as such, it is important to take another
characteristic of the EUs regime into account: its continuous transformation. EU
institutions since the beginning of integration change their character, competencies, and
533
members; moreover, they interact with each other, often via power struggles aiming at
strengthening or not losing positions and influence. I consider the EUs regime in this
sense to be shaped by institutions, rules and their members who act politically (see
Palonen 2003 on categories for analysing political action), using the explicit as well as
implicit possibilities for action offered by the regulations of the Treaties and the rules of
procedure of the institutions.
All EU institutions interpret both in their acting, and mostly to their respective
advantage, in particular when encountering ambiguities in regulations or when facing
situations and challenges not covered by the existing rules and established practices.
This is particularly important since the EU regime is still in the making and neither its
rules nor its routines are as well established as they are in most nation states. Shaping
them and thus the roles and influences of the EU institutions hence is an important part
of EU inter-institutional politics.
Thus, I suggest to enlarge the focus of analysis on the EUs political regime
beyond the established approaches in EU studies whose limitations recently have been
discussed by Niilo Kauppi (Kauppi 2010)1 and to concentrate on the procedural and
institutional forms and practices of political action between the institutions which shape
the EUs political regime from within, meaning the interplay between the EUs
institutions.
It is an idea I got in a joint work-in-progress with Kari Palonen to develop a
framework for analysing the related political practices and strategies, drawing on
methodological perspectives and findings from conceptual history and political rhetoric.
The point of this approach is that there hardly exists any as multi-level, as complex and
as dynamic polity as the EU. Just therefore it is striking to note that in the existing EU
studies the institutions and political powers of the Union practically never have been
analysed in terms of their political actions and related to their political strategies and
rhetorical genres.
Using this research perspective allows to open up a procedural analytical
perspective on the EU as a political regime being in perpetual change. These changes
are shaped by the classical means of political debate and rhetoric as well as by their
underlying political strategies. I will in the following sketch some elements of a
research agenda for analysing what I term the micro-politics of conceptual and political
change in the EU, regarding both the intra- and inter-institutional politics in the EU.
To develop this agenda, I will first look at the EU institutional regime from
without, discussing the EUs institutions as they are defined in the Treaties. I then
1
In a recent critique of the ontology of established approaches in EU studies, Nillo Kauppi argued that
they use an exclusive ontological framework reproducing dualisms (objectivesubjective, individual
institution, socializationcalculation, interestnorm, supranationalnational and so on), which prevent
research from elaborating a more complex, thick empirical description of EU integration. He suggests
an alternative, inclusive and reflexive framework seeking to go beyond these dualisms and developing a
relational approach that takes into account the interactive character of institutions and the individuals and
groups inhabiting them (Kauppi 2010).
534
develop a perspective for analysing political and conceptual change from within the
EUs institutional regime, regarding EU institutions as political actors.
1. Looking at the EU from without: The EUs institutional regime after Lisbon
The Treaty of Lisbon is setting out a regime consisting of a multiplicity of
institutions there are more of them than in most classical national political regimes.
The Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (afterwards TFEU) states:
The Unions institutions shall be:
the European Parliament,
the European Council,
the Council,
the European Commission (hereinafter referred to as the Commission),
the Court of Justice of the European Union,
the European Central Bank,
the Court of Auditors Article 13, TFEU (European Union 2010))
Compared to a classical model of parliament with a 1st and 2nd chamber, a
government, and/or a president, it becomes obvious that the EU regime is characterised
by mixed functions:
The European Parliament is Article 14 of the TFEU states:
The European Parliament shall, jointly with the Council, exercise legislative and
budgetary functions. It shall exercise functions of political control and
consultation as laid down in the Treaties. It shall elect the President of the
Commission.
2. The European Parliament shall be composed of representatives of the Unions
citizens. They shall not exceed seven hundred and fifty in number, plus the
President. Representation of citizens shall be degressively proportional, with a
minimum threshold of six members per Member State. No Member State shall
be allocated more than ninety-six seats.
The European Council shall adopt by unanimity, on the initiative of the
European Parliament and with its consent, a decision establishing the
composition of the European Parliament, respecting the principles referred to in
the first subparagraph.
3. The members of the European Parliament shall be elected for a term of five
years by direct universal suffrage in a free and secret ballot.
4. The European Parliament shall elect its President and its officers from among
its members.
The EP is a parliament with most parliamentary characteristics, but its role is
different from parliaments in parliamentary regimes for example with respect to the lack
of a formal right to legislative initiative and in relation to the other institutions.
The European Council (EC) has been institutionalised in a new role by the
Lisbon Treaty which came into force in December 2009: the former meetings of the
535
Heads of state, which took place up to four times a year, were now made permanent,
and the new institution was given a constitutional role in the EUs regime.
Article 14 TFEU states:
1. The European Council shall provide the Union with the necessary impetus for
its development and shall define the general political directions and priorities
thereof. It shall not exercise legislative functions.
2. The European Council shall consist of the Heads of State or Government of
the Member States, together with its President and the President of the
Commission. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and
Security Policy shall take part in its work.
The EC meets twice every six months, convened by its President. Except where
the Treaties provide otherwise, decisions of the European Council are taken by
consensus. By qualified majority, the EC elects a permanent president for a term of two
and a half years, renewable once. His/her role is defined as such:
6. The President of the European Council:
(a) shall chair it and drive forward its work;
(b) shall ensure the preparation and continuity of the work of the European
Council in cooperation with the President of the Commission, and on the basis
of the work of the General Affairs Council;
(c) shall endeavour to facilitate cohesion and consensus within the European
Council;
(d) shall present a report to the European Parliament after each of the meetings
of the European Council.
The President of the European Council shall, at his level and in that capacity,
ensure the external representation of the Union on issues concerning its common
foreign and security policy, without prejudice to the powers of the High Representative
of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security. The President of the European Council
shall not hold a national office.
The EC hence may not act as a legislative body This role was and is assigned to
the Council of Ministers (Council). Article 16 TFEU defines the role of the Council as
such:
The Council shall, jointly with the European Parliament, exercise legislative and
budgetary functions. It shall carry out policy-making and coordinating functions
as laid down in the Treaties.
The article also specifies that the Council meets in different configurations, since
it shall consist of a representative of each Member State at ministerial level, who may
commit the government of the Member State in question and cast its vote.. The
Council configuration depends on the policy matters that are discussed.
536
The Council act by a qualified majority (except where the Treaties provide
otherwise), which is defined from November 2014 as at least 55 % of the members of
the Council, comprising at least fifteen of them and representing Member States
comprising at least 65 % of the population of the Union. A blocking minority must
include at least four Council members.
A Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member
States is responsible for preparing the work of the Council.
Article 16 (8) includes a decisive new provision introduced by the Lisbon
Treaty:
The Council shall meet in public when it deliberates and votes on a draft
legislative act. To this end, each Council meeting shall be divided into two parts,
dealing respectively with deliberations on Union legislative acts and nonlegislative activities.
The commission shows characteristics of an EU government, as laid out in
Article 17 (1) TFEU:
The Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union and take
appropriate initiatives to that end. It shall ensure the application of the Treaties,
and of measures adopted by the institutions pursuant to them. It shall oversee the
application of Union law under the control of the Court of Justice of the
European Union. It shall execute the budget and manage programmes. It shall
exercise coordinating, executive and management functions, as laid down in the
Treaties. With the exception of the common foreign and security policy, and
other cases provided for in the Treaties, it shall ensure the Unions external
representation. It shall initiate the Unions annual and multiannual programming
with a view to achieving inter-institutional agreements.
Moreover, it is the only body with a right to law initiatives (Article 17(2) TFEU)
2. Union legislative acts may only be adopted on the basis of a Commission proposal,
except where the Treaties provide otherwise. Other acts shall be adopted on the basis of
a Commission proposal where the Treaties so provide.
Further definitions set out in Article 17, TFEU are that the Commissions term
of office shall be five years and the members of the commission until October 2014
consist of one commissioner by member state; from nov 2014, a smaller commission
based on a rotating system will be established.
The President of the Commission is in a decisive position, laying down
guidelines for the work of the Commission, deciding on the internal organisation of the
Commission, appointing Vice-Presidents among the members of the Commission, and
having the right to request commissioners to resign.
Article 17 (7) strengthens the role of the European Parliament in the election of
the Commission president:
537
Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having
held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified
majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of
the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by
a majority of its component members. If he does not obtain the required
majority, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall within one
month propose a new candidate who shall be elected by the European Parliament
following the same procedure,
The collegium of the other commissioners is elected as it was the practice for the
last years: the Council adopts a list of persons proposed, and the list is subject to
a vote of consent in the EP. On the basis of this Consent the European Council
appoints the new commission with qualified majority.
The Commission, as a body is responsible to the European Parliament. It may
vote on a motion of censure of the Commission. If such a motion is successful, the
Commission resigns as a body.
2. Shaping the EU-regime from within: EU institutions as political actors
The EUs political regime throughout the whole integration process never has
been static. On the contrary, it has been much more dynamic than in most of its member
states, since there has been a continual development, and no finalit of European
integration is in view so far. The EU is a political regime in perpetual change.
The organisation of the Iron and Steel Union in the early 1950s and then that of
the European Economic Community founded with the Treaty of Rome in 1958,
followed an inter-governmental model with a subordinate parliamentarians council that
was elected by national parliaments and summoned rarely. An original feature in the
EEC was the strong Commission, which was not merely a secretariat but had executive
powers of either governmental or administrative type that put limits to the intergovernmental powers at the fields agreed to belong to the Community. The Commissars
have increasingly been elected among politicians, and below them a multi-level
administrative apparatus has been built. The names Commission and Commissars dont
correspond either to the ancient Roman model of delegates sent to mission for special
tasks or the Soviet model of peoples commissars understood in principle as revocable
delegates with a bound mandate. Their status rather resembles that of ministers
responsible to the inter-governmental council of ministers but in the fields of the aquis
communitaire the Commission and the Commissars soon developed independent
powers of political initiative.
Out of the original setting institutionalised by the 1951 ECSC Treaty and the
1957 Treaty of Rome, only three bodies have kept most of their characteristics: the
Commission as Guardian of the Treaties, the European Court of Justice, who has to
interpret ECSC and EEC laws, and the Council of Ministers, who in those earlier days
of EU integration had a similar role as today, deciding on EEC laws. The EEC also
disposed of a parliamentary assembly, consisting of delegates from the member states
and having only consultative function. Two moves of the EP have made the EEC, later
538
In sum, the EU institutions use their procedural and rhetorical roles to shape, and
possibly improve, their positions in the EUs regime. In their political and rhetorical
acting they always address two levels: a policy-oriented level, directed at the output of a
law project or a policy, and a balance-of-power-oriented level related to the powerplay
between the institutions.
Such a dual dimension of institutions political acts is nothing new and
obviously also exists in national political regimes. In these cases it mostly has a ritual
and symbolic role, since the institutional roles mostly are well-established and seldom
questioned. The effects of the inter-institutional powerplay are much more decisive in
the EU, whose regime is much less stable and much more in development. This is why
it is my key argument that the EU is decisively shaped by micro-politics of conceptual
change.
REFERENCES:
European Parliament. 2009. BUILDING PARLIAMENT: 50 YEARS OF
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT HISTORY 19582008. Accessed May 08, 2012.
http://www.abgs.gov.tr/files/ardb/evt/1_avrupa_birligi/1_1_tarihce/50_years_of_europe
an_parliament_history.pdf.
European Union. 2010. Consolidated Treaties. Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Accessed
February
05,
2013.
http://bookshop.europa.eu/isbin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/EU-Bookshop-Site/en_GB/-/EUR/ViewPublicationStart?PublicationKey=QC3209190.
Kauppi, Niilo. 2010. The political ontology of European integration. Comparative
European Politics 8 (1): 1936.
Lietzmann, Hans J. 2011. European Constitutional Politics and Contingency. The
European Union as a sui generis political entity. In Parliament and Europe:
rhetorical and conceptual studies on their contenporary connections. Edited by
Claudia Wiesner, Tapani Turkka, and Kari Palonen, 93107. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Palonen, Kari. 2003. Four times of politics: Polics, Politics, Politicking and
Politicization. Alternatives (28): 17186.
Palonen, Kari, and Claudia Wiesner. The European Council Second Chamber,
Congress of Ambassadors or Federal Presidency?
Tiilikainen, Teija, and Claudia Wiesner. i.E. Towards a European parliamentarism? In
Parliament and Parliamentarism. A comparative history of disputes on a European
concept. Edited by Pasi Ihailainen, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen. New York:
Berghahn Books.
Wiesner, Claudia. Forthcoming. The European Parliament as special parliament and
political actor: Dissensus, debate and deliberation as tools. In The Politics of
Dissensus: Parliament in Debate. Edited by Kari Palonen, Jos M. Rosales, and
Tapani Turkka: Cantabria University Press & McGraw Hill.
541
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
In just a few years, from 1977 to 1980, the language of consensus revamped Spanish
parliamentary politics. Being so unconventionally parliamentary, the idea of consensus
brought together opposite political parties around a series of audacious economic and
political reforms. Clearly a transient strategy, it managed to consolidate liberalizing and
democratic changes. By early 1981, its capacity seemed to be worn out. Yet it survived
afterwards but mostly as an inspiring motif that awkwardly accommodated to politics as
usual. This paper presents the outline for a comparative study on the uses of consensus
in three parliamentary moments: the Spanish Second Republic, especially since 1931 to
1936; the transition to democracy years, from 1977 to 1981; and the recent legislative
period of 2004 to 2008.
542
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Reception studies intersect in various ways the history of concepts, becoming in some
cases relevant laboratories to a historical semantics approach. The history of ideas in
Turkey, which has a large part to the issue of cultural and disciplinary transfers-and
specifically philosophical-, favored the paradigm of univocal circulation of ideas on the
one hand (from France to the Ottoman Empire and to Turkey, for example), and
between different fields and disciplines (philosophical, academic and political fields) on
the other. The contextualization of philosophical concepts reception generated an
intensive use of a paradigm of modernization and westernization, constituted as the
backdrop for the movement of creation of new structures that hold discursive
monopolies (university, forms of government, structures of education) in the ending
ottoman empire and the new republican Turkey. The role played by the discourse effects
of some intellectuals texts of the studied eras on the construction of such a historical
paradigm is important, since the paradigm permeated by capillarity the studies
themselves, presenting the creation of new disciplines as a marker of modernization.
Our approach will not be to conduct the trial of the use of such paradigms, nor of
the opposition of the concepts creation context vs their reception context, . It is rather
to identify the coding at work, if possible, in reception studies, and to question the
inevitability of a minimal paradigmatic approach, which, as in a narrative fiction, allows
an actualization by personification of a conceptual system and its movements (an
actantial circulation of ideas pattern). Paradigm becomes a "hyper concept", which
organizes the permeability between historical discourse and its object considered as
historically concrete. In this case, to consider conceptual systems (including
philosophical ones) not as uniform units, but as vectors of a conceptual code" likely to
duplications and mutations in different contexts, may allow to avoid their reification
through a univocal circulation model.
An overview of reception studies of philosophical ideas in Turkey and of the
methods of this history, his inflection, more or less marked by these paradigms, will
allow us to understand what the image of the circulation of concepts can bring to
543
544
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The act of declaring the rights of man, either in the American colonies (1776), France
(1789), or the Dutch Republic (1795), as Lynn Hunt has recently pointed out, brought
about a certain inner logic. Once the universal rights of humanity were declared, so the
reasoning behind this logic goes, the floodgates were open: not only religious
minorities, Jews, and women, but also free people of colour and black slaves could now
claim equal rights on the basis of being member of the party of humanity. Accordingly,
the age of the Atlantic revolutions (c. 1776-1800) figures prominently and is often
presented as a key turning point within the broader conceptual history of citizenship as
the concept of citizenship became infused with radical notions of (universal) equality
and democratic self-governance.
But what this logic and the claims that drew upon this logic also generated was
the mobilization, invocation and sophistication of an arsenal of concepts, arguments,
and theories to circumvent or simply refute this universalistic logic. The international
reception of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) represents a pivotal moment in this
process. It incited the articulation of deeply rooted assumptions, mixing theories of
historical progress and civilizational infantilism with notions of the prerequisites and
capacities individuals required in order to justifiably claim the rights and assume the
duties of modern, enlightened citizenship.
My paper chapter consists of a comparative analysis of the reactions to, and
reflection on, the Haitian Revolution, in order to understand in what ways these
responses helped to shape revolutionary and post-revolutionary concepts of citizenship
in France, the Dutch Republic and the United States. In what kind of broader arguments
concerning the nature and scope of the notion of citizenship did the Haitian Revolution
came to play a role? And how did the Haitian Revolution come to function within such
conceptions of citizenship? Put differently, by examining the shifting reception and
perceptions of the successive phases and different aspects of the Haitian Revolution in
545
the Dutch Republic, France and the United States I try to trace the intellectual
consequences of one of the revolutionary eras most disruptive events in order to shed a
fresh light on how the concept of citizenship was redefined in the age of revolution.
TEXT/TEXTO:
Between 1789 and 1804 black slaves and free men of colour transformed the French
plantation colony of Saint Domingue into the independent state of Haiti. What initially
began as an attempt of white French planters seeking representation in the newly
summoned Estates General and wealthy so-called gens de couleur (free men of colour)
demanding an end to racial discrimination, turned into a full-blown revolution when a
massive slave insurrection broke out in the summer of 1791. A bloody civil war racked
the island for more than a decade. With French, Spanish, and English armies invading
the island and thousands of refugees fleeing to other Caribbean islands and North
America, the revolutionary events in Saint Domingue soon acquired international
dimensions. News of the islands disaster travelled far and wide.
The succession of revolutionary events that has come to be known as the Haitian
Revolution sent shockwaves throughout the Atlantic world. Depending on ones point
of view, Dutch, French and American observers in one way or another related the
reports and news coming from the West Indies to the larger context of the Atlantic
revolutions. More in particular, the Haitian Revolution forced American, Dutch and
French revolutionaries to reflect anew on the scope of revolutionary citizenship and the
core, often implicit, assumptions underlying it.
In this paper I present a comparative analysis of the reactions to, and reflection
on, the Haitian Revolution and its conjectured implications in order to understand in
what ways these responses helped to shape revolutionary and post-revolutionary
concepts of citizenship in France, the Dutch Republic and the United States. In what
kind of broader arguments concerning the nature and scope of the notion of citizenship
did the Haitian Revolution came to play a role? And how did the Haitian Revolution
come to function within such concepts of citizenship? Put differently, by examining the
shifting reception and perceptions of the successive phases and different aspects of the
Haitian Revolution in the Dutch Republic, France and the United States this chapter
traces the intellectual consequences of one of the revolutionary eras most disruptive
events in order to shed a fresh light on how the concept of citizenship was redefined in
the age of revolution.
The act of declaring the rights of man, either in the 1776 American Declaration
of Independence, the 1789 French Dclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, or
the 1795 Dutch Verklaring der rechten van den mensch en den burger, as Lynn Hunt
has recently pointed out, brought about a certain inner logic. Once the universal rights
of humanity were declared, so the reasoning behind this logic goes, the floodgates were
open: religious minorities, free people of colour, Jews, women, all could now claim
546
equal rights on the basis of being member of the party of humanity. 1 The generality of
the declarations wording man, humanity, citizen exceeded the act of its
enunciation, as tienne Balibar put it.2 It provoked radical interpretations of equality
that the original drafters might not have imagined and most of them did not conceive at
all.3
What this logic and the claims that drew upon this logic also generated,
however, was the mobilization, invocation and sophistication of an arsenal of concepts,
arguments, and theories to circumvent or simply refute this logic. The international
reception of the Haitian Revolution in particular represents a pivotal moment in this
process.
In my analysis of the early reception history of the Haitian Revolution I roughly
distinguish four key issues: first, the question of the extent of the political realm of the
modern republic; second, the civilizational, moral, and political status of black slaves,
and whether declarations of the rights of man were applicable to them, both in theory
and practice; third, the widespread disillusionment about, and disenchantment with,
universal ideals, as well as a more specific rejection of French philosophical
radicalism; and lastly, the invocation and articulation of a discourse of gradual
emancipation and regeneration of black slaves (as well as non-western peoples in
general).
I
Revolutionary Saint Domingue questioned the limits of the (imperial)
sovereignty of the French (and hence the Dutch) state, especially since rights
declarations had relocated this sovereignty within the nation. Whereas the American
Revolution had established a close link between consent, citizenship and national selfdetermination, creating outside the boundaries of the British Empire a new polity on the
basis of the at least in theory voluntary consent of its citizens, this spectre of
colonial secession and its impact on the reconfiguration of the notion of citizenship
within a republican empire would work out differently in the case of French Saint
1
L. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007)., pp.
146-76, esp. pp. 148-153.
2
E. Balibar, 'Citizen Subject', in: E. Cadava, P. Connor, andJ. Nancy (eds.) Who Comes
After the Subject? (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 33-57., at p. 52.
3
A.G. Sepinwall, The Abb Grgoire and the French Revolution the Making of Modern
Universalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)., pp. 90-91;K.M. Baker,
'The Idea of a Declaration of Rights', in: D. Van Kley (ed.) The French idea of Freedom :
The Old regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1994), pp. 154-196.; pp. 156-57, 191; M. Gauchet, 'Rights of Man', in: M. Ozouf
and F. Furet (eds.) A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 818-828. For a critical discussion of the relationship
between the language of equality and liberty in American legal documents and its
meaning in the historical context of the late eighteenth century, see M. Rozbicki, Culture
and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2011), pp. 17-33.
547
Domingue, and eventually the Dutch colonies. 4 The French and Dutch imperial
revolutions did not imply a shift from overseas empire to nation-state. It involved, as
Jeremy Adelman has argued, the exploration of models of re-accommodating colonies
into imperial formations [] that would stabilize, not dissolve, empires.5
The risk of colonial secession imperilled not only Frances economic interests
and symbolic power as an Atlantic empire, but also thwarted the endeavours of such
prominent revolutionaries as Mirabeau, the Abb Grgoire, Brissot and Condorcet of
carrying through what they saw as a universal revolutionary project, that is to say,
proclaiming within the French empire civic and political equality to all free men
regardless of their colour. In a sense the ways in which revolutionary discourse was put
to use by on the one hand North American revolutionaries during the 1770s and 1780s,
and on the other hand radical egalitarian French revolutionaries during the 1790s had
reversed. Whereas American revolutionaries invoked the notions of the rights of man
and national sovereignty so as to legitimize their break-up from the British Empire,
French revolutionaries invoked the rights of man in order to keep Saint Domingue
within the French empire and secure the unity of the political community. In the view of
the latter the task, or as it would be called in the nineteenth century, the mission
civilisatrice, including ameliorating the condition of slaves and regenerating the
uncivilized so as to make them fit for republican citizenship, was best secured in the
hands of a metropolitian based political elite in the centre of power.6 The lesson drawn
from the colonial political elites stubborn opposition to granting free men of colour
equal rights made clear that this task could not be entrusted to them. Accordingly, as
Marcel Dorigny rightly remarked, the doctrine of the Amis de Noirs was abolitionist,
but by no means anticolonialist.7 Instead their agenda consisted of a redefinition of the
notion of citizenship within the framework of republican empire. This did not imply a
first step from Atlantic empire to nation-state, but an effort to make the French empire
compatible with the ideals of the French revolution. The imperial dimension of modern
republican citizenship was perhaps most concisely summarized by Antoine-JeanThomas Bonnemain: According to the declaration of the rights of man, all individuals
that constitute the empire must be citizens; their rights are guaranteed by the
constitution. 8 In the Batavian Republic an advisory draft written in late 1797 by
representatives Samuel Wiselius and Bogilaus von Liebeherr for the section on colonies
offered to the constitutional committee equally envisioned a similar radical egalitarian
republican empire: as foundational principle, the advisory draft held, we maintain that
equality, the foundation of civic freedom, allowing no distinction in rights between
4
J.H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870 (Chapel Hill, N.C.:
University of North Carolina Press, 1978).
5
J. Adelman, 'An Age of Imperial Revolutions', American Historical Review, 113 (2008),
at p. 332.
6
P. Rge, l'conomie politique en France et les origines intellectuelles de la mission
civilisatrice en Afrique, Dix-huitime sicle 44 (2012), 117-130.
7
{{1227 Dorigny,Marcel 1993}}. Cf. F. Gauthier, [review] Yves Benot, La Rvolution
franaise et la fin des colonies, Annales historiques de la Rvolution franaise, 1988, vol.
274, pp. 491-493.
8
Bonnemain, Rgnration des colonies (1792), p. 95-96.
548
members of the same citizen-state (Burgerstaat), the rights as well as the duties of
Batavian citizens in Asia, Africa, and America must be like those that actually apply
within Europe.9 Hence, in the worldview of French and Dutch revolutionaries, In the
worldview of French and Dutch revolutionaries the vision of a republican empire could
be construed as a liberating ideology.10
However, whereas the case of free people of colour had definitively broadened
the scope of the nations colonial citizens, the question of black slaves incited a whole
new set of considerations.
II
The massive slave insurrection that erupted in August 1791 drastically altered
the picture of Saint Domingue. In the Dutch Republic the image of Saint Dominguan
whites and free people of colour brotherly celebrating July 14th, was substituted for, as
the Dutch lawyer and radical writer Pieter Paulus put it, scenes of destruction, murder,
arsons, in one word, civil war.11 The leading Orangist publicist Adriaan Kluit wrote
similarly of the islands catastrophic and miserable state.12 Such dire images of Saint
Domingue would haunt the minds of Dutch politicians, thinkers and journalists for years
to come. During a debate in the National Assembly in April 1797 over the advisory
report on colonial affairs as presented by a specially established committee, the
prominent representative Rutger-Jan Schimmelpenninck warned his colleagues that the
name of St. Domingo alone should make you think. It represented nothing less than
[t]he very voice of humanity and this voice calls out to you to be cautious. The
committees report on colonial affairs did not mince its words either. Saint Domingue
had fallen into the most woeful chaos and miserable savagery. In a follow-up report
the chairman of the committee Hendrik Jacob Floh at one point even confessed that the
committee members gladly would have liked to cast a veil over the horrors of Saint
Domingue, since the disasters had been covered by the press in such a way that
everyone should by then have been sufficiently instructed and warned.13
The image of a once wealthy and orderly colony racked by horrific violence and
devastation came to dominate American, Dutch and French media. Even from within
9
S. Wiselius et al,. Ontwerp van vertoog, om te worden geplaatst in het voorafgaande
vertoog (discours preliminaire) voor het ontwerp van constitutie, 18 Dec. 1797. As cited
in: {{1237 Les, Lubbertus 1947}}, bijlagen, pp. 105-147.
10
Cf. F. Cooper, T.C. Holt and R.J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor,
and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000), p. 12. The phrase liberating ideology is theirs, although Cooper et al.
apply it to colonization.
11
Pieter Paulus, Verhandeling over de vrage: in welken zin kunnen de menschen gezegd
worden gelyk te zyn? En welke zyn de regten en pligten, die daaruit voordvloeien?
(Haarlem: C. Plaat, 1793), p. 205-7[precies?]. tooneelen van verwoesting, van moord,
van brandstigtingen, met n woord, van burgeroorlog
12
De rechten van den mensch in Vrankrk, geen gewaande rechten in Nederland. Of
Betoog, dat die rechten b het volk van Nederland in volle kracht genoten worden. / By
Een patriot [= Adriaan Kluit], p. 50.
13
(1797) Dagverhaal der handelingen van de Nationaale Vergadering, no. 547, 1 June
1797, vol. 6, pp. 3-8.
549
Saint Domingue, Nathaniel Cutting anticipated in one of his letters to Jefferson that
news of the horrid evastation had probably already reached him.14 Bryan Edwards
account of the Haitian Revolution related of insurgents spreading death and
desolation. 15 As British colonial politician in Jamaica, plantation holder, and historian
the pre-eminent statesman-intellectual of British West Indies according to David
Brion Davis Edwards witnessed the slave insurrection when he had come to the aid of
French planters in September 1791. His Narrative of the Calamities which have
desolated the Country ever since the Year 1789 appeared in his The History, Civil and
Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, that would become immensely
influential in the early American Republic, as historian Edward Rugemer has recently
demonstrated. French and Dutch translations of it appeared in the early 1800s.16 To
enhance the dramatic effect, Edwards contrasted the once magnificent and romantick
landscapes that must now give place to the miseries of war, and the horrors of
pestilence; to scenes of anarchy, desolation, and carnage.17 France too saw an outburst
of (eyewitness) accounts of the insurrection many of which, according to Jeremy
Popkin, cast the violence in Saint Domingue as a stark, racialized confrontation
between civilized whites and barbaric enemies.
Such characterizations of the civil war in Saint Domingue were not a slip of the
tongue. They helped to establish an intricate connection between on the one hand the
exceptional atrocities for which Saint Domingue became (in)famous and on the other
hand the alleged mentally and morally savage or uncivilized condition of the slaves.
The terms anarchy and wilderness to describe the overall condition of the island as
well as the portrayal of black insurgents as incontrollable, disorderly savages, with
fiery characters, taken over by relentless rage and accustomed to African
barbarism, were elements that functioned within a distinctive binary framework of
civilized and uncivilized peoples.
14
Cutting to Jefferson, 29 nov. 1791.
15
E. Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American
Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008).
16
Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation, pp. 8, 52-52.
17
B. Edwards, An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo
comprehending a Short Account of its Ancient Government, Political State, Population,
Productions, and Exports; A Narrative of the Calamities which have desolated the
Country ever since the Year 1789, with some Reflections on their Causes and probable
Consequences, and a Detail of the military Transactions of the British Army in that Island
to the End of 1794 (London: J. Stockdale, 1797), iii, xviii-xix. Edwards account of Saint
Domingue was first published as a single volume. It appeared as the fourth volume of his
The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. This
classic work first appeared in two volumes in 1793. It saw as many as five editions and
was expanded to five volumes, and was translated in French, German, Dutch, Portuguese
and Italian. It came out in Philadelphia in 1806. Other American editions appeared in
1805 and 1810 (by three different printers). R.B. Sheridan, Edwards, Bryan (17431800), in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004); online edn. Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8531, date of
access: 17 April 2013].
550
18
Olympe de Gouges, Lesclavage des noirs, ou lheureux naufrage (Paris: 1792).
Translation taken from Preface to The Slavery of Blacks, in: Dubois and Garrigus, p.
109.
19
Bryan Edwards: (16-17) [zie ook ?: On the other hand, the society of Amis des Noirs,
having secretly in view to subvert the ancient despotism of the French government,
loudly clamoured for a general and immediate abolition, not only of the slave trade, but
also of the slavery which it supported. [] and considered that it ill became them to
claim freedom for themselves, and withhold it at the same time from the negroes: it is to
be lamented that a principle so plausible in appearance, should, in its application to this
case, be visionary and impracticable.]
20
Edwards, An Historical Survey, p. 87.
551
552
respect the government. Black slaves however, accustomed to be ruled with a rod of
iron, will not easily submit to milder restraints. Immediate emancipation would turn
them into hordes of vagabonds, robbers, and murderers. But this should come as no
surprise Tucker held, for [w]ithout the aids of an enlightened policy, morality, or
religion, what else could be expected from their still savage state, and debased
condition?25
Concluding remarks
A crucially important and dominant line of response to the Haitian Revolution
consisted of the depiction of the revolting black slaves as uncivilized savages lacking
the required prerequisites and capacities in order to justifiably claim the rights and
assume the duties of modern, enlightened citizenship within the political realm of a
modern republic. The notion of modern republican citizenship became what I call
civilizationally qualified within a framework of republican empire.
It incited the articulation of deeply rooted assumptions about the prerequisites
and capacities individuals needed in order to be admitted to the political community of
citizens. The ideological groundwork of nineteenth-century visions of differentiated
citizenship within the political realm of an empire and based on notions of civilizational
hierarchy were laid during the 1790s.
25
Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery, p. 86.
553
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Although it has been established that sociability within the language of natural law is
not found in Italy or in other Catholic countries in 18th century, this paper presents a
study that will allow us to improve our understanding on this matter. In the first
section, this paper presents a study of the concept of sociability in Pufendorfs work De
jure naturae et gentium 1672. The second part focuses in the translation of Pufendorfs
concept of sociability in Italian by Givambatista Almici in 1757-1759, whilst in the
third, it is followed its transfer to America through the works of the republican Mexican
political thinker Servando Teresa de Mier (1765-1827) in the first half of 19th century.
In so doing this study provides with a fascinating case not only, of a wide semantic
transfer between countries and cultures but also, in a long period of time.
554
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Los procesos histricos de configuracin de las realidades polticas del mundo moderno
nunca han sido absolutamente independientes de la forma que han adoptado en la
conciencia pblica, en los imaginarios colectivos, en los discursos polticos y en las
singulares consideraciones filosficas. Diversas representaciones de las naciones y de
las identidades polticas le han dado vida, en sus entramados metafricos, a los
escenarios y los actores de las grandes discusiones polticas modernas. As, los procesos
de construccin de la identidad nacional no pueden ser explicados como el paulatino
desenvolvimiento de una idea, como si sus agentes participasen a priori de un ideal
puro de nacin a partir del cual se hara posible la reconstruccin teleolgica de la
historia patria. La historia de los procesos de construccin de las naciones modernas
constituye una problemtica compleja que se comprende si se abordan con rigurosidad
las representaciones de la nacionalidad y de la historia en las que tales proyectos han
adquirido su significado.
Por eso es que los procedimientos de anlisis a travs de las cuales se han
estudiado los procesos poltico-histricos de construccin de la nacin colombiana,
asumen la nacin como un conjunto de referentes simblicos de cohesin social,
recurren a mtodos que obedecen a intereses ideolgicos particulares, y pretenden por
vocacin desnudar compromisos inmorales detrs de todo discurso. Los lugares
comunes en los que incurren estos ejercicios de anlisis se sustentan en construcciones
imaginarias de los fenmenos y los procesos del pasado, en vez de convertir tales
imgenes en su objeto de estudio. Lo que ha sido el acento de estos anlisis es su
irrestricta afiliacin a preconceptos de las teoras de la historia que desconocen las
variables filosficas, conceptuales, narrativas y creativas que intervienen en la escritura
de la historia nacional. Frente a esta clase de estudios, que distancian la tarea histrica
555
TEXTO/TEXT:
La hispanidad como problema
La hispanidad se puede definir de dos maneras y a partir de dos hechos diferentes. Se
puede hablar de la hispanidad como una realidad cultural, como un talante que tiene que
ver sin duda con el misterio de Espaa, y el misterio de Espaa no es un misterio
geogrfico, sino espiritual. Es decir, que su explicacin no se circunscribe a las fronteras
polticas de una Espaa imperial porque ya que no existen (Ortega y Gasset, 1999).
Entonces y de tiempos atrs, el misterio de Espaa se extiende all donde la sangre
espaola dej sus frutos, desde Amrica hasta la Minila de las Filipinas, y, en Europa,
desde Italia a Marruecos. Por ello es pertinente hablar de los sucesos histricos
acaecidos en los siglos XVI y XVII europeos, porque revelan la influencia geopoltica
imperial espaola tanto en Europa, Asa y en Amrica (Elliot, 2010). No es producto del
azar que la estructura burocrtica del reino de Npoles y de las dos Sicilias, fuese igual
a la virreinato de la Nueva Espaa, del Per y de Flandes.
As, uno es ese fenmeno espiritual, el talante de la hispanidad, que es el
resultado del corolario del misterio geopoltico de Espaa, y otra es la categora, el
concepto de hispanidad que ya es una cuestin histrica, filosfica y hasta terica que se
puede rastrear y resear de forma clara aunque no ms fcil. Porque, la hispanidad es:
una, la del proyecto de los Reyes Catlicos, despus, la de la empresa de Carlos V. Le
sigue, la del proyecto de Felipe II, que difiere de la de Carlos V. Entre otras, porque
Carlos V quera ser emperador y, para eso, requera ser rey de Castilla, mientras que
Felipe II quera ser rey de Castilla y, para eso, precisaba ser dueo de un imperio como
el de Carlos V (Kamen, 2006).
Otra es la hispanidad del siglo XIX. Una hispanidad cercana que como categora
poltico-terica es la del siglo XX. Otra es la del conflicto ideolgico de la Espaa de la
guerra civil y del franquismo. Es por eso que la hispanidad es un universo complejo de
influencias y categoras culturales y de significados sociolgicos que han producido una
manera de ser caracterizada por la fatalidad y por la imposibilidad de escoger uno solo
de esos factores determinantes antes sealados.
Este esquema histrico-conceptual se puede conectar con el hecho de que
Espaa, como categora poltico-geogrfica es el fruto de un encuentro de talantes,
concepto que las ciencias sociales han despreciado con cierta injusticia analtica. En
556
definitiva, no slo razas o etnias, sino talantes tambin, formas de vida del extremo
occidente caracterizan y conforman el modo de ser espaol. Esa zona-lmite, idea de
lugar recndito, o de lugar pretrito durante varios siglos pens que no poda
protagonizar nada. La hispanidad sera el fruto de esa herencia, de una vocacin de
protagonismo con la certidumbre o con la certeza, de no protagonizar algo. El ser
hispnico, por ejemplo, en contraste con el ser galaico-portugus, supondra una
vocacin europea y de dominio europeo, pero inconsciente, sometido a una fuerza o a
un control inconsciente. El resultado natural es que el anlisis histrico demuestra que
Espaa fue provincia fenicia sin ser el eje fenicio, fue provincia griega sin ser el eje
griego, fue provincia romana sin ser el eje romano, fue provincia rabe sin serlo
tambin, hasta los visigodos la tuvieron como una provincia ms de extremo occidente
y no, con particualaridad, como la ms importante.
Por lo anterior, de acuerdo con preocupaciones tericas contemporneas, el siglo
XVI hizo que concluyeran, que maduraran, en trminos histricos, y, junto con el
descubrimiento de Amrica, unas posibilidades polticas, religiosas, administrativas y,
hasta sociolgicas que Espaa no haba vislumbrado y, frente a las cuales precisamente
no estaba preparada (Gmez, sf) . As, la hispanidad sera ese talante no resuelto, esa
condicin de proyecto, esa ida hacia algo fundamental o extraordinario, sin alcanzarlo,
sin convertirlo en algo real.
Una tensin civilizatoria: lo nrdico y lo mediterrneo
Sin embargo, en este proceso de doble identificacin hispnica est el doble
carcter de la civilizacin europea: lo mediterrneo y lo nrdico. Esta frontera, por
llamarla de algn modo, es determinante en la configuracin histrica de lo que es
Occidente. Debido a que el asunto cardinal es el de la pertenencia o no a la cultura
occidental que, de alguna manera, es el hilo que amarra el destino de los pueblos que
estn bajo la lgica civilizatoria de las lenguas europeas y occidentales. Pero hay
elementos que apareceran all, con voz y voto, por derecho propio, y hay otros que
estn buscando membresa y asiento a como d lugar, y de ah se derivan mltiples
conflictos histricos y culturales definitivos. Y, uno de ellos, quiz el ms relevante es
el de las civilizaciones del norte y del sur o la civilizacin germnica o nrdica y la
civilizacin mediterrnea.
Al revisar la historia cultural europea, se encuentra que la semejanza de los dos
mundos mediterrneos, es decir, el mediterrneo europeo y el mediterrneo africano, es
ms palpable y verificable que entre la del mediterrneo europeo y el norte de Europa.
Tiene ms similitud un italiano con un tunecino que un italiano con un sueco, a razn de
que la civilizacin mediterrnea fue lo que arrastr la vida material, y espiritual de
diversos pueblos hasta materializarse en costumbres como la comida, el vestido, los
ademanes, los amoros, las relaciones familiares y dems. Pero en el plano de la
categoras conceptuales y de las creencias, ese arrastre produjo unas formas de vida que
tienen su mayor expresin en Italia, Portugal y, luego en Espaa. Es posible que por eso
Espaa fuese el ltimo hito de la civilizacin mediterrnea y que vino a morir en una
playa de Amrica. Era obvio, por lo tanto, que Amrica terminara siendo una
prolongacin del espritu mediterrneo espaol (Brague, 2011).
557
luchas intestinas que se libraban por el legado poltico y electoral de Alfonso Lpez
Pumarejo, su padre. Lo cual no implica que sus tesis dejen de ser un aporte significativo
al debate poltico colombiano sobre su condicin como nacin hispnica.
Entender la hispanidad
Al buscar en las ediciones centenarias del Diccionario de la Real Academia
Espaola, el trmino hispanidad alude a un escenario ligado exclusivamente a los
fenmenos lingsticos e idiomticos del idioma espaol. Pero tras la Guerra Civil
Espaola, la hispanidad se convierte en un acervo de valores y tradiciones
caractersticas de los pases pertenecientes al imperio espaol. Y, en coincidencia, los
autores estudiados manejan esquema conceptual explicativo en torno a otro concepto: el
de la hispanidad.
El concepto de hispanidad en la formacin del pensamiento poltico colombiano
es polmico, como todos los conceptos polticos que encarnan divisiones partidistas e
ideolgicas en Colombia. Sin embargo, su naturaleza polmica no es un obstculo para
que se desarrolle una investigacin desprovista de pasiones partidistas similares a las
que han alimentado el uso del mismo concepto.
A los ojos de cualquier lector desprevenido, esta investigacin parecera ser una
labor quijotesca o condenada al fracaso e, incluso, al olvido. Pero nada ms cercano y
propio a nuestra forma de entender la poltica, el gobierno, la sociedad y la familia y
dems fenmenos personales del colombiano, que la viva marca de Espaa.
En palabras del escritor colombiano Enrique Serrano, para el colombiano, la
hispanidad es una forma de ser de la que se puede renegar, alabar e incluso abjurar; pero
jams desprender o desembarcar porque es el envoltorio religioso, social, poltico e,
incluso, econmico de los que somos y de lo que seremos. Y, para el mismo Serrano,
Colombia tiene una ventaja intelectual comparativa, por denominarla de alguna forma,
ante muchos pases de Latinoamrica y es que los valores y discursos filosficos
tocantes con la hispanidad se pueden estudiar con relativa tranquilidad debido a que no
son condiciones justificatorias de procesos electorales, como ocurre con el indigenismo
en funcin de un discurso poltico-electoral. Caso de lo anterior, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Mxico y la mayora de los pases de Centroamrica.
Es en esa pretensin explicativa en la que se puede hablar de nacin hispnica:
un intento por reconciliar las mltiples formas de entender y exponer cmo hemos
vivido e interpretado la hispanidad, con el juicio crtico y el anlisis profundo de sus
mltiples fenmenos polticos nacionales, al tener como horizonte un merecido
homenaje a Colombia en su bicentenario como nacin libre.
REFERENCIAS:
Brague, Rmi. (1995). Europa, la va romana. Gredos: Madrid.
Caro, Miguel Antonio (1952). Ideario Hispnico. Bogot: Instituto Colombiano de
Cultura Hispnica.
Caro, Miguel Antonio (1990). Escritos Polticos. Bogot: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
562
563
Venezuela y la venezonalidad
Carlos Alarico Gmez (diplarca43@gmail.com)
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El 24 de octubre de 1499 fue descubierto el Lago de Maracaibo por Alonso de Ojeda,
quien estuvo en el lugar acompaado de Juan de La Cosa y Amrico Vespucci. Durante
su estada establecieron contacto con los aborgenes y pudieron constatar que sobre una
pequea isla -a la que llamaron pea- se encontraba un casero al que le decan Veneciuela. El nombre qued registrado en el mapa que elabor Juan de La Cosa en 1499
(terminado en 1500) y en el libro que escribi Martn Fernndez de Enciso en 1502
(publicado en 1519), para entonces socio de Ojeda y de Juan de La Cosa.
Fernndez de Enciso tuvo la oportunidad de visitar el Zulia (nombre de la planta
palometa en idioma Chibcha) en 1502 y de trabajar al lado de Ojeda, que fue su socio.
Juan de la Cosa le mostr su mapa y le explic los detalles del viaje de 1499 cuando
asisti al descubrimiento del Lago de Maracaibo acompaando a Ojeda y Vespucio.
Con esos datos -y el conocimiento que obtuvo durante los aos que vivi en el Caribepudo escribir su libro Suma Geographica, publicado en 1519 con autorizacin escrita
del rey Carlos I en la que dice: El cual dicho libro fu trado al mi Consejo y visto y
examinado por ellos, y porque parece ser til y provechoso tvelo por bien; y por la
presente vos doy licencia y facultad para que vos, o quien vuestro poder hobiere,
podis imprimir el dicho libro y esfera y lo vender.
La lectura del libro de Fernndez de Enciso debe haber influido en la Real
Cdula que decret la creacin de la Provincia de Venezuela en 1528, ya que era el
nico que estaba vivo y trabajando cerca del rey en ese trascendental momento. Los
otros protagonistas haban culminado sus das: de la Cosa en 1510 cerca de la costa de
Cartagena, asesinado por los indios guajiros (yucpas); Vespucio muri en Sevilla en
1512 y Ojeda en Santo Domingo en 1515. Por tanto, fue l quien influy en el monarca
para que a la nueva Provincia le diera el nombre de Venezuela.
La fecha y originalidad de los referidos documentos han sido cientficamente
certificados por expertos espaoles, con lo que se dej comprobado que el origen del
vocablo Venezuela se encuentra en fonemas del pueblo paraujano, que se comunicaba
en idioma A, versin que el ponente demostrar historiogrficamente.
Los restos de Alonso de Ojeda fueron trasladados a Venezuela en 1982 por
iniciativa del Gobierno de Luis Herrera Campins, misin que le fue encomendada al
padre Fernando Campo del Pozo, prroco de Ciudad Ojeda, poblacin fundada por el
presidente Eleazar Lpez Contreras en 1939. Al llegar a su destino final fueron
colocadas en un cofre y en un acto pblico el obispo del Zulia, monseor Ramrez Roa,
564
las bendijo con agua del Lago de Maracaibo y las deposit en el nicho que a tal efecto
haba sido preparado en la Catedral de Ciudad Ojeda.
565
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Esta ponencia se dividira en dos aportados.
En primer lugar nos centraramos a comprender cmo las Relaciones
Internacionales han acogido en sus brazos de poder al Pacfico. Por consiguiente,
desarrollaramos un recorrido histrico que partira desde la definicin de ese Gran
Lago espaol (descubierto por Nuez de Balboa hace exactamente cinco siglos) hasta
la estructuracin del Pacfico en tres grandes entidades: la Melanesia, Polinesia y
Micronesia. Una divisin geogrfica que responde a los deseos de las potencias de
comprender la realidad de este vasto mar, de ah que aparezca la misma en el siglo XIX.
Un siglo donde los procesos imperiales (de los que nos haremos eco) azolarn con
fuerza a los diferentes territorios del Pacfico, producindose un nuevo reparto colonial
al estilo de frica.
En segundo lugar, tras establecer esa mirada que el mundo occidental ha tenido
hacia la Mar Sur, estudiaremos la historiografa que los cientficos espaoles han creado
sobre los dominios espaoles en su Pacfico oriental. Unos dominios que girarn en
torno a Filipinas, de ah, que los pocos historiadores que han mirado al pasado colonial
oriental se centren en estas islas y de que se halla acuado el trmino Hispanoasia para
referirse a esos dominios. Sin embargo, bajo este concepto se marginan las ltimas
colonias ultramarinas espaolas, ya que las Palaos, Carolinas y Marianas (vendidas a
Alemania en 1899), se hallan en un continente diferente a Asia. Por consiguiente,
apostamos por el nuevo concepto de la hispano-asiaoceana para acabar con la
dependencia que el mundo europeo ha otorgado a toda la regin de la Oceana bajo las
caractersticas de Asia.
566
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Los conceptos de imperio e imperialismo han tenido un papel fundamental tanto en el
estudio de estructuras polticas y socioeconmicos caractersticas de la Edad Moderna y
del periodo contemporneo anterior a la Segunda Guerra Mundial (constitucin y
sucesin de imperios nacionales, como el espaol; expansin imperialista de las
naciones europeas) como en los discursos polticos crticos o justificativos relacionados
con esas estructuras. Tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial con el proceso de
descolonizacin, laconstitucin en occidente de Estados sociales y democrticos de
derecho, la Guerra Fra entre los Estados Unidos y la extinta Unin Sovitica, y el
establecimiento de un nuevo marco de relaciones internacionales los conceptos de
imperio e imperialismo perdieron progresivamente centralidad en los discursos polticos
y en el anlisis histrico del mundo contemporneo.
Pero hoy, en el nuevo marco histrico de la globalizacin capitalista neoliberal y
con la configuracin de un nuevo orden internacional, los conceptos de imperio e
imperialismo han vuelto a ser retomados tanto en el discurso poltico anticapitalista
como en los anlisis sociolgicos e historiogrficos del mundo actual.
La reactualizacin de dichos conceptos va acompaada de una reformulacin de
sus significados, con la que se pretende lograr que dichos conceptos procuren una
comprensin y explicacin adecuada de las realidades histricas sobre las que se
proyectan.
En esta comunicacin pretendo estudiar y exponer esa reformulacin que los
conceptos de imperio e imperialismo han tenido en nuestros das. Son varios los
analistas sociales y polticos que han retomado los conceptos de imperio e imperialismo,
por considerarlos imprescindibles para la comprensin de la nueva etapa de
globalizacin capitalista neoliberal, y han llevado a cabo reformulaciones de los
mismos. Obviamente, no puedo ocuparme de todos.
Por ello, me centrar en dos de las propuestas de reactualizacin de nuestros
conceptos que ms repercusin han tenido tanto en el mbito acadmico como entre
determinados movimientos polticos: el concepto de Imperio (con mayscula inicial)
elaborado por Michael Hardt y Antonio Negri, y el concepto de nuevo imperialismo
empleado por David Harvey. Organizar mis anlisis y exposiciones siguiendo la
propuesta de Norman Fairclough (en Discourse and Social Change, Cambridge, 1992)
de atender a tres dimensiones relacionadas: el concepto propiamente dicho; el discurso
567
en que se inserta, en cuyo seno el concepto objeto de estudio forma parte de distintos
campos semnticos; y la realidad a la que el concepto de refiere.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Introduccin
Durante las dos ltimas dcadas, a raz del actual proceso de globalizacin y sobre todo
de las intervenciones blicas de Estados Unidos en Afganistn, Irak y otras zonas del
mundo, se ha producido una importante revitalizacin de los debates polticos sobre el
imperialismo estadounidense y el imperio americano, as como de manera paralela un
significativo incremento de las publicaciones acadmicas (estudios de ciencias polticas,
sociologa e historia) sobre el imperialismo y los imperios (vase, por ejemplo, Foster
2002, Letempl 2007, Turgeon 2009).
El empleo de los conceptos de imperialismo e imperio en el marco del actual
proceso de globalizacin capitalista ha dado lugar a modificaciones y modulaciones
relevantes en el significado de estos conceptos1. En esta comunicacin pretendemos
mostrar algunos de esos cambios semnticos. Para ello, en la lnea tradicional de la
historia conceptual de utilizar los textos de pensadores relevantes como fuentes para el
estudio de los conceptos, nos centraremos en las aportaciones de David Harvey (2003,
2004) sobre el nuevo imperialismo, y en las teorizaciones de Michael Hardt y
Antonio Negri (2000, 2009) sobre el Imperio (con mayscula inicial)2.
Se trata, pues, de abordar un caso especfico (transformaciones semnticas de los
conceptos de imperio e imperialismo en el marco del actual proceso de globalizacin
capitalista) de un asunto mayor y fundamental en la historia conceptual: la relacin
entre cambio conceptual y transformaciones sociales (Koselleck 2004). Los periodos de
cambio sociohistrico importantes van acompaados de cambios semnticos en los
conceptos sociopolticos relevantes, cambios que se producen en el marco de los
debates sociopolticos que se incrementan en esos periodos. Por ello, forma parte de la
historia conceptual el estudio de las conexiones que existen entre los cambios y las
continuidades conceptuales, por un lado, y las transformaciones estructurales (sociales,
polticas, econmicas) de largo alcance, por otro (Oieni 2005: 34).
Los conceptos de imperio e imperialismo, al igual que otros conceptos sociopolticos relevantes, han
experimentado cambios semnticos a lo largo de su historia. Sobre las transformaciones semnticas de
estos dos conceptos a lo largo de la historia pueden consultarse: Koebner 1961, Koebner y Schmidt 1964,
Duverger 1980, Pervill 1986, Steinmetz 2008.
2
Tanto los planteamientos de Harvey sobre el imperialismo como en especial las tesis de Hardt y Negri
sobre el Imperio han sido objeto de crticas (vase, por ejemplo, Brenner 2006, Grosfoguel 2008 y Amin
2003). En el presente texto no atenderemos a esas crticas, pues nuestro objetivo no es dar cuenta de las
mismas ni valorar su justeza; aqu nos limitamos a considerar los conceptos de imperialismo e imperio de
los autores referidos con el fin de mostrar los cambios semnticos que dichos conceptos estn
experimentando en el actual proceso de globalizacin capitalista.
568
569
570
que han existido hasta ahora4. Vivimos un interregno, un periodo de transicin hacia
el Imperio; una fase en la que las estructuras nacionales ya no bastan por s solas
debido al proceso de globalizacin para regular la economa, pero en la que an no se
ha constituido un estado global capaz de regular la economa global, el capital
globalizado, como los Estados-nacionales regulaban el capital nacional (Hardt y Negri
2009: 279).
Hardt y Negri decretan la muerte del concepto de imperialismo en el marco del
actual proceso de globalizacin, puesto que en este proceso dicho concepto se queda sin
referente al no ser ya posible, en opinin de los autores, una dominacin poltica
imperialista. En su opinin, en la actualidad vivimos un periodo de transicin en el que
el viejo imperialismo ha muerto y el nuevo Imperio an est surgiendo (2009: 227).
El orden poltico global que exige el nuevo ciclo de acumulacin capitalista no
puede constituirse ni mantenerse mediante formas imperialistas unilaterales, de Estados
Unidos o de alguna otra potencia como China, ni mediante formas imperialistas
multilaterales basadas en la alianza de un grupo limitado de Estados-nacin dominantes
(Hardt y Negri 2009: 228).
En el proceso de formacin del Imperio que vivimos, los Estados Unidos, como
Estado-nacin ms poderoso, ha intentado imponer un orden imperialista basado en la
toma unilateral de decisiones, en el unilateralismo. Estados Unidos ha intentado un
golpe de Estado imperialista destinado a controlar de manera unilateral los asuntos
globales. Pero en el marco del actual proceso de globalizacin el unilateralismo ya no
es posible, no sirve para controlar dicho proceso e imponer un nuevo orden global. El
golpe de Estado intentado por los Estados Unidos ha fracasado tanto en el terreno
militar como en el terreno econmico, poltico y moral (Hardt y Negri 2009: 211 y 217).
Estados Unidos no constituye y, en realidad, ningn Estado-nacin puede hoy
constituir el centro de un proyecto imperialista. El imperialismo ha terminado (Hardt
y Negri 2000: 16; el subrayado es de los autores).
Ha terminado porque toda poltica imperialista supone el establecimiento de
lmites territoriales a la circulacin del capital, los cuales entorpecen el proceso de
reproduccin del capital, lo frenan dando lugar a crisis de sobreacumulacin y
desvalorizacin del capital (Hardt y Negri 2000: 255 y 354). El orden global garante de
nuevos ciclos de acumulacin de capital no puede basarse en la forma Estado-nacin,
sino que debe cobrar una forma nueva.
La globalizacin (desterritorializacin) de la produccin y la movilidad del
capital son fundamentales para el dominio poltico de la burguesa sobre el proletariado,
pues colocan a este en una posicin de negociacin debilitada (Hardt y Negri 2000:
320), la cual permite a la burguesa capitalista la obtencin de tasas de ganancias altas,
es decir, el logro de reproducciones rentables del capital acumulado: podra decirse que
la construccin del imperio y de sus redes globales es una respuesta a las diversas
luchas emprendidas contra las maquinarias modernas de poder y, especficamente, a la
4
La constitucin del Imperio est en proceso, pero no es inevitable. Adems del Imperio, de un orden
global imperial, Hardt y Negri refieren otros escenarios futuros posibles: la cada en el desorden global o
un contraimperio basado en el comunismo.
571
La economizacin del concepto de imperialismo habra comenzado con el libro de John A. Hobson
Imperialism (1902) y habra sido continuada por Lenin (1917), Rosa Luxemburgo y otros autores
marxistas. A juicio de
Steinmetz (2008: 7), la obra de Hardt y Negri sobre el imperio supone el
apogeo de la concepcin economicista del imperio y del imperialismo.
572
REFERENCIAS
AMIN, Samir (2003), Le capitalisme snile, Actuel Marx, n 33, pp. 101-120.
6
Vase, por ejemplo, la siguiente definicin de imperio de Michael Mann (2005: 446; los subrayados son
mos): sistema centralizado y jerarquizado introducido y perpetuado mediante el ejercicio de la
coaccin/coercin por medio del cual un centro impone su dominio/dominacin sobre periferias, de las
que mediatiza las interacciones y en el seno de las cuales organiza la circulacin de recursos.
573
BRENNER, Robert (2006), What is, and what is not, imperialism?, Historical
Materialism, vol. 14, n 4.
BREWER, Anthony (1980), Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, Londres.
DUVERGER, Maurice (dir.) (1980), Le concept dEmpire, PUF, Pars.
FOSTER, John Bellamy (2002), El redescubrimiento del imperialismo, en Atilio
Alejandro Born (comp.), La teora marxista hoy: problemas y perspectivas, CLACSO,
Buenos Aires, 2006, pp. 445-462.
GROSFOGUEL, Ramn (2008), Del imperialismo de Lenin al Imperio de Hardt y
Negri: fases superiores del eurocentrismo, Universitas Humanstica, n 65, enerojunio, pp. 15-26.
HARDT, Michael y NEGRI, Antonio (2000), Imperio, Paids, Barcelona, 2005.
(2009), Commonwealth. El proyecto de una revolucin del comn, Akal,
Barcelona, 2011.
HARVEY, David (2003), El nuevo imperialismo, Akal, Barcelona, 2007.
(2004), El nuevo Imperialismo: acumulacin por desposesin, recogido en J.
A. Hobson y V. I. Lenin, Imperialismo, Capitn Swing Libros, Madrid, 2009,
pp. 531-570.
(2005), Breve historia del neoliberalismo, Akal, Barcelona, 2007.
HOBSON, J. A. (1902), Estudio del imperialismo, Capitn Swing, Madrid, 2009.
KOEBNER, Richard (1961), Empire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
KOEBNER, Richard y SCHMIDT, Helmut Dan (1964), Imperialism, The history and
significance of a political word 1840-1860, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
KOSELLECK, Reinhart (2004), Historia de los conceptos y conceptos de historia,
Ayer n 53 (1), pp. 27-45.
LENIN, Vladimir L. (1917), Imperialismo, fase superior del capitalismo, Capitn
Swing, Madrid, 2009.
LETEMPL, Cline (2007), LEmpire en question: origines et dveloppement dun
dbat amricain contemporain, Revue LISA/LISA e-journal, http://lisa.revues.org/1691,
pp. 161-190.
MANN, Michael (2005), Imprialisme amricain: des ralits passes aux prtextes
prsents, tudes internationales, vol. 36, n 4, pp. 445-467.
OIENI, Vicente (2005), Notas para una historia conceptual de los discursos polticos.
Los aportes de la historia conceptual, la genealoga de Foucault y el anlisis crtico del
discurso a una nueva historia poltica, http://hdl.handle.net/2077/3276.
PALLOIX, Christian (1974), Imprialisme et mode daccumulation international du
capital. Essai dune approche du no-imprialisme, Tiers-Monde, t. 15, n 57, pp. 233252.
PERVILL, Guy (1986), Limperialisme: le mot et le concept, en Enjeux et
puissances, pour une historire des relations internationales au XXme sicle,
Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 41-56.
STEINMETZ, George (2008), Empire et domination mondiale, Actes de la recherche
en sciences sociales, n 171-172, pp. 4-19.
574
TURGEON, Nancy (2009), Les tudes impriales lre postcoloniale: quelque chose
de neuf, quelque chose de vieux, quelque chose demprunt..., Dynamiques
internationales, www.dynamiques-internationales.com, pp. 1-32.
575
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Es bien conocido que parte importante de la actividad intelectual y de difusin de las
ideas en Amrica hispana se dio dentro de variados procesos de recepcin y traduccin
de ideas provenientes de distintos horizontes tanto espaciales como intelectuales.
Asimismo, el peso de la tradicin hispnica se hizo sentir de diferentes modos en los
discursos y en las prcticas ms innovadores. Pero es recin en los ltimos aos cuando
nuevas perspectivas analticas basadas en la historia conceptual y en la historia de la
traduccin nos invitaron a reconsiderar la circulacin de los modelos, no como simple
transposicin de artculos de una constitucin a otra, sino como conjunto de enunciados,
textos, traducciones e imgenes que circularon entre los espacios de la disputa poltica,
las prcticas culturales y los ensayos constitucionales. De manera que la indagacin en
torno a la lectura y circulacin de los textos polticos en su dimensin material y
conceptual no slo recuper el dilogo bidireccional entre los distintos espacios del
mundo euroatlntico, sino que provey de nuevas herramientas analticas para tomar
distancia de la reductora perspectiva de las influencias, que presupona una recepcin
pasiva y desencarnada de las nuevas ideas en la era de las revoluciones. Sin embargo, y
pese a los nuevos avances historiogrficos, no contamos an con un mapa de las
traducciones que circularon por todo el espacio iberoamericano, y menos an, con un
conocimiento del alcance y modalidad de las reflexiones sobre la traduccin de textos
polticos. En esta comunicacin me propongo mostrar algunas de las dimensiones que
pueden articular convenientemente un dilogo e integracin entre la historia de los
conceptos y la historia de la traduccin para un mejor conocimiento de la produccin y
circulacin de textos polticos. Asimismo, sealar algunas de las paradojas que revelan
las prcticas de traduccin en un perodo de fuertes cambios polticos y de menores
mutaciones culturales.
576
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En la actualidad, se conoce la obsidiana como un producto de origen
geolgico, derivado del enfriamiento de un tipo de lava volcnica en
ciertas condiciones. Sin embargo, su construccin como espcimen
geolgico en el s. XVIII se llev a cabo a partir de la comparacin
entre sus fuentes materiales europeas y americanas. Con diferentes
nombres en el Nuevo Mundo, de acuerdo con grandes reas culturales, y
su (supuesta) desaparicin en el Viejo Mundo desde la Edad Media, el
mismo trmino actual de obsidiana fue elaborado, debatido, y
planteado
por
diferentes
especialistas
y
cientficos,
europeos
y
americanos. En ltima instancia, la piedra de obsidio (segn Plinio,
de origen africano) se hallar en el centro de la controversia entre
gelogos, vulcanlogos, cientficos, que al emplear un trmino u otro,
la validan como un derivado de los volcanes, o bien con un origen
extico diferente.
577
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Los textos evocados se inscriben en el ciclo inaugurado el 25 de mayo de 1810 en
Buenos Aires cuando una junta, en nombre del pueblo soberano, proclama la caducidad
de las autoridades espaolas y, buscando el apoyo de otras intendencias, pone en
marcha ejrcitos liberadores en direccin del Alto Per y del Paraguay.
Paralelamente a la confrontacin armada estalla una guerra de informacin y
propaganda. Se trata aqu de analizar las estrategias retricas que siguen los manifiestos,
las proclamas de dos portavoces porteos Belgrano y Castelli. Construidos sobre el
juego de la enunciacin y de la antonomia, segn una estructura dual, estos textos
obedecen a una misma voluntad de legitimidad, credibilidad, justificacin, transparencia
y captacin de las poblaciones, sobre todo indgenas, para movilizarlas. Belgrano y ms
an Castelli, segn una verdadera empresa de descalificacin de las personas, de las
ideas y de las acciones del campo enemigo, construyen sus propias imgenes. Dejan
percibir, con el recurso a ciertas metforas, una nueva escena poltica y social donde se
exaltan el patriotismo, la voluntad de los pueblos, sus derechos originales, la libertad
civil as como la felicidad, la confianza, la armonia y la fraternidad, el porvenir.
Emergen nuevas figuras : la del pueblo, del ciudadano, del americano...
Estudiar tales discursos es tambin hacerse la cuestin de su recepcin, de sus
modalidades de transmisin, condiciones de circulacin y de traduccin en quechua,
aymara y guarani... Pero para tratar de eso dejo la palabra a mis colegas...
578
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La Proclama a los habitantes de Ultramar (30 de agosto de 1812) es un documento
emitido por las Cortes de Cdiz, para exhortar a los espaoles de Amrica y Asia a que
apoyen al gobierno representativo instaurado durante el cautiverio de Fernando VII, y
exponerles las ventajas de la Constitucin de 1812. A pedido del Ministro de Ultramar,
varias traducciones fueron realizadas en lenguas indgenas. El objetivo de este estudio
es desarrollar un anlisis comparativo de las versiones espaola (texto fuente), quechua
y tzotzil (textos metas) de la Proclama, mostrando cules son las estrategias
argumentativas y retricas que los traductores, o ms bien los intrpretes, utilizaron para
convencer a sus destinatarios. En efecto, los traductores annimos realizaron cambios y
desvos de sentido que no son tanto el producto de dificultades en la transposicin de los
conceptos de la lengua-fuente sino, ms bien, de opciones ideolgicas precisas, que es
importante elucidar.
TEXTO/TEXT:
Uno de los cinco miembros que formaban la nueva regencia, constituida en Cdiz el 22
de enero de 1812 y presidida por el Duque del Infantado, era un tal Joaqun de
Mosquera y Figueroa, un criollo colombiano que haba sido juez en la Audiencia de la
ciudad de Mxico. Es l el autor de la Proclama a los habitantes de Ultramar1.
Los argumentos que utiliza para convencer a los espaoles de Amrica y Asia
para que se unan a su causa, pueden resumirse as : hay que desconfiar de Napolen y
no acordar ninguna veracidad a la propaganda francesa que incita a los habitantes de las
colonias de Ultramar a conseguir la independencia ; stos pueden sentirse tranquilos
pues, gracias a la resistencia heroica de los espaoles y al apoyo militar de Inglaterra,
los ejrcitos de Napolen sern pronto expulsados del suelo espaol; los
independentistas difunden informaciones falsas, haciendo creer que Inglaterra los
apoyar cuando en realidad est claramente del lado del rey y del gobierno
1
Proclama a los habitantes de Ultramar, Cdiz, Duque del Infantado, Imprenta real, 1812.
579
Archivo de Indias de Sevilla (Sec. 5a Aud. de Lima Leg. 1016). El texto ha sido reeditado, en
transcripcin paleogrfica, por Paul Rivet et Georges de Crqui-Montfort (Bibliographie des langues
aymar et kiua, tomo I, 1951: 247-260). Estudio realizado a partir del texto quechua.
581
los mitos locales ms populares : el del regreso del Inca. Como representantes de una
legitimidad originaria, los incas haban sido recuperados por los independentistas
argentinos, quienes fueron tambin los primeros en hacer traducir al quechua sus
proclamaciones. Las autoridades espaolas imitaron rpidamente su ejemplo. Es as que
en la versin quechua de nuestro documento, el Ministro de Ultramar recibe los
apelativos de awki prncipe y apu seor , que eran ttulos honorficos atribuidos a
los soberanos del antiguo Tahuantinsuyo. Todo ello en un texto lleno de arcasmos
lxicos que hacen referencia a la civilizacin inca, como la palabra awqa enemigo o
hamawta sabio . En la guerra que los opone a los franceses, los espaoles
construyen pukara, fortalezas y combaten con champi y maqana, porras de bronce y
de piedra. De este modo, el Per se convierte en la America inkaq suyun el territorio
de la Amrica inca , poblado por los inkaq hawayinkuna los descendientes de los
incas .
El traductor de la Proclama en lengua tzotzil se inscribe, l tambin, en la
tradicin literaria de los sermones pero opta por motivos estticos e ideolgicos bien
diferentes. Su texto se dirige a los indios mayas de la Provincia de Chiapa que, en la
poca colonial, se encontraba bajo la jurisdiccin de la Capitana general de Guatemala.
No conocemos su identidad pero todo indica que se trata de un franciscano cuya lengua
materna no era el tzotzil sino el espaol.
El Grande Grito Mandado Viene por Nuestro Seor Rey hacia los Hombres
Vivientes que Viven Aqu al Lado del Mar Grande Hondura (Mukta awanej
takibil talel yuun kojowtik Rey ta stojol winiketik kuxajtik lita jech mukta nab)3 es un
texto que difiere enormemente del original, a tal punto que no podemos prcticamente
hablar de adaptacin sino ms bien de otro texto. Prueba de ello es, en primera
instancia, su extensin que es del triple que la original. Desde el punto de vista del
contenido, las primeras diferencias se presentan a partir del ttulo. El traductor, en
efecto, se apropia el documento comenzando por invertir su perspectiva. Es a los
hombres que viven aqu al lado del mar a quienes se dirige, mientras que el texto de
Mosquera y Figueroa estaba destinado a los habitantes del otro lado del mar .
Impone despus al rey como la autoridad que emana el documento, aunque son las
Cortes de Cdiz quienes lo promulgaron. Esto se explica seguramente por el hecho de
que, para el poder colonial de la muy conservadora Provincia de Chiapa, el rey era la
nica autoridad reconocida. En lo que respecta a la Constitucin, el autor de la versin
tzotzil omite voluntariamente toda alusin a las ideas liberales que contiene,
presentndola como una especie de libro sagrado cuyo fin es proteger a los indios contra
el Mal. Pues, mientras que las referencias a la religin son muy raras en la Proclama,
estas son prcticamente omnipresentes en la traduccin tzotzil. El lenguaje poltico de
Mosquera y Figueroa es remplazado por un lxico religioso tomado del Antiguo
3
Manuscrito en Lengua Sotzil , typescript copy of translation of proclamation signed by the Duque del
Infantado, by William E. Gates, 1930 ( ?), Archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian
Institution, 3168 :IV, National Anthropological Archives. Estudio realizado a partir de la traduccin
espaola de un tal M. M. (9. 7. 1906). In Robert M. Laughlin, Beware the Great Horned Serpent !
Chiapas Under the Threat of Napoleon, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2003 : 224-239.
582
Testamento y las ideas liberales por imgenes apocalpticas inspiradas del Libro de
la Revelacin. Es as que el matador Napolen es presentado explcitamente como el
Anticristo, que proclama falsamente Yo soy su dueo poderoso del Universo .
Napolen es tambin comparado con una serpiente y, notablemente, con la serpiente
cornada de la cultura maya precolombina, que en la poca colonial haba asumido los
rasgos de Satn, el Dragn infernal. En cuanto a los espaoles, siempre son llamados
los cristianos Espaoles . La palabra cristianos, as como la de matador relacionada
a Napolen, tiene aqu el rol de un epteto homrico, es decir de complemento del
sustantivo cuya funcin principal es la de caracterizar a la persona que lo lleva. Los
espaoles son de ese modo presentados como mrtires cristianos, que sacrifican sus
vidas para defender la fe en Dios.
Empleando varias veces la prosopopeya, figura de estilo que atribuye un
discurso ficticio a un ausente en este caso los espaoles , el autor no slo da mayor
vivacidad a su demostracin, sino que adems, al asociar otras voces a la suya, crea una
puesta en escena polifnica que le da al discurso una fuerza de persuasin mayor. Otra
tcnica estilstica que es frecuentemente utilizada, es la acumulacin de trminos
yuxtapuestos que dan un ritmo al enunciado y crean, al mismo tiempo, una especie de
encadenamiento en letana: Hambre, pena, ancia, pobreza, muerte, sed, destruccin,
no hay ya otra cosa otra riqueza nuestra . Para producir el mismo efecto de
sentido, utiliza de manera recurrente la anfora retrica, es decir la repeticin de una
palabra al inicio de grupos sintcticos paralelos : () as como grande serpiente,
muerte solamente hay tiene en la boca : muerte en los ojos : muerte en la palabra :
muerte en sus manos () . Espaa se convierte en la nueva Jerusaln y su rey,
Fernando VII, en el sustituto de Dios en la Tierra. Es l el Salvador heroico que, una vez
liberado, podr proteger a sus amados hijos indios. De hecho, el traductor recuerda en
una nota que los indios deben obedecer al rey incluso si ste fuese un tirano feroz, pues
rebelarse contra el rey equivaldra a rebelarse contra Dios. En particular, los indios son
llamados a pagar tributo a las autoridades coloniales. La paradoja es que la Constitucin
de la cual la Proclama deba exaltar las ventajas para los habitantes de Ultramar
abola el tributo indio. Pero el traductor tzotzil proclama que el depsito de lo que l
llama un Donativo no es ms que una manera de obedecer al cuarto mandamiento,
Honrars a tu Padre y a tu Madre , porque el considera que los espaoles tienen una
autoridad parental y tutelar sobre los indios. Es as que la proclamacin poltica se
transforma en una exhortacin moral. Todo el texto est estructurado en base a la
oposicin entre el Bien (Dios, Jess, la Virgen, la Iglesia, el rey Fernando VII, los
Cristianos, Espaa y sus aliados) y el Mal (el Diablo, Napolen, Rousseau, Voltaire,
los herticos, Francia). En el centro se encuentran los indios, los hijos amados ,
que deben decidir qu camino seguir, la va de la Salvacin o la de la Perdicin.
Al traducir la Proclama a los habitantates de Ultramar, los autores de las
versiones quechua y tzotzil produjeron un texto segundo, doble del primero. Para
provocar la adhesin de las poblaciones indgenas y construir un discurso capaz de
convencer y conmover, remplazaron un universo simblico por otro. Las nociones
polticas expresadas en el texto de Mosquera y Figueroa tuvieron que dialogar con
elementos culturales pertenecientes a tradiciones literarias locales, que implicaban la
583
utilizacin de un lxico especfico. A pesar de que los tres textos buscan construir lo
que podramos definir como una teologa moral de lo poltico, las religiones que
profesan difieren profundamente. Religin del Progreso, de la Unidad, de la Nacin en
el texto de Mosquera y Figueroa, cuyo vocabulario se organiza alrededor de algunas
palabras claves como gobierno, derechos, constitucin. Religin como sistema de
valores y de creencias en la traduccin quechua, en donde el lenguaje de los sermones
se mezcla con arcasmos lxicos que evocan un pasado inca mitificado. Religin
utilizada como un arma en la traduccin tzotzil, en la que el autor emplea imgenes
apocalpticas y expresiones bblicas para intimidar a sus destinatarios. De esta manera la
Proclama y sus reescrituras no slo nos muestran hasta qu punto la lengua es visin e
interpretacin del mundo, sino tambin a qu realidades socio-culturales tan diversas
deban enfrentarse las proclamaciones polticas de la poca de las independencias.
584
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Esta ponencia analiza las ocurrencias del concepto quechua de runa kay (lit. ser gente
o humanidad) que aparece por primera vez en la proclama que Juan Jos Castelli
dirigi en 1811 a los indios del virreinato del Per. En este texto runa kay traduce la
nocin de honores, es decir de ttulos que se conceden para nombrar a alguien en una
dignidad o empleo. Volvemos a encontrar esta expresin con frecuencia en recientes
traducciones al quechua de textos legislativos donde expresa la nocin de dignidad
humana. Observamos que, en la lengua actual, runa kay presenta tambin otro
significado que analizamos y mostramos ser histricamente anterior al de dignidad.
Finalmente, planteamos la hiptesis segn la cual runa kay adquiri el sentido
secundario de dignidad humana en la poca de la Ilustracin, con la difusin de la
idea de unidad del gnero humano como fundamento de una igualdad de derechos.
585
PLENARY
SESSION
IV
586
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La creacin de la repblica de las Provincias Unidas de Holanda durante la guerra de
ochenta aos contra la monarqua hispnica ha sido subestimada por la historiografa de
las revoluciones hispanoamericanas de principios del siglo XIX, que analiza con
frecuencia estas experiencias a partir de insights comparativos con la revolucin
norteamericana y la francesa. Luego de la Unin de Utrecht en 1579 y del acta de
abjuracin del rey espaol en 1581, la repblica en los Pases Bajos representa en el
siglo XVII una novedad: se trata de una unin de provincias sin un rey como soberano.
En el imaginario holands, una asimiliacin geogrfica se establece con Amrica a
partir de la denuncia de la tirana y de la crueldad de los espaoles en Indias y en
Europa del Norte (varias ediciones de la Brevsima relacin de la destruccin de las
Indias -1552-, del dominicaco Bartolom de las Casas, son impresas en las Provincias
Unidas y distribudas por todo el continente). Surgida a partir del desmembramiento de
la monarqua catlica, esta repblica revela caractersticas comunes a las primeras
experiencias republicanas hispanoamericanas: la tensin entre la revolucin y la
fidelidad al rey, el problema de la unidad de ciudades y provincias consideradas
soberanas, la necesidad de fundar un mito de orgenes de la repblica, la articulacin de
un lenguaje republicano con referencias cristianas. Estas caractersticas refieren a un
problema constitutivo de la construccin de repblicas en la modernidad: la fundacin
de una nueva legitimidad poltica. Desde una perspectiva de anlisis histricoconceptual, en esta ponencia estudiaremos la creacin de la repblica de las Provincias
Unidas en los Pases Bajos y explicaremos su incidencia en las revoluciones
hispanoamericanas a travs del caso del Rio de la Plata, desde su revolucin en 1810
587
588
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
La ponencia se propone estudiar el republicanismo napolitano del 1799 y las primeras
experiencias republicanas de la independencia hispanoamericana como una
consecuencia de la crisis de legitimidad monrquica, en los dos casos de la misma
dinasta, la de los Borbones. Se analizara igualmente como las dos experiencias pueden
explicarse por la herencia de la plurisecular pertenencia al mismo conjunto poltica y
cultural, la monarqua catlica.
589
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
El republicanismo exclusivista describe un registro intelectual abocado a la crtica a
fundamentis del gobierno monrquico, y de la legitimidad real. Este registro inscribe al
rgimen y a la comunidad republicanos en un horizonte religioso a travs de un lenguaje
que remite al Antiguo Testamento. Al mismo tiempo, represent una herramienta de
combate retrico contra el derecho divino de los reyes. Este republicanismo sirvi as
para legitimar nuevos regmenes en la modernidad a partir de un fundamento
indiscutible: las Sagradas Escrituras. Algunos de los exponentes de este registro
exclusivista (muchas veces soslayado en el republicanismo atlntico) fueron Milton,
durante el Commonwealth de Cromwell y Paine, en la Revolucin norteamericana.
Mientras que el ejemplo durante la Revolucin francesa se distingue en su perodo
fundacional (1792-1794). Durante las revoluciones hispanoamericanas de principios del
siglo XIX, en la Tierra Firme convulsionada (integrada por los actuales territorios de
Colombia y Venezuela) la figura de Juan Germn Roscio ilustra la vigencia de este
registro intelectual en sus famosos textos titulados Patriotismo de Nirgua y abuso de los
reyes (1811) y El triunfo de la libertad sobre el despotismo(1817).
La comunicacin intentar rastrear la presencia y circulacin de los lenguajes del
republicanismo exclusivista en la Tierra Firme y sus significados polticos y sociales.
Para ello, explicaremos los contextos sociales de recepcin de estas ideas y las
dinmicas polticas que impulsaron sus promotores. Nos referiremos a la Revolucin
francesa en el Caribe que represent a partir de 1794 el contexto fundamental para
comprender la difusin de estos nuevos lenguajes, en particular, a travs de uno de sus
principales acontecimientos: la conspiracin de Gual y de Espaa en 1797. Hasta la
crisis de 1808, el republicanismo exclusivista determin la formacin de
contrapblicos secretos o discretos, que subvertan silenciosamente el monopolio de
la Publicidad monrquica en sus prcticas de traduccin, lectura y difusin. Durante la
Independencia, este paradigma desempe un papel de primer orden para asentar la
legitimidad de la repblica. Por su dimensin religiosa, el republicanismo exclusivista
representaba para el nuevo rgimen revolucionario un recurso poltico de primer orden
en la conquista de los sectores populares.
590
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
After independence, in several Latin American countries were undertaken legal reforms,
in order to transform society, educate citizens and combat corporate privileges inherited
from the Spanish monarchy. There was a common impulse in the reforms undertaken by
Bernardino Rivadavia (Buenos Aires), Francisco Santander (Colombia), Mariano
Glvez (Guatemala) and Valentin Gomez Farias (Mexico). This paper point out the
common features of the first Spanish American reformism, especially those that were
aimed at securing a republican order.
591
TEXT/TEXTO:
Does the concept of market have a semantic history? That is, does the market as
concepts qualify for a history? Far removed as it may appear from the topic of the
history of the the concept of middle class, it is actually the central theoretical question
to answer for the issue this paper tries to deal with. For the market and the middle
class(es) have very correlate histories as concepts.
Since the 18th-century, the market has been considered a natural ingredient of
any economy, just as the middle class was then for the first time regarded as a natural
component of a modern commercial society. Contingent as it may appear to us today,
commercial society was depicted then as a natural stage in human progress; according
to this assumption, already in The Wealth of Nations the only story that needed be told
about the market was on its rise and on the limitations imposed to it by the influence of
unnatural institutional settings (Smith, 1776, Book Three). But the market itself was
592
taken as a phenomenon the history of which was, if any, that of its desirable progress
and its regrettable decline. The middle class was on its part seen as ultimately dependent
on the expansion of markets, that is, on the division of labor in society, and expressed in
the rise of the so-called professions living out of market regulations: lawyers, doctors,
merchants and other entrepreneurs.
As the science of Economics took shape throughout 19th century, conceptions of
the market as a historically contextual phenomenon with substantially different content
or referring to varying economic processes was eventually abandoned, especially after
the success of the Neoclassical synthesis elaborated by Alfred Marshall at the end of
century (1890). Attempts to historize the market as offered by heterodox authors such as
Thorstein Veblen or interdisciplinary adventures such as Economic Sociology had
clearly failed even before the outbreak of WWI (Gislain and Steiner, 1995). This does
not mean that there is nothing historical in the modern conception of the market, but it is
much reduced to the acknowledgement of the changes in the institutions governing
markets, not of the market as such. Henri Pirenne at the beginning of the 20th century
(1956 [1926]) or Andr Gunder Frank at its ending (1998), to put just two examples,
have offered descriptions to what neo-institutional approaches currently uphold on this
matter: histories of legal institutions and norms and regulations (North, 2005). Today,
markets are referred to in plural, and economic institutions are analyzed in their
founding concepts, from notions of development to the semantics of wage-labor and
welfare (Rist, 2002; Castel, 1995). However, the myth that markets are the expression
of the tendency of men to -quoting from Adam Smith- trade, barter and exchange still
makes for a natural history of the market (MacMillan, 2003).
What about the middle class? For as compared to classical economics there was
no disciplinary orthodoxy in the realm of sociology throughout the 19th century. And as
opposed to political economists, sociologists could neither claim a monopoly over the
definition of the middle classes. Analytical definitions of the middle class are more of a
20th-century phenomenon related to the rise of functionalist sociology, especially after
the works of Ralph Dahrendorf (1961) (who put forward the conventional idea that the
middle class is born decomposed in diiferent layers and strata at different hierarchical
and functional places in an industrial economy) or Michael Ossowski (1969). In Marxist
approaches, a remarkable landmark was Erik Olin Wrights argument on What is
middle about the middle class? back in the late 1980s (1986), as would be Michael
Manns neo-Marxist detailed classification of the different layers that made for a
middle class nation in European 19th-century society (1993, 546-596). Before WWII,
however, the middle class was conceived from within definitions of classes that were
part and parcel of political and ideological debates in the public sphere.
There is, from this perspective, a history of the concept of middle class to be
told; the assumption of this paper is nevertheless that still it remains unclear whether we
are dealing with a truly semantic history or with a different kind of phenomenon, which
I label de-naturalizations and re-naturalizations of the middle class rather than resemantizations proper. These ups and downs in what appears as an unhistorical,
ontological perception of their nature certainly outline a history, which has to do with
the shared belief, by different publics and authors in different and changing contexts,
593
that the middle class did and does have a history which is generally both economic,
sociological and political.
The semantics of middle class extend along the space of what Ellen Meiksins
Wood signaled once as the formal separation between the political and the economic
in a modern society with a market economy (1981). In any conceptualization of the
middle class there is always a tension between the ideal of political and moral virtue and
the natural manifestation of modern social order and progress (though also of
mediocrity and decadence). In between the natural and the unnatural, the middle
class(es) have be alternatively regarded as the epitome of the homo economicus or of the
zoon politikon and their counter-concepts, in changing boundaries established by means
of political and ideological controversies.
One way of showing this tension between the natural and the unnatural is
choosing a case were debates on the middle classes have recurrently placed them at the
crossroads of the political institutions of self-government, that is, of Liberalism and
Democracy, in a market, capitalist economy. My paper deals with Spain in the 19th and
20th centuries, and in particular with three (or rather four in the conclusions) particular
contexts.
I
During most of 19th century, Liberalism reigned in Spain; it was however also
exposed to recurring political crises that usually triggered popular upheavals and
prompted authoritarian derrapages. Debating on the role of the middle classes was
central for the very stability and shaping of representative government. Since very early,
what was at stake in constitutional debates was the recognition of the middle classes as
the legitimate ruling class in a modern society. This sociological imagination of
Liberalism was not original of Spain; however, the Spanish middle classes were
conceived as embodying a singular blend of natural and unnatural features.
Moderates in particular, though admitting an unchecked trend of social
expansion by the middle classes, rejected that political power in a modern constitution
should be left in their hands alone. As Antonio Alcal Galiano proposed, the middle
classes could only rule in a representative government provided they shared power with
the old landed aristocracy (1984 [1843], 104; DSC, 18-XI-1844). This political
denaturalization was regarded as a necessity derived from a long-term history inserted
as a space of experience in the emerging notion of middle class. As a result of their past
under absolutist rule, the middle classes were assessed as being few in quantity,
territorially scattered, politically disorganized and uncultivated. From these standpoints,
they could not be trusted as the embodiment of virtue.
Moderate perceptions were not only founded on historical interpretation but also
on a contextual specification of the liberal ideal of a mixed government. In classical
political thought tyranny was identified with the political exclusiveness of a single
power: the exclusiveness of the monarchical principle was identified with despotism,
and that of the democratic power of the people with anarchy. Spanish moderate liberals,
on their part, discredited also the possibility of mesocracy, or government based on the
political dominance of the middle ranks of society, as a dangerous unbalance of a mixed
594
constitution. Given that the middle class embodied the material interests of society
(Alcal Galiano, 1984, 105), their political monopoly would expose the rest of the
population to their greedy and egoistic aims, and this would in turn put off the social
diffusion of wealth, culture and manners (Snchez Len, 2004). This negative horizon
of expectation inserted in the conception of the middle classes also helps explain that
the new professions living from the market tended to be referred to usually in plural in
order to conjure fears of a political monopoly by a social minority.
On the part of radical liberals, the middle classes did not appear as constrained
by such sociological features and moral hazards. But one will not either find in so-called
progresistas a clear-cut defense of the middle classes as the natural political class of
modern Liberalism. This was partly due to the fact that more left-wing liberals adhered
to the populist terminology originally established with the 1812 Constitution (Romeo,
1998). The catch-all concept of People not only dissolved particular groups and
classes into a wider and encompassing entity but also tended to define a conceptual
framework where political cleavages and social dichotomies intertwined, strangling the
possibility of any middle category (Prez Ledesma, 1991).
The diffusion of a populist terminology hindered conceptual refinements in
assessing the components of the middle classes, thus allowing for the inclusion of
public servants and other salaried categories as natural members of the new professions;
on its part, the institutionalization of private property as the condition for political rights
emptied the middle class of any juridical content. As elsewhere, the middle classes were
dissolved for electoral and tax matters into a wider and narrowly economic category of
property owners (Sierra, Pea and Zurita, 2010). In this case, however, the debate over
what Kocka and Mitchells (1993) label an enlightened bourgeoisie was won already
in the 1830s by conservative approaches, that as opposed to their counterparts in France
or England, suspected of capacity as a sound qualification for citizenship (Snchez
Len, 2001).
From the 1840s onwards constitutional engineering was adapted to this political
denaturalization, with the establishment of a rather high threshold of wealth for
acquiring voting rights and the establishment of a Senate where an aristocracy of
traditional wealth and prestige was recreated. Paradoxically, while these institutional
trends excluded relevant parts of the new professions from political citizenship, they
contributed to diffuse a popular image of the new ruling classes that did not distinguish
between its old and new social components.
It was republican speakers who ended up stressing that, as the old landed
aristocracy declined, the middle classes were becoming the new ruling power in Liberal
Spain, the effect of which was the exclusion and pauperization of the popular laboring
classes (Peyrou, 2008). As the crisis of monarchy gathered momentum in the 1860s, in
certain radical republican circles, the middle classes would end up quickly identified
with economic parasites exploiting for their benefit and social reproduction a
monopolistic control of state institutions, and from this standpoint the eternal enemy of
the laboring classes (Battaner, 1977, 306 [from a 1870 newspaper]).
The short Republican takeover in the 1870s would not thus but ratify a common
conceptual trend that regarded the political leverage of the middle classes as a danger
595
for modern order and progress, both from right and left Liberal sensibilities. The
monarchical Restoration of 1876 on its part would be founded on a new Liberal
consensus which reaffirmed property as the mark of status and citizenship. Outside this
consensus, the rise of more radical ideologies such as Socialism fuelled social and
moral dichotomies diffused in the emerging rhetoric on the social question. By the end
of 19th century, Pablo Iglesias, the founder of the Socialist Workers Party of Spain,
declared: In Spain there are only two classes, and added an argument that equated the
middle class with a powerful minority: modern aristocracy is in capital. He even
defined the old clergy and aristocracy as an ennobled middle class (1985 [1884],
202).
Political denaturalization had thus produced a pendulum logic in the
classification of the middle class, from a marginal grouping within society to a
threatening and conservative oligarchy. At the same time social professions and groups
identified with the label clearly felt recurrently excluded from the benefits of political
citizenship.
II
From the 1890s until the 1920s, slowly but stubbornly the middle classes
regained centrality in political discourse. Interestingly enough, it was republican
rhetoric that championed the return of the concept of middle classes to the fore. In a
context of embedded corruption in the electoral system and recurrent obstruction to
political reform, again the middle classes occupied the core of ideological debates, this
time on the possibilities of a fully-fledged democracy as a precondition for undertaking
the measures required for the modernization of Spanish social and economic
institutions.
In particular during the 1920s, intellectual reaction against the dictatorship
upheld by the monarchy fostered an explosion of rhetoric focused on the capacity of the
middle classes to regenerate the political system by means of political participation
through the ballot and in government institutions. The illnesses of the liberal system
were discursively signaled in their degrading effects over the condition of the middle
classes. As the old republican leader Alejandro Lerroux affirmed in 1931, right after the
establishment the Second Republic, the monarchical system had implied not only living
in the lack of all kinds of freedoms and the vain enthroning of arrogance but also in
the cowardice and the resignation of the middle classes (El Heraldo de Madrid, 2206-1931, p. 16).
After having been openly discredited as a reliable ruling group, the middle
classes were now reassessed as the natural agent of virtue, to the extent that the political
system was required to adapt its shape to their political inclusion or takeover. When
President Manuel Azaa produced his famous allocution in 1931 declaring that the
middle classes are finally in power in Spain, political re-naturalization seemed to have
reached its peak along with the normalization of Spanish Liberalism.
Sociological imagination was crucial to this emerging liberal democracy. As refounded by Manuel Azaa, Spanish republicanism elaborated a different history of the
ebbs and tides of political participation during the 19th century, arguing that the
596
weakness of the democratic ideal in modern Spain had been, as Melchor Fernndez
Almagro wrote in 1933, in its lack of a foundation on any social class (Lpez Cordn,
undated, 148). As opposed to their 19th-century predecessors, 20th-century republicans
gave recognition to a variety of legitimate social classes whose aggregation made for a
sovereign People, and reclaimed a stable political alliance among them in order to
assure a wide social basis for the incumbent reforms, especially a land reform regarded
as the condition for guaranteeing moral and economic independence on the part of the
rural laborers. Urban middle classes would on their part profit from a market-oriented
economy and from a parliamentary system to naturally reproduce their social status.
This identification of the middle classes with democracy, and of democracy with
a political alliance between the middle and the working classes was ambivalent, though.
It also produced a new framework of competition where other social classes could now
legitimately be represented as the embodiment of political virtue and economic and
cultural progress. As the 1929 crisis and its aftermath re-opened up debates on the
economic foundations of modern society, and as liberal constitutions experienced the
pressure from extremist ideological critiques, political re-naturalization was forced to
share discursive space with social de-naturalization of the middle classes. As
elsewhere, much of the anti-parliamentarian discourse and revolutionary rhetoric of the
1930s was a reaction to the shared consciousness of the compromised, even doomed
future of the middle classes as a social entity.
In Spain this reaction was to acquire the shape of a clear-cut dichotomy. From
the left-wing supply of all-encompassing ideologies such as Socialism, Communism or
Anarchism, social tensions around the implementation of the land reform and other
conflictive labor relations were increasingly assessed as a signal of decadence of a
whole social structure based on the centrality of the middle classes as modernizing
ideal. While in the 19th century the picture of the middle classes had stressed their moral
and political shortcomings, now it developed into a fully-fledged discourse on the
failure of the Spanish bourgeoisie for fulfilling its modernizing historical task (Maurn,
1976 [1936]). Even in the more realistic and pragmatic Popular Front proposals, the call
for a tactic alliance with the progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie was understood as
a short-term strategy for the final takeover by the popular classes.
On the conservative side, the identification of democracy with a popular
takeover in the making sprang fears of an overall decline in moral and cultural
standards, when not of anarchy or social revolution. The touchstone of these trends was
the prognosis of a destruction of the middle classes, strangled as they appeared by the
monopolistic concentration of wealth and property in the hands of financial plutocracies
or of emerging Socialist state institutions. Spanish reactionary newspapers and journals
were stuffed with depressive accounts of the proletarization of the middle classes
derived from the development of capitalism (Accin Espaola, 01-08-1933, 1); even
economic crisis was explained as caused by the desertion of the middle classes allured
by Socialist propaganda (Accin Espaola, 16-10-1933, p. 125). According to these
perspectives, the corporative encadrement of the middle classes was the only alternative
available against its dissolution and the subsequent destruction of social order as a
whole.
597
This engineering of devices for the collective organization of the professions did
not however imply a reconceptualization of the middle classes; not even a radical
increase of its presence in discourse. As elsewhere, Spanish fascist rhetoric was framed
in traditional nationalist and classical political economy languages, to which Spanish
reactionary thought added catholic discourse as an intellectual and mobilizing vein, but
where the concept of middle classes could not easily strive for a space of its own. The
growing critique to parliamentarianism also worked against the naturalization of a social
class historically identified with the experience of modern representative institutions.
As violence among extreme opposed social and political visions erupted in 1936,
dichotomies of all kinds (reds/fascists, spanish/foreigners, rich/poor) occupied the
public sphere. In a military and civil clash that was also a war of words, the possibility
for any middle category was completely pointless.
III
In spite of the demise of political citizenship after the 1936-39 Civil War, the
long dictatorship of Franco had the unexpected effect of paving the way for a radical
alteration in the semantic ebbs and tides of the concept of middle classes. Whereas
before definitions of the middle classes had involved some kind of social or political
denaturalization, the forty years of lack of political freedom witnessed social and
political re-naturalization of the middle classes in intellectual and propagandistic
discourse.
First, the official institutions of the dictatorship upheld a positive image of the
middle classes in society. As the regime steered its way towards development policies,
the representation of the middle classes as the horizon of expectation of Spanish modern
society regained centrality. By 1970 Jos Ort Bords, a top bureaucrat of the
ideological machinery and propaganda of the regime, could refer to the discontinuity
in Spanish polity during the 19th century, and to the serious problems experienced
during the 20th century, and blamed them both on the feebleness of the Middle
Classes (1970, 6). However, he could now also conclude that possibly the Middle
Class is today the most decisive and influential in Spanish society.
But the semantics of the concept of middle class were far from being
monopolized by official discourse. It was actually in pro-democratic anti-Francoist
oppositionist circles that the middle classes were recast as a natural component of a
well-ordered society to come. Especially in the works of Enrique Tierno Galvn (2009,
III), a philosopher who introduced functionalist sociology in Spain, the middle classes
appeared as the ineluctable consequence of economic development and the emergence
of new social cleavages based on consumerism instead of production . Social renaturalization was thus obtained by means of a relative de-naturalization of the working
class
Inspired by structuralism and functionalism, scientific conceptualizations of the
middle class were offered by the first generation of Spanish academic sociologists
during the 1960s. Official and oppositionist intellectuals shared thus in their
contribution to represent the middle classes as a natural component of modern Spanish
society. Their differences should not pass unnoticed. Whereas for the dictatorship
598
bureaucrats, the middle classes had already achieved their historical goals with the
modernizing policies sponsored by the regime, for oppositionists they were at a major
historical crossroads. But the sociological imagination of Tierno Galvn and his
followers political participation of the middle classes was conceptualized as the only
way Spanish society could finally overcome a traumatic past of violence and civil war,
the institutional crystallization of which was a dictatorship that based its legitimacy in
the military coup detat of 1936 and the subsequent oppression and repression of
freedom (Tierno Galvn, 2009, III). Spanish postfrancoist democracy can be thus seen
essentially as a mesocratic society superseding a dictatorship unable to find ways for the
proper political takeover of the middle classes.
IV
The middle classes have not been a relevant concept for Spanish democracy, but
it has certainly regained centrality with the current crisis of globalized capitalism. The
most accurate and ambitious analysis of the nature, origins and depth of the crisis are
already making extensive usage of the term (Lpez and Rodrguez, 2011). On a wider
scale, just recently President Obama has delivered a speech relating the overcoming of
the crisis to the policies capable of offering a grand bargain to the middle class (The
Washington Post, 30-07-2013). There has probably been not another period in
modernity in which the social naturalization of the middle class has been so high. This
is all the more striking when all economic studies definitively probe that social
inequalities are on the rise everywhere in the world, thus shrinking the social space for
middle class.
This shows the degree to which, as Dror Wharmam says, the middle class is
taken today as given in our world (1995). For Wharman, however, the imagination on
the middle class has followed the line of changing political configurations. I have
tried to show that a history of the middle class as concept expresses the changing
boundaries between natural and unnatural perceptions of the social order. That these
changes are politically established is out of question; what remains to be discussed is
the degree to which the alternative shifts in natural and unnatural perception of the
middle classes truly account for a semantic history proper, or whether they still await
alternative definitions of the practices of human exchange as essentially diverse and
contingent in their social effects.
REFERENCES
Alcal Galiano, Antonio (1984) [1843] Lecciones de derecho poltico, Madrid, Centro
de Estudios Constitucionales.
Battaner, Mari Paz (1977) Vocabulario poltico-social en Espaa (1868-1974), Madrid,
RAE.
Castel, Robert (1995), Les mtamorphoses de la question sociale: a chronique du
salariat, Paris, Fayard.
599
Dahrendorf, Ralph (1959), Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, Stanford
(Ca.), Stanford University Press.
Frank, Andr Gunder (1998), Reorient. Global Economy in the Asian Age, Los Angeles,
University of California Press.
Gislain, J.J. and Steiner, P. (1995) La sociologie conomique (1890-1920): Durkheim,
Pareto, Schumpeter, Simiand, Weber et Veblen, Paris, PUF.
Kocka, Jrgen and Allen Mitchell (1993), Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century
Europe, Oxford, Berg.
Lpez, Isidro and Emmanuel Rodrguez (2010), Fin de ciclo. Financiarizacin,
territorio y sociedad de propietarios en la onda larga del capitalismo hispano (19562010), Madrid, Traficantes de Sueos.
Lpez Cordn, Mara Victoria (undated), La revolucin de 1868 y la I Repblica,
Madrid, Siglo XXI.
McMillan, John (2003), Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets, New
York/London, Norton and Company.
Marshall, Alfred (1890), Principles of Economics.
Mann, Michael (1993), The Sources of Social Power. Vol II. The Rise of Classes and
Nation States, 1760-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Maurn, Joaqun (1966) [1936], Revolucin y contrarrevolucin en Espaa, Pars,
Ruedo Ibrico.
North, Douglas C. (2005), Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton,
Princeton University Press.
Ort Bords, Jos (1970) Las clases medias en Espaa, Madrid, Ediciones del
Movimiento.
Ossowski, Stanislaw (1969), Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, London,
Routledge and Keegan Paul.
Prez Ledesma, Manuel (1991), Ricos y pobres; pueblo y oligarqua; explotadores y
explotados. Las imgenes dicotmicas en el siglo XIX espaol, Revista del Centro de
Estudios Constitucionales, 10, pp. 59-88.
Peyrou, Florencia (2008), Tribunos del pueblo. Demcratas y republicanos durante el
reinado de Isabel II, Madrid, CEPC.
Pirenne, Henri (1956) [1927], Medieval Cities: Their Origin and the Revival of Trade,
Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Rist, Gilbert (2002), The History of Development: From Western Origin to Global
Faith, New York, Zed Books.
Romeo, Mara Cruz (1998), El lenguaje del nuevo liberalismo: moderados y
progresistas, 1934-1943, Ayer, 29, pp. 37-62.
Snchez Len, Pablo (2001), Ciudadana e individualismo en la Ilustracin Espaola
(opinin e inters en la ciencia de la economa civil de Jovellanos), en
Ciudadana y Nacin en el mundo hispnico contemporneo, Vitoria, Instituto de
Historia Valentn de Foronda/Universidad del Pas Vasco.
Snchez Len, Pablo (2007), La pesadilla mesocrtica: ciudadana y clases medias en
el liberalismo histrico espaol, en Prez Ledesma, M. (ed.), De sbditos a
600
601
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
This research has the objective to analyze the process of historical development of the
concept homeless. This is an eminently qualitative study, whose features fall along the
lines of social research. The object of study is delimited in understanding the concept
homeless as construct new meaning.
As comparative support, addresses the issue of vagrancy and begging, observing
the historical transformations of these concepts throughout history. The concepts
vagrancy and panhandling are starting points of the search, and serve to guide the
historical approaches on the street in contemporary designs.
The questioning was done for this research was: after all, what it is when it
comes to begging, vagrancy or homelessness? It is therefore the concern of knowing
when these concepts, through use, have come to represent certain social conflicts, and
plan where these conflicts were significant.
The journey in search of the social history of the concepts in other historical
times was justified before the imposition of that there is a story of how to structure
concepts without an approach to social history (Koselleck, 2006), because it is in social
history, which seek content that will give significance (meaning) to the concepts
studied.
In order to meet the social history of these concepts, we sought a review on the
level of political semantics in order to determine whether, at the present time, were kept
the same historical perceptions of the past, or if, somehow, were resignified . According
to Koselleck (2011) it is possible to pursue the future, as it is outlined by a 'key'
contextualized in the field of social history, with time markers and conceptual already
defined.
To facilitate data analysis, two grids were scanned for analysis: the first used as
a tool for obtaining parameters for structuring a history of concepts, called the analysis
grid for obtaining historical content. The second, for the interpretation of results and
analysis products, extracted from bibliographic sources of historical and documentary.
This research considered relevant approach on the iconographic representation of
concepts, because, for various conceptions of vagrancy and begging, in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, there has always been concern about the visual presence of
these people in the cities. If they were interned in correio houses, because they were
disciplining policies were being applied consistently: else, they needed to take action
against the presence of those people (Piragibe: 1928).
602
TEXT/TEXTO:
This research has the objective to analyze the process of historical construction of the
concept homeless situation. This is an eminently qualitative study whose features fit
into the molds of social research. The object of this study is delimited in understanding
the concept homeless as a construct of a new meaning.
As comparative support, addresses the issue of vagrancy and begging, observing
the historical transformations of these concepts throughout social history. Thus, the
concepts vagrancy and begging are the starting points on the research, and serve to
guide approaches of the conceptions of the homeless situation, employed nowadays.
The question made in this research was: after all, what it is when it comes to
begging, vagrancy or homelessness?
Bias in historical and political, for vagrancy and begging in Brazil, it was
verified that the State Government relied on the European tradition to discipline and
energetic social control (Piragibe, 1928). As for the homeless, their situational and
modal sense integrated the political agendas in the XXI century, whose formal concern
was special social protection, that is, protection required on the circumstances of the
subject.
The time frame was established based on the historical incursions of vagrancy
and begging from the fourteenth century until the present.
With the purpose of knowing the social history of these concepts, we sought a
review on the level of political semantics in order to determine whether, at the present
time, were kept the same historical perceptions of the past, or if, somehow, were
reinterpreted. According to Koselleck (2011) it is possible to pursue the future, because
it is delineated by a key contextualized in the field of social history, with time markers
and concepts already defined.
As these historical contexts indicate key elements of social transformation in
Brazil, it was selected historical and bibliographical sources, from periods in which the
perception of vagrancy and begging, as meaningful units of analysis, operated as objects
of public policies on discipline and social control.
Data analysis and definition of the starting point
At first, the option was only working with a paradigmatic concept, which
became palpable the research development, so the social representation concept
vagrancy served as starting point, or "basic seed", to be highly significant given the
similarities with the object homeless (Vaisman, 2006:340).
It was elected vagrancy as a concept deeply marked by a burden historical and
political transformation in the course of brazilian society (Piragibe, 1928). However, for
the development of research, there was a necessity to integrate begging in the
603
composition of the 'starting point, which did not cause changes in the proposed
methodology, nor weakened its main goal, which is the study of the concept homeless.
To dissociate the concepts - vagrancy and begging, the impression we had was
mutilation, indicating that a concept was as significant as the other for the conceptual
history, so the negative application could hinder the comprehension of the third concept
- homelessness. Besides, social history indicated that both rooted in the same historical
time, established their bridges to contemporary: the discipline policy for begging was
repealed only in 2009; the abrogation of the rule in regard vagrancy is under
consideration in the Senate yet.
Delimitation of analysis grids
To facilitate the analysis of the obtained data it was scanned two analysis grids:
the first one used as a tool to obtain the parameters of the structure of history of
concepts, called grid of analysis for obtaining historical content. The second one was
the interpretation of the results or analysis products, extracted from bibliographic
sources of historical and documentary.
For the construction of the first grid analysis, the procedures were adapted from
Sousa and Villas Boas (2011:206-217), and consist of:
Identification of the "axes" that currently organize the concepts vagrancy
and begging, "according to the reiteration of speech".
Developing an 'association list' containing synonyms (antonyms were not
listed, just observed), and attributes (derived synonyms) of 'selected axes'.
In that manner, we proceeded to the collection of comparative words and their
synonyms in dictionaries nineteenth century, which served as a tool of temporal
modulation. As a starting point for this step, the meaning of vagrancy and begging was
consulted in three nineteenth-century dictionaries, and derived synonyms of these
entries, building up a bank of words that were used as input into the next phase of the
research.
Analysis frameworks have been developed for the concepts vagrancy and
begging, to allow individualization of each semantic words, analyzing them also
separately. This is because the semantic at some times tend to coincide, the risk of
misinterpretations would be high. The results obtained indicate the permanence of the
semantic set in contemporary discourses, which allowed to proceed with this technique.
- Selection of historical references to support the research of literature
sources. These sources will be used to: a) a comparison of the concepts vagrancy and
begging with the concept homeless, with the application of AntConc RC2w 3.2.3
software (Windows) 2011, b) construction of a 'matrix analysis', for extracting excerpts
and record keeping. This step of the analysis aims to seize political semantics of traces
of the past, nowadays.
In choosing the historical sources used for comparison with the association list,
it was selected the following in official documents.
For the construction of a 'matrix analysis', and extracting of the excerpts and
record keeping it was used other historical sources. These sources has the purpose of
making a record keeping, which served as input for the extraction of the perceptions of
604
It is listed two images below, one captured in the nineteenth century, published
in a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, with entries and illustrations, the second in
the XXI century, published on the Internet. Both represent the worldview that the
observer has to the object and allow the transposition of the realities of the past and the
future. It shows a reality of the nineteenth century transposed for the XXI century.
For photography n 2, the concept used in the nineteenth century and previous
centuries is vagrancy / begging. For images above, the formal concept contemporary
occurs in the field situational - homeless.
By transferring the images, the content does not change itself, not even the
condition of the subject, but the context built up different perceptions and social
policies. Thus, from the realities of the world, subjects construct their social
inscriptions; create identities and also stigmatizations.
By superimposing the concept vagrancy and begging, in terms of semiotics
(image) or perceptions, it cannot notice significant change. Formally, these two
concepts are endowed with semantic and politics, significantly different (as shown in
the list of associations).
There are moments in history, nineteenth-century for example, that the
associated words with begging is also applied to vagrancy. This fact also repeated when
associated words were analyzed with the two social phenomena: the list prepared for the
term begging, only the words' beggar ',' alms' begging 'is repeated in associations with
vagrancy.
In the search of associated words with begging and vagrancy it also became
clear the different conceptions of both concepts, the two conditions always bothered
societies, but in the case of begging, it is noticeable a conception of human compassion,
while for vagrancy, the semantic field is full of censorship, not to say, aversion to
another; the perception is pejorative: 'idleness', 'lazy', 'malfeasance', 'homeless',
'unemployed' , 'uncertain', 'unstable', 'defective', 'depleted', 'doubtful', 'cunning',
'clumsy', 'useless', 'worthless', among many others.
606
The vagrant did not deserve mercy, but the disciplining by labor and if
necessary, the internment on the houses the correction as expressed by Piragibe (1928).
In the middle ages, the condition of a vagrant was considered a disgrace, an affront to
the moral laws of the church. It was given to the beggar alms and to the vagrant an
alternative to maintain their own livelihood by honorable means, that it was the work.
On the contrary sense, unemployed or unoccupied, was not worthy to occupy a space in
urban centers or society.
For the homeless concept, the focus shifts the subject to the condition of the
subject. In certain way, the subject is implied and the very concept keeps him invisible.
Results obtained
In this section, it was applied to the second analytical grid, destined to the
interpretation of the results or products analysis, extracted from bibliographic sources of
documentary and historical.
In the analysis of the concept street living, the adjunct adnominal 'street'
highlights the social relationship of the subject with its reality featuring
circumstantiality or naming their condition. The meaning of the concept homelessness
seems to be much more comprehensive than the meanings of begging and vagrancy.
These interpreted as typical social phenomena on city streets.
In the case of the concept homeless, the load of the semantic and policy matter is
directed to the concept street, from which emerge the stigmas and discrimination, and
the marginalization of the subject itself. Being of the street, street life, homelessness,
either temporarily or permanently, are analogous situations, which represent conditions
of the subject.
Compared to subjects who are in the street situation today, the concept does not
indicate the same level of visibility, and the effect caused by the concept seems
somehow uncertain, since sometimes emanates from an adjunct adnominal of the
street, sometimes a adjunct in the street; expressing routine and continuity of life of
people who are kept in indeterminacy. This mark is in the use of an indefinite pronoun
'the one that' lives on the streets, or is on the street, or make the street his home.
In the field of semiotics, we can safely say comparing the two images (photos 1
and 2), that it is a beggar or vagrant, but not a homeless, because this is not yet the
perception of contemporary society. The idea about these people, these days, and that
needs to be deconstructed, it is still a beggar / vagrant, the subject that bothers and not
of their condition.
The degree of coverage of the concepts, vagrancy and begging are restricted to
specific situations, bounded by social history. At the association list, the words are
synonymic and even those considered derivatives also delimit and categorize vagrant
subjects; beggars subjects.
The explanation of the semantic content of the concepts is sufficient for the
conditions examined - vagrancy and begging, while those are restricted to that
condition. Regarding the homeless, the degree of coverage of the concept is
indeterminate, only restricted to 'who' is in street condition; the bond established with
the street, which shows circumstantial.
607
REFERENCES:
Foucault, Michel, Vigiar e punir: o nascimento da priso. Petrpolis: Vozes, 2007.
Giorgetti, Camila, Moradores de rua: uma questo social? So Paulo: FAPESP, EDUC,
2 de Janeiro: Garamond, 2000.
608
609
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The history of local anti-Semitic prejudice and violence and especially various forms of
co-responsibility for the Holocaust were arguably among the most sensitive questions in
postwar Hungary. After early postwar confrontations with the extermination of
Hungarian Jewry in the forms of war crimes trials, public debates, published memoirs or
interview projects where anti-Semitic practices were discussed explicitly and in a
detailed manner, the communist regime developed diverse ways of coding the
cataclysmic events and embedding them in a larger anti-fascist ideological frame. With
the gradual decline of communist ideological control, previously mandatory antifascism lost much of its persuasive power in a country that might have had significant
fascist movements but did not have fascist regimes during most years of the Second
World War in spite of being massively involved in the Holocaust.
The central question my paper will address is how the concept of anti-Semitism
has fared after the decline of mandatory anti-fascism in Hungary that coincided with
novel attempts to discuss the Holocaust more prominently as well as renewed attempts
to marginalize it. I will show that while tentative explorations of anti-Semitism were
conducted prior to 1989, a veritable explosion of discussions around the concept of antiSemitism took place around the fall of communist regimes that dealt with its origins,
history, contemporary strength as well as political uses. Anti-Semitism became a wellestablished scholarly object simultaneously with what was termed the revival of antiSemitism. Its relevance as an analytical term remained heavily contested though. It
resulted in lengthy and often embittered public polemics, the eminent politicization of
the concept and its frequent use in discussions of the country in more recent years.
My presentation will analyze the multiple redefinitions of anti-Semitism that
were attempted and relate these to the use of the concept of the Jewish question in
particular. It will reveal the major semantic shifts over the course of the past quarter of a
century through the use of conceptual historical methods.
610
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
Conceptual historians have frequently neglected geographical concepts such as the
West. There are no entries, for example, in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe on the
concept of the West. This paper will therefore outline and analyze the contours of a
conceptual history of the West. It does so not by focusing on the history of the concept
in just one country but by laying bare how it evolved through the exchange of ideas
among several European countries and the United States. It is based on an analysis of
selected print-media of the 19th and 20th century in Great Britain, France, the United
States, Germany, and Russia.
It was through debates led both within Russia and Western Europe that the
concept of the West as a distinctive and separate cultural community evolved in the
19th century. In Russia, the concept of the West stood at the center of debates over
Russian identity. Westernizers wished Russia to follow the course of European
countries and to modernize according to their example. The Slavophiles by contrast
gave the term Westernizers a negative connotation and set Russias allegedly
harmonious, organic, and spiritual community apart from what they perceived as a
divisive, artificial, and hollow West. The French and British public followed the
Russian debates and began imagining Russia as the antinomy of Western Civilization.
As a result, the West became increasingly associated with capitalism, democracy, and
the Enlightenment, since these were the elements that Slavophiles rejected most
emphatically. In the German states, the development of the concept of the West was
more complicated. In part, this can be attributed to Germanys geographical position in
Central Europe and the fact that the emerging German nationalism was just as
Francophobic as Russophobic. It was thus rather the idea that Germany occupied a
middling role or the position of a mediator between western and eastern principles
that won widespread acceptance. During World War I, German intellectuals contrasted
the ideas of 1914 with the ideas of 1789 and German culture with Western
Civilization to assert German superiority over Great Britain and France. As with the
Russian debates of the nineteenth century, which were received abroad and had a
611
measurable influence on how the West would come to define itself, the German
debates about the ideas of 1914 were absorbed in Western Europe and North America
and given a negative twist. Great Britain, France, and the United States thus also
conceived of the conflict in ideological terms between western democracies and
eastern autocracies. The notion of a Western Civilization, which was characterized
by democracy and capitalism and whose roots could be traced back to ancient Greece,
gained widespread popularity even in the United States. This was a profoundly new
development: previously, as Americans had previously defined themselves in
opposition to Europe and had interpreted the founding of their union as a radical break
with the past.
It was only after World War II, however, that West-Germans would also come to
widely identify with Western Civilization. Germanys defeat and utter moral and
intellectual break-down after the war discredited positive notions of a German special
path and thus created the possibility of imagining Germany as part of a larger
Western Civilization. The tremendous cultural influence of the United States,
moreover, would ensure that West-Germans would reconsider their national identity
along lines compatible with the markers of western identity. Finally, the concept of
the Abendland could be reinvented to enable Wet-Germans to conceive of themselves as
part of a larger Western Civilization. Thus a transnational coalition of American,
British, French, and German proponents of the idea of the West emerged, which
legitimized the postwar order by propagating the concept of a western civilization
threatened by eastern communism and thus linking North America and Western in a
common cultural space.
612
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
As a partially integrated European polity receded before and after the Thirty Years War
and the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the category of Europe gains ground in the
writings of the period and remained, ever since, a feature of international politics.
Against the background of a challenged conception of empire (as a composite political
order associated with the Holy Roman Empire), the category of Europe emerges
associated with notions of moving parts and balance.
Manoeuvring between conceptions of political pluralism (diversity of sovereign
polities) and conceptions of cultural compatibility (Europe as a civilization against
which others should be measured), the concept of Europe operated as an early
encapsulation of Modern aspirations of universality and plurality usually associated
with the Enlightenment(s). At the same time, Europe follows from a vanishing
political-moral ordering in which the category of politics as the realm of crises
becomes paramount. Incidentally, the present debate on ordering slowly shifts from
polity to politics.
Afterwards (after the American, French and Haitian revolutions), Europe is
invoked as a moral token against the re-enactment of another inception of empire as
political order the Roman(istic) empire with fledgling universalistic aspirations
during Napoleonic Wars. By doing so, Europe was invoked (as a legitimate
conception of political order alternative to empire) by a sketchy concert of states
victorious over Napoleon the Concert of Europe follows. In this sense, our proposal
approaches the multifaceted inception of the category of Europe through the analytical
lenses of the history of concepts, markedly the perspective of Reinhart Koselleck,
between the 17th and 19th centuries.
613
614
ABSTRACT/RESUMEN:
The call for this years international conference of the History of the Political and Social
Concepts Group celebrates the success of begriffsgeschichte across many disciplines
history, political science, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, translation studies and law
among other academic fields, creating common ground to transdisciplinary debates
and advancing their particular researches on the question of the use of languages in
different social and political contexts dispersed in time and space. However, in the
ghetto-like discipline of International Relations, it seems that the German History of
Concepts has not yet made its incursion. The goal of this paper is to reflect about the
main disciplinary and political questions that stand as obstacles to the incorporation of
the approach of conceptual history to the study of IR.
In the last two decades, IR has gone through an ideational turn that many
insiders see as an incomplete one yet. In the so-called American Social Science, the
study of ideational factors, subjectively or intersubjectively held by humans acting on
and being integrated by them in the reality we live in, has been specially advanced by
scholars introducing many different approaches to the field, specially the European
social theory, including the contribution of names as divergent as Giddens, Foucault,
Habermas, Arendt, Derrida, Bourdieu, Gramsci, among many others. Still, a leading
scholar has noted one decade ago that the understanding of the constitutive role of
language has yet to be fully addressed in the discipline, and that the work of Reinhart
Koselleck and other German conceptual historians was a very promising venue not yet
explored. As he sentenced then, International relations scholars should rise to the
challenge.
However, it seems that the challenge is yet to be faced. Beyond exploring the
reasons for such a neglect or ignorance, this paper tries to indicate fruitful ways for a
theoretical intervention through begriffsgeschichte, including some of the many
contributions being made outside IR to such central concepts to the disciplines lexicon
such as the state, sovereignty, anarchy, power, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, and so on
what just make the lack of presence of this approach in the discipline more
embarrassing or even suspicious.
615
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
En el presente trabajo nos hemos querido centrar en el anlisis de determinados
conceptos y metforas de mbito poltico en diferentes textos en euskera durante la
primera mitad del siglo XIX. As pues, utilizamos como hilo conductor los escritos Peru
Abarca (1802), Guipuzcoaco Dantza Gogoangarriac (1824) y Guipuzcoaco
provinciaren condaira edo historia (1846), textos de gran inters en cuanto que son
testigos del descubrimiento del pueblo, caracterstico de las elites de la poca.
Precisamente el concepto pueblo ser uno de los que analizaremos con ms ahnco, y
es que el hecho de encontrarnos con estos textos en euskera en una poca donde el
significado de dicha palabra se encuentra en un progresivo cambio, da mayor inters al
anlisis. Uno de los objetivos ser el de entender las soluciones que dan los autores a
traducciones de difcil realizacin con una serie de conceptos que seguramente seran
ajenos a la comunidad de habla de esta lengua en aquella poca. El uso de metforas
como la madre patria y el resurgimiento tambin ser interesante para comparar con
las traducciones y para poner en su contexto histrico los citados escritos. Conceptos y
metforas suman fuerzas para generar unos discursos que cada vez irn adquiriendo
tintes ms polticos.
1
Contratado por la EHU/UPV dentro del programa de doctorado del master Europa y el Mundo
Atlntico, poder, cultura y sociedad, mediante una beca predoctoral del Programa de Formacin de
Investigadores del DEUI del Gobierno Vasco.
616
TEXTO/TEXT:
Discursos civilizadores
El desmantelamiento del Antiguo Rgimen fue un proceso de cambio, que se
deja ver en muchos aspectos, siendo la lengua uno de ellos. Habiendo redescubierto
(Burke, 1991 [1978]) al pueblo, verdadero garante del espritu nacional, y con una
creciente necesidad de justificarse en ste como actor poltico, las elites cambian su
mensaje de distanciamiento que haba sido caracterstico durante el siglo XVIII. El
pueblo pasar de ser ese ente incivilizado a depositario del espritu nacional de los
nuevos estados emergentes. As pues, las elites usan al pueblo para dotar de contenido a
las nacientes comunidades imaginadas (Anderson, 2011 [1983]), redefiniendo el propio
trmino pueblo (Guerra, 2009 [1992]: 285-309;430-466).
Siguiendo el ejemplo occidental, las elites vascas emitirn una serie de discursos
en este sentido. El redescubrimiento del pueblo se deja ver como la principal
caracterstica de la obra manuscrita y sin publicar Peru Abarca (Mogel, 1881)1 (1802)
del sacerdote Juan Antonio Moguel, donde se pretende ensear la bondad del modo de
vida vascongado a miembros de las elites que vivan en entornos urbanos (Dez, 1982:
13-57). La relevancia del cambio de discurso es su continuidad en el tiempo, ya que en
1824 Juan Ignacio Iztueta, escribir su libro de danzas: Guipuzcoaco Dantza
Gogoaingarriac (Iztueta, 1824). Se pretende que las tradiciones vascongadas resurjan
de sus cenizas, recurriendo para ello a lo que, a todas luces puede ser considerado una
invencin (Hobsbawm, 2012 [1983]; Juaristi, 1998 [1987]) o, si se prefiere, gnesis
(Altuna, 2012), de la tradicin. Este discurso se complementar ms tarde con
Guipuzcoaco Provinciaren Condaira (Iztueta, 1847), publicacin pstuma de1847. La
diferencia de estos dos ltimos escritos con el anterior, es la de su impresin y difusin
promovida por la diputacin guipuzcoana (Garmendia, 1974; Garmendia 1994), para lo
que debemos tener en cuenta el proceso de acaparamiento de poder por parte de las
diputaciones vascongadas a comienzos del XIX (Rubio, 2003) y sus intereses
poltico/culturales en la difusin de este tipo de discurso.
Tomando estos textos como hilo conductor, analizaremos expresiones clave de
contenido social o poltico, teniendo presente el contexto de cada uno de los discursos
(Koselleck, 1993 [1979]: 108-121). Debemos recalcar la importancia de encontrarnos
con los citados textos en euskera, idioma al que se tenan que traducir conceptos a
veces totalmente ajenos a sus hablantes, en su mayora de clases sociales bajas con poco
contacto con la administracin o la poltica. En estos casos, encontramos la frmula x
edo y (x o y), mostrando una palabra presumiblemente ms conocida en segundo
lugar y=nazio y otra ms desconocida x=dierri, teniendo las dos el significado
castellano de nacin. As, las soluciones que estos autores proponen son de sumo inters
desde el punto de vista histrico-conceptual y lingstico.
1
617
Fiel: cargo foral dentro del organigrama vizcano que equivala al alcalde en tierra llama de Bizkaia.
618
Salustio, donde emplea el trmino Erri de una manera ms amplia. Iztueta en 1824 da
un salto cualitativo, traduciendo la palabra del Diccionario geogrfico de Espaa,
bascongados como Euscal-erria, en singular (contrastando con el plural de Moguel).
Expresiones como Erritarki (Popularmente), Erriaren-chit-berekin (Muy del pueblo)
o Erriaren soinua (Sonido del pueblo) nos remiten a una concepcin que se acerca
ms a la social/cultural. Adems, es interesante ver cmo aparecen los binomios Dierri
edo nazio (Nacin) y, sobre todo, Dierri edo pueblo (Pueblo). Evidentemente, el
concepto nacin dentro de un escritor que defiende el tubalismo y el vasco-cantabrismo
no puede sino referirse a una concepcin tnica o cultural (Forcadell, Romeo, 2006: 2125), pero este tipo de conceptos nos muestran una ligera apertura a otro tipo de
comprensin del mundo.
Nos interesa constatar que es probable que Iztueta tomara la palabra dierri de
un catecismo poltico traducido en 1820 al euskera. Si la primera leccin del catecismo
original (de 1812) nos habla sobre la Nacin espaola (D.J.C., 1812: 4) la versin
vascongada hace lo propio sobre Dierri Espaatarraren gaean y ms adelante vemos
el binomio Nacioa, edo Dierriac (Amundarain, 1820: 6-8). Parece que la obra la
tradujo un cura, Jos Felix Amundarain habiendo tomados prstamos de Larramendi
(San Martn, 1987). Las supuestas filiaciones liberales de Iztueta podran dejarnos
pensar que tuvo acceso a este tipo de documentacin.
En ambos idiomas trminos anteriormente neutros expresan, necesariamente,
nuevos conceptos: iritar o erritar, que en el Antiguo Rgimen eran simples
pobladores de lugares fsicos como la ciudad o el pueblo, ahora son depositarios de una
serie de derechos. La palabra Dierri no es nueva, ya aparece en el diccionario del
jesuita de 1745 equiparndolo a nacin (natio gens) (Larramendi, 1853
[1745]:192;241)3. Sin embargo, para el traductor del catecismo poltico hay un nuevo
significado. Qu significaba para Iztueta?
En su famosa obra sobre las diversiones pblicas, Jovellanos habla sobre dos
clases de pueblo: el que trabaja y el que huelga (Jovellanos, 2010 [1812]: 71). Pues
bien, Iztueta, para traducir pueblo en este sentido amplio no usa las palabras de
Larramendi iritarrac (Larramendi, 1853 [1745]: 302)4 sino diarte, de la misma raz
de dierri. Es bastante probable que tras este trmino Iztueta viera algo intermedio
entre el concepto de poblador y de individuo con derechos, siguiendo la estela del
fuerismo decimonnico, prximo a lo que se ha llamado la concepcin esencialista de
la nacin del primer romanticismo, donde se vuelve a los valores religiosos barrocos y
se elabora un discurso que enaltece la identidad en torno a la lengua. El pueblo, que ha
guardado sus usos y costumbres, puede permanecer verdaderamente puro en ese
aislamiento. A pesar de tomar muchos elementos de la concepcin austracista de la
Monarqua, muchas cosas cambiaron en estos escritores, ahora es el alma nacional de
un pueblo lo que legitima lo poltico. Esta convergencia llegar a amplios sectores del
moderantismo teniendo xito en los aos 40 (Fernndez, 1994). En este sentido, Iztueta
3
Para patria hay otras acepciones como erri, sorterri, jayeterri: Patria, natale solum.
De hecho, la definicin de Larramendi resulta muy esclarecedora, recalca dos tipos de acepciones
en cuanto a personas: 1- la gente de l: iritarrac, iridia, uritarrac, uridia, Latin: pupulus y 2-lo
mismo que plebe, vulgo. Lo equipara a boalda o tumulto del pueblo: vis populi.
619
ayuda a crear un nuevo imaginario vasco que, repetimos, destruye algunos de los viejos
paradigmas para asentar otros nuevos y toma viejos elementos ponindolos al da
(Madariaga, 2008 [2006]: 22), Iztueta ha comenzado a dar esos pasos lo que se deja ver
en las metforas utilizadas.
Metforas: La madre patria y el resurgimiento
La imagen que refleja Iztueta en sus dos escritos al referirse a la provincia es la
de una gran familia. El alcalde, figura paternalista, cuida de la moralidad de los
habitantes donde los ancestros gurasoak (padres), han dejado las buenas tradiciones
en manos de sus descendientes. En 1824 la principal cualidad de los guipuzcoanos es la
Anaitasun (Hermandad) y las villas guipuzcoanas son consideradas hermanas y
linajudas. En 1847, la provincia se nos muestra como una gran madre gure Ama zintzo
Gipuzkoak (nuestra buena madre Gipuzkoa) o gure Ama maite maitagarri
Gipuzkoak (nuestra querida madre Gipuzkoa). La metfora de la familia bajo la
autoridad, en este caso matriarcal, era una constante por parte de las elites guipuzcoanas
desde el Antiguo Rgimen (Larramendi, 2010 [1882]: 25)5. En un mbito ms extenso,
Gipuzkoa aparece como hermana del seoro de Bizkaia y de la provincia de Alava, lo
que concuerda con la metfora utilizada en las Juntas Generales guipuzcoanas en sus
actas (AGG-GAO). El reiterado uso de la metfora nos muestra su efectividad entre el
pblico, de hecho, la eleccin no sera casual, ya que articulara completamente el
discurso de los organismos forales (Fernndez, 2010: 166-200) y sera de fcil
asimilacin para sus receptores.
Volviendo a 1824, Iztueta elabora otra interesante metfora: el renacimiento o la
creacin de una nueva sociedad como un nuevo edificio que ha de ser levantado de sus
cimientos (dem: 204-207). En la ofrenda inicial a la ciudad de Donostia recuerda cmo
la ciudad fue destruida por las tropas aliadas, cmo sus habitantes fueron maltratados y
forzados y cmo despus sufrieron la llegada de una epidemia. Sin embargo, todo ello
se presenta para realzar su resurgimiento posterior. Si bien Donostia pueda ser
considerada un ejemplo bastante fsico por su incendio de hace doscientos aos, este
renacimiento tambin podra darse, ms metafrica e implcitamente, en su segundo
escrito, de 1847, con una provincia que no haba salido ni haca diez aos de una lucha
fratricida pero que se mostraba como una entidad cohesionada y venerable con su
descripcin de ros, montes, hijos ilustres y hazaas pasadas y presentes.
A modo de conclusin
Al igual que las traducciones latinas moguelianas, los conceptos polticos ms
interesantes de Iztueta son utilizados inicialmente para las traducciones de textos
castellanos como los de Zamacola y Jovellanos. Estas traducciones dan resultados tan
interesantes como Arguidore (Ilustracin 6 ) o Anaitasun (Fraternidad), ambos
5
Larramendi ya dice en su Corografa Guipuzcoa, provincia distinta de lava y Vizcaya. Todas tres
hermanas, hijas de una misma madre, que se llam y se llama su primitiva inmemorial, antiqusima
libertad.
620
REFERENCIAS:
Fuentes primarias
Archivo General de Gipuzkoa, AGG-GAO_JDAM_175_0068A0089v.
Amundarain, J.F., Jaquin-bide Iritaraudia Espaiaco Neurguidaren, edo Constitucio
berriaren
erara
aderezatua,
1820,
[En
lnea],
URL:
http://www.zumalakarregimuseoa.net/ekintzak-eta-zerbitzuak/ikerketa-etadokumentazioa/argitalpen-digitalak/1812ko-dotrina/ (Consultado el 03/06/2013).
D .J. C., Catecismo poltico, arreglado la constitucin de la Monarqua Espaola:
para ilustracin del pueblo, instruccin de la juventud, y uso de las escuelas de
primeras letras, Madrid, Oficina de Collado, 1812. [En lnea], URL:
http://books.google.es/books?id=FL4IT31TwHcC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source
=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=twopage&q&f=false (Consultado el 10/06/2013).
Iztueta, J.I., Viejas danzas de Guipzcoa/Guipuzkoako dantza gogoangarriak, Bilbao,
La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1968 [1824].
- Gipuzkoako Probintziaren Kondaira edo Historia, Klasikoen Gordailua, 1847, [En
lnea],
URL:
http://klasikoak.armiarma.com/idazlanak/I/IztuetaGipuzkoa.htm
(Consultado el 20/06/2013).
7
Ponemos como ejemplo la obra de Intxausti basada, entre otras, en las publicaciones de P. Burke al
respecto.
621
Jovellanos, G.M. de, Memoria Sobre Las Diversiones Pblicas (1812), USA, Kessinger
Publishing, 2010, [1812].
Larramendi, M., Diccionario trilinge. Castellano, Bascuence y latn (Tomo I), San
Sebastin, Don Pio de Zuazua, 1853, [1745].
- Diccionario trilinge. Castellano, Bascuence y latn (Tomo II), San Sebastin, Don
Pio de Zuazua, 1853, [1745].
- Corografa o descripcin general de la muy noble y muy leal provincia de Guipzcoa,
Valladolid, Maxtor, 2010. [1882].
Mogel, Juan Antonio, Peru Abarka, (versin de Josu Lavin), Getxo, Klasikoen
Gordailua, [En lnea], URL: http://klasikoak.armiarma.com/pdf/MogelJAAbarka.pdf
(Consultado el 7 de enero de 2012) [1881].
Fuentes secundarias
Ahedo Gurrutxaga, I., El viaje de la identidad y el nacionalismo vasco en Iparralde
(1789-2005) (Vol I), Gasteiz, Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2005.
Altuna, B., El buen vasco. Gnesis de la tradicin Euskaldun fededun, Donostia,
Hiria, 2012.
Anderson, B., Comunidades imaginadas. Reflexiones sobre el origen y la difusin del
nacionalismo, Mxico D.F., Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 2011 [1983].
Artola, A., La antimodernidad en el Pas Vasco: prcticas sociales y discursos (17651833), en Cuadernos dieciochistas, 10, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2009,
pp. 121-147.
Burke, P., La cultura popular en la Europa moderna, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1991
[1978].
Dez Ezkerra, M., Peru Abarca como acto comunicativo, en Euskera:
Euskaltzaindiaren lan eta agiriak, XXVII, N1, (1982), pp. 13-57.
Elliot, J.H., A Europe of composite Monarchies, en Past & Present, N 137, 1992, pp.
48-71.
Fernndez Sebastin, J., Espaa, monarqua y nacin. Cuatro concepciones de la
comunidad poltica espaola entre el Antiguo Rgimen y la Revolucin liberal, en
Studia Historica-Historia Contempornea, Vol. XII (1994), pp. 61-73.
-Las revoluciones hispnicas. Conceptos, metforas y mitos, en VV.AA., La
Revolucin Francesa: Matriz de revoluciones?, Mxico D.F., 2010, pp. 133-223.
- Cabalgando el corcel del diablo. Conceptos polticos y aceleracin histrica e las
revoluciones hispnicas, Fernndez Sebastin, J. y Capelln de Miguel, G. (Coords.)
Lenguaje, tiempo y modernidad. Ensayos de historia conceptual, Santiago de Chile,
Globo Editories, 2011, pp. 21-59.
Forcadell, C. y Romeo, M.C., (Eds.) Provincia y nacin. Los territorios del liberalismo,
Zaragoza, Institucin Fernando el Catlico (CSIC), Diputacin de Zaragoza, 2006.
Garmendia Arruebarrena, J., Noticias sobre Iztueta en los registros de las Juntas
Generales de Guipzcoa, en Boletn de la Real Sociedad Vascongada de los Amigos
del Pas, Ao XXX (1974), Cuadernos 3 y 4, pp. 467-468
-En torno a Guipuzcoaco Condaira, de Iztueta, en Boletn de estudios histricos de
San Sebastin, Vol. 28, 1994, pp. 684-712.
622
623
RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Es usual reconocer en el fundador del nacionalismo vasco un primer uso del concepto
de independencia, en el sentido de reivindicarla para el conjunto de territorios vascos de
ambos lados de los Pirineos. Nadie antes que l haba utilizado ese concepto en el Pas
Vasco como eje de un programa poltico.
Y en efecto as es. Arana reivindica para los pases vascos una independencia
entendida como absoluta desconexin poltica entre la entidad que l empieza a llamar
Euzkadi (que era lo que hasta entonces se conoca en la literatura foralista como Euskal
Herria) y el resto de Espaa (y en menor medida Francia). Y adems lo hace basndose
en una historia anterior en la que, segn l, dicha entidad poltica vasca siempre haba
sido independiente hasta el final de las guerras carlistas.
El caso es que las fuentes polticas vascas que durante el siglo XIX hablan de
independencia lo hacen en un sentido distinto al que les adjudica Sabino Arana y, en
cualquier caso, nunca como eje de un programa poltico que reivindique algo semejante
para los vascos respecto de Espaa y, en su caso, Francia.
Este trabajo pretende poner de manifiesto los distintos significados del concepto
de independencia que aqu se dirimen, tanto el utilizado por el fundador del
nacionalismo vasco como los empleados por los publicistas anteriores a l y en los que
l pudo basar su programa poltico.
TEXTO/TEXT:
que el pueblo vasco haya sido independiente a lo largo de toda su historia. De ese modo
la ideologa nacionalista se define por la defensa a ultranza del catolicismo, hasta el
punto de poner esta condicin en primer lugar del lema, y luego el resto de las
caractersticas definidoras del pueblo vasco: su leyes, su raza y su idioma.
Con el paso del tiempo la defensa del catolicismo en poltica ha quedado
postergada, as como apelar a conceptos ciertamente incmodos como es el de la raza. Y
as, lo que ha quedado como definitorio del lema primigenio del nacionalismo
actualmente es el deseo nunca ocultado de independencia y la defensa a ultranza de la
lengua propia, el euskera.
No obstante, si hablamos de independencia y de euskera, a ningn nacionalista
actual le cabr la ms mnima duda de cul de esos dos elementos, aun considerndose
siempre los dos como importantes, es el ms importante de su ideologa. Y creo que a
nadie le cabr duda de que es el de independencia. Es ms, los nacionalistas consideran,
casi en su totalidad, que sin el sueo de la independencia o sin la posibilidad futura de la
misma, el euskera nunca podr tener garantizado su futuro.
El concepto de independencia, esto es, la idea de que Vizcaya (porque por ella
empieza la ideologa nacionalista) y el resto de territorios vascos habran sido
independientes respecto del resto de Espaa en toda su historia, es, por tanto, el ms
importante de la ideologa nacionalista. Y podemos decir que as lo fue desde su mismo
origen. Antes incluso de que apareciera el lema JEL. Cronolgicamente el concepto de
independencia aparece antes. En efecto, su primera aparicin, y adems explicada con
cierto detenimiento, la tenemos en los Pliegos Histrico-Polticos (I), escritos el 21 de
abril de 1886 y publicados en Barcelona el 7 de abril de 1888 y donde nos dice que la
autonoma de Bizkaya (as lo escribir siempre Sabino Arana) respecto de Espaa es
idntica a la de la independencia absoluta1. En este texto aparecern relacionados los
trminos independencia y absoluta, referidos a Bizkaya respecto de Espaa, en tres
ocasiones.
Pero el texto definitivo en el sentido de configurar el concepto de independencia
como el ms importante y el primero de la ideologa nacionalista es el titulado Apuntes
ntimos, fechado, para los prrafos que nos interesan ahora, en mayo de 1887. Ello es as
debido a que en l Sabino Arana integra en una sola la explicacin de las tres cuestiones
que, a nuestro juicio, dan la clave del origen del nacionalismo vasco: el concepto de
independencia vasca, la revelacin de 1882 y el lema Dios y Ley Vieja aunque sea
con sus trminos en castellano, que solo a partir de diciembre de 1887, en su forma J.-G.
eta L.-Z. (Jaun-Goikua eta Lagi-Zarra) empezara a aparecer en los escritos de Sabino
Arana.
En efecto, en los Apuntes ntimos, Sabino Arana explica cmo, con unos cortos
conocimientos de la Historia de Bizkaya y en parte por ciertas dosis de reflexin, l ya
saba que Bizkaya haba sido siempre absolutamente independiente de Espaa. Y que
fue el ltimo ao de esta etapa de mis evoluciones polticas, o sea 1882, tras una
larga discusin con mi hermano Luis, que ya para entonces era independiente
1
En Obras Completas de Sabino Arana Goiri, San Sebastin, Sendoa, 1980 (en adelante O.C.),
tomo I, p. 74.
625
absolutista, o sea nacionalista, que lleg al descubrimiento del lema Dios y Ley Vieja2.
En El discurso de Larrazabal, del 3 de junio de 1893, cuando vuelve a contar, casi en
los mismos trminos que en Apuntes ntimos, el caso de la revelacin, dice que para
entonces Luis era ya bizkaino nacionalista3. Pero, en cualquiera de los dos casos, Luis
era nacionalista no porque conociera el lema JEL, algo para lo que Sabino habra
necesitado una previa preparacin y reflexin, segn sus palabras, sino porque era
independiente absolutista, o sea bizkaino nacionalista.
Por lo tanto, Luis Arana lleg a ser nacionalista tan solo por creer que Bizkaya
haba sido siempre independiente de Espaa, sin conocer el lema JEL. De ah se deduce
la preeminencia del concepto de independencia sobre el lema JEL, algo que a mi juicio
tiene una gran trascendencia para entender el origen de la ideologa nacionalista. Y ello
por varias razones. Primero porque, paradjicamente, en lugar de justificar la
revelacin de 1882 sirve para corroborar su carcter de estricta invencin de Sabino
Arana. Segundo, porque permite explicar ms adecuadamente la trayectoria del
nacionalismo vasco en toda su historia, en particular en el momento ms trascendental
de la misma, como fue su postura en 1936 a favor del Estatuto y la Repblica, poniendo
la patria por delante de Dios.
Sabemos, porque el propio fundador de este movimiento as lo dej escrito, que
se encontraba completamente solo cuando inici su proselitismo4, lo cual quiere decir
que, hubiera o no influencia previa, esta no se materializaba por ningn lado, o al menos
quien debiera haberse sentido heredero de ella no la haca explcita en absoluto. Ahora
bien, la idea de independencia no le llega a Sabino Arana porque s. Hay unos
antecedentes de la misma, en particular en el tradicionalismo espaol en general, y
vasco en particular, del siglo XIX. Y tenemos tambin las citas de los autores que pudo
haber extrado esa idea de la independencia originaria: Arstides de Artiano
fundamentalmente y tambin Zamcola en parte. Y ninguno ms. No cita, por ejemplo,
a Ramn Ortiz de Zrate (1817-1883), tan del gusto de un estudioso del nacionalismo
vasco como Jos Extramiana, que tanto contribuy a identificar al tradicionalismo vasco
con una suerte de prenacionalismo5. O a Dorronsoro, de quien Javier Corcuera recoge
un par de veces una cita significativa con el trmino independencia por el medio6. O a
En Historia del Nacionalismo Vasco en sus Documentos, Bilbao, Eguzki, 1991, tomo I, p. 108.
El discurso de Larrazabal, en O.C., tomo I, pp. 154-160. El relato de la revelacin en pp. 157158.
4
Mas cuando habiendo llegado a conocer a mi Patria y cado en la cuenta de los males que la aquejaban,
extend mi vista en derredor buscando ansiosamente un brazo generoso que acudiera en su auxilio, un
corazn patriota, por todas partes tropec con la invasin espaola que talaba nuestros montes y que, en
vez de ser rechazada, era loca y frenticamente secundada por indignos hijos de Bizkaya, y no hall en
ninguna un partido, una sociedad, un libro, un peridico, una pgina, una sola pgina, bizkainos que me
escuchis, verdaderamente bizkaina. En El discurso de Larrazabal, 3-6-1893, O.C., I, p. 157.
5
Ver Jos Extramiana, R. Ortiz de Zrate: precurseur du nationalisme basque, en Hommage a Henry
Bonneville, Grenoble: Universit des Langues et Lettres de Grenoble, 1982, pp. 101-125.
6
La cita en cuestin es: Si Castilla no cumple su compromiso, indisputable es nuestro derecho a
declarar rota la unin y recuperar nuestra independencia, como lo hicieron nuestros abuelos
respecto al reino de Navarra, del que form parte Guipzcoa antes que de Castilla; y aparece en
las pginas 114 y 124 de La patria de los vascos, Madrid, Taurus, 2001.
3
626
627
Dicha Orden supone, a juicio de los ntegros, querer reforzar la figura del Rey en
detrimento de los otros dos principios del lema que iban por delante, Dios y Patria, y
significa el germen de lo que luego tomar cuerpo y supondr la ruptura del carlismo y
la aparicin del integrismo.
El integrismo refuerza los poderes intermedios correspondientes a las diferentes
circunscripciones polticas que conforman la monarqua, abomina de los partidos
polticos y concede al rey la potestad de resolver pero con el visto bueno de las Cortes y
por el bien de la comunidad: En las Cortes los reinos mismos, las fuerzas vivas del pas
y los consejos, por sus mandatarios o mensajeros, que no los partidos ni sus diputados
que ahora nos tiranizan y destrozan, miran por sus fueros que si no es a su gusto no les
pueden quitar ni mudar As el rey, poder nico, reina y gobierna, y l y solo l
resuelve; pero no como quien maneja rebaos de su propiedad, sino como quien est
puesto para regir a hombres libres y racionales, y en bien de la comunidad12. Este es el
significado de la teora del pactismo tradicionalista.
El tradicionalismo espaol, del que forma parte el integrismo, y del que parte
tambin, obviamente, el nacionalismo vasco, reconoce que sin unidad religiosa no es
posible, ni concebible siquiera, la unidad poltica13. El tradicionalismo, as mismo,
reconoce la singularidad propia de las diferentes partes territoriales constitutivas del
Estado, respecto de las cuales la religin ejercera de vnculo interno, mientras que la
Corona sera el vnculo externo14. Por otra parte, ni siquiera es necesario recurrir a los
tradicionalistas vascos para encontrar el concepto de independencia de las unidades que
conforman la Monarqua espaola: lo descubrimos tambin en autores tpicos del
tradicionalismo no vascos, como el propio Vzquez de Mella y otros15. Ello deriva de la
teora pactista, que segn Evarist Olcina tiene su primera manifestacin dentro del
tradicionalismo en una de las primeras cartas de Mara Teresa de Braganza, Princesa de
Beira, al pretendiente Juan, padre del futuro Carlos VII, fechada en Baden el 15 de
septiembre de 1861 y que contiene la frase: Porque el monarca en Espaa no tiene
derecho a mandar sino segn religin, ley y fuero16. El propio Vzquez de Mella, en un
discurso durante las sesiones del Congreso relacionadas con la defensa de la
personalidad jurdica de la regin, celebradas entre los das 30 y 31 de mayo de 1890,
declarar que: Porque aqu, la nacin, mejor dir, el Estado central, ha sido la
12
Op.cit., p. 26.
Ver Juan Vzquez de Mella, Regionalismo y monarqua, Madrid, Rialp, 1957, en especial su
discurso pronunciado en 1918, con ocasin de la Semana Regionalista de Santiago de Compostela,
donde se contiene un epgrafe titulado El regionalismo y la religin, en pp. 133-137.
14
Ver Francisco Sevilla Benito, Sociedad y regionalismo en Vazquez de Mella, Madrid, Actas,
2009, pp. 112-146.
15
As, por ejemplo: estas tradiciones emanan de las diferentes leyes con que se han regido las
provincias espaolas, y esas leyes proceden de los diversos hbitos y costumbres engendrados por
los diversos orgenes de aquellas provincias, en otros tiempos, como es sabido, reinos
independientes y soberanos, en Bienvenido Comn, La poltica tradicional en Espaa, Zaragoza,
1870, citado por Jos Luis Abelln, Historia crtica del pensamiento espaol, vol. 4 Liberalismo y
romanticismo, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1984, p. 647, nota 45. As como Juan Vzquez de Mella en
Regionalismo y monarqua, op.cit., cuando afirma que todas las regiones espaolas fueron
afluentes de la nacin y casi siempre Estados independientes o federados, en p. 143.
16
Citado en Evarist Olcina: El carlismo y las autonomas regionales, Madrid, Seminarios y
Ediciones, 1974, p. 171.
13
628
resultante de la unin de varias regiones que antes eran independientes, pero que al
unirse no han podido perder aquellas prerrogativas y facultades esenciales a toda
entidad jurdica, sobre todo si es de un orden tan superior como lo son las regiones17.
Cuando la idea de Monarqua hispnica deja de ser el vnculo externo
incontestable de la unidad poltica para todos los tradicionalistas, porque Carlos VII se
est empezando a hacer liberal segn parte de ellos, y cuando al mismo tiempo el
liberalismo est empezando a anular al catolicismo como vnculo interno de Espaa,
ser cuando se producir la desafeccin integrista y comenzar a despuntar el
nacionalismo vasco. Los integristas ya no ven al Pretendiente, por sus veleidades
liberales, como la cabeza de la Monarqua que garantizar que la historia de Espaa
contine siendo lo que haba sido siempre. Este es tambin el suelo terico de la
ideologa nacionalista.
A nuestro juicio, y como conclusin de este trabajo, lo ms verosmil para
explicar el origen del nacionalismo vasco es la simultaneidad de todo el proceso. La
teora del independentismo absoluto fue la intuicin primordial que est en la base de
esta ideologa y que dio lugar a dos secuelas: la invencin de la revelacin de 1882 y
la construccin del lema JEL. Todo se habra gestado a la vez, entre 1886 y 1887, en
plena etapa barcelonesa. El integrismo le pudo llevar a Sabino Arana de la mano en su
trayectoria ideolgica hasta el final, pero hizo falta algo ms para desvincularse del
resto del integrismo espaol y hacerse nacionalista vasco: En efecto, sostena todo
nuestro credo y solo se diferenciaba de nosotros en el antiespaolismo, que significaba
la separacin, dice quien lleg a liderar en solitario el integrismo espaol a partir de
1909, el guipuzcoano Juan de Olazbal y Ramery en La Constancia de 30 de marzo de
1932 ya citada. Y ese independentismo solo se lo poda dar un factor de distincin y de
separacin con el resto de Espaa que tuvo que venir necesariamente desde el concepto
de raza, entendido de un modo nada catlico, eso s.
El anlisis con el que hemos llegado hasta aqu, sobre el origen de la ideologa
nacionalista, partiendo de un concepto como es el de independencia, hay que
complementarlo, por tanto, con el significado que tambin se le da, en la ideologa
nacionalista originaria, al concepto de raza, usado habitualmente tambin en aquel
momento histrico18. Entender la raza vasca como completamente separada y distinta de
la espaola y considerarla ms apta que esta para vivir en el catolicismo se convierte
entonces en lo verdaderamente caracterizador del primer nacionalismo vasco. Asombra,
visto desde ahora, que un mensaje as pudiera prender en su tiempo, teniendo en cuenta
que estamos hablando del catolicismo, religin ecumnica, universal por principio, y de
Espaa, el pas catlico por antonomasia, el que ms ha hecho en la historia por la
difusin del catolicismo en todo el mundo.
17
18
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RESUMEN/ABSTRACT:
Desde su fundacin en 1958, ETA ha constituido el principal referente ideolgico del
nacionalismo radical abertzale. Aunque en sus primeros aos la organizacin no se
defina abiertamente como marxista, para principios de los aos 70 el marxismoleninismo fue adoptado como ideologa oficial por su rama ms importante. Por aquel
entonces su idea de democracia constitua un concepto muy impreciso que, a la vez que
serva para oponerse al rgimen de Franco, mezclaba elementos propios del leninismo,
con otros ms cercanos a la tradicin nacionalista reaccionaria y otros tomados en
prstamo de los movimientos anticolonialistas del Tercer Mundo. Con la consolidacin
en Espaa a partir de 1978 de un sistema democrtico de tipo occidental, ETA y sus
diversos brazos polticos se vern forzados a precisar su idea de democracia. A su modo
de ver, una democracia slo lo ser realmente en la medida en que acepte como sujeto
de la soberana al pueblo vasco. En este sentido, negarn que el Estado Espaol sea un
sistema verdaderamente democrtico, siendo, por ello, legtimo combatirlo con las
armas. Adems, se postularn formas de democracia directa y asamblearia. El gran
problema que plantear dicho concepto de democracia ser una definicin operativa del
sujeto poltico implicado
The concept of democracy in Basque radical nationalism
The foundation of ETA in 1959 led to the born of a Basque revolutionary and radical
nationalism. Although during its first years the group didnt define itself as Marxist,
in the early 70s Marxism-leninism was adopted by its most prominent branch as the
official ideology. By that time, its concept of democracy was extremely imprecise. In
the main, it was used with the aim of opposing Francos regime and it was the result of
mixing meanings taken from Leninism, romantic nationalism and Third World anticolonialist movements.
With the consolidation of democracy in Spain since 1978, ETA and its political
branches became obliged to specify their idea of democracy. In their opinion, a true
democracy must accept Basque people as subject of sovereignty. In this sense, they will
deny that Spain is a true democracy. Besides, they will support different patterns of
direct democracy. In any case, the lack of agreement within the concerned territories
and population about the boundaries of those Basque people will bring up a deep
social fracture within them.
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TEXTO/TEXT:
En 1958 un grupo de jvenes provenientes de la rama juvenil del Partido Nacionalista
Vasco fundan Euskadi ta Askatasuna, ms conocida por sus siglas, ETA. Esta
organizacin armada abogar por el uso la violencia para instaurar un Estado vasco
independiente. Aunque algunos de los territorios en donde aspira a construirlo
pertenecen a Francia, la prctica totalidad de sus ataques tendr lugar en Espaa. Desde
1960 hasta 2010, ETA asesina a unas 850 personas, entre militares, policas y civiles. Si
bien el apoyo abierto a las actividades de ETA en las encuestas siempre ha sido muy
minoritario en el Pas Vasco (inferior al 5% y en tiempos recientes al 1%), sus diversos
brazos polticos han cosechado resultados electorales mucho ms amplios, entre el 1025% de los votos.
ETA nunca ha articulado una ideologa demasiado precisa. Es significativo que
durante los aos setenta y ochenta se apelara entre sus militantes al lema: Hagamos
primero la casa. Veamos despus de qu color la pintamos. En uno de sus documentos
internos ms importantes, la llamada Carta a los intelectuales, la organizacin
confesaba abiertamente que su ideologa no es un sistema acabado y esttico sino la
sntesis actual de las ideas de sus militantes (Garmendia, i, 300). Ya a finales de los
aos 70 uno de los primeros estudiosos del discurso poltico de ETA, Garmendia,
advirti cmo en ella las teorizaciones siempre haban jugado un papel secundario
respecto al activismo nacionalista. En este sentido, slo cabra hablar de diferentes fases
ideolgicas a lo largo de su trayectoria en un sentido genrico.
La primera ETA se caracterizaba fundamentalmente por su radicalismo
nacionalista. Consideraba el Pas Vasco como una colonia sometida a un genocidio
cultural por parte de Espaa y Francia y la independencia como la nica opcin para
garantizar la supervivencia del pueblo vasco. En lo social, condenaba el capitalismo y
apelaba genricamente a la construccin de un sistema socialista. No obstante,
rechazaba el marxismo, al que tenda a identificar con un rgimen de tipo sovitico (o,
mejor dicho, estalisnista). De hecho, en sus publicaciones afirmaba la imposibilidad de
ser vasco y comunista al mismo tiempo. Por chocante que pueda parecer hoy, el modelo
social de la ETA inicial no estaba demasiado lejos de la doctrina social de la Iglesia
Catlica. En cambio, en lo religioso la organizacin destacaba por su carcter
aconfesional. Esto contrastaba marcadamente con el catolicismo militante que haba
sido la sea de identidad del Partido Nacionalista Vasco, la agrupacin vasca
nacionalista ms antigua y extendida. ETA se diferenciaba tambin del Partido
Nacionalista por su actitud ante la lengua vasca, el euskara. Por supuesto, el segundo
defenda su importancia, pero, tradicionalmente, haba considerado que la clave de la
identidad vasca no estaba en el idioma que desde haca siglos era slo hablado por una
minora de la poblacin vasca-, sino en sus caractersticas raciales. Los jvenes que
impulsaban ETA estaban lejos de negar la existencia de una etnia vasca, pero crean
631
que el verdadero elemento definitorio de la identidad nacional era la lengua. Algo, por
cierto, muy llamativo, si se tiene en cuenta que la mayora de ellos la desconoca y la
estaba aprendiendo de adulto.
A partir de 1963 se observa un cambio notable en el discurso de ETA. Los
sectores ms prximos al marxismo van cogiendo peso en su direccin. Sus textos se
pueblan de tpicos leninistas a las vanguardias dirigentes, las clases trabajadoras, el
proletariado, la explotacin, etc. Esta retrica provocar la salida de algunos de los
fundadores y, a corto plazo, la escisin de la organizacin en diversas corrientes. En
pocos aos, sin embargo, la rama ms marxista (ETA VI) se alejar del nacionalismo y
adoptar posiciones internacionalistas. Su ideologa oscilar, con una falta notoria de
rigor, entre el marxismo-leninismo, el trotskismo y el maosmo. Como irnicamente le
reprocharn los miembros de una faccin rival: la organizacin se acuesta nacionalista,
se levanta marxista, se merienda maosta y se cena trotskista. Dividida en diferentes
sectores, ETA VI desaparecer hacia 1974.
La otra gran corriente, la llamada ETA V, rene en principio a quienes temen
que el excesivo protagonismo de las cuestiones sociales y el internacionalismo socialista
traigan consigo un abandono de la causa nacionalista. Pese a todo, sus miembros
intentan no quedar atrs en el uso de un lenguaje revolucionario y, de hecho, se
continan definiendo como socialistas aunque sin concretar ningn tipo concreto de
modelo econmico-. En 1974 esta ETA V se dividir, asimismo, en dos ramas: ETA
poltico militar ms obrerista- y ETA militar ms nacionalista-. Tras la disolucin de
la primera en 1982 como consecuencia de su evolucin hacia la social-democracia y su
aceptacin del marco autonmico-, ser la segunda quien monopolice las siglas creadas
en 1958. A medio plazo y en contradiccin con sus orgenes a medio plazo, ETA m
incluir tambin a militantes y corrientes que se consideraban marxistas. Durante toda la
dcada de 1980, llegar a demandar convertir al Pas Vasco en la Cuba de Europa.
Todava en 2007 el portavoz ms destacado de su brazo poltico, Arnaldo Otegi, se
defina como marxista. Con todo, el socialismo de ETA m ser siempre un
socialismo vasco y su militancia estar siempre ms comprometida con el problema
nacional que con el social acaso porque el nivel de vida del Pas Vasco se cuenta
entre los ms elevados de Espaa-. Por otro lado, como tal, ni ETA m ni sus brazos
polticos propugnarn nunca una alineacin con el bloque sovitico. Tampoco -al
margen de algunos sectores difciles de cuantificar- propugnar abiertamente la
constitucin una dictadura del proletariado. En cualquier caso, en la dcada de 1990,
tras la desaparicin de la URSS, las referencias al marxismo en su discurso se harn
mucho ms espordicas.
Esta imprecisa (y relativa) evolucin ideolgica de ETA tiene un interesante
reflejo en la manera en que ha ido concibiendo el concepto de democracia. Como
intentar mostrar, por encima de todas las modas ideolgicas y las escisiones, la
democracia ha estado siempre subordinada en ETA a las reivindicaciones nacionalistas.
A la vez, son relativamente constantes el desprecio por la democracia representativa y la
defensa de modelos en los que se concede gran importancia a los municipios,
considerados como las instituciones ms cercanas al pueblo, que sera el verdadero
protagonista de la poltica.
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