scholarly journals Levinas, Latin American Thought and the Futures of Translational Ethics

2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Larkosh
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Literature ◽  
Ethical Philosophy ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Utopian Thinking ◽  
Latin American Thought ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Liberation Philosophy ◽  
American Thought

Abstract This article underscores the relevance of the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to contemporary discussions of translational ethics, especially with respect to contemplations of the discipline’s future. It posits thinking of the future as an ethical imperative against the historical backdrop of the Holocaust and other human ethical crises. Despite the foreclosure of utopian thinking that such a context might imply, there are nonetheless other modes of imagining translation in other terms, whether “dés-inter-essement,” cross-identification, or other forms of transcultural ethical consciousness. The discussion is highlighted by examples from Latin American literature, liberation philosophy and anthropology, as well as from the historical trajectory of the discipline of translation studies from the 1970’s to the present.

Miguel de Unamuno

1955 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-156
Author(s):  
Gerhard Masur
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Literature ◽  
Miguel De Unamuno ◽  
American People ◽  
Generation Of 1898 ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
History Of ◽  
Latin American Thought ◽  
The Impact

THE history of Ideas is still terra incognita on our map of the Latin American world. We are aware of certain European influences on the Hispanic American people, such as the Spanish mystics, Rousseau and the French romanticists, or Comte and his school of thought. But few comprehensive studies of Latin American thought exist. Not even the impact of Spanish philosophy has been fully evaluated. Although we know that the representative thinkers of the generation of 1898, Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Luis de Zulueta and others were widely read, we know little of their effect on the writings of Alfonso Reyes, B. Sanin Cano, Francisco Romero and Jose Carlos Mariategui, to mention only some outstanding examples. Yet Unamuno was deeply interested in Latin American problems and his comments on Bolivar, Sarmiento and Latin American literature command our attention. Many critics recognize this significant relationship. Rafael Heliodoro Valle, for instance, remarks: “No cabe duda de que Unamuno ha sido el escritor espanol que mas curiosidad intelectual ha tenido hacia nosotros.”

Uncommon Grounds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Latin American Literature ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The Us

This chapter turns from a historical account of the development of the US literature of experience and the Latin American literature of reading to a textual analysis of the US and Latin American historical novel. Hemispheric/inter-American scholars often cite William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) as exemplifying instances of literary borrowing across the North–South divide. As I demonstrate, however, each of the later texts also realigns its predecessor’s historical imaginary according to the dominant logics of the US and Latin American literary fields. Whereas the American works foreground experiential models of reconstructing the past and conveying knowledge across generations, García Márquez’s Latin American novel presents reading as the fundamental mode of comprehending and transmitting history.

Anxieties of Experience

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Latin American Literature ◽  
First Century ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Leaves Of Grass ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
The Us ◽  
New Interpretation

Anxieties of Experience: The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño offers a new interpretation of US and Latin American literature from the nineteenth century to the present. Revisiting longstanding debates in the hemisphere about whether the source of authority for New World literature derives from an author’s first-hand contact with American places and peoples or from a creative (mis)reading of existing traditions, the book charts a widening gap in how modern US and Latin American writers defined their literary authority. In the process, it traces the development of two distinct literary strains in the Americas: the “US literature of experience” and the “Latin American literature of the reader.” Reinterpreting a range of canonical works from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Anxieties of Experience shows how this hemispheric literary divide fueled a series of anxieties, misunderstandings, and “misencounters” between US and Latin American authors. In the wake of recent calls to rethink the “common grounds” approach to literature across the Americas, the book advocates a comparative approach that highlights the distinct logics of production and legitimation in the US and Latin American literary fields. Anxieties of Experience closes by exploring the convergence of the literature of experience and the literature of the reader in the first decades of the twenty-first century, arguing that the post-Bolaño moment has produced the strongest signs of a truly reciprocal literature of the Americas in more than a hundred years.

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