La crisis silenciosa

Por Martha Nussbaum
Editorial Katz

"La educación es el proceso por el cual el pensamiento se desprende del alma y, al asociarse con cosas externas, vuelve a reflejarse sobre sí mismo, para así cobrar conciencia de la realidad y la forma de esas cosas."
Bronson Alcott, pedagogo de Massachusetts, c. 1850

"[A]l hacer uso [de las posesiones materiales], el hombre debe tener cuidado de protegerse frente a la tiranía [de ellas]. Si su debilidad lo empequeñece hasta poder ajustarse al tamaño de su disfraz exterior, comienza un proceso de suicidio gradual por encogimiento del alma."
Rabindranath Tagore, pedagogo indio, c. 1917

Estamos en medio de una crisis de proporciones gigantescas y de enorme gravedad a nivel mundial. No, no me refiero a la crisis económica global que comenzó a principios del año 2008. Al menos en ese momento, todo el mundo sabía lo que se avecinaba y varios
líderes mundiales reaccionaron de inmediato, desesperados por hallar soluciones. En efecto, el desenlace para sus gobiernos sería arduo si no las encontraban, y a la larga muchos de ellos fueron reemplazados por causa de la crisis. No, en realidad me refiero a una crisis que pasa prácticamente inadvertida, como un cáncer. Me refiero a una crisis que, con el tiempo, puede llegar a ser mucho más perjudicial para
el futuro de la democracia: la crisis mundial en materia de educación.

Se están produciendo cambios drásticos en aquello que las sociedades democráticas enseñan a sus jóvenes, pero se trata de cambios que aún no se sometieron a un análisis profundo. Sedientos de dinero, los estados nacionales y sus sistemas de educación están descartando sin advertirlo ciertas aptitudes que son necesarias para mantener viva a la democracia. Si esta tendencia se prolonga, las naciones de todo el mundo en breve producirán generaciones enteras de máquinas utilitarias, en lugar de ciudadanos cabales con la capacidad de pensar por sí mismos, poseer una mirada crítica sobre las tradiciones y comprender la importancia de los logros y los sufrimientos ajenos. El futuro de la democracia a escala mundial pende de un hilo.
Ahora bien, ¿cuáles son esos cambios tan drásticos? En casi todas las naciones del mundo se están erradicando las materias y las carreras relacionadas con las artes y las humanidades, tanto a nivel primario y secundario como a nivel terciario y universitario. Concebidas como ornamentos inútiles por quienes definen las políticas estatales en un momento en que las naciones deben eliminar todo lo que no tenga ninguna utilidad para ser competitivas en el mercado global, estas carreras y materias pierden terreno a gran velocidad, tanto en los programas curriculares como en la mente y el corazón de padres e hijos. Es más, aquello que podríamos describir como el aspecto
humanístico de las ciencias, es decir, el aspecto relacionado con la imaginación, la creatividad y la rigurosidad en el pensamiento crítico, también está perdiendo terreno en la medida en que los países optan por fomentar la rentabilidad a corto plazo mediante el cultivo de capacidades utilitarias y prácticas, aptas para generar renta.
La crisis nos mira de frente, pero aún no la hemos enfrentado. Continuamos como si todo siguiera igual que siempre, cuando en realidad resulta evidente en todas partes que ya no se pone el acento en lo mismo que antes. En ningún momento hemos deliberado acerca de estos cambios ni los hemos elegido a conciencia, pero aun así, cada vez limitan más nuestro futuro.

NO DEJES DE LEER LA ENTREVISTA EXCLUSIVA QUE MARTHA NUSSBAUM CONCEDIÓ A LITERAL

García Bernal and Diego Luna Will Have A Business Meeting with Pedro Páramo.

By Jaime Perales Contreras.

Every living Mexican on the earth will certainly agree that there is no more tragic fictional character than Pedro Páramo. Written by the Mexican storyteller Juan Rulfo, this novel is pure Shakespeare. Probably, this is the first, of many impediments, to fairly adapt Rulfo’s key fiction into a motion picture.

Since its publication in 1955, Pedro Paramo has sold almost two million copies and has never been out of print. For more than fifty years, this son’s journey in search of his father --–A modern version of Telemachus finding Ulysses--- still appeals to readers of different ages and nationalities around the world.

For more than three years, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, both actors and film producers, envisioned the ambitious project to film a motion picture based upon Rulfo’s literary masterpiece. Relatively little information has been released on Garcia Bernal and Luna’s project. The only news we know for certain is that the film will be directed by the Spanish filmmaker Mateo Gil, author of the screenplay of the movie called Vanilla Sky (2001), and will have García Bernal in the leading role. The motion picture will be co-produced with the support of Mexico, Spain and Portugal, with a 7.5 million dollar budget.


The movie suffered delays as a consequence of García Bernal’s overbooked agenda and a more urgent need to obtain additional financial support. Nonetheless, initial production will take place in three different locations on fall 2010: Spain, Mexico City and Jalisco Mexico. Pedro Páramo will be the fourth film based upon Juan Rulfo’s most famous novel.

The internationally acclaimed Mexican novelist died of lung cancer in 1986. As his literary legacy, Rulfo published only three slim books: The Burnt Plain (1953), Pedro Páramo (1955) and The Golden Cockerel (1964). All were apparently written in uncomplicated and colloquial language, but his style is always elegant, accurate and strikingly poetic.

Rulfo was also a very skilled photographer. He left approximately 6,000 negatives to his foundation. This not very well known talent was revealed to the public in a retrospective exhibit organized in Mexico City, at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), when Rulfo was in his mid-sixties. This was the first step to be known not only as novelist, but also as an extraordinary visual artist.The American writer Susan Sontag introduced the novel Pedro Páramo into the U.S. literary and cultural markets.

Literal Conversa con la artista Anna Kurtycz

Dentro del marco de las celebraciones del Bicentenario que organizó la Universidad de Rice y en colaboración con el Consulado General de México, se presentó la exhibición de arte de Anna Kurtycz. Compartimos nuestra conversación con Anna.

Rose Mary Salum: En México existe una larga tradición con el grabado. ¿Cómo se inserta a tu obra dentro de esta tradición?

Anna Kurtycz: Efectivamente México cuenta con grandes figuras del grabado. Como artista y como mexicana sus imágenes forman sin duda alguna parte de mi formación. Heredo sobre todo de los grabadores periodísticos, como José Guadalupe Posada, porque mi trabajo está fuertemente relacionado con la memoria y con la búsqueda de dejar huella tanto de los sucesos históricos como de los recuerdos y sucesos de la vida cotidiana. Del grabado comprometido socialmente (que se desarrollo sobre todo a partir de los años cincuenta por el taller de gráfica popular) heredo la idea de que la imagen puede ser un elemento importante de cambio, de reflexión. Tengo igualmente una neta influencia del trabajo de mi padre, el artista Marcos Kurtycz, quien dedicó gran parte de su arte al libro y el material impreso. Los talleres de impresión de libro que desarrollo con niños son pruebas de esa influencia.

RMS: No se puede hablar de una escuela de grabado en México, sin dejar de hacer referencia al maestro José Guadalupe Posada. Veo una influencia de su obra en la tuya. ¿Qué otras influencias has recibido?

AK:Posada fue un magnifico artista y uno no deja de aprender de sus grabados tanto por su capacidad de adaptar la imagen a todo tipo de textos y públicos, como a su valor gráfico, en donde lo blanco y negro se encuentran en equilibrio. En mi trabajo trato de alcanzar esa misma armonía y pertinencia. Al mismo tiempo el trabajo de Posada me influye por su valor histórico. Sus grabados logran retratar una época, preservar su memoria, que es lo que en cierto punto quiero que suceda con las imágenes que produzco y que llamo “placas de memoria”.

RMS:En tus Placas de la memoria el sincretismo de las épocas, cargadas de connotaciones políticas, sociales e históricas conviven con el presente. ¿Cómo surge ese interés y cuál es tu propuesta al hacerlo?

AK:A través de mis placas de memoria, y de las imágenes que imprimo a partir de ellas, busco apropiarme y dar sentido a las contradicciones y complejidad de los lugares y el tiempo que me tocan vivir. Fijar en imágenes los detalles cotidianos en el marco de los eventos históricos me permite rescatarlos del olvido, hacerles homenaje y proponer un dialogo con el que observa; elemento que considero esencial del quehacer de todo artista.


RMS:En los universos que presentas, se percibe un espíritu comunitario pero a la vez silencioso, se ven pocas bocas, hay un ambiente
conglomerado pero sin ruido, comunal pero silencioso. ¿Podrías platicarnos más sobre este tema?

AK:En realidad nunca me había percatado de este hecho. Creo que esas figuras sin boca y silenciosas simbolizan una cierta pasividad que intuyo de parte de la sociedad frente a ciertas situaciones que le toca vivir. Tal vez su existencia dentro de la imagen permite reforzar la presencia de otros individuos, a veces solitarios, que leen y se expresan.

RMS:Hay una perfecta definición de las clases sociales, las costumbres y, de nuevo, la historia ¿Cómo se realiza una creación desde la memoria para que tus piezas tengan su vigencia?

AK:Como decía anteriormente la memoria es un tema que me fascina. Es necesaria como herramienta para saber a donde vamos, para repensar el futuro. En la imagen es además una forma de llevar la narración. Un recuerdo lleva a otro, se traslapa, se clarifica, se confunde y ese recorrido es único para cada uno de nosotros, ligado a nuestras propias experiencias, nuestras representaciones, nuestras ideas y sueños. Como seres humanos compartimos esa capacidad de memoria, pero al mismo tiempo como individuos diferentes, con vivencias distintas, abordamos el recuerdo, y ese recorrido, de manera distinta. Mis grabados proponen al que observa mi propia construcción de memoria y la narración que va con ella a fin de encontrar similitudes y diferencias, elementos de dialogo. Su vigencia esta dada precisamente por ese dialogo.

RMS:Actualmente te encuentras trabajando en un proyecto titulado Northern Frontier. ¿Nos puedes hablar de eso y de otros futuros proyectos?

AK: Frontera Norte es parte de una instalación que será expuesta en Accra (Ghana) en diciembre. La exposición, intitulada “Identidad y Migración”, es uno de los proyectos que mi espacio de creación, Studio Kurtycz, realiza desde hace dos años en Ghana, donde habito. La exposición, en la cual participamos seis artistas (entre ellos mi marido Rudek van der Helm y tres artistas africanos), busca crear una dinámica creativa que involucre los artistas locales y que proponga al publico ghanés obras artísticas de calidad que permitan la reflexión sobre temas que consideramos importantes.

"Me pe succhini wae" woodcut(50 x 70)(2009)


*Primera imagen "Vague souvenir" woodcut(50 x 70)(2009)
*Segunda imagen Anna Kurtycz

Dr. Raquel Chang-Rodríguez talks to Literal about Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa

After we learned about Vargas Llosa´s Nobel Award, we decided to talk to Dr. Raquel Chang-Rodríguez who is an expert on Vargas Llosa´s oeuvre and a Distinguished Professor of Spanish-American literature and culture at CUNY. She was also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (NEH), the Profesora Honoraria of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, and Miembro Correspondiente of the Peruvian Academy of the Spanish Language. We are happy to share this conversation with you.

Rose Mary Salum: We know you saw this one coming. Can you please talk about the significance of his award to a Latin American writer? What does an award like this means for the Spanish spaeking literary world?

Dr. Raquel Chang-Rodríguez: Mario Vargas Llosa has just been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is the 6th writer from Spanish America to receive it: he follows Gabriela Mistral (1945, Chile), Miguel Angel Asturias (1967, Guatemala), Pablo Neruda (1971, Chile), Gabriel García Márquez (1982, Colombia), and Octavio Paz (1990, Mexico). It is a tremendous and richly deserved international recognition of Vargas Llosa’s work. In addition, the award underscores the importance of Spanish, an international language, spoken in the Americas, Europe, the Philippines, and regions of North Africa, as a major literary language.

Since the publication of The Time of the Hero in 1963, Vargas Llosa presented himself as a daring innovator of style, capable of tackling a variety of themes and infusing them with fresh nuances. Thus this novel about adolescent rebellion and general indifference and corruption in “Leoncio Prado,” a military academy, turns into a critique of the abuse of power, into a study of human relations, including bullying, and its tragic consequences. Despite the fact that it was vilified in Peru ―several copies were burned in Lima― the novel signaled a new era for literature written in Spanish. It launched Vargas Llosa’s international career as a writer and situated his work squarely within the “boom” period during which Latin American literature gained international recognition.

RMS: Last week in the Berlin Festival, intellectuals and writers were wondering if Latin American literature was no longer in fashion. Vargas Llosa´s award could speak against this theory. However, it seems that the new trends are not favoring writers from Latin America. What is your opinion on that?

RCHR: Of course Vargas Llosa’s Nobel award disproves the theory that you mention. But let me offer another recent example. Granta, the prestigious British literary magazine that announces in periodic lists the best new writers of the English-speaking world, has ventured into the Spanish-speaking world. It recently proposed a new category called Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists; it includes 35 writers and seven are from Latin America. This “incursion” of Granta into new linguistic territory signals an interest in what is being written and published in that language. If we add to this, the number of excellent authors from Latin America writing and publishing, and the works from the region that have been translated into other languages, all augurs for Spanish-American literature. I am sure that now in our area ―and by the way this includes Spanish-Americans living and writing elsewhere (New York, Los Angeles, El Paso, Madrid)― there are other Nobel winners in the making!

RMS: The Nobel committee awarded the Peruvian author “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". According to your expertise, what else makes Mario Vargas Llosa such an outstanding writer?

RCHR: Vargas Llosa is a superb story teller, able to probe the human condition in singular ways. He has mastered the use of complex stylistic devices to present distinct voices in his fiction. Thus, when opening the pages of his novels the reader is able to enter into a complex world, urban and rural spaces often disjointed. However, the characters lead the way and the fictional world becomes our reality making it impossible to put down the book. Politics, power and violence, often go hand in hand in Vargas’s Llosa novels. He has a masterful ability to show how they intersect and can affect national life as well as the life of simple individuals. Nowhere is this more evident than in Urania, the main character of The Feast of the Goat (2000), a victim of Trujillo, the long-time dictator of the Dominican Republic.

RMS: Like many Latin American authors, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career, but gradually became disenchanted. His book La ciudad y los perros brought him international recognition. Can you talk about his political life and how it influenced his work?

RCHR:Vargas Llosa, an admirer of Albert Camus, feels that a writer has a social responsibility. Perhaps this is why he ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990. A Fish in the Water (1993), a collection of autobiographical essays, describes his failed attempt to become president; in this book he presents a cast of ambitious and questionable characters ―craving power for themselves― recognizable in many Latin American countries. This fascination with politics is a recurrent theme in his fiction. For example, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1984) describes from several perspectives the changing personality and ideology of a revolutionary while Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) recreates the difficult times of Manuel Odría’s dictatorship in Peru. He also uses humor and parody to mock the stifling military bureaucracy as in Captain Pantoja and the Special Services (1973). However, as proven by The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997) and The Bad Girl (2006), his fiction has an important erotic vein.

I eagerly wait for 3 November 2010, the launching date for Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest novel, El sueño del celta. And I look forward to continue reading the works of this indisputable master of the Spanish language.


RMS:Can you please explain what moved you to become an expert on Vargas Llosa and talk to our readers about your work on Vargas Llosa?

RCHR:I began reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s novels and short-stories since the early sixties, and later his theatre and essays. I recognized almost immediately, his singular narrative voice. As Vargas Llosa developed as a writer and tackled more complex subjects with a self-assured hand, I realized that he was a master writer, destined to receive international recognition.

We share common interests, particularly in Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), the first Spanish-American writer born in Cuzco, Peru. In Fall 2009 we participated in a symposium honoring Inca Garcilaso. Just last week, October 1st to be precise, we presented at the Americas Society in New York City, the book that collected the papers from the symposium, including a major essay by Vargas Llosa and an interview with him. Several days after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. What an honor for Peru, his native country, for the Spanish-speaking world, and for all lovers of good literature!!!

The Persistence of Memory, When Mario Vargas Llosa Talked to Literal

Some time ago, Literal had the oppottunity to talk to the Noberl Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. We´ve reproduced part of that conversation . However, you want to read more about it, you can find it here

Miguel Ángel Zapata: Mario, with this beautiful view that you have here I could write a poem every day.

Mario Vargas Llosa: Yes, of course, but I couldn’t write a novel a day, although I can certainly progress a little bit every day in whatever novel I am working on.

M. A. Z.: Then you would say quite definitely that the environment—one’s surroundings, nature itself—supports the process of writing and creating?

M. V. LL.: Without a doubt. Yet I also believe that when you are obsessed with a story you write in the same mode regardless of your surroundings.
A pleasant environment, like this one for example—a lovely landscape in constant
change, because the sea in the morning is not the same as the sea at twilight, not the same as the sea when it is sunny or cloudy—is not only pleasing to me but also stimulating.

M. A. Z.: You live in different countries. How are you able to continue working as you move around?

M. V. LL.: Indeed, my residence changes; I live in Lima, Madrid, London, and Paris. What is stable—rather, what gives great stability to my life—is my work, because I never stop working. I leave Lima and arrive in Paris, and the next day I take up the work where I left it in Lima, and it is the same when I go from Lima to Madrid to Paris or to London. In each city I come to a desk where I have absolutely everything I need to work: diskettes, index cards, the indispensable books that I feel I must take with me wherever I go. My routine is always the same: I begin work in the morning and continue in the afternoon, and this has not changed in a very long time. The truth is that it was a different story when, in addition to
writing, I had to work to make a living, but since I have been able to devote all of time to writing my routine is the same. In the morning my work is more creative; in the afternoon I correct, reread, and take notes for the following day’s work. In the afternoon I always do research, which complements the creative work. I respect
that routine rigorously. I work during the week on the book I’m writing, and on the weekends I devote my time to writing articles; I write newspaper articles a couple of times a month.

M. A. Z.: What is the point of departure for your writing?

M. V. LL.: Generally speaking, the point of departure is memory; I believe all the stories I have written have been born of some lived experience that has remained in my memory and that becomes an image, fertile ground for imagining a whole structure around it. It’s also true that I have always followed an outline, almost since my first story: I take many notes, I make index cards, and I make some plot sketches before beginning to compose. In order to be able to begin writing I need at least a structure, though perhaps a very general one, for the story. And then I can begin to work. I first produce a draft, which is the part of the work that is hardest for me. As soon as I have it the work is much more pleasant; I can write more confidently, more securely, because I know that the story is there. This has been a constant in what I have written: doing research that will familiarize me with the theme, the situation, the period during which the story takes place.

M. A. Z.: As is the case with your novel about Flora Tristán and Paul Gaugin.

M. V. LL.: No doubt. Of course, that work dealt with historical personalities, but in other cases, although I’m not working with a historical situation, I anyway travel to the places where the story takes place, I read testimonies, newspapers of the period, not with the aim of reproducing a historical truth but rather to feel familiar with, immersed in, the environment in which I want to situate the characters and the story. Then I correct a lot, rewrite a lot. For me, to tell you the truth—this is something José Emilio Pacheco once said, and it seems right on the mark to me—what I like best is not writing but revising. It’s the absolute truth. When I correct and revise what I have already done, that is when I really enjoy writing the most.

M. A. Z.: And when you finish a novel and it’s published, do you read it again? To look for faults, perhaps, I don’t know. . .

M. V. LL.: No. The last time that I read it is in proofs, and after that I try not to read it again, if I can help it. Sometimes when I work with a translator I am obligated to reread in order to correct errors, but in general I don’t like to revisit what I’ve already written and published.

M. A. Z.: But perhaps you’ve read a fragment and thought that you would have liked to change a section of the novel, as was the case with Valéry, Juan Ramón Jimenez, and now with Pacheco, whose brilliant poetry is in a continual state of revision.

M. V. LL.: Of course, that has happened to me often, and it is one of the reasons I don’t like to reread my own work once it’s published. Every time that I reread my own work I wonder whether I could have worked on the story a little bit more.

If you want to read the entire conversation, you can find it here in page 4