Ideology and the ‘Liberation of Theology’: The Role of Critique in Juan Luis Segundo and Slavoj Žižek

The turn to religion within critical theory has brought the critique of ideology back into theological view. This essay examines the relation of theology to ideology in the liberation theology of Juan Luis Segundo. Segundo's key contribution is his use of the concept of ideology as an efficacious force in theological work in service to poor communities. I argue that the critical and political force of Segundo's theology is dulled by this neutral use of ideology critique. This may be ameliorated by consulting Slavoj ?i?ek's negative use of Christianity as ideology critique. Without endorsing ?i?ek over Segundo, I propose that ?i?ek's critical use of political theology can help liberation theology reengage the role of negativity and critique in the immanent relation of theory and praxis.     

Thomas Mann und Luther

At the center of Sophocles’ Antigone is a struggle to reconcile personal beliefs with the needs or dictates of society. At no time is such a struggle more relevant than in periods of war, so it is not surprising that new adaptations of Antigone cluster around periods of armed conflict, whether between nations or within a single nation itself. In Luis Rafael Sánchez’s The Passion of Antígona Pérez (1968)—the subject of this essay—the nation or territory in question is one not typically featured in Western anthologies of drama: Puerto Rico, in the troubled possession of the United States.     

La fealdad de Safo: su tratamiento eufemístico en Leopardi

The ugliness of Sappho, despite the credibility it has enjoyed for centuries, has always been circumvented or attenuated in scholarly works, and even more so in literary recreations of the life and death of this celebrated muse. These strategies range from the portrait of Sappho as a beautiful woman to expressing her ugliness via euphemistic formulas: that which is resorted to most is the negation of the antonym (Sappho is not beautiful). Leopardi, with his Ultimo canto di Saffo, stands out among those who have explored this particular path in depth. Analysis of the most direct sources of this poem, as well as of some of its translations and imitations in Spanish, helps to see how in Leopardi euphemistic negation interweaves and fuses with suicidal negation, beautifying “nothingness” and suggesting readings at a second level, which simplify and run contrary to the logic of the discourse.     

The Humanism of André Malraux

In this essay, I explore the influence of Byzantine literature in the New World from a transatlantic perspective. Specifically, I examine the Scala paradisi of Juan Clímaco (570–649) as it is found in the Peregrinación de Bartolomé Lorenzo (1586) by the Jesuit José de Acosta (1539–1600), a text from the colonial period. Surprisingly, this text has received almost no critical attention. I focus on the study of the text (and the context in which it was produced and received), basing my analysis on a comparison of Acosta's text with other similar works. By using a comparative method, I explore the ideological and aesthetic tensions that underlie Acosta's work. Moreover, this analysis makes manifest the cultural and literary continuities (or traditions) and ruptures which, coming as much from the East as from the West of Europe, arrived in the Vice-regency of Peru in the second half of the sixteenth century.     

‘How to handle eternity’: infinity and the theories of J.W. Dunne in the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman

This essay examines the importance of the notion of infinity to the work of Flann O'Brien and Jorge Luis Borges. Using as a starting point their shared interest in the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne's highly eccentric theories about the ‘multidimensional’ nature of time, the essay goes on, through a close analysis of a number of Borges' stories and of O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, to call attention to a fundamental affinity between these two ostensibly quite different authors. A case is ultimately made for a consideration of Borges and O'Brien as writers with remarkably similar views on fiction and the universe.     

Cernuda,poeta de un sur imposible

This article examines the poetics that Luis Cernuda developed throughout his life in connection with its sublime illusion of a genuine Spanish south through the romantic recreation he made of his native Seville, in several texts written from exile: they are various poems of The Reality and Desire and the essays Digressions on Romantic Andalusia and History of a Book, and, above all, the autobiographical prints from Ocnos, in which Albanio's sensitive experiences reflect both the meditative elegance of Cernuda's childhood and adolescence and the utopian promise of a true relationship with the world beyond the social hypocrisy of bourgeois capitalism and the coercion of Franco's dictatorship. My intention in this article is to weave innovatively, in a consistent and documented way, the biographical events with the artistic intentions of the poet, to reveal original interpretive links between desolate reality and the desire for transcendence in his strange lyrics.     

Notes on Contributors

The author contends that Leonardo Sciascia's L’affaire Moro is not a work of non-fiction, as Sciascia proposed, but of historical fiction, and that Sciascia's Moro is a literary character, more a spokesperson for Sciascia's political views than a reflection of the historical figure. Sciascia's Moro embodies the same qualities as many of Sciascia's other protagonists, such as a radical individualism and willingness to sacrifice all in order to protect their dignity and liberty. What emanates from the text is a ‘postmodern’ blend that interprets and imposes a narrative hierarchy on events, and conveys a mental reality that need not necessarily coincide with what can be proven with evidence. In fact, Sciascia combines factual information and his own ‘conjectural knowledge’ to convince his reader of the ‘moral truth’ of his argument. Sciascia's is indeed a strong narrative in that it succeeded in shaping how the Italian public views to this day a critical juncture in its recent history.     

Pavlov and Cajal: Two different pathways to a Nobel Prize

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) and Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) were two contemporary scientists who not only had a great impact on Russian and Spanish science but also on the international stage. Both shared several common features in their life and work, yet they followed fundamentally different paths during their training as scientists. While Pavlov received his laboratory training under the guidance of Ilya Tsion (1843–1912), Cajal did not receive any formal training within a particular laboratory nor did he have a mentor in the traditional sense, rather he was mainly self-taught, although he was supported by key figures like Maestre de San Juan (1828–1890) and Luis Simarro (1851–1921). In this article, we compare the scientific training of these two Nobel Prize laureates and the influences they received during their scientific lives.