Reconstructing the Memory of the Wounded Social Body: A Philosophical-Theological Reflection from the Search for Missing Persons in Mexico

This essay analyzes the phenomenon of clandestine graves of missing persons in Mexico as a social, political, and philosophical problem, where theological clues are established. With the contributions of decolonial thought this reflection seeks to think the absence and, within it, to think the emergence of an alternative world promoted by the just people of history with the resistances they create to live the present with dignity and hope.

The Decay of the Heroic State. The Conflict in Giambattista Vico’s New Science

The aim of this essay is to analyze the figure of conflict in Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova, highlighting its epistemological function and its historical-political cogency. This conflict presents itself both as an epistemological means through which reason understands the process of community establishment, and as the effective force for the development of nations. In fact, the changing of times outlined by Vico takes the form of an asymmetrical conflict which proves to be socially significant to the extent that it allows the recomposition of the social body within an order marked by the recognition, albeit precarious, of equality.

Awareness Based Systems Change and Racial Justice

In my years working as a racial justice lawyer I came to realize that the law, while an incredibly important part of the work, is too blunt an instrument for the work of opening people’s hearts. What awareness-based systems change, and Theory U in particular, has to offer is a framework and method for doing this subtle work. In this piece I describe the ways in which this approach can serve as a powerful tool in the transformation of systemic and structural violence through its core movement of turning the beam of observation back on self and system with open-mind (curiosity), open-heart (compassion) and open-will (courage). If structural violence is a series of societal agreements to not pay attention to a set of people we deem less human than ourselves, as I believe it is, then what does it mean to cultivate a quality of attention that redresses these agreements? Not averting our eyes from the systemic racism that shapes our collective existence is core, as is witnessing with a tender heart. Then connecting the tender heart to effective action means acting with understanding of the urgent need to see from the whole, which cannot exclude anyone, especially people who have been marginalized. While you do not unmake centuries of injustice and violence by paying attention with an open-mind, heart, and will, you do help the social body in the room become more effective at the thing they are trying to do - beginning to address centuries of injustice and violence. That is the potential of awareness-based systems change.

Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962), the Photographs in His Popular Science Literature

The case of Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962) is symptomatic of a time when sciences like anthropology and ethnology supported the fascist ideology and gave it scientific approval in a crucial political moment for Benito Mussolini’s regime (1930–1940), which enacted racist laws and institutionalized the establishment of racial segregation in the colonies as well as within the boundaries of the motherland. Over the past thirty years historiography has focused some attention on the issue, but in this contribution I would like to highlight a point that has only been mentioned in passing in studies dedicated to the Florentine anthropologist, namely the questions surrounding the use of his massive photographic corpus. Since the use of imagery to nourish a collective imagination had become crucial for the fascist regime, an analysis of these images and their circulation may allow us to better explore the interrelationship between a totalitarian political power, the social body impregnated with propaganda, and the physical anthropology practiced by Cipriani, who produced a colossal visual corpus that suited the fascist theoretical apparatus.

The discussion of body in 'Every Day' by David Levithan

In the novel Every Day by David Levithan, there exists a profound discussion about body through its protagonist A’s life, its plot, dialogues, and events that unfold. This paper uses qualitative textual analysis as its methods in order to obtain relevant data to be further analyzed using the theoretical framework from Stuart Hall (theory of representation (2013)) and Chris Shilling (The Body and Social Theory (2003)). Through the indexical signs from the text, there are discussions of how the body is represented, which are as something superficial, as a mask, and as something temporary. Through the analysis of the social body, it is also found that the body has become a social asset in which it could also contribute to one’s self-identity, creating the body as a project that one could work on throughout one’s life. Consequently, the metaphor of body as a machine appears, as well as the revelation that there is also a close relation between death and the body. Through death, the social body is reduced into individual body, where the living often avoids the dead, fearing subconsciously of their own. These aspects could be observed from A’s life and Rhiannon’s response towards it.