Renewal Of Studies Research Articles

Translation as the Mirror Image of Hermeneutics

The aim of this paper is to question if, in the field of translation and hermeneutics, we are now facing new challenges. In fact, after the renewal of studies on Schleiermacher and the different methods of translating, and after A. Berman’s research on the role of translation in the Bildung and H.-G. Gadamer’s and P. Ricoeur’s work, the relationship between hermeneutics and translation is getting to know a new development. We will identify this new development by exploring a question that emerges from the above work, the question of the untranslatable. Outlined by Ricoeur, by Jacques Derrida and by Walter Benjamin, this concept of the untranslatable is revealed, in the wake of Luigi Pareyson’s hermeneutics, to be positive: rather than expressing the impossibility of translation, it points to the inexhaustible nature of truth.

Pesquisa e produção de conhecimento sobre quilombos: entrevista com José Maurício Arruti

A pesquisa sobre quilombos tem se ampliado consideravelmente nos últimos anos, incorporando diferentes referenciais teóricos. Dentre os pesquisadores que têm contribuído para a renovação dos estudos sobre comunidades quilombolas está José Maurício Arruti, doutor em Antropologia Social (UFRJ) e professor da Universidade Estadual de Campinas. O professor Arruti pesquisa comunidades quilombolas e povos indígenas, em especial sobre os temas Políticas de Reconhecimento, Território, Memória e Educação. Apresentamos, a seguir, a entrevista por ele concedida, em que discute aspectos de sua trajetória de formação, a produção de conhecimentos sobre comunidades quilombolas, a inserção na pesquisa sobre a temática, as principais dificuldades enfrentadas por essas comunidades no atual contexto de perda gradativa de direitos. Finalizamos a entrevista com o professor Arruti nos apontando sobre seus atuais interesses de ensino e pesquisa.
 Palavras-chave: Quilombos; Memória; Território; Educação.

O tombamento de áreas naturais pelo CONDEPHAAT: marco de inovação e memória da instituição do patrimônio paulista (1976-1995)

O artigo enfoca o tombamento de áreas naturais pelo CONDEPHAAT - Conselho de Defesa do Patrimônio Histórico, Arqueológico, Artístico e Turístico. Discute, nesse sentido, as potencialidades e limites do uso do tombamento para a preservação da paisagem natural em suas pluralidades e sentidos, entre os anos de 1970 e 1990, período em que se concentram a maioria das ações desenvolvidas pelo órgão paulista nessa seara de atuação. Propõe como resultado da reflexão a ideia de que a viabilidade do tombamento de áreas naturais deva ser discutida como problemática do presente em constante diálogo interdisciplinar como debate imprescindível na renovação dos estudos sobre as dimensões da ação preservacionista e, em especial, sobre a responsabilidade dos órgãos de reservação do patrimônio cultural na proteção da natureza.

Experience vs. Concept? The Role of Bergson in Twentieth-Century French Philosophy

In one of his last writings, Life: Experience and Science, Michel Foucault argued that twentieth-century French philosophy could be read as dividing itself into two divergent lines: on the one hand, we have a philosophical stream which takes individual experience as its point of departure, conceiving it as irreducible to science. On the other hand, we have an analysis of knowledge which takes into account the concrete productions of the mind, as are found in science and human practices. In order to account for this division, Foucault opposed epistemologists such as Cavaillès and Canguilhem to phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre but, also, and more particularly, he opposed Poincaré to Bergson. The latter was presented by Foucault as being the key-figure of the “philosophy of experience” at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fifteen years later, in his Deleuze and in the Logics of Worlds, Alain Badiou again uses this dual structure in his interpretation of the past hundred years of French thought. He employs a series of oppositional couples: himself and Deleuze, Lautmann and Sartre, and, finally, Brunschvicg and Bergson. On the one hand a “mathematical Platonism” and on the other a “philosophy of vital interiority.” This Manichean reading of philosophy, and the strategic use of the figure of Bergson has, itself, a long tradition. It was also proposed by Althusser who, following Bachelard, opposed his standpoint to any form of “empiricism.” Althusser developed his thought from a tradition of Marxist thinkers and ideologists, which included Politzer's and Nizan's critique of bourgeois philosophy and, even before that, neo-Kantians such as the philosophers of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. The aim of this essay is to deconstruct and to put into its precise context of production this series of genealogies which entails the mobilization of Bergsonism and of the name ‘Bergson.’ By doing so, I hope to weight the importance of Bergsonism in twentieth-century French philosophy, in both its “positive” and its “negative” aspect. The essay will proceed regressively, taking into account figures such as Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze, Foucault, Canguilhem, Cavaillès, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, but also Polizer, Brunschvicg and Alain. The conclusion of the essay is an attempt at reading the “Bergson renaissance” in the light of new discoveries in genetics and the cognitive sciences and to tie it to the renewal of studies in the history of French philosophy.

Romanian Migration to the Community of Madrid (Spain): Patterns of Mobility and Return

The article analyzes the process by which Romanian immigrants to the Autonomous Community of Madrid (Spain) return to their country. Starting with the empirical reality and the theoretical focuses on human mobility as a form of transnationalism, the article emphasises on the characteristics which distinguish the Romanian collective from other collectives of immigrants living in Spain; circular migration that creates work networks. The paper reflects how the intensive mobility contributes to a process that is continuous and partial—hardly ever final. The first part of the article presents the phases of Romanian migration to the Autonomous Community of Madrid. It then delves into the process by which Romanians return to their country of origin, while detailing those factors that influence their decision. The conclusions point towards a renewal of studies on mobility within the framework of the European Union that links the border dynamic with the migration process.

Renewing Cultural Studies

Renewing Cultural Studies

The Problem of a History of Nineteenth-Century Theology

The student of Protestant theology in the nineteenth century is confronted by a curious puzzle. It has long been agreed that between the publication of Friedrich Schleiermacher's Speeches on Religion, to the Cultured among Its Despisers (1799) and the outbreak of the First World War there occurred dramatic and far-reaching changes in the patterns and styles of Protestant theology. These may be saluted as creative breakthroughs; they may be put down as dangerous though finally temporary detours from the true line of development; or they may even be combated as the expressions of infidelity and apostasy. But that there occurred theological events of decisive importance, few will deny. Further, it is at least a defensible thesis that the theological situation of the twentieth century is peculiarly dependent on the developments of the nineteenth century. That is, not only do the same problems continue to bedevil and to fascinate, but the shapes in which those questions emerge for us are essentially derivative from the forms they were given in the nineteenth century. This is one of the reasons that in the present generation we see an impressive renewal of study of nineteenth-century theology-not only of the few giants whose names have always been familiar, though whose work may actually have been as much hidden as disclosed by well-worn cliches, but also of many other thinkers whose significance has been less well attended to. Yet in spite of all this, there has never appeared a general history of nineteenth-century Protestant theology.