Interview

 Interview

Obra autoral principal

Pensador, teórico, escritor, sociologo, anthropologo

Entrevista con Abdel Hernandez San juan

https://m.facebook.com/people/Abdel-San-Juan-Hernandez/100078847707090/

Pregunta: cuando comenzaste a escribir tu obra científica?

Abdel Hernández San Juan: Escribir libros de teoría es mi obra autoral individual principal de forma continuada desde el año mil novecientos noventa y dos, ocupa el noventa y nueve por ciento de mi tiempo, vivo escribiendo estos libros, son desde esa fecha mi principal obra como autor. 

  En ello está mi pensamiento individual, son libros en los que desarrollo mi propia obra teórica, mi propio pensamiento, son obras de pensamiento filosófico, de epistemología, de sociología, de lingüística teórica y ciencias del lenguaje, de analítica de las ciencias, algunos son muy teóricos dentro de lo que llamamos ciencias duras, y dentro de estas en lo que podría considerarse las ciencias más duras entre las ciencias duras, las referencias podrían ser Derrida y Hegel, por ejemplo mis libros más recientes se hayan dentro de esta vía, el correlato de mundo: interpretante y estructura en la teoría cultural posmoderna, un libro de lingüística teórica, semiótica teórica, filosofia clasica y fenomenologia en sociología que discute y propone como movernos entre el mundo en si y el mundo fenomenológico, entre el horizonte intramundano en su inmediatez de mundo en si y formas del mundo que son correlato del texto analizando tres paradigmas de research 1- hermeneutica y ontologia, exegesis y texto e interpretante y alternancia, traducción y comparacion

  Pensando ciencia: nuevas avenidas fenomenológicas entre filosofía y sociología, un libro que desarrolla una reteorizacion entre filosofia clasica y sociología fenomenologica de la relacion entre sujeto, objeto y concepto como base del conocimiento discutiendo nuevas posibilidades para la teoria de la performatividad en los modos de research basados en el sentido común y en la restauración de la idea de mundos

   The core of experience: self percepción and common sense in phenomenological sociólogy, un libro de ensayos escogidos. 

   Tengo otros libros que pasan a la discusión de realidades sociales y culturales como por ejemplo mis libros sobre la publicidad, la vida cotidiana y los mass medias como cultura escritos desde mi perspectiva en Texas, es decir, alrededor del mercado libre, la publicidad y los mass medias en estados unidos, son libros que evocan mi propio mundo de vida escribiendo y conectado al internet en Houston, como por ejemplo, El Horizonte intramundano: fenomenologia y hermenéutica del mundo de vida, El Self y el Acervo, El cuerpo Multisensorial, El ser y la monada, El presentacional linguistico, lo dado y lo no dado

   El segundo de estos se enfoca en la formacion del self como este se permea y adquiere forma entre el self y lo social en un mundo de mercados libres y tecnologia en su relacion con el acervo, propone una reteorizacion del self desde la filosofia clasica para luego desentrañando su rica y compleja fenonenologia discutir como puede articularse desde adentro de esa fenomenologia una sociología fenomenologica que sea teoría cultural entre el self y el acervo, el segundo discute la relacion entre ser, lenguaje e interpretación en un mundo de inteligencia artificial y nomadismo proponiendo y discutiendo una fenomenologia del concepto de liminalidad su importancia en términos de subjetividad y sensibilidad en tales condiciones y sus modos de darse en condiciones seculares y poseculares

  El tercero desarrolla una discusión fenomenologica y lingüística del componente metatextual del ciberespacio en su relacion con el mercado discutiendo mis conceptos de intangibilidad, intersticialidad y stratos en la teorizaciones de los nuevos medias hoy, el tercero se enfoca en los rituales y la estética en los ambientes tecnologicos

  En este sentido no se refieren a mis espacios de trabajo en los cuales de por si no estaba conectado a internet, ni en mi oficina en transart foundation ni en mis oficinas en rice university estaba conectado a internet, en ellas escribía determinados días a la semana, pero sin internet, luego era en mi casa, donde vivía donde escribía y al mismo tiempo estaba conectado de modo que se refieren a mi propia vida cotidiana desde el que era en aquel entonces mi hogar, entre mil novecientos noventa y siete y el dos mil tres, es un esfuerzo por pensar, reflexionar y teorizar mi propia experiencia, por evocarla, a la vez que de abstraer cosas sobre cultura y tecnología que de por si nos afectaban a todos en Texas, reflexiones sobre el ser, la subjetividad, la memoria, el self, entre otros conceptos, evocan mi propia situación en la cultura desde la tecnología en ese entonces

   y luego están mis libros de sociología urbana y de antropologia urbana que se refieren de modo más específico a mis proyectos de trabajo de campo en los mercados populares urbanos y donde discuto mi propio trabajo de campo tales como La verdad indeterminista: los mercados populares en el capitalismo, reteorizando intertextualidad: método de investigación en sociología de la cultura, tambien escribí uno de antropologia urbana que discute mi trabajo de campo y el de Quetzil Eugenio en un mismo volumen, repensando la antropologia urbana, asi como mis libros The crysalide of being, Los umbrales de la couple y The semantique elucidation

   PG: Cual dirías es tu escuela en las ciencias?

   Abdel Hernandez San Juan: Me considero fundador de una nueva escuela en el pensamiento, pero en general diría que es un neoromanticismo, un retorno a un modo clásico de pensamiento y teorizacion

   PG: Como llamarías esa escuela?

   Abdel Hernandez San Juan: neoromantica, Abdeliana, soy fundador, en el ámbito de la filosofía y la epistemología he replanteado e iniciado nuevas avenidas entre epistemología, fenomenología y hermenéutica, que colindan con el pragmatismo, pero que se desarrolla como una modalidad nueva de conceptualismo científico, reteorizando en nuevos sentidos la lógica clásica desde Hegel, alrededor de una variedad de conceptos, ser, memoria, presencia, fenoménico, conciencia, self, acervo, concepto, subjetividad, realidad, texto, exegesis, entre muchos otros, tambien he concebido una nueva teoría de la performatividad dentro de la epistemología, de aquí derivan libros que replantean desde nuevas avenidas y horizontes la sociología de la cultura, las relaciones entre filosofía y sociología, innovativos, y tambien he concebido una nueva modalidad de trabajo de campo basada en proxemica y cinésica, en la que mi enfoque fenomenológico y hermenéutico da con una nueva modalidad de sociología urbana y de antropologia urbana. 

   Es una conjugación original única muy teórica en el sentido clásico, epistemología, ciencias del lenguaje, sociología muy teórica y trabajo de campo que se mueve entre sociología y antropologia urbana, pero desde una elaboración original que no puede reducirse a ninguna escuela previa en la tradición, creo que mis libros sobre los mass medias en estados unidos tambien son originales dentro de la tradición previa sobre este tema, introducen un modo completamente nuevo de abordar el asunto tanto en términos de estilo, de forma, como en términos teóricos. 

PG: Influencias

Abdel Hernandez San Juan: Ello funciona en lo formal, el estilo de escritura y de pensamiento, en la elaboración de un pensamiento propio entran las diferencias que tienes de punto de vista, por un lado, los asuntos, problemas teóricos y desarrollos propios que elaboras en términos conceptuales y luego el estilo, en lo formal en el modo de teorizar, pensar y escribir pues es un asunto tambien de escritura, en la medida en que van pasando los años inicias una búsqueda propia, personal, algo que se hace lo propiamente de uno en los dos sentidos apuntados, forma y teoría o conceptualidad, esa búsqueda propia pasa por distintos momentos y se va profundizando con el tiempo, en la medida en que interiorizas elaboras algo nuevo y de ello surge el pensamiento de uno, cuando ello ocurre ya tus preferencias se han reducido al mínimo en cuanto a otros, hay un periodo en que te interesan muchas cosas, luego decantas y te quedas con unas pocas, ello toma años, y es consecutivo con la elaboración de una obra propia

  Al principio me influyo Bourdieu, pero mis teorías y elaboraciones eran únicas, distintas a las suyas, luego me intereso Alfred Shutz, su social phenomenology, la etnometodologia, el interaccionismo simbólico, específicamente me gustaban Alfred Shutz y George Herbert mead, pero igual mis elaboraciones y teorizaciones fueron distintas, única, originales, innovadoras en relacion a ello, luego Frankfort y específicamente sobre todo habermas y con el adorno y la tradición hegeliana incluido Hegel en directo sobre todo este en años más recientes, tradición reteorizada por mí en el sentido de la filosofía clásica, pero lo que desarrolle y concebí respecto a ello también fue original y único, luego hay una conjugación que mueve ejes y replantea relaciones epistemológicas entre estas tradiciones, Derrida ha sido crucial para mí, asi como la semiótica, específicamente Todorov entre estas tradiciones, me fui moviendo hasta conseguir algo completamente mío, mi propia búsqueda y mi propia investigación 

   En la antropologia me que posicionado del lado de la antropologia lingüística y  cognitiva iniciada por Stephen a Tyler, pero igual como el mismo Stephen me ha dicho lo que yo hago es innovador y original

    Luego están los ambientes académicos en que uno se desenvuelve que influyen, de modo que a grandes rasgos no es posible obviar mis dos posiciones académicas más extensas como investigador, en Houston, a partir de mil novecientos noventa y siete, como complimentary research asociate anthropology faculty at rice university, allí estábamos stephen a tyler, yo, Quetzil Eugenio, comencé en ese entonces una nueva obra y carrera, muy lejos e independiente de los temas por los que viaje el primer año, esta nueva obra y carrera está centrada en mi obra individual solo, en mi obra autoral teórica, en la continuidad de mis libros autorales

   se inicia con una conferencia que impartí en el congreso de etnometodologia en la universidad de Houston, en la facultad de antropologia sobre un film llamado incidentes de viaje de Quetzil Eugenio y Jeff impele, 

   continua con mis intervenciones teóricas en el bag lectures main room y una conferencia que impartí sobre Pierre Bourdieu en ese room en la facultad de antropologia de rice university, continua con un dialogo filosófico entre yo y Stephen a Tyler iniciado ese año que retoma nuestro dialogo filosófico sobre el concepto de evocación, desarrollado un año antes, en aquel dialogo Stephen en su ensayo Evocation: the Unwriteable, a response to Abdel Hernandez San Juan había hecho una crítica a lo que habíamos hecho en mil novecientos noventa y siete y me propone comenzar de nuevo nuestro dialogo independientemente de aquel evento, 

  algo que luego me ratifica en varios emails deseándome lo mejor en mis siguientes proyectos posteriores a mil novecientos noventa y siete, ese dialogo fue grabado, continua con el programa de mi laboratorio que anuncie en Houston ese año incluyendo un programa de conferencias y de mis viajes a Berkeley, san francisco, new Orleans y new york, el programa de conferencias teóricas y una serie de diálogos tambien grabados, 

  incluye una variedad sucesiva de meetings, lectura de ensayos, visualización de documentación visual y diálogos teóricos con Quetzil Eugenio en su apartamento en Gordon y en cenas y almuerzos, a veces con la participación de lisa Breglia

  continua con diálogos teóricos entre yo y Surpic Angelini a partir de ese año 1998 que retoman nuestros diálogos teóricos grabados años antes desde 1995, estos en cualquier lugar, la ciudad, cenas, el carro, en Houston y antes en caracas

  se desenvuelve con una conferencia que impartí en el centro de cultura hispana de Houston sobre la subjetividad de la emigración, vivir entre culturas basada en mi propia subjetividad y experiencia como emigrante y un seminario de un año en pensamiento filosófico y teórico continuidad de esa conferencia que desarrolle una vez a la semana como sesiones autoreflexivas sobre ser emigrantes incluyéndome que desarrolle con emigrantes mexicanos y argentinos ese año, desarrollado con diana gland y carlos gland, incluye sesiones de una vez a la semana durante seis meses ese mismo año con cristina jadick y Mike jadick en Houston

   continua con mi viaje a lake Forest College invitado por la facultad de antropologia y sociología para participar en un panel sobre la relacion cultural estados unidos-México, los mercados turísticos de antropologia y cultura Maya, la curaduría de una muestra sobre arte maya y antropologia, turismo y mercados entre México y estados unidos, donde trabajé en la museografía y puesta de conceptualización espacial, impartí conferencia, ello fue con Quetzil Eugenio y lisa Breglia, incluye una conferencia a propósito de ese viaje en el congreso nacional de antropología aaa en chicago, también con Quetzil Eugenio y lisa Breglia donde participaron surpik angelino y George marcus

   continua con una conferencia que impartí en el congreso lasa en florida, tambien con Quetzil Eugenio y lisa Breglia, e incluye mis intervenciones teóricas en la facultad de antropologia como director artístico de la fundación transarte investigador asociado complementario de la escuela de ciencias sociales, facultad de antropologia de la universidad de rice entre el noventa y siete y el dos mil tres en torno a lo cual tambien debe mencionarse una conferencia que impartí en el panel fictocriticism,  

  un ambiente de teorizaciones donde de hecho inicie toda una nueva línea de pensamiento fenomenológico y etnometodologico dentro de un auge que comprende mi obra teórica, la de Stephen a Tyler y la Quetzil Eugenio. 

   me refiero a largos años en Texas a partir de mil novecientos noventa y ocho teorizando todos los días, 

   Creo que este auge que iniciamos en Texas ha tenido una importancia indiscutible y mis libros todos uno tras otro hasta los más recientes se inscriben en las cuestiones teóricas que desde entonces han conformado ese ambiente académico y de vida.

 Luego mi otra posición académica larga tambien fue influyente, desde 1991 hasta 1996 como profesor investigador en el centro de investigación y desarrollo del instituto superior universitario armando reveron dirijido por Miguel posani sicologo ambiental y epistemologo que recien llegaba de Italia en la linea de moran enfocado en el imaginario, lo crucial aquí era que estábamos enfocados en el desarrollo de nuevas perspectivas de epistemologia y teorías de la complejidad, tambien vivimos un auge proliferador todos esos años en el centro entre yo, Miguel posani y Manuel Espinosa.

  

PG: Que dices respecto a la antropologia?

Abdel Hernandez san Juan: Creo que puede decirse que soy más sociólogo que antropólogo, pero también soy antropólogo, he desarrollado una reteorizacion completa de la antropología desde la filosofía retomando en la filosofía clásica los orígenes de la antropología filosófica y volviendo a replantear completamente los caminos epistemológicos hacia la antropología cultural, mi posicionamiento en la antropología, como he dicho antes, ha sido del lado de la antropología lingüística y cognitiva iniciada por Stephen A Tyler, cuya influencia acepto

Main authorial work

Thinker, writer, sociologist, anthropologist

Interview with Abdel Hernandez San Juan

Question: when did you start writing your scientific work?

Abdel Hernández San Juan: Writing theory books is my main individual authorial work continuously since the year 1992, it occupies ninety-nine percent of my time, I live writing these books, since that date they have been my main work as an author.

  This is my individual thought, they are books in which I develop my own theoretical work, my own thinking, they are works of philosophical thought, of epistemology, of sociology, of theoretical linguistics and language sciences, of analysis of sciences, some are very theoretical within what we call hard sciences, and within these in what could be considered the hardest sciences among the hard sciences, the references could be Derrida and Hegel, for example my most recent books are within this path, the world correlate: interpretant and structure in postmodern cultural theory, a book of theoretical linguistics, theoretical semiotics, classical philosophy and phenomenology in sociology that discusses and proposes how to move between the world in itself and the phenomenological world, between the intramundane horizon in its immediacy of the world itself and forms of the world that are a correlate of the text analyzing three research paradigms 1- hermeneutics and ontology, exegesis and text and interpretant and alternation, translation and comparison

  Thinking science: new phenomenological avenues between philosophy and sociology, a book that develops a retheorization between classical philosophy and phenomenological sociology of the relationship between subject, object and concept as a basis of knowledge, discussing new possibilities for the theory of performativity in research modes. based on common sense and the restoration of the idea of ​​worlds

   The core of experience: self perception and common sense in phenomenological sociology, a book of selected essays

   I have other books that go on to discuss social and cultural realities, such as my books on advertising, daily life and the mass media as culture written from my perspective in Texas, that is, around the free market, advertising and mass media in the United States, are books that evoke my own life world writing and connected to the internet in Houston, such as, The Intramundane Horizon: phenomenology and hermeneutics of the life world, The Self and the Acquis, The Multisensory Body, The Being and the Monad, The linguistic presentational, the given and the not given, the first of these focuses on the formation of the self as it permeates and takes shape between the self and the social in a world of free markets and technology in its relationship with the heritage, proposes a retheorization of the self from classical philosophy and then, unraveling its rich and complex phenonenology, discusses how a phenomenological sociology that is a cultural theory between the self and the heritage can be articulated from within that phenomenology. The second discusses the relationship between being, language and interpretation in a world of artificial intelligence and nomadism, proposing and discussing a phenomenology of the concept of liminality, its importance in terms of subjectivity and sensitivity in such conditions and its ways of occurring in secular and post-secular conditions.

  The third develops a phenomenological and linguistic discussion of the metatextual component of cyberspace in its relationship with the market, discussing my concepts of intangibility, interstitiality and strata in the theorization of new media today, the third focuses on rituals and aesthetics in environments. technological

  In this sense, they do not refer to my work spaces in which I was not connected to the internet, neither in my office at transart foundation nor in my offices at rice university was I connected to the internet, in them I wrote certain days a week , but without the internet, then it was in my house, where I lived, that I wrote and at the same time I was connected in a way that refers to my own daily life from what was then my home, between nineteen ninety-seven and two one thousand three, it is an effort to think, reflect and theorize my own experience, to evoke it, at the same time as abstracting things about culture and technology that in themselves affected us all in Texas, reflections on being, subjectivity, memory, the self, among other concepts, evoke my own situation in culture from technology at that time

   and then there are my urban sociology and urban anthropology books that refer more specifically to my fieldwork projects in urban popular markets and where I discuss my own fieldwork such as The indeterministic truth: popular markets in the capitalism, retheorizing intertextuality: research method in sociology of culture, I also wrote one on urban anthropology that discusses my field work and that of Quetzil Eugenio in the same volume, rethinking urban anthropology, as well as my books The crysalide of being, The thresholds of the couple and The semantic elucidation

   PG: What would you say is your school in science?

   Abdel Hernandez San Juan: I consider myself the founder of a new school of thought, but in general I would say that it is a neoromanticism, a return to a classical mode of thought and theorization.

   PG: What would you call that school?

   Abdel Hernandez San Juan: neoromantic, Abdeliana, I am a founder, in the field of philosophy and epistemology I have rethought and initiated new avenues between epistemology, phenomenology and hermeneutics, which border with pragmatism, but which is developed as a new modality of conceptualism scientific, retheorizing classical logic since Hegel in new senses, around a variety of concepts, being, memory, presence, phenomenal, consciousness, self, heritage, concept, subjectivity, reality, text, exegesis, among many others, I have also conceived a new theory of performativity within epistemology, from here derive books that rethink from new avenues and horizons the sociology of culture, the relationships between philosophy and sociology, innovative, and I have also conceived a new modality of field work based on proxemic and kinesic, in which my phenomenological and hermeneutic approach finds a new modality of urban sociology and urban anthropology.

   It is a unique original conjugation, very theoretical in the classical sense, epistemology, language sciences, very theoretical sociology and field work that moves between sociology and urban anthropology, but from an original elaboration that cannot be reduced to any previous school in the tradition. I believe that my books on the mass media in the United States are also original within the previous tradition on this topic, they introduce a completely new way of approaching the issue both in terms of style, form, and in theoretical terms.

PG: Influences

Abdel Hernandez San Juan: This works in the formal, the style of writing and thinking, in the elaboration of your own thought the differences that you have in point of view come into play, on the one hand, the issues, theoretical problems and own developments that you elaborate in conceptual terms and then the style, in the formal way in the way of theorizing, thinking and writing because it is also a matter of writing, as the years go by you begin your own, personal search, something that is done properly of one in the two senses indicated, form and theory or conceptuality, that self-search goes through different moments and deepens over time, to the extent that you internalize, create something new and from this arises one's thought, when this occurs Your preferences have already been reduced to a minimum regarding others, there is a period in which you are interested in many things, then you decide and stay with a few, this takes years, and is consecutive with the development of your own work.

  At first I was influenced by Bourdieu, but my theories and elaborations were unique, different from his, then I became interested in Alfred Shutz, his social phenomenology, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, specifically I liked Alfred Shutz and George Herbert Mead, but my elaborations were the same. and theorizations were different, unique, original, innovative in relation to it, then Frankfort and specifically especially Habermas and with the Hegelian embellishment and tradition including Hegel live especially this in more recent years, a tradition retheorized by me in the sense of classical philosophy, but what I developed and conceived regarding it was also original and unique, then there is a conjugation that moves axes and rethinks epistemological relationships between these traditions, Derrida has been crucial for me, as well as semiotics, specifically Todorov among these traditions, I moved until I got something completely mine, my own search and my own research

   In anthropology I have positioned myself on the side of the linguistic and cognitive anthropology initiated by Stephen Tyler, but just as Stephen himself has told me what I do is innovative and original

    Then there are the academic environments in which one operates that influence, so broadly speaking it is not possible to ignore my two most extensive academic positions as a researcher, in Houston, starting in 1997, as complimentary research associate anthropology faculty at rice university, there we were stephen and tyler, I, Quetzil Eugenio, began a new work and career at that time, very far away and independent of the topics through which I traveled the first year, this new work and career is focused on my work individual alone, in my theoretical authorial work, in the continuity of my authorial books

   It begins with a conference that I gave at the ethnomethodology congress at the University of Houston, in the faculty of anthropology about a film called travel incidents by Quetzil Eugenio and Jeff Impele,

   It continues with my theoretical interventions in the bag lectures main room and a conference that I gave on Pierre Bourdieu in that room in the Faculty of Anthropology at Rice University, it continues with a philosophical dialogue between me and Stephen Tyler started that year that resumes our philosophical dialogue about the concept of evocation, developed a year before, in that dialogue Stephen in his essay Evocation: the Unwriteable, a response to Abdel Hernandez San Juan had made a critique of what we had done in 1997 and he proposed that I start from new our dialogue regardless of that event,

  something that he later confirmed in several emails, wishing me the best in my subsequent projects after 1997. That dialogue was recorded. It continues with the program of my laboratory that I announced in Houston that year, including a program of conferences and my trips. to Berkeley, San Francisco, New Orleans and New York, the program of theoretical conferences and a series of dialogues also recorded,

  includes a successive variety of meetings, reading of essays, viewing of visual documentation and theoretical dialogues with Quetzil Eugenio in his apartment in Gordon and at dinners and lunches, sometimes with the participation of Lisa Breglia

  It continues with theoretical dialogues between me and Surpic Angelini from that year 1998 that resume our theoretical dialogues recorded years before since 1995, these anywhere, the city, dinners, the car, in Houston and before in Caracas

  It unfolds with a conference I gave at the Houston Hispanic Culture Center on the subjectivity of emigration, living between cultures based on my own subjectivity and experience as an emigrant, and a one-year seminar on philosophical and theoretical thought, a continuation of that conference that developed once a week as self-reflective sessions on being emigrants including me who developed with Mexican and Argentine emigrants that year, developed with Diana Gland and Carlos Gland, includes sessions once a week for six months that same year with Cristina Jadick and Mike Jadick in Houston

   I continue with my trip to Lake Forest College, invited by the faculty of anthropology and sociology to participate in a panel on the cultural relationship between the United States and Mexico, the tourist markets of anthropology and Mayan culture, the curation of an exhibition on Mayan art and anthropology, tourism and markets between Mexico and the United States, where I worked on museography and spatial conceptualization, I gave a conference, this was with Quetzil Eugenio and Lisa Breglia, it includes a conference about that trip at the AAA National Anthropology Congress in Chicago, also with Quetzil Eugenio and Lisa Breglia where Surpik Angelino and George Marcus participated

   It continues with a conference that I gave at the Lasa Congress in Florida, also with Quetzil Eugenio and Lisa Breglia, and includes my theoretical interventions in the Faculty of Anthropology as artistic director of the Transarte Foundation, complementary associate researcher of the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of anthropology at rice university between ninety-seven and two thousand and three, around which a lecture that I gave on the fictocriticism panel should also be mentioned,

  an environment of theorizations where in fact a whole new line of phenomenological and ethnomethodological thought begins within a boom that includes my theoretical work, that of Stephen Tyler and Quetzil Eugenio.

   I mean long years in Texas starting in 1998 theorizing every day,

   I believe that this boom that we began in Texas has had indisputable importance and my books, one after another, even the most recent ones, are part of the theoretical issues that have since shaped that academic and life environment.

 Then my other long academic position was also influential, from 1991 to 1996 as a research professor at the research and development center of the Armando Reveron Higher University Institute directed by Miguel Posani, an environmental psychologist and epistemologist who had recently arrived from Italy in the Moran line focused on the imaginary, the crucial thing here was that we were focused on the development of new perspectives of epistemology and theories of complexity, we also experienced a proliferative boom all those years in the center between myself, Miguel Posani and Manuel Espinosa.

  

PG: What do you say about anthropology?

Abdel Hernandez San Juan: I think it can be said that I am more of a sociologist than an anthropologist, but I am also an anthropologist, I have developed a complete retheorization of anthropology from philosophy, returning to the origins of philosophical anthropology in classical philosophy and completely rethinking the paths. epistemological towards cultural anthropology, my position in anthropology, as I have said before, has been on the side of linguistic and cognitive anthropology initiated by Stephen A Tyler, whose influence I accept

PG: You are also an ethnographer.

Abdel Hernández San Juan: The problem with ethnography lies in the fact that there are many stereotypes about what ethnography is, and the way I work, ethnography abandons all these stereotypes and begins a completely new form of ethnography, but then it happens that there is a past in ethnography and that past demands, demands from the point of view of inheritance, if one is innovating and rethinking ethnography in a new way, it is assumed that if it has a past one must settle its debts with that past and effectively in Science in one way or another has to settle its debts with the past, it is not like in art, where the Dadaists, for example, broke with the entire past by denying inheritance completely, in science you have to explain in a certain way how The new thing that one does is related to the way it was in a certain tradition.

   Quetzil defines me as an ethnographer in his essay on ethnography and performative principles of fieldwork, Surpik Angelini has recently published on the transart webside, theorist, cultural anthropologist and ethnographer, and they are not the first to put it and say it, then the urban books Based on my field work, they are clearly urban anthropology books.

  For example, Levi Strauss says in three paragraphs in structural anthropology that anthropology should be like semiotics and that the objects of culture are signs, but then in none of his books does he ever make a single semiotic analysis of culture and signs in it, he uses linguistics as an analogy to study non-linguistic phenomena, but when studying the latter he does not analyze them semiotically, Stephen A Tyler says that ethnography must be intertextual and he says it from semiotics, in his case there is a little more of linguistic and semantic analysis when he theorizes, what he called linguistic anthropology, he develops that possibility a little more but again there is not exactly the development of a semiotics of culture, although much more than in Levis Strauss or in Clifford Geertz

  The latter said that anthropology must interpret cultures, presumably since interpreting involves interpreting texts, he understands culture as a text, something that Stephen Tyler says before him and applies it to text analysis, both, Stephen first Geertz then They develop analyzes of symbolic phenomena in different ways, but in neither case nor in Levi Strauss do you find truly semiotic analyzes of culture, of culture as a text and of concepts of the text that go beyond the literal text, then comes one as a new generation, they could be my grandparents, truly develops semiotic analyzes and completely rethinks anthropology in those terms, but then their direct disciples come, let's say those who would be their children who also did not develop semiotics, and they say that what one is doing what the grandparents did and it is not true, Stephen himself told me that my theory was innovative, I accept that Stephen is an inspiration and I even recognize an influence on Stephen and less on the other two, but again what I do it is new, it had not been done before me.

PG: Quetzil has published an essay based on your concept of Performativity

Abdel: Yes, it reflects what I am saying, an environment of theoretical boom that we began in Texas, theorizing every week and seeing each other frequently, he has seen me for long hours theorizing orally in my laboratory in 1998 in Houston, in our apartments in Texas , at dinners, lunches, in Illinois, he has read many of my theoretical essays, we read each other all those years, and we have continued reading each other to the present, in fact, I have just sent several of my books and essays to both him and Stephen including synopses of each essay and book, and I have just read about seven essays by Quetzil and two by Stephen, and I have also sent Surpic several of my books, so we continue to be well connected in theory.

    I think that in that essay he is based mainly on things that he theorized in conferences on the panel about his film at the University of Houston and at Rice University in the Faculty of Anthropology, although we have read essays by many of the other in Houston, as I said. , then worked together in Illinois in '99, and we have been together with conferences on various panels,

   He is currently in Indiana but at that time he was at Lake Forest College and before that at the University of Houston, anthropology, I Transart Foundation of Houston and at the Faculty of Anthropology at Rice but he refers to a lecture I gave at the Ethnomethodology Congress of '98 and then to the invitation he made me from Lake Forest in '99.

       There are differences between us, as always happens, in some points we are different, but there are many more points in common than the differences.

     Now, regarding Geertz, there are things about Geertz that I accept that I like, but I must say what they are, first, the idea that Geertz proposed interpretive anthropology, as I said before, does not mean that there are truly textual analyzes in Geertz's books. and semiotics of objects, signs, artifacts and bodies in culture, in fact, you do not find properly semiotic analyzes anywhere, despite this, there are things that I like about Geertz, I like the way he places the work between various cultures, I like that, I accept that I have been inspired by that aspect of Geertz, the Geertz of After the facts: two countries, four decades and one anthropologist, and finally, I do it in a different way than Geertz, mine and original, Geertz united several cultures in a narrative of experience and life, it is a kind of autobiographical anthropology, I do it differently, I compose authorial groups made up of a variety of essays that do not refer to oneself among those cultures by the via self-references of life as someone who narrates what has been lived, -sometimes I do it but it is too scarce and insignificant--but in a logical-theoretical way, putting together within the same logical group, essays on Houston, on bilingualism between Venezuela and United States, on Venezuelan slang and Amerindian multilingualism, on semiotics, on material culture among those who work between Venezuela, me, Mexico, Quetzil, and African countries, and conclude with semantic essays on Cuban slang and religion between Miami and Havana, It is a way of forming an authorial whole that presupposes displacements as well as situating the social science text between various cultures, as I do for example in my book semantic elucidation, or as I do in my book rethinking intertextuality and even in self and collection, among others, the set of my books also includes different scenarios, I accept a certain inspiration in Geertz in this specific sense and indirectly a certain influence, but the market from here as a work in itself is not the example, in that work my reference was stephen his essay postmodern ethnography

    PG: What relationship do you see between being an emigrant, life as an emigrant and being a writer, what relationship do they have with your experience and life as an emigrant?

    I can say that I emigrated from Cuba when I was twenty years old – the same age at which Surpik emigrated from Venezuela, where he was born – I emigrated just as almost my entire generation emigrated and I am one of those emigrants for whom emigration becomes definitive in a positive sense, not I am a nostalgic emigrant for the culture of origin, I positively assimilate to my new cultures, first I emigrated to Venezuela in the neoliberal capitalist period when Carlos Andrés Pérez, then to the United States, Texas, Bill Clinton, George Bush. Surpik, who emigrated at the age of twenty, can say what this means in the subjectivity of an individual in their cultural makeup, one changes completely, one transforms.

  Obviously it is not the same to emigrate at twenty years old as at five years old, you already bring something more accomplished with you, but you are still a child, you are just beginning to conform, you live all your twenties, all your thirties, there is no going back, you are an emigrant forever , you were formed as a being, as an individual, as a person and as a subjectivity in emigration,

   There are writers and theorists who have been emigrants, I could mention the examples of Alfred Shutz in the United States, Jacques Derrida, an Algerian emigrant in France, Svetan Todorov and Julia Kristeva, Bulgarian emigrants in France.

   To say that one is an emigrant and that this is not reflected in one's work as a writer is impossible, it is reflected whether one wants to or not, so that all my books, from the first to the most recent, are directly or indirectly about me. experience as an emigrant, whether I want it or not and although it is not their topic, in some way it is made explicit.

    For example, Derrida, perhaps he would deny that his work reflects that he is an Algerian in France, but he reflects it whether he wants it or not and he would even say that it is crucial, if you read the margins of philosophy in depth and study it you will find a rediscussion of classical philosophy from Greece written by an Algerian who by writing it is doing his own auto-ethnography at the same time as he is ethnographing the tradition of European philosophy, whether or not it is an explicit intention, it is implicit

PG: Readings

Abdel: Mentioning everything I have read is impossible, I read too much, and I not only read but I study what I read, it means that I read it completely and several times, my books are full of both mentions within the chapters and they have a bibliography. Regarding which I have read and studied everything listed several times, but there are thousands of books and magazines that one reads and they are not mentioned or are not included in the bibliography.

  If I have to mention some things, I could say that I read and studied Junger Habermas's theory of communicative action in depth in 1993 and I read and studied a book by Alfred Shutz, edited by his wife, Ilse, and by Thomas Luckman, his disciple, Knowledge. in the worlds of everyday life

    In Venezuela I read several books by Derrida, at least I read the margins of philosophy, grammatology, and deconstruction and I also concentrated on reading Deleuze, I read The Logic of Sense and The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque by Deleuze, I read all of Boudrillard that I had only read Transestetica, I finished completing my readings of Bourdieu and Foucault

    In semiotics, it was very important for me to read Todorov's work during those years in Venezuela. I read almost all of his books and studied them, symbolism and interpretation, the genres of discourse, theory of the symbolic, criticism of criticism, Bakhtin and dialogicism, the dictionary of language sciences and facing the limit

    Also in Caracas I read and studied several books by Lacan that were important to consolidate my knowledge of theoretical psychoanalysis, which I needed to deepen because I did not master it as much as semiotics, which I studied in depth in Venezuela in order to conclude my semiotic studies.

    In Caracas I read Lyotard's difference.

    I also read many books on European urban sociology and on modernity projects and collective representations. Of course I read Daniel Bell, the advent of post-industrial society, I read an edition published by contemporary sociology experts, Javier Muguenza, Salvador Bueno, Miguel Beltrán, among others, and a magazine of moral philosophy, Isegoria, both Spanish.

       In Caracas I read Piaget's Learning in Children.

        In Caracas I read Jean Benoist's compendium in petrel from the meeting Identity of mathematical philosophers, Julia Kristeva and Serres with Levis Strauss.

     also structural anthropology, art and ethnology and Charbonier's interview with Levis Strauss.

      In Caracas I read many theory essays in magazines, for example, the magazine of logical positivism of the Simón Bolívar University, several issues, and social science magazines around community projects such as those of cecap and cepap related to the work of the faith and church. happiness

   I read a compendium on orality and writing by Walter Ong and other cognitivists like Havelock, and I read and studied Geertz's Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz's After the Facts, the Anthropologist as Author and Geertz's Local Knowledge, The Dilemmas of Culture of James Clifford and the Advent of Postmodern Anthropology of Carlos Reynoso.

  Then in Houston I read Constructive and Reconstructive Sciences by Habermas, which I really liked, an edition that came together with Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, I read Aesthetics and Interpretation by Gadamer, in Houston and Los Angeles, I read the responsibility of forms, a compendium of Barthes's essays published at the University of California, I read Language and Responsibility and Chomsky's minimalist program,

    Then in Houston I deepened my reading of Derrida, studying more thoroughly the margins of philosophy and reading new books and essays, the margins of philosophy that I continue to study to the present so that I reread it and reread it studying it, I read it again new to Deleuze, expanding to read empiricism and subjectivity, I read postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism by Jameson

   I also read Time and Narration by Ricoeur in Houston, I read Prolegomena for a Next Linguistics by Stephen A Tyler and Presenter (dis) Plays by Stephen A Tyler. I mean in print ways of reading them calmly and well, because in Houston I read vile Bodies: A Mental Machination and Them Others without mirrors by Stephen but in a reading that was not enough, I needed to re-read them for a truly complete read

    More recently, in addition to re-reading Habermas's theory of communicative action and the structure absent of echo that I had read in Venezuela, I have read about three times and repeatedly studied Hegel's science of logic, I read the theory Aesthetics of adornment , selected essays by Benjamin, Sensible Time by Kristeva, by whom I had only read a few individual essays, Duration and simultaneity by Bergson, science of science and reflexivity by Bourdieu by whom I had read many books, Lessons on Kant by Deleuze, essays of Heidegger on Kant, on identity and on time. What is the philosophy of Deleuze and Guatarri, Derrida on Hurseel Genesis and structure, Kristeva's interview with Derrida, Derrida's meeting with Richard Rorty, what is the use of the truth of Rorty and Pascal Engels,

   So more recently I calmly read Stephen's Them other voices without mirrors and his essay A Point of Order which I had not read.

   I also re-read Geertz's Anthropologist as an Author twice more, read Malinowski's The Argonauts of the Western Pacific in full and thoroughly studied it, and re-read Levis Strauss's structural anthropology twice more.

   I mentioned my two longest academic positions, on the one hand, my position as complementary research associate Anthropology faculty at rice university working as an independent position correlated to my position as artistic director of the transarte foundation of Houston, the first between nineteen ninety-seven and two thousand four, the second, between nineteen ninety-seven and two thousand two, but there is also the other extensive position as a researcher at the research and development center of the Armando Reveron university institute of plastic arts in Caracas where I was, Miguel Posani, who came from Italy in the line of Edgar Moran and Manuel Espinosa who came in the line of Pierre Francasteleas in epistemology and epistemology of complexity

 PG: Your scientific position

Abdel Hernández San Juan: My scientific position is on the side of an extensive and abundant tradition that has focused on the autonomy of the sciences, it is a line that has two extremes, we autonomists who are based on principles of economic autonomy, here we are those who we are neoliberalists, depoliticization of the economy, scientific work considered as an individual form of author's work

  The other line does not so much demand respect for the freedoms and self-determination of science from the free market, but rather positions itself not against politics but against it, sometimes some have no other alternative because there are contexts in which politics and politicians want to interfere in science in any way, and in such cases there is no other remedy than to turn science against politics, that is, to put all the means of hard sciences to combat politicians of any tendency and ideology without exclusion of any

   I am within the first line, my work remains within it without making concessions because turning against politics is accepting its game, even when it is against it it is making what one writes speeches aimed at politics inclusive.

    Throughout the last century, there were different ways in which science was subordinated to circumstances external to it, such as, on the one hand, the so-called instrumental reason, the instrumentalization of science, led by utilitarian positions through which, for example, certain Sociology was left at the expense and subordinated, statistical sociology for example, as well as institutionalist sociology, were subordinated, this was the case with positivism, logical neopositivism, empiricism and a variety of tendencies, also with the old constructivism where the scientist was understood or seen as someone subject to the construction of society as this construction was understood from dynamics external to science such as politics and governmentality,

  but at the same time, forms of science that were contrary to this developed simultaneously, my individual positioning is situated and positioned from this side,

   Here we have thinkers who in many ways took a scientific distance from everything that was detrimental to the autonomy of science. Here we have, on the one hand, the sociology of Max Weber, who distanced himself from the entire secular system of bureaucracy and mechanisms. of governmentality, exposing them to scientific analysis and not allowing such instances to intervene over science, on the other hand, we have the tradition of phenomenological sociology that focused on removing sociology from any possibility of it being instrumentalized by politics and governmentality, situating itself from what I call the cutting of the world of life.

  Here it is about the fact that one is first an individual who has his own life world and is the author of works, not allowing our scientific works to develop in any other way than as part of that life as individuals in our life worlds, only being responsible individuals from our own life world can be responsible for the autonomy of science

   Here we have the shift from a macro sociology to a specific microsociology, as occurs in the work of Alfred Shutz, whose work comes from philosophy and phenomenological research. There are some sociologists who during one part of their work maintained this distance, but who otherwise way they were progressively succumbing to determinism, the main epistemological question at issue here lies in the dispute between determinism and indeterminism,

  The first considers that science is determined by circumstances external to it and that it has to be subordinated to those dynamics governed by politics and governmentality, the second, indeterminist, is based on the principle that science must be autonomous and independent, indeterministic with respect to those external circumstances I am indeterministic

   For example, Lyotard dedicated extensive developments to objectifying how, from the theory of language and discourse itself, science is independent and contrary to politics, in the same sense authors such as Jacques Derrida and Jean Boudrillard saw it.

   Again, only Gadamer's hermeneutic tradition and the first pragmatism in line with phenomenology escape all of this, on the other hand of course also psychoanalysis.

  

Question: wouldn't this be a type of anarcho-capitalism to use a phrase that is used to define a certain trend that developed around Habermas but distancing itself from him?

Abdel Hernández San Juan: The concept of anarchism has a negative burden that makes it difficult to assume the notion. Chomsky, for example, defines himself as an anarchist, but at the same time part of his speech is politicized, Bakunin and other anarchists in the past, were associated with a destructive idea towards modernity, I am contrary to this, I do not position myself from a negative attitude towards modernity, I start from a sociology of common sense and common sense the first thing it does is confirm the world as it is. We live it, I prioritize life worlds in my scientific work, I cut it from the life worlds, from my own life world, only hermeneutics, pragmatism and phenomenology accept the social world as it is and while on the one hand They do not accept the interference of determinism and its politicized instrumentalization, on the other hand, nor do they adhere to destructive and pessimistic tendencies towards modernity,

  Here comes Max Weber's valuable concept of axiological neutrality, science must be axiologically neutral, not take sides with politics in any direction or trend, understand that science must be autonomous and always maintain a neutral distance towards any form of politics, whatever that policy may be without exclusion of any ideology or political tendency

  but at the same time axiological neutrality presupposes that we live in a world that we have previously accepted and meant and that as such it is our responsibility to be optimistic and positive regarding that world as it is without trying to destroy or change it, so that if we agree with certain aspects of the so-called anarcho-capitalism, the prioritization of the one hundred percent free market as a guarantee and condition of objective and subjective possibility of the autonomy of the sciences, depoliticizing the economy

    but we are not anarchists in the sense, for example, that theories were written pessimistically to destroy modernity.

PG: Since 2003, have you not had any long and stable academic position?

Abdel Hernandez San Juan: No, but I am looking for it, I want a next one, I need it, I am looking for it in the United States, I have had some short academic positions related to specific topics after that, but not yet a long and stable one like those two, but I'm looking for her in the United States.

Pg: you have talked about El Cid in the 1991-1996 reveron, directed by Miguel Posani, what is the relationship between the Research that you brought in El Cid and then in Texas

Abdel: El Cid is a center that was created due to and within the context of the emergence of a new institute, a university of plastic arts, in this sense it is a center that adapted to the demands of an art institute, but In its theoretical bases, El Cid had as its central axis the development of new paths of epistemology, completely rethinking the subject-object relationship in an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary perspective. In this sense, everything I have done since is a logical continuity in my work and in my research of what I had been doing at El Cid under the direction of Miguel, the only difference would be that before I was more subject to art research and then I moved more towards the social sciences but these were already the center of my attention since then

Pg: are you talking about a boom in El Cid?, similar to Texas later

Abdel: without the slightest doubt a very important boom, Miguel Posani had just arrived from Italy full of new ideas, theories of complexity, the imaginary, the holistic, he wrote crucial experimental epistemological essays in those years

I had just emigrated, I arrived from Cuba and I began to write my first theoretical books from El Cid that reflect that boom. The institute, in addition, its guiding theoretical texts were beautiful, transdisciplinarity, holism, the ideas and thought of Manuel Espinosa, between Miguel and Manuel the references were moran, bateson, I brought my entire discussion of epistemology in sociology and semiotics as reflected in my first book borders and overflow that I wrote from the center

Pg: but Miguel then turned towards therapy

Abdel: theoretically, therapy has always interested me, but I think that Miguel, who is an environmental psychologist, was in those years deciding what his practice would be like. He, for example, was the first person with whom I discussed Lyotard's immaterials in the pompidue, the possibility of exploring theory in other media, in the media in fact not only in writing and Miguel in those years proposed to me for my curatorship a theoretical conference designed to be seen in multimedia language even within the museum displays which the what he is doing today has to do with that, although Miguel is more interested in it than I am, for me the writing of authorial books of theoretical essays continues to be the main means of expression

But this is very similar to what we discussed in rice, social science practices in art media or interdisciplinarity diffusing the institutional borders between social sciences and art in that sense Miguel and I are in maximum harmony today it is almost as if we had never left the center and we will continue working as a team, Miguel is working on the therapeutic comix, such as stanford carpenter

Pg: but they are different between the two

Abdel: undoubtedly, Miguel is a psychologist working on therapy, I am not, my relationship to therapy is theoretical, not empirical, of course we have differences, but how boring it would be if we were the same

Stephen also worked on therapy on a theoretical level.

But Miguel is an excellent epistemologist, he is the only psychologist I have ever met who works on epistemology and this is our main affinity because epistemology has always been the central axis of my research and work and it is today more than ever, perhaps Miguel's case would deny what I maintain in my essay, the evacuation of substance when I say that psychology has no entry into the philosophy of science with the exception of Piaget, but I maintain it because when he writes epistemology it is as if he changed avenues.