This chapter discusses some contributions that Mexican and Latinx phenomenologists have made to the critical phenomenology of home, i.e., the experience of “being at home in the world”—an experience that has always been both deeply cherished and bitterly contested. Tracing a line of thought that runs from the work of two Mexican phenomenologists in the 1940s and 1950s (Jorge Portilla and Emilio Uranga) to the work of two contemporary Latinx phenomenologists in the U.S. (Gloria Anzaldúa and Mariana Ortega), we find (...) a shared view that the Mexican and Latinx experience has been marked by zozobra, an anxious condition characterized by the inability to be at home in the world. However, these philosophers disagree about the source of this zozobra, and even whether zozobra is something that should overcome or embraced and celebrated. Reading these thinkers together, we learn that home is several things simultaneously: an essential foundation for human existence; an illusory ideal whose pursuit leads us to exclude vulnerable others and vulnerable parts of ourselves; and a site for the negotiation of the circumstances in which one finds oneself, in the tragic and beautiful hope of creating a life to call one’s own. (shrink)

​In the wake of the extremely divisive 2016 presidential election, many US Americans are feeling deeply unsettled by the sense that the basic norms that govern life in our society are in a state of flux. How might we best describe and analyze the experience of living in a society that is so divided, a society whose very normative structure seems to be disintegrating? What problematic behaviors might arise in this situation? And how might we continue to work for positive (...) social change without further disrupting the normative order of our society? In this paper, I explore some insights into these issues that can be found in the work of Mexican phenomenologist Jorge Portilla, whose fascinating essays on cultural politics are just beginning to be translated into English. Portilla lived at a time in which his society’s normative structure was also in a state of flux. He argues that this state of normative disintegration generates a widely shared sense of zozobra—a profound anxiety that is not a psychological state but a state of existence, and that tends to provoke a number of defensive reactions that may be familiar to us today. I argue that Portilla's analysis of zozobra is a valuable resource for navigating the contemporary world.​. (shrink)

Introduction: Mexican Philosophy: What Is It and Why It Matters -- Relajo -- Nepantla -- Zozobra -- Corazonada -- Tik -- Figure of the World -- Mexistentialism.

Leopoldo Zea of Mexico and Miguel de Unamuno of Spain are two exemplary philosophers in twentieth-century transatlantic Hispanism. In this article, these thinkers are put in conversation to explore their contrasting orientations toward existence, which reveal both the breadth of modern Hispanic thought and the benefit of Emilio Uranga’s concept of zozobra, in this case applied by holding in tension the differing approaches of Zea and Unamuno rather than choosing one over the other.

En momentos de zozobra y duda, de torpeza y desengaño, como los que corren, puede convenir volver la vista atrás e indagar en tiempos pasados de parecido tenor. Fijarse en épocas, como las que siguieron al malhadado 1898, de derrotas interiorizadas e inciertos mimbres de futuro, para vislumbrar propuestas críticas, reflexivas, como las que, a principios del siglo XX, hizo Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) arremetiendo contra los muchos extraños moradores de la política: la soberbia, el fulanismo o la ramplonería, (...) la fatuidad o el dogmatismo. (shrink)

I offer a phenomenological description of undocumented immigrant reason, provisionally understood as a sort of historical reason grounded on undocumented immigrant life. That is, the categories of undocumented immigrant reason are resources for undocumented immigrant existence and are inscribed in the historical memory of immigration (they are shared and communal), accessed by immigrants in stories, anecdotes, and interpersonal trauma. Abstracting from personal experience, testimony, popular culture, and elsewhere, I propose a fragmentary list of these categories of undocumented immigrant reason, a (...) list that includes journeying, crossing/nepantla, uncertainty/zozobra, nostalgia, and return. These categories, which structure undocumented immigrant reason, are reflected in beliefs and attitudes about migration, belonging, the contingency of life, the centrality of memory, and the meaning of death. Constitutive of immigrant rationality are beliefs and ways of being that lend meaning to immigrant life, including those beliefs and ways of being that place immigrants in closer proximity to fundamental human truths. (shrink)

El mito platónico de Prometeo, con el robo del fuego a los dioses, simboliza el despegue del más apasionante reto de la Humanidad, la aventura del conocimiento. Dédalo con sus ingenios persiguió en vano la estela; y el rapto de Europa por Zeus, no en su vertiente ortodoxa, sino tal como lo representa Bayros, clausura un periplo en pos del bienestar que hoy se muestra tan esperanzador como amenazante. Cuando estamos a punto de realizar el imperativo de Francis Bacon dominando (...) el mundo natural, éste se resiste y rebela dejando al descubierto la fragilidad de la criatura humana. Piqueras como contrapunto esporádico es un testigo del pasado, un aldabonazo en la conciencia. El imperativo tecnológico resume este momento de inflexión en el que nos hallamos: un punto ¿de no retorno?, ante el que la conciencia moral zozobra y que puede marcar el sino de la humanidad doliente. Hasta aquí nos ha traído el apogeo de lo racional, hasta la crisis que todo lo impregna. Si esto es un cuento de Calleja, no acertamos a vislumbrar la moraleja. (shrink)

La oveja (Ovis aries) es el primer animal domesticado para consumo en un hito histórico que marca el inicio de la sedentarización de las comunidades humanas al comienzo del Neolítico. Durante milenios, fueron semejantes al muflón asiático (Ovis orientalis), su ancestro salvaje. Las razas primitivas supervivientes en el norte de Europa son oscuras, mudan el pelo estacionalmente, tienen cuernos en ambos sexos y apenas producen lana. Los ancestros de las modernas surgieron hace unos 3.500 años. Se seleccionaron para producir lana (...) blanca, que crece indefinidamente y se colecta anualmente. Este proceso coincide con la invención de las tijeras de esquilar y con el descubrimiento de tintes como la púrpura. Solo la lana blanca puede teñirse de cualquier color, permitiendo trasladar al tejido las mismas señales que quizá antes nos pintábamos con ocre sobre el cuerpo. La oveja, un herbívoro social muy manejable, sumaba al suministro de alimento el de una fibra abrigada y modificable en su color distintiva de quienes la visten. Un lienzo en blanco donde trasponer las expresiones estéticas antes restringidas al cuerpo, al arte rupestre y al mobiliar. De ahí que diversas mitologías contemplen una relación simbólica especial con ellas. La revolución estética propiciada por las ovejas blancas zozobra en el siglo XX con la aparición de nuevas fibras y el abaratamiento de otras. Hoy, los arquetípicos y blancos rebaños característicos de la iconografía occidental tienden a una coloración mixta al devaluarse la lana. Otras especies domésticas con fibras que solo recientemente se han apreciado comercialmente, como las cabras de angora (Capra hircus) o las llamas (Lama glama), siguen un proceso idéntico al emprendido con las ovejas hace milenios para tornarse blancas. Presentamos las implicaciones estéticas que han estimulado la selección artificial de ovejas con lanas blancas desde un punto de vista transdisciplinar. Siguiendo la corriente bioevolutiva, que entiende nuestra conducta estética y sus manifestaciones como parte de nuestra etología, veremos cómo ese largo proceso estuvo incentivado por nuestro deseo de teñir los tejidos para expresar un fenotipo extendido creando una nueva señal social. Esa nueva señalización, operante en el plano de la selección sexual, se va complicando al desarrollarse nuestras capacidades simbólicas y tecnológicas, siendo sintomática del entorno causal en el que se produce. (shrink)

Typically, existentialist analyses of “America” have been limited to North America (more specifically, the United States). I argue that developing an adequate framework for existentially analyzing America requires a turn to Mexican existentialism. In Emilio Uranga’s and Jorge Portilla’s writings, we discover new conceptual tools for understanding Americanness as such. These thinkers help us imagine an account of American being that does not restrict itself to the United States by using the concepts of existentialism to describe the crises their neighbors (...) to the north as well as they themselves face. American existence has been historically characterized by a convergence (oftentimes clash) of disparate races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, religions, and identities. As history unfolded, this convergence led to various existential crises across the Americas. Whereas the US American way of life is marred by a blustering, naïve, and purposeless misuse of freedom that disregards the other, the existential crisis the Mexican lives is characterized by “accidentality” and “zozobra.” Despite these important differences, all existentialists, and the Mexican existentialists of the Hyperion Group especially, remind us that there is a common way to overcome the various existential crises plaguing the Americas, and that is to exercise freedom in a purposeful, communally conscious manner. (shrink)

_In this symposium, Roberto A. Carleo III, Gregory Doukas and Imogen M. Sullivan think alongside Carlos Alberto Sánchez about the contingency of human existence as it is understood in Mexican existentialism. They ask: Should the notion of a metaphysical substance be discarded altogether due to its misuse in the history of European philosophy? Or are there philosophical reasons to avoid ontological uncertainty by, for example, postulating the notion of a non-discrete substance? And if attempts to define human substantiality merely seek (...) to defy this accidentality, should scholars with deviant identities deliberately engage in a wandering beyond dominant frameworks to evade the material and hermeneutical hostility of these frameworks? How should they work alongside others to best take up their responsibility? In his reply, Sánchez considers what the project of accidentalization would imply for each of these carefully-crafted interventions._. (shrink)