“Colombia has elected its first leftist President” or some variation of that headline is the international’s press overwhelming description of Colombia’s presidential election last Sunday. It is correct, as correct as saying a small lot of prisoners revolted in a...
Ricardo Sanín Restrepo
The work of art as power and destruction
Excerpt from the novel " Gabriel’s Horn" (Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo. 2020, Uniediciones, Colombia) Well then, I also want to address the subject of the immortality of art as a religious, mercantilist and mediocre idea. My...
Many Worlds Interpretation, Critical Theory and the (Immanent) Paradox of Power
The Paradox and its Solution Conclusion: Allow me to begin with the conclusion and work my way back to it. Only in contingency is the world possible, when the world is harnessed in necessity it is simply a simulacrum of the world through a simulacrum of power....
The Case Against Agamben’s Impotence
Another appraisal of Aristotle´s configuration of potentiality and actuality and the latter as a division between Entelecheia and Energeia may open up a new consideration of being and power. Through it, we may dispel Agamben´s interpretation of power that shrouds...
Roma, or the Concealed Artist
The poet should endeavor, if possible, to combine all poetic elements; or failing that, the greatest number and those the most important; the more so, in face of the caviling criticism of the day. — Aristotle, Poetics Like all great aesthetic works, Roma by Alfonso...
The X Game of Language: Decrypting Heidegger’s Ready to Hand
We feel as if we had to repair a torn spider's web with our fingers. — Ludwig Wittgenstein (PI, 106) Description of the game Imagine that tomorrow every single written sign of every written language is transformed into the letter “x” (all scripts become the extensive...
The Razor’s Edge of Politics: Notes on the Meaning of the Encryption of Power
The original theory of the encryption of power was formulated by Gabriel Méndez-Hincapíe and I in an article published in Spanish in 2012. In the following years, several panels regarding the theory where held at the Critical Legal Conference, in 2014 at the...
You want it darker? Trump’s aberrant community & why he still won’t win
Trump comes as the deranged savior, channeling all the frustration and spite towards the ruling class, a sort of dark Angel of political retribution. But if anything, he will intensify the Washington Consensus, he will govern for the Davos people, with the Davos...
Why Trump Won’t Win and Why it Matters
Trump’s candidacy allows us to see the domestic contradictions that have always existed globally. There is a sinister umbilical cord between the inside of American politics and institutionalism and its unrestricted and savage outside. The American president resembles...
The ‘Lawful’ Political Killing of Bogotá’s Mayor: Gustavo Petro
One of the longest living myths in Latin America is that Colombia is one of its most stable democracies. Of course, formally, the country has not suffered a military dictatorship in the last fifty some years and all the internal clockwork of a republican system seems...