my fields of interest
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THEORETICAL / EXPERIMENTAL
My main theoretical endeavor focus the hypothesis of extra-cultural becoming of man. That implies the reflection on the conditions of non-cultural poiesis, i.e. radically autonomous creativity, independent from culturally transmitted precedents or inspirations. I am also interested in cultural disruption, caused rather by voluntary rupture, deliberately sought liberation from paradigmatic procedures, than catastrophic events; such a deliberate rupture opens space for post-cultural creativity, that may, or may not, enter the redesigned frontiers of the cultural. On the other hand, I study the emergence of the new level of complexity at the intersection of a number of cultural systems, their interference and overlapping that may lead to collapse under the overcharge of contradictory exigences that those interacting cultures impose upon the individual; that may lead, once again, to the post-cultural as a new range of phenomena. In any case, extra-cultural creation, as I suppose, may bring about a potential of authenticity, leading to novel, liberating exploration of the uncharted zones of human experience. The research that accompanies this theoretical endeavor develops in several directions. In the first place, I search for a new theoretical idiom suiting what would be a description of vague, abstract or culturally inarticulate forms of human creativity. This is why I revisit postmodern authors, their experiments at the frontier of verbal, visual and diagrammatic. I also search for new sources of conceptual inspiration, such a contemporary mathematics and physics. ANALYTICAL The analytical practice of my research obviously encompasses both the cultural and the extra-cultural. Any non-cultural glimpses of human creativity are available for analysis basically through their imperfect cultural translation. They are partially present in the cultural transmission as underground currents, surfacing from time to time as texts, images, artworks, documented practices. Thus, my everyday work consists in exploring the marginal zones of cultures where some insight into the non-cultural may occasionally be found. Such a collected insight is to nourish the theoretical reflection on the symbolical matrix encompassing both the culturally actualized and the unexploited or potential areas of meaning. I have also been active in much more traditional genres of literary criticism. As a researcher in comparative literature, I am currently focusing on transcultural writing and the creation of a non-hegemonically universal system of literary communication. I understand World Literature as a creation of the writers appealing to non-local readership, dissolving the frontiers of literatures defined territorially (ex. as national or regional literatures) rather than diagramatically (as charts of connections). Those writers usually transgress the frontiers of languages (ex. through translingual strategies or incrustation of native tongues into the matrix of the dominating languages in transindigenous writing). In strictly academic terms, Portuguese and Lusophone studies used to be at the core of my specialization in Romance literatures. I also dedicate a great deal of attention to the Mediterranean as an area of circulation and interference between Western and Eastern literary, dogmatic and aesthetic systems. In this area of research, I conjugate literary criticism with history of ideas and comparative religious studies, giving special relevance to mysticism and non-orthodox religious thought. I have been working on the formation of a trans-religious postsecularism combining the spiritual inspirations liberated by the dissolution of confessional denominations. The outcomes of my dispersed research and criticism in World Literature are brought together by the idea of travel as a framing circumstance of reading, leading to a textual/visual conceptualization of meaningful landscapes. They are to be found on this website in the section "Travels & Literature" that I constantly enrich and develop. VISUAL As it can be observed on this website, I also engage into visual experimentation, exploring the connection between text and image. As mentioned above, I am also interested in the relations between the theoretical discourse in humanities and the visual arts, by which I understand using visual tools to create and convey my novel theoretical approach. |
recent and currently developed projects
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2017-2018: “The search for the Adamic language and the emergence of transcultural aspiration in the aftermath of the European maritime discoveries”, LE STUDIUM Loire Valley Institute for Advanced Studies, the SMART LOIRE VALLEY Programme's Fellowship; Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665790; duration: 12 montths.
2020: "MediTransCulture" (Paris-Seine). |
research philosophy and scholarly itinerariumThe model of academic career I follow often causes surprise or, quite bluntly, appears as meaningless, chaotic, lacking planning and awareness of my academic targets. Quite to the contrary, I'm aware of my targets, I dare say to a much higher degree than most persons in the academic world. What I have in mind is a sort of Agambenian model of scholarly creativity, in which novel views in humanities are issued from the study of non-obvious materials, intertwined in a way that is both inventive and particularly complex. To get this richness of tissue, a vast outlook is a prerequisite, which contradicts the usual accent on specialised knowledge that predominates in the academia. The secret of excellence is to put together two ingredients. On the one hand, the quality of being well-informed, since only a deep insight into the mater enables one to bring forth the non-obvious starting points and develop them convincingly, giving a consistence to the whole. On the other hand, the courage of contesting the scholarly and intellectual status quo of our times through insights that essentially result from a novel way of integrating those materials.
I ask about the human beyond the frontiers of the cultural. It is clear that this sort of interrogation cannot be answered inside the boundaries of a traditional academic specialisation, such as was in my case that of Portuguese and Lusophone studies. The maritime adventure of the Portuguese, their clash against the world and their moments of madness just give a handful of tesserae for my broad mosaic. But I also need other sources, in Europe, in the Mediterranean, in the Arab world, in Iran, in India, wherever I find traditions achieving sufficient sophistication to foster the emergence of a new level of complexity. It opens the way to those extracultural insights and moments of enlightenment I search for. Essentially, as I believe, erudition fosters synergy and the vastness of outlook leads to qualitative difference. On my way back from a lecture on Persian poetry in Leiden, I learn how to recognise those glimpses of extracultural intuition in Fernando Pessoa's Antinous; otherwise I would never get to such ideas. This is just to suggest how a synergistic mechanism is put in motion when I circle between my various fields of research. At the end of the road, there is a new theory of man as maker and transgressor of culture, striving to achieve the extracultural condition of absolute authenticity and absolute expression. Something, just like it often happens in Giorgio Agamben's writings, to be found in the last paragraph on the last page of my books to come. |
