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The Solitude of the Critical Thinker: A History of Recurrent Rejection

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Note: This text was originally written in Spanish and is presented here in English translation. Introduction In recent years it has become common to describe the isolation of intellectually inquisitive individuals as a by-product of neoliberalism: the performance society, the imperative of emotional productivity, or the pressures of hyperconnectivity would have turned conversation into a superficial exchange from which many withdraw. Although this diagnosis captures certain features of our present, it falls short. The phenomenon has far deeper roots and spans very different historical periods. From antiquity to today, those who seek an interlocution that does not merely reaffirm the immediate often encounter a climate of mismatch and, frequently, a subtle form of ostracism. This article examines that process without victimhood, focusing on the psychological and social mechanisms that generate rejection, as well as the historical paradox by which the very figures once marginalized e...
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The Myth of the Omniscient Eye: Why We Don’t See the Origin of an Image

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Introduction: Analog, Digital, and Synthetic We live a moment both familiar and uncanny. The recent proliferation of images produced by generative systems has revived an enduring prejudice: the suspicion that artificial creations lack authenticity. We argue passionately over whether a “true” image must emerge from chemical film, a sensor, or a generative model. Yet almost no one acknowledges the uncomfortable obviousness: the eye does not perceive the technical genealogy of an image. The distinction that structures this debate—analog, digital, AI—does not belong to visual experience but to cultural myth. In fact, the observer apprehends only what lies before them; everything else is narrative, belief, nostalgia. This simple premise undermines most of the purist rhetoric. It becomes even clearer when considered through an analogy as elegant as it is devastating: language. The Invisible History: A Lesson from Linguistics In linguistics, the distinction between synchronic and diachr...
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Putting One’s Name on the Line: Nietzsche’s Otobiography and the Politics of Inheritance

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In the desert, you can remember your name The Event of the Name When Nietzsche writes Ecce Homo , he transforms autobiography into a philosophical experiment. “I know my fate. Someday my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous,” he prophesies, turning his signature into an event rather than a label. The proper name—Nietzsche—becomes a force that detonates the conventions of authorship, identity, and remembrance. “I am no man, I am dynamite,” he declares, and in doing so he inscribes philosophy into the explosive space between life and writing. Jacques Derrida, in his 1979 lecture Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name , seizes precisely this explosion. Yet Derrida does not seek to interpret Nietzsche’s confession; he listens to it. His neologism otobiography —from oto , the ear—suggests that life-writing is never purely self-generated. It is heard, transmitted, inherited. Nietzsche’s “I” is already plural, resonating in...
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Saussure without Saussure: Otobiography, Signature and Death

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I've been through the desert On a horse with no name   Before the Signature In 1916, three years after Ferdinand de Saussure’s death, his students published Cours de linguistique générale , the book that would define modern linguistics and structuralism. Yet Saussure never signed the book. What we read as the Course is a reconstruction compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from student notes of three lecture series delivered in Geneva between 1906 and 1911. In their preface, the editors admit that Saussure “probably would not have allowed” these notes to appear in print and that they assume full responsibility for any distortions or gaps: “ We are fully aware of the responsibility we owe not only to our readers but also to Saussure himself, who perhaps might not have authorised the publication of this text. We accept this responsibility, and it is ours alone. Will critics be able to distinguish between Saussure and our interpretation of Saussure ?” From the outset...
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From Generative to Algorithmic Grammar: Derrida, Barthes, and the Crisis of Cartesian Linguistics

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Introduction The advent of language models has profoundly transformed our understanding of language. These systems generate coherent texts, respond to context, reformulate meanings, and simulate creativity—all without consciousness or biology. This technological shift raises a pressing question: if language does not require an organic substrate to function, what remains of the faculty of language as an innate attribute of the human species? This question acquires a philosophical dimension when considered alongside the insights of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, who anticipated a conception of language as a network of signs and writing independent of a subject. In this sense, algorithmic models produce meaning without intentionality, enacting operations that function beyond the bounds of human awareness. This essay argues that algorithmic systems exemplify the transition from language conceived as the expression of a mind to writing as a differential network, thereby enactin...
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