In different ways, the dictatorship was in academia…
the regime killed and thought at the same time—
and, of course, it killed thought as well.
P. Ravecca
Introducing the issue
The nexus between social thought and political context is an intimate one. This connection is even more intense and complex among those who study and divulge their knowledge of political science, which can be largely understood as intellectual attempts at theorizing, explaining, and predicting how political power takes form and is used, for power is both the subject and impediment to what political science does. Therefore, the crises that emerge from this relationship become both epistemic and civic problems.
The political conditions of present-day Cuba are not favorable for any kind of civic debate. Under the current regime the state of the rights to information, free expression and free association, put the country at a disadvantage regarding others in the region. As a closed one-party autocracy and post-totalitarian model, Cuba appears as the most restrictive case for the exercise of citizen rights according to the evaluations of V-Dem, Freedom House or Democracy Index When any form of spontaneous mobilization —including those with no party/political affiliations, such as communal environmentalism and animal protection— is subject to monitoring, co-opting, and vetoing by the State, it becomes very difficult to sustain any kind of public debate. Then and there, those who are interested in participating in national politics actively and autonomously, are severely restricted.
In this context, one can see how the problems that arise from the kind of political discourse that reigns in Cuban academia —including that which emerges from state-affiliated institutions, as well as that which does not but is authorized by the state in order to pretend like there is some kind of space outside those institutions— are notorious. Some of these problems, their characteristics, contexts, and interpretations, have been analyzed elsewhere. They can be summarized as follows:
- Absence and manipulation of data. There are no statistics/polls from non-state sources. State sources tend to be manipulated, thereby not reflecting society accurately.
- Distance between theory and political reality. The constant mention of a ‘communist horizon exemplified this’ and the ‘socialist/popular’ nature of the current regime.
- Conceptual overstretching which, in its extreme form, leads to the emptying of meanings. The ahistorical, anti-Marxist use of the term “Revolution” to refer to the status quo and the use of adjectives (popular, socialist, participative) of a non-existing democracy.
- Direct (in state-sponsored academia) or indirect (in state-authorized academia) justifications for the government’s decisions, especially those pertaining to the persistent dynamics of the economic crisis and to the political repression of the last two years.
- Hits: 1831
No sé en este momento la respuesta a esta pregunta, pero está ahí como tantas otras.
Cuando un cambio viene de un modo suficientemente lento, escapa a la conciencia, y no provoca en la mayor parte de los casos ninguna reacción, ninguna oposición, ninguna revuelta…
El cientificismo se ha entronizado en el pensamiento universal hasta el punto de fomentar el relativismo moral, que se establece con el argumento de que los conceptos éticos son variables según las culturas y las épocas en que se desenvuelven, sencillamente porque no pueden ser empíricamente demostrados.
Según lo describo en el libro de próxima publicación, titulado "La Huella del Cristianismo en la Historia", el cientificismo resultante de La Ilustración «postula que los únicos conocimientos válidos son los que se adquieren mediante las ciencias positivas, lo cual tiende a dar excesivo valor a las nociones científicas o pretendidamente científicas. Por tanto, sus críticos lo califican como una postura ideológica que pretende hacer pasar como conclusiones de la ciencia lo que serían en realidad nociones intelectuales propias de una determinada filosofía materialista. Por el contrario, sus promotores estiman que las ciencias formales y naturales presentan primacía sobre otros campos de la investigación tales como ciencias sociales o humanidades.»
Invertebrate Spain (as in without backbone), and The Revolt of the Masses are two of José Ortega y Gasset’s best-known works. Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), a Spanish philosopher and essayist, wrote during the first half of the 20th century when Spain wavered between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. For him, the Basque and Catalan separatisms of his day were manifestations of the existential ordinariness of societal values, and of the mediocrity of Spanish institutions. Spain had ceased to be “an active and dynamic reality” and had become a society without ambitions or illusions.