Abstract

Este texto tiene por objetivo establecer un contraste entre la concepción temporal de la cultura maya-mexica y la concepción temporal cotidiana que tenemos en tanto cultura occidental. El contraste se establecerá en primer lugar a partir de una breve exposición de los calendarios mayas y mexicas, es decir, de la comprensión de los calendarios es que se puede crear un horizonte en el que lo religioso permea toda actividad en ambas culturas. En segundo término exponemos en breves líneas la concepción cotidiana del tiempo, ayudándonos de un filósofo vertebral en el pensamiento moderno occidental: Kant. Al enunciar ambas posiciones buscaremos construir un puente en el que criticaremos la concepción temporal cotidiana de Occidente, ya que ésta tiene sus fundamentos en la ideología que cobró fuerza a partir de la modernidad: el capitalismo y el liberalismo. Para construir dicho puente, nos ayudaremos de un filósofo crítico de la modernidad: Walter Benjamin.

Abstract

Recent Catalan criticism has focused on place and space, as well as immigration, but has overlooked temporality. Yet migrations are not only a matter of space (of demographic movements and geographical relocations), but also of time: immigration questions the idea of origins and the possibility of a shared future, and problematizes the rhythms of everyday life. Temporality, in fact, is a key axis in the formation of identities and in cultural conflicts, not just regarding the uses of the past and the projection of societies towards the future, but also in relation to the normative uses of the body. The coexistence of asynchronous temporalities provoked by immigration is a factor in both cultural and psychic conflict. Najat El Hachmi’s novel L’últim patriarca (2008) is an excellent example of these phenomena. Here the circular temporality, based on the repetition of cycles, of Morocco’s traditional society comes to a halt in the failure of the narrator’s father to reproduce patriarchal domination in Catalonia. The novel roots this experience in modern referents through a dialogue with the Catalan literary tradition, and questions the idea of temporality understood as succession of generations by problematizing biological reproduction and gender subordination and through the shattering effects of anal sexuality. This article offers an integrated analysis of these issues by reference to psychoanalysis.