Amphibious Writings, Part I

Anomalies of Philosophical “Normalization” in Colombia (1940-1969)

Abstract

This article characterize the notion and practice of philosophy of a group of Colombian professors in the twentieth century. The starting point is the historiographic revision of the "normalizing" account in the history of local philosophy. The qualitative analysis of texts written in Colombia between 1940 and 1960 proposes an ambivalent reading of some characteristics of the philosophy as a profession, exposing the tensions between a philosophical vocation and the modest working conditions. Other tensions will show the two axes (technical and cultural) from which those professors pretended to do philosophy. In 1950, the account of the normalizing process of philosophy was reinforced by Francisco Romero through some exemplary, "Adamic" and even epic referents. Later, the account of the decades between 1940 and 1960 was crystallized under the retrospective lens of 1980, but from a unilateral view of the category of "normalization", focused only on technical and disciplinary aspects of philosophy. To address the cultural axis, the figure of the "intellectual" of the mid-twentieth century is outlined, based on what Renán Silva has characterized as the "shepherd of souls", as the one who could interpret popular culture and dictate a course for it. A second installment, which deals with the analysis of different textual registers of philosophical writing in the mid-twentieth century, more focused on the axis of interpretation and cultural orientation.