Abstract
A palimpsest is a writing erased and replaced by another. Sometimes, perhaps all too often, our lives become incarnated palimpsests thanks to the prevailing biopolitics, which refers not only to the government of the living, but also to the multiple practices of dying and disappearing. Can art teach us to create new relationships with our essential ghosts, with those who refuse to abandon us despite everything? In this paper we address the work titled Palimpsest, by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo (Bogotá, 1958), in which she plays with those absences that are permanently present. The tears that flow from the earth itself, tracing the names of migrants who disappeared while fleeing the war, show us not only the necessity to name those who are no longer with us, but could create the basis for a kind of divinology (Meillassoux, 2006) through which new ties would be built, beyond the interested political use, between human beings and those harassing absences.
Presenters
Carlos Gutiérrez CajaravilleAssociate Lecturer, Historia y Ciencias de la Música, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—-New Aesthetic Expressions: The Social Role of Art
KEYWORDS
Biopolitics, Divinology, Doris Salcedo, Ethics, Palimpsesto, Specters
