Remembering Palmstraat

MOK

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She was reclining on the night
glancing at broom shrubs and one of those blocks
of masonry that lead to the soul
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there was a clear sense of nothing else existing
she said
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Vermeer
the painter
would have liked to see it
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he would fly through the oblique light
and from that shadow invent the night
the ancient river absorbed.
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LC

Creation dilemma and the role of design

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The understanding of modernity was almost always presented through an initial war between myth and logos or, in other words, between the teo-semiotic interpretation of the world and the rational abduction combined with technological reproductibility (let us imagine that the original “punctum”[1] of modern history was like Blumenberg’spectator[2], when observing a naval battle from a quite distant place).
This almost cosmogonic fight that resulted in the aparent victory of reason was, in turn, folloied for the emergency of the idea of subjectivity (that went back at least to the 1600s). Since the Enlightment era, the self-enunciating of subjectivity has increased through a slow metamorphosis of the original representation – where everything was still considered as manifestation of a holy expression - to the ideia of a complex and constructed net of effects. Hume’ s definition of man (1739-40/1985) as a mere sum of perceptions and Kant´schema theory (1787/1988) integrate this kind of ‘desconstruction’.
All of a sudden - as Foucault wrote (1966) - in the 19th century, the man and the languages emerged to the surface of real existence and became both epistemic objects par excelence. Since then, man and languages were never again seen as something that God would have distributed calmly to the world, in the context of an unquestionable and innominable order and harmony. Since then, the representation started to be seen as a construction, or a designed and formed product moved by the creative effort of man. The modern subjectivity fulfilled thus the mission of a somewhat spartan initiation, but apparently full of beneficial results (above all in the field of material culture).
Little and little, the autonomous affirmation of subjectivity dissociated itself from the idea of being a simple part of a holy flock that would move towards eschatological salvation (Carmelo, 1995-1999). One of the most important impacts of this subjective affirmation was the new concept that defined culture as all that man does or has ever done (Herder´s “Kultur”[3]). Nevertheless, this emerging society (based on the construction) readopted a specialised metaphor: the creation. As a sign of this new age, Gropius started his known 1919 manifest underlying this normative trend: "the last end of all the creativity is to construct"[4].
During the 19th century, reflecting this modern cosmogony, the creativity was about to be understood in two major and distinct ways: or as a dynamic based in the experience that would culminate with Peirce´s pragmatic abduction (1996), or as a peculiar process that found in the artistic creation the reappropriating of the divine production, although dependent on the individual sphere of the "genius" (the term is Kant´s concept - 1787/1988).
In the former, the creativity was understood as a participated and guided movement around “inquiry”, “doubt” and the provisoriety of “belief”[5] (Steiner underlyed, instead of “creation”, the term of reference “discovery” for scientists and “invention” for technology – 1990/2000, p. 369).
In the last, after the romantic advent, the creation was understood as a revelation that tended to separate itself from the dominant technological and rational convoy that seemed to control the ordered landscape of modernity.
In the former, the creation was above all defined as a logical process of investigation. Its key element was the “interpretant”, a mental self-reproductive sign that translates the deepening of a previous sign creating therefore an addition of knowledge and experience. However, if the interpretant was refered by an argument, then semiosis, or the signic self-reproduction, changed into a permanent significafion and discovery process, in which “abduction”[6] formulated conjectures, after induction having tried them and before deduction necessary conclusion have taken place (“signs conduce to learning from experience by mediating between reality and our cognitions, and by storing learned material for subsequent interpretations and use”; Hookway, 1992, p.127). On the logic of abduction, the most efficient tool of human knowledge and creation, Peirce affirmed in his Sixth Conference of Harvard (1903): "the abduction is the process of formation of an explicative hypothesis. It is the only type of logical operation that introduces a new ideia” (1996, p. 324). Or, in other words: “Reasoning is of three kinds. The first is necessary, but it only professes to give us information concerning the matter of our own hypotheses” (...) “The second depends upon probabilities.” (...) “The third kind of reasoning tries what il lume naturale”, (...) “can do. It is really an appeal to instinct.” (Peirce, 1978, p. 98 - 1.630).
In the last, the creation is defined as an expression that refers different semiotic contents but always in the presupposition that, in its deep subliminarity, it is populated by a transcendent, intransitive and ineffable nature (Majewski wrote: “In his study of Balzac’s philosophy Henry Evans concluded that even Balzac, the self-appointed social analyst, had adopted the belief in art as “la véritable religion du monde moderne’” – 1989, p.1). This self-vision of the art seems to identify itself with the nietzschian definition of truth – “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have”(...) “been drained of sensuous force” (Dayton, 1998, p. 119.). Such sacralised truths, as Shelley wrote, participate in the apostolate of the almost holy and creative poet:
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“§30 Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can fortell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. §31 A Poet participates in the eternal, the infinite and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions time and place and number are not.”(1840/1986, pp.37-8).
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Gasset (1925/1998) also redescovered this new intrinsic art content, when commenting Teodoro Lipps concept of “Einfuhlung” (or “affection”):
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“Y aquello que acaso era un montón inerte de pidras, puestas las unas sobre las otras, se levanta ante nosotros como dotado de una vitalidad propia”(...)”En realidad somos nosotros mismos quienes gozamos de nuestra actividad, de sentirnos poseedores de poderes vitales triunfantes, pero lo atribuimos al objeto”[7] (1998, p. 112.)
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In other words: besides the labyrinth of interpretative curiosity (the refered “montón of piedras”), emerges the almost expressionist recognition of a creative illumination. This art “value of cult” (completed with the value of its proper public "exposition") is also, for Benjamin (1936/1992, p. 84), its great ‘isotopia’ and over all the way of ressacralising a time that seemed to have been defently separated from a mythologic and theocentric pathos.
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Have this initial modern “war” - or this generally characterized shock between “myth” and “logos” - been exactly real?
Blumenberg (1981/2000, 1984/1985-2) preferred to understand myth as something that always survived through the times. Far from being silent in a remote origin, the myth would have been sedimented in the galaxy of the reason and, like the romantic and nietzschian flavors, it would have lead us to the temptation of the aesthetic judgment that surpasses - or skirtes - a necessary and analytical definition of values:
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“The antithesis between myth and reason is a late and a poor invention” (…) which “forgoes seeing the function of myth, in the overcoming of that archaic unfamiliarity of the world, as itself a rational function” (…) “the boundary line between myth and logos is imaginary” (1985-2, p.48).
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Design will probably appear before us today as one of the achievements of this theory of Blumenberg.
That´s why creation is not the same thing for artists and for designers.
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Following this logic, art would continue to pursuit the ideia of creation that has its roots in the original opposition between myth and logos, assuming clearly the plan of the former against the rationality of the last.
On the other hand, design would be the clear evidence that such opposition never really existed, being its own forms the meeting point for myth and logos (getting thus together the pure creation’ tradition and the pragmatic effectiveness’ tradition).
More concretely: the speech on art, in the last two and half centuries, would have developed a creation pattern based on mistery and immanence, which can be reflected above all in “expressive” trends (expressionism, informalism, body art, etc.), in “oniric” trends (surrealism, etc.) and in “the reducionist” trends (minimal art, conceptual art, etc.), but also – although mostly less - in “formative” trends (cubism, stijl, op art, etc.), “social” trends, (expressive realisms: some Picasso, some pop art, etc.) and “useful art” trends (bauhaus, Malevich’ s constructivism, etc.)[8].
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However, as far as design is concerned, the historic and inherited idea of creation seems to have its roots in the conceptual assumption formulated by Blumenberg: On one hand, sharing the same dimension of the creative poeisis that art demands, and, on the other hand, sharing abduction‘s rationality and effectiveness applied to the expression of material culture. When congregating the two aparent dichotomic terms - myth and logos -, design would be not only the full achievement of a metaphysical prophecy (going back to romanticism) but also the achievement of a logical and conjectural system. Besides that, design would be a kind of climax in our current and aestheticised world.
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In such vision, design would find in nowadays’ technology its full accomplishment. Not only because it congregates what always was thought to be opposed (reason and myth), but also because it can help art to free itself from modern sacralising paths, mixing therefore their pieces with artefacts, objects, urban furniture and, in a word, with all material culture. The “hyperreality” (Merrel, 1995) would thus be, in such accomplishment, the product of the overcoming of exaust modern antinomies (fiction vs. real, public vs. private, emission vs. audiences, truth vs. sense and - of course - reason vs. myth) and would have its main visibility in visual global simulacra where design fulfills a prominent role (media, cyberworld, advertising speech, objects, hightech products, environment, material culture in general – Carmelo, 2005-2).
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In the current hyperreality is emerging a new hibridism that integrates, without central or referencial orders, what was enunciated in the beginning of modernity as fixed and agregated identities. In design, this “rhyzomatic” (Deleuze/ Guattari, 1980) spreaded movement is taking place through the emergency of new materials, which are presenting themselves to the new global emotions and functionalies as the real prothesis of our material culture. They are like tactile simulacra that we can enjoy with the body and the perceptions (flexible ceramic, metallic foam, plastic conductors, Solid-state light sources, carbon staple fibres, etc.). The case of the synthetic polymers is quite interesting, since it refers directly to mimesis of natural properties, preserving the tactile attributes and modifying if necessary the potential shapes of the products. Therefore, the products become more and more a kind of changeable features that are far beyond the form and function to which they would have been previously drawn (light vs. resistant, deformable vs. flexible, transparent vs. cloudy, etc.).
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The essays of Blumenberg, Work on Myth (1984/1985-2) and Imitation of Nature… (1981/2000), seem to be essential for the apprehension of this interface between underlying myth reality and the logos dayly life reality. The study of this encounter, applied to the complexity of roles and functions that design plays today in the technological and contemporary world, can be of major importance. This subject is part of a post-doctoral research that we are initiating and which also concerns the neurobiologic data that explains mental patterns of creativity, this are being made after previous researches[9] on this theme, more specifically on Damásio[10] mental semiosis.
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Hans Blumenberg myth conception, instead of barthesian conotative ideology (1957) or anthropology perscriptions, is based in historical processual patterns. Far from being a distant and unknown entity, the myth is seen by the author as a product that acts and reacts, or that implements itself always throughout the times, coexisting with all kind of live expressions. The myth is thus a deep imaginary product, invisible memory and evidence, but always concerned to the facts, to the questions and to all concrete states of thinks of all eras. "Reocupation" (Umbesetzung) is the concept name for this permanent adaptation that characterises Blumenberg´s myth, which is also seen as an acting inheritance of western culture.
The "mithologic reocupation" - in the case of design - would place the radical inventivity side by side: that of creative poiesis (when Romanticism hast mobilised all forces against Aufklärung) and that of material efficiency of creation.
C. and P. Fiell wrote in the recent Designing The 21st 4 Century [ ] : " Design must answer to technical, funcional and cultural needs and create solutions to communicate emotion and meaning in order to transcend his forms, structure and production." (2005, pp.11-21). We believe, however, that design is already breathing this transcendence a long time ago. It will not be either a coincidence that W. Gropius has written in 1919 manifest: "There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies" (2004/1919).
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REFERENCES
BARTHES, R., 1957, Mythologies, Seuil, Paris.
BENJAMIN, W., (1973) 1986, Le Concept de Critique Esthétique dans le Romantisme Allemand, Paris, Flammarion.
BENJAMIN, W., (1936) 1992, Sobre arte, técnica, linguagem e política, Relógio d´Água, Lisboa.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1979, pp.1-33), 'The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel', in New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism R. Amacher and V. Lange (eds) Princeton, Princeton UP.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1966) 1985-1, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Massachussets/Londres, MIT Press.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1984) 1985-2, Work on Myth, Massachussets/Londres, MIT Press.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1979) 1990, Naufrágio com espectador, Vega, Lisboa. BLUMENBERG, H., (1981) 2000, Imitation of Nature: Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of Creative Being’ in The End of Nature, Dossier on Hans Blumenberg, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring/Summer.
BRAGANÇA DE MIRANDA, J., (1988, pp.53-62), Modernidade e linguagem: em torno das posição de Hans Blumenberg, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, 6/7, Cosmos/CECL, Lisboa.
CARMELO, L., 1999, Anjos e Meteoros . Ensaio Sobre a Instantaneidade, Editorial Notícias, Mem Martins.
CARMELO, L., 2002, Músicas da Consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.Lisboa.
CARMELO, L., 2003-1, Órbitas da Modernidade, Editorial Mareantes, Lisboa.
CARMELO, L., 2003-2, Semiótica - Uma Introdução, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
CARMELO, L., 2005-1, A Novíssima Poesia Portuguesa e a Experiência Estética Contemporânea, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
CARMELO, L., 2005-2, Viragem Profética Contemporânea, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
CRUZ, M.T., (1988, pp.173-190), Arte, Mito e Modernidade, Sobre a metaforologia de Hans Blumenberg, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, 6/7, Cosmos/CECL, Lisboa.
DAMÁSIO, A., (1994) 1995, O Erro de Descartes-Emoção, razão e cérebro humano, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
DAMÁSIO, A., (1999) 2000, O Sentimento de Si- O corpo, a emoção e a neurobiologia da consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
DAYTON, E.(org.), 1998, Arte and Interpretation-An Anthology of Readings in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Arte, Eric Dayton,Peterborough (Canada); Hertfordshire (U.K.); Rozelle (Australia).
DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F., 1980, Capitalisme et schizophrénie - Mille Plateaux, Minuit, Paris.
FIELL, C. & P., 2005, Designing The 21st Century, Tachen, Koln.
FOULCAUT, M., (1966) 1988, As palavras e as coisas, Edições 70, Lisboa.
(De) FUSCO, R. (1983) 1988, História da arte contemporânea, Presença, Lisboa.
GROPIUS, W., (1919) 2004 (p.28) in Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum of Design - The Collection, Berlin.
HOOKWAY,C., 1992, Peirce, Routeledge,London-New York.
HORKHEIMER,M., 1984, Origens da filosofia burguesa da história, Presença, Lisboa.
HUME, D., 1985, A Treatise of Human Nature, Penguin Books,London-New York-Victoria-Toronto-Auckland.
HUME, D., 1988 (pp. 491-558), An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Modern Philosophy - An Anthology of Primary Sources, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., Indianapolis/R.Ariew-E.Watkins (org.)/Cambridge.
JENSEN, K., 1995, The Social Semiotics of Mass Comunication, Safe Publ., London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi.
KANT, I., 1988, Crítica da faculdade do juízo, I.N.C.M., Lisboa
MAJEWSKI, H., 1989, Paradigm & Parody, Images of Creativity in French Romanticism – Vigny, Hugo, Balzac, Gautier, Musset, University Press of Virgnia, Charlottesville.
McHOUL, A., 1996, Semiotic Investigations - Towards an Effective Semiotics,University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska.
MERRELL, F., 1995, Semiosis in the Postmodern Age, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana.
ORTEGA Y GASSET, J, (1925) 1998, La deshumanización del arte y otros ensayos de estética, Editorial Optima, Barcelona.
PEIRCE, C.,1966, Selected Writings (values in a Universe of Chance), Dover Publications,Inc,New York.
PEIRCE, C.,1978, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce,Vol. I e II, The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
PEIRCE, C. (Org./Tr. Deledalle, G.) 1978, Écrits sur le signe, Paris, Seuil.
PEIRCE, C.,1990, Semiótica, Editora Perspectiva, S. Paulo.
PEIRCE, C. (Org./Tr. Machuco Rosa, A.) 1998, Antologia Filosófica, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, Lisboa.
SHELLEY, P., (1840) 1986, Defesa da poesia,Guimarães editores, Lisboa.
STEINER, G., (1990) 2002, Gramáticas da criação. Relógio d´Água, Lisboa.
VATTIMO, G., 1987, O fim da modernidade-niilismo e hermenêutica na cultura pós-moderna, Presença, Lisboa.
YOLTON, J.(org), 1991, Enlightenment, Blackwell, Oxford/ Cambridge – Massachusetts.
NTS:
[1]Barthes, R., 1980, La Chambre Claire, Gallimard, Paris.
[2]Blumenberg, H., (1979) 1990, (Schiffruch Mit Zuschauer Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher) Naufrágio com espectador, Vega, Lisboa.
[3]“The definition of culture as that which both unites and differentiates humans into cultures in the plural became influencial especially throught the work of the german philosopher Johan Gottfried Herder (Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784)” (K.Jensen, 1995 (p.5), The Social Semiotics of Mass Comunication, Safe Publ., London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi).
[4]Gropius, W., 2004 (p.28) in Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum of Design - The Collection, Berlin.
[5] Pragmatic peircian concepts (“The Fixation of Belief”, 1877; 1996, p. 125).
[6]Peirce compares "Retroduction (or abduction)", i.e.," the First Stage of Inquiry", with the instinct of the birds: "if we knew that the impulse you prefer one hypothesis you another really were analogous you the instincts of birds and wasps, it would be foolish not you give it play, within the bounds of reason"(...)"But is it fact that man possesses this magical faculty? Not, I reply, you the extent of guessing right the first teams, nor perhaps the second; but that the well-prepared mind has wonderfully soon guessed each secret of nature is historical truth."(1996, pp. 369-371).
[7]O. Y Gasset, La desumanización del arte y otors ensayos de estética, Editorial Optima, Barcelona,1987:112.
[8]Conceptual references from De Fusco, R. (1983) 1988, História da arte contemporânea, Presença, Lisboa.
[9]Carmelo L., 2002, Músicas da Consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.Lisboa
[10]About (1994) 1995, O Erro de Descartes-Emoção, razão e cérebro humano, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins, and (1999) 2000, O Sentimento de Si- O corpo, a emoção e a neurobiologia da consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.

Prophetic literature and war in pre-modern times

(The catastrophe of the Hispanic Moriscos or a Memory without Memory)

by Luís Carmelo (Translated by Margarida Martins)

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"Aljamiado-morisco" literature

The prophetic message is by nature, an unstable, capricious, enunciation because it neither reveals nor hides the real, rather filtrates it. As stated by A. Berthelot (1987) the prophetic message conditions the reader to simultaneously distrust and postulate hidden meanings that surpass the actual text. This means the prophetic text fits into a type of pre-modern, interpretative universe dominated by a semiosis where the emitter is always understood as an entity that governs the mystery, be it in immanence or transcendence.
The particularities of the prophetic, however, always tend to co-operate with the reality surrounding it and with the real audience to whom it is destined. The background to this co-operation is situated in the fact that prophetic texts almost always result from simulations and forged manipulations of the future, having as an objective idealising the present conditions according to the desires of the enunciator. This is why the prophetic production oscillates between the real and the imaginary, within a misty and ambiguous region of the almost possible and almost exact.
The new Christians of the Islamic region of Aragon, the so-called Moriscos had to deal with forced conversions after 1526 and were later expelled from Spain in 1609. This community, dominated by the catastrophe of its own cultural decline produced clandestine texts of a prophetic genre, discovered just over a 100 years ago within the walls of rural houses in the Ebro region.
These clandestine texts, now in the hands of today’s interpreters, are proof of the final legacy of an entire civilisation whose existence in the Iberian Peninsula can be traced back almost a thousand years. The intention of this presentation, a mere overview, is to analyse how the Morisc identity is reflected in some of their prophecies. This is the subject that I worked on during my PhD (University of Utreque, Netherlands) in 1995.
One of the obsessions that is found frequently in the Morisc prophecies relates to the immense loss of conscience, particularly in relation to the understanding of the Koran. This sign, fatal to a community which internally wishes to be Islamic is enhanced by others factors which are always explicit in texts revealing pain, such as the loss of a mother-tongue, mystical and literary symbolism, the comparatives used in the metaphoric process (the cooking pan as a symbol of crisis and the furnace as a symbol of unity) and the loss of social and familiar conscience.
The linguistic problem of the Moriscos, (dominated by a language in the transition between old Aragon and Castilian and filled with substantial forms of Arabic) is merely an exterior symptom symbolising the impossibility of translating a culture the Moriscos believed they belong to. The social and familial degeneracy reflects the discontinuity of an old model of life in a new situation, as well as the pressure and oppression of forced conversion to which they were subjected daily.
Unable to translate the prior cultural, genealogical world and not having the necessary disposition for a profound structure to express it, (semiotic as well as linguistic), the Morisc enunciators reveal a besieged identity. The situation of hybrid identity in which they live - at all levels -is an ominous metaphor for a predicted ending, a pre-felt catastrophe. Curiously, during this century of Iberian gold, the slow death of the Hispanic community was mirrored by other deaths in the South American continent.
According to Miguel de Epalza, the link with the past, or rather with the specified Islamic genealogy, is based on an imaginary Iberian-magrebine scheme of "Almoáda" origins and reveals clairvoyant characteristics.
This means that, although the Moriscos felt recognition and nostalgia of the past they generated a simultaneous impossibility to actualise in a focused way their collective memory. The strongest evidence being the "aljamiada" literature that the Moriscos created in their homes. There is, however, no genetic relation between the Arab alphabet and the Romanic language. Due to the intense pressure of the slow demise of their culture, the Morisc text is unconsciously saturated with semantic and syntactic breaks, repetitions and a miscellany of content without direction. It is curious to note the recurrence of Arab lexemes in the prophecies of the naming systems, in particular those of people and places and more of "res" (objects) than "modus" (actions). This demonstrates a total destruction in relation to the linguistic/communicational system in cause.
The vernacular forms reveal a constant determinant and occupy a mid-ground between the dominion of the Romanic Universe (which the Moriscos refuse assimilating to) and the pressures reminiscent of the Arab. This linguistic, inter-semiotic mid-ground is by chance a reflection of the referred identity situated between two impossible fates: the lost past, object of nostalgia and the present, whose common denominator rests on the inability of the Moriscos to assimilate the Christian world.
The self-conscious progressive cultural decadence (and ignorance) is a fact that has been explicitly enunciated in various texts of the Aljamiada-Morisco literature. In the referred enunciation this aspect of the real is also represented. A deficit of identity in the prophetic corpus we are analysing, is almost always associated with the absence or the "lack" the Moriscos always felt. An example of this emptiness are the symbolic "heart," sometimes described as empty or removed according to the whether or not it has been animated by the divine spirit. The emptiness of being underlines the infidelity of men before the Divine, this is synonymous to the first death, the spiritual one. In other words an Islamic identity in its proper sense would only be compatible with an interior religious existence. This vital aspect of the degeneracy of the Moriscos is justified as having its origins in religious negligence, comparing the Moriscos to the times of Jewish exile. The announcement of the evils to come and of natural catastrophes are interpreted as constituting a divine punishment inflicted on the Moriscos for earlier negligence. The infidelity and obsessive culpability becomes, in this sense one of the most important and most relevant identity aspects of the Moriscos, justifying the emptiness they experienced.
Although the Moriscos felt a radical emptiness, they identified themselves with a strong collective conscience. The marking tendency of the Moriscos that in relation to the Christians is found in the Aljamiado-Moriscos literature reveals a very deep mark. For example, factors, like ritual hygiene or the difficulty in representing the divine stand out in the sentences which denounce the Christians ("pork eaters" "cross-worshippers") in the same way that at a more symbolic level, the Moriscos re-vindicate exclusively purification and incorruptibility as assets. Revealing in this sense is the way S. Isidoro de Sevilha is used as a pseudo-narrator of the prophecies. In one of the texts, the saint associates himself to the Divine Islamic unity (tawhid) to the non-divine nature of Jesus Christ and the still the impossible sharing that exists between God and man constituting the theological distinction between Islam and Christianity. Besides the negligence and the divine punishment to which the Moriscos feel victims, they maintain the contradictory certainty of what they inherit by rightful laws - as opposed to the Christians. One of the most reiterated Morisco denouncements occurs during the traumatic historical moment of the betrayed trials (las juras) the changing Christian politics which, between 1492 and 1501, would lead to the first forced conversions. In the analysis of the descriptions of landscapes the semiotics of space reveals the Morisco conscience of fields. Not only do they mystify the Iberian land (going as far as to state in one of the prophecies that Spain is one of the "heavenly plains" where honey flows in the rivers.) but also because they are entirely opposed to the Christians which own the Iberian territory - more scatological than physical. The symbolic space of the prophecies is in this sense, doubled: on the one hand, it replaces the great conquests of other times, on the other hand, it restructures the present, based on the desire to restructure the experience of the ottoman invasion (for which they formulated an adequate route.)
This fracture or Islamic-Christian breach manifests itself equally in characters of a symbolic nature. In this way, for example, S. Tiago de Compostela, the comet of Brittany or the French cavalry are opposed to Alhambra, to the aura of Cordoba or the cavalry of Ronda in a prophecy. These symbolic oppositions among others generate more at superficial levels in the complex text structures that constitute the actual logic of the narrative.
It is also a part of the dichotic nature of this literary real, the vision that the Christians have of the Moriscos. In this context emerges the idea of caste, emphasising the need to clean the Spanish land of all the ferment that corrupts the national unity (Christian and religious.) In one of the prophecies, the Moriscos fill this terrible semantic aspect with the figure of the Encoberto which follows the tradition of prophetic characters as a "last saviour emperor," the decisive agent of the premonitory expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. Curiously, since the 14th century the Iberian peninsula has been full of mythical Encobertos, whether Islamic or Christian. Portugal made this figure into a myth of the restoration of its independence in the 17th Century and it would export the expression of this imaginary to Brazil.
The prophecy 3 where the Christian figure of the Encoberto emerges is clearly a text that was transformed or manipulated at a certain time by Christian hand. It represents a forged graft as many others in the time of war of Alpujarras. However, the meaning of this intervention in a Morisco clandestine corpus is not a detail but a question of interest because it allows us to understand something on a more complex Morisco identity. Although it may seem far-fetched, the analysis on the nature of the prophecy in cause is a relevant factor that we have to raise. That is, was it not a Morisco that forged the prophecy? There is a combination of details that in principle allow us to conclude affirmatively: Although the prophecy is a result of extracts taken from others (some Christian, some not, and namely, the actual prophecy 2 of the same corpus) the hesitations that indicate that the enunciator does not have (as any other moor) Castilan as a mother tongue, are clear; The refuge on Arabic words as for example, adrabes - doors to the city - or the designation of the Jabarin monster - comes from the same type of semantic destruction that surges in the remaining prophecies of the corpus; We can witness syntactic imitations (calcos), identical to those of other prophecies that reveal the presence of a linguistic model exogenous to the romanic vernacular used, assuming, therefore, characteristics common to the more general textualisation of Aljamiado-Morisco literature. The author demonstrates good knowledge of Islamic and Christian symbols, even recurring to the mythification and mystification of Spanish lands, Morisco characteristic always present in other prophecies of the corpus;
Finally, the recourse to threats and curses, reveals the manipulation skill of the forger that created ambiguities in the beginning of the text through a familiar dialogue in the Aljamiado-Morisco sphere and ends it with an unexpected victory of the Christian Encoberto.
In this way, it is well possible that a Morisco was bribed by the Christians, using the text as a common war weapon which at the time was the prophecy. A certain point allows us to conclude, with caution, that the Morisco community, aware of their own weaknesses and inconsistencies in identity is vulnerable to this self-flagellating enunciation.
If the self mutilation is an accepted attribute in another prophecy, the forth- of a clear Morisco authorship, in the rest as in the rest of the corpus- it is also possible to interpret the presence of the grafted prophecy at least in part in this same sense (that, actually is in accordance with the investigations of J. Hawkins on the "Morisco philosophy of suffering" 1998). Such an opinion might be raised, independently of the insertion of prophecy 3 in the syntax of the three remaining prophecies, at an earlier date to the enunciation of these (possibly at the time of the last copy of the present MS., all of it uniformly reigned with magrebí characters written by the same author) In the meantime let’s just say that the prophecy of our corpus corresponds to a hermeneutic logic of the time where the presence of various contradictory versions within the same texts was common, considering the common practice of intertextual manipulation that constituted the communicational and political game of the prophetic production.
This is, briefly, the silhouette of the real Morisco identity as it appears represented in the semiotic construction of the prophetic corpus of the Manuscript 774 of the Paris National Library. Survival, belief in a scatological coming, conscience of an irredeemable loss, the fight against a "hybrid" identity (of which they feel conscious) nostalgia of the past, emptiness of "being" as a punishment for the religious negligence (for which they feel responsible) self-flagellation - and still the clear conscience of the cultural field that is theirs (although without a consistent language in order to translate it into, that reveals the nature of the drama of the Morisco identity) configures traces of the real Moriscos included in the text in the time when it was created. We are facing what can be designated an internal monologue of a community going through a profound identity crisis and at the edge of the abyss or catastrophe of its own existence as a community in history. In another way we are faced with a memory with no memory.
As L. Cardaillac refers in the conclusions to his classic "Morisques et Chretiens - un affronttement polémique (1977:389) the Moriscos have no history in the sense that history pre-supposes the existence "d’un groupe humain en évolution", hereby the study of the Morisco problem besides the use of historical method to analyse it inevitably needs other methods particularly the "sociological" (ibid.:389). Our alternative route of semiotic-textual research helps to reveal representative characteristics of reality which enrich the study of terminal minorities like the Moriscos. Unfortunately, this reality is still more contemporary than it may seem.

Mr. Posada's case

Creates a real tension between the politics of the global war on terrorism and the ghosts of the cold war on communism.

Beyond Humanity

NYT

This is Shandong Labor Re-education Camp in Zibo (it´ s also a carbonized thermal parts factory). All inmates are expected to do some factory work or manual labor. The camp is one of more than 300 special prisons in China.