Roger Bartra – författare

Focuses on the subject of 'melancholy madness' in Spain. This work demonstrates that the subject of melancholy in the Spanish Golden Age is an indispensable link in a chain which may help us to understand the appearance of sadness and malcontent in Europe at the dawn of modernity.

This book is a collection of essays on the Mexican transition to democracy that offers reflections on different aspects of civic culture, the political process, electoral struggles, and critical junctures. They were written at different points in time and even though they have been corrected and adapted, they have kept the tension and fervour with which they were originally created. They provide the reader with a vision of what goes on behind those horrifying images that depict Mexico as a country plagued by narcotrafficking groups and subjected to unbridled homicidal violence. These images hide the complex political reality of the country and the accidents and shocks democracy has suffered.

This book is a collection of essays on the Mexican transition to democracy that offers reflections on different aspects of civic culture, the political process, electoral struggles, and critical junctures.

This book is a collection of essays on the Mexican transition to democracy that offers reflections on different aspects of civic culture, the political process, electoral struggles, and critical junctures. They were written at different points in time and even though they have been corrected and adapted, they have kept the tension and fervour with which they were originally created. They provide the reader with a vision of what goes on behind those horrifying images that depict Mexico as a country plagued by narcotrafficking groups and subjected to unbridled homicidal violence. These images hide the complex political reality of the country and the accidents and shocks democracy has suffered.

Pens and swords, words and blows: for Roger Bartra, the culture of ink and the culture of blood offer two contrasting approaches to the political transformations of our time. In this compilation of essays, Bartra thinks through these transformations by tracing the complex interplay between popular culture, nationalist ideology, civil society, and the state in contemporary Mexico. Written with verve over a period of twenty years, these essays-most translated into English here for the first time-suggest why Bartra has become one of Latin America’s leading public intellectuals. The essays cover a broad range of topics, from the canonical forms of Mexican culture to the meaning of postnational identity in a globalizing age, from the repercussions of the 1994 Zapatista uprising to the 2000 election of Vicente Fox and the end of the PRI’s seven-decade rule. Across this range of topics, Bartra imparts astute insights into a critical period of transition in Mexican history, stressing throughout the importance of democracy, the complexity of identity, and the vibrancy of the Left. In Blood, Ink, and Culture, he provides a stimulating inside look at political and intellectual life in the southern reaches of North America.

Pens and swords, words and blows: for Roger Bartra, the culture of ink and the culture of blood offer two contrasting approaches to the political transformations of our time. In this compilation of essays, Bartra thinks through these transformations by tracing the complex interplay between popular culture, nationalist ideology, civil society, and the state in contemporary Mexico.

Written with verve over a period of twenty years, these essays—most translated into English here for the first time—suggest why Bartra has become one of Latin America’s leading public intellectuals. The essays cover a broad range of topics, from the canonical forms of Mexican culture to the meaning of postnational identity in a globalizing age, from the repercussions of the 1994 Zapatista uprising to the 2000 election of Vicente Fox and the end of the PRI’s seven-decade rule. Across this range of topics, Bartra imparts astute insights into a critical period of transition in Mexican history, stressing throughout the importance of democracy, the complexity of identity, and the vibrancy of the Left. In Blood, Ink, and Culture, he provides a stimulating inside look at political and intellectual life in the southern reaches of North America.

In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness. Placing culture at the centre of his analysis, Bartra brings together findings from anthropology and cognitive science and offers an original vision of the continuity between the brain and its symbolic environment. The book is essential reading for neurologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists alike.

In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness. Placing culture at the centre of his analysis, Bartra brings together findings from anthropology and cognitive science and offers an original vision of the continuity between the brain and its symbolic environment. The book is essential reading for neurologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists alike.

In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness. Placing culture at the centre of his analysis, Bartra brings together findings from anthropology and cognitive science and offers an original vision of the continuity between the brain and its symbolic environment. The book is essential reading for neurologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists alike.

In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness. Placing culture at the centre of his analysis, Bartra brings together findings from anthropology and cognitive science and offers an original vision of the continuity between the brain and its symbolic environment. The book is essential reading for neurologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists alike.

A profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devicesIn this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence. Charting the extensive history of the placebo effect through medieval healing, shamanism, and early psychoanalytic practices, Bartra posits that consciousness is not simply the province of the mind but something equally shaped by external systems and objects. He finds evidence of this “exocerebrum”-the extension of our brains outside the body-in the shamanistic concept of the placebo, in which external objects heal our bodies, and in modern technical devices like prostheses or robots, whose development of a mechanical consciousness would have to mimic, and in turn elucidate, the processes involved in the creation of consciousness in humans. Through this radical concept, he analyzes digital media’s relationship to the functions of the human brain and probes the possibility of artificial consciousness. Both a look at the human body’s potential to restore itself and a profound reflection on the curative power of symbolic structures, Shamans and Robots explores how our technologies increasingly serve as extensions of our cognitive selves.

This is a historical and anthropological study of the myth of the werewolf aimed at reflecting on the metamorphoses of evil and understanding the long evolution of a mythical structure. Legends and folklore allow us to explore the brutal bestiality of a figure loaded with sexuality, eroticism, and desire. From ancient times to the present day, the tragic narrative universe of a strange and dangerous wild world is unfolded, with elements of tenderness, that has contributed to defining the profile of civilization as its opposite. The myth was contaminated with religious fanaticism when werewolves were persecuted and burned during the times of the witch hunts.

This is a historical and anthropological study of the myth of the werewolf aimed at reflecting on the metamorphoses of evil and understanding the long evolution of a mythical structure. Legends and folklore allow us to explore the brutal bestiality of a figure loaded with sexuality, eroticism, and desire. From ancient times to the present day, the tragic narrative universe of a strange and dangerous wild world is unfolded, with elements of tenderness, that has contributed to defining the profile of civilization as its opposite. The myth was contaminated with religious fanaticism when werewolves were persecuted and burned during the times of the witch hunts.

"El ángel de la historia contempla con tristeza el devenir humano. En la Modernidad, la melancolía no es la sombra: es la médula del pensamiento."Immanuel Kant paseaba por Königsberg intentando imponer orden al caos. Max Weber observaba cómo el capitalismo vacía de sentido el mundo. Walter Benjamin contemplaba, con tristeza, los escombros del progreso arrastrados por el viento de la historia. Ninguno de ellos quiso mirar a la melancolía de frente, pero ella los alcanzó. Ahora, El duelo de los ángeles traza un ensayo fascinante en el que la locura, el tedio y la tristeza dejan de ser simples sombras para convertirse en claves profundas del pensamiento moderno.Con una prosa lúcida, sugerente e incluso poética, Bartra convierte a estos tres pensadores en protagonistas de un experimento antropológico: explorar las grietas de la razón ilustrada para revelar cómo lo irracional habita el corazón mismo de la Modernidad. Es una invitación a pensar —y a sentir— desde las heridas. Una obra deslumbrante que ilumina las zonas oscuras del saber con la melancólica luz de los "ángeles caídos": aquellas entidades dolientes y ambiguas que habitan tras la fachada del "progreso"; la consagración del tedio, la locura y la tristeza que Kant, Weber y Benjamin no pudieron —ni quisieron— ignorar.

"e;Asi como hay un oficio divino que con rezos, salmos y cantos marca las horas canonicas, hay tambien un oficio mexicano que acota el tiempo nacional de acuerdo con los canones oficiales establecidos."e; Por que las ceremonias patrias, los himnos, la exaltacion del "e;alma mexicana"e; y el culto a los heroes revolucionarios nos conmueven hasta las lagrimas y, sin embargo, nos oprimen? Roger Bartra encontro la respuesta al analizar la crisis politica de los anos ochenta y noventa: la identidad nacional no es una esencia heredada, sino una construccion politica que ha sobrevivido al ocaso del nacionalismo revolucionario. En este libro, Bartra desmonta con lucidez el mito del homo mexicanus -ese ser anfibio que oscila entre la melancolia del indio derrotado y la agresividad alburera del pelado urbano, una figura mitica que el Estado revolucionario invento para hacer de la ciudadania una entidad siempre incompleta, siempre necesitada de tutela y redencion. El "e;caracter nacional"e; no ha sido mas que un mecanismo de control que justifica el autoritarismo, el fraude electoral y la sumision. Leer estos ensayos en 2026 es comprender que las transiciones democraticas en Mexico fueron procesos a medias; es reconocer que cada vez que un politico invoca la "e;grandeza de Mexico"e; o la "e;unidad revolucionaria"e; repite un conjuro arcaico para paralizar la critica. Una lectura indispensable para quienes sospechan que la identidad nacional, a fuerza de repetirse como origen, se ha convertido en la ficcion politica que aun hoy nos sigue habitando y gobernando. Esta edicion incluye una nueva introduccion del autor que conecta las fracturas de los anos ochenta con el regreso del PRI en 2012 y los embates identitarios del presente.

Este libro explica cómo la filosofía ilustrada, la sociología moderna y el pensamiento crítico se han enfrentado al oscuro mundo irracional. El autor aborda aquí un extraño enigma: ¿por qué la irracionalidad y el desorden mental logran alojarse en el corazón de la cultura moderna orientada por el racionalismo?, y busca la respuesta en Kant, Weber y Benjamin.

En Los salvajes en el cine Roger Bartra muestra cómo los míticos salvajes siguen impregnando a la civilización occidental y se han adaptado al nuevo paisaje científico y tecnológico. El hilo conductor de esta obra es la condición mítica de estos personajes que existen en la imaginación occidental desde hace milenios y que en el cine adquirieron ciertas características particulares, por lo que vemos aquí vampiros, hombres lobo, momias, cyborgs, robots, superhéroes y otros.