Papeles de Identidad

‘Jews in Space’. A History of Extraterrestrial Diaspora and the Future of Galactic Jewishness

2023-09-08T08:36:42+02:00

Following Arendt’s statement in 1941 that the moon was “the only place where we can still be safe from antisemitism”, this article explores Jewish extraterrestrial existence as depicted in literature and popular culture, focusing on the intersections of Jewish identity, diasporic narratives, and speculative futures. Using Mel Brooks’ satirical concept of Jews in Space and Martin Salomonski’s lesser-known novel Zwei im andern Land, the text examines how Jewish communities have been imagined in fictional extraterrestrial settings as responses to historical and contemporary challenges. This allows to delve into the way these narratives engage with themes of displacement, belonging, and the search for a permanent homeland beyond Earth, reflecting anxieties and aspirations surrounding Jewish survival and self-determination. Whether on the moon or on any other celestial body: ‘Jews in Space,’ as the article argues, appears again and again as a kind of reversible gestalt, alternating between quasi-Zionist and diasporic conceptions of the future.

To infinity and closer. The Space Conquest and its Identities. Conditions and Figures of a Corporative Futurization

2023-08-13T15:59:15+02:00

The article investigates an aspect of space exploration with an impact on politics, culture and social identities: corporate futurizations, embodied in SpaceX, of the project of human colonization of space, especially Mars. Relying on an archive built with testimonies of experts and workers involved in space projects, reports, books and documentaries, the article begins by presenting some novelties and conditions —technological, political, economic and legal changes— of the current space race. Next, simulation is explored as a fundamental practice for imagining space futures, and then the vision of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is explored as a specific case of imagining the colonization of Mars. In this sense, the interrogation of corporate forecasts and desires allows us to reflect on the current dynamics between colonial logics and space futurizations (defined in the article with a neologism, “corporate terrasocioformation”), seeking to understand what kind of space identity is configured, and what kind of relationship it establishes with Earth. In closing, a critique that feeds other images of spatial future are discussed.

Fictoreal humanity: creaturations and other women artifices

2023-09-10T10:34:54+02:00

This article addresses the construction of femininity through narratives about the artificial woman. Alongside the history of what I refer to as creaturation (creature + creation) in literature and film, I explore the current coexistence with characters in general, and with creaturation in particular, in its humanising use of artificial intelligence. From its mythological genesis to the present day, this historical journey allows us to reflect on the construction of the feminine, essentially in terms of servility, abnegation, and as the work of man. The hypothesis of male creaturation is also questioned, with two fictional examples. The feminisation of AI serves to address the irrelevance of the gender binary and its role in (post)human identity. The study thus raises the implications of the persistence of this character and the socio-affective and identity effects of increasingly blurring fiction with reality.

Parental identities in contemporary science fiction cinema

2023-07-06T11:07:34+02:00

In her celebrated Frankenstein (1818) Mary Shelley inaugurated a theme that will be key to cinematic science fiction: technologically mediated procreation. This article explores parental identities through the textual analysis of three films made by European women directors in the last years —High Life (Claire Denis, 2018), Little Joe (Jessica Hausner, 2019) and Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021)— addressing the actualization of the technology-mediated procreation motif in contemporary science fiction. I argue that these films, shot under the premises of a genre usually filmed by men, expand the motifs of science fiction by addressing, among others, issues such as filicide, incest, interspecies procreation, or the struggles involved in the care of offspring in single-parent families. In addition, I study the presence of female characters far from the stereotype of the virtuous mother who, in contrast to the paternal figures, surpass the traditional role of caring for offspring.

Hope as a political issue: the future of working class identity in Blade Runner 2049

2023-09-26T20:18:09+02:00

Since its origin, science fiction cinema has used the topic of the artificial human to represent the working class instrumentalized by the productive elites, which has given rise to copious sociological reflection on the matter. Based on it, this article seeks to account for the anticipatory scenario projected in the futuristic film Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2017) in contrast to the current reality and what is exposed in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, to respond to the concerns that poses the future of the working class. The analysis shows a polarized society where clones (replicants) are enslaved to maintain human life; The middle class has disappeared and the blade runner is now aware of being a replicant-servant, but this has not deactivated the ideology but has submerged him in another one that is even more effective and paralyzing. This is only the starting point of the dystopia that, unlike its namesake, also offers a prospective scenario with a constructionist and desirable nature that invites social change through a unique metafictional revolutionary agent. Villeneuve turns his film specifically and narrative fiction, in general, into an ally of the oppressed classes; He grants it a structural emancipatory role capable of reversing the lack of systemic hope and overcoming the diffuse cynicism that annuls identities in the tired society of the future, promoting personal and collective action.

Future Facial Identities in the Metaverse

2023-06-30T13:18:47+02:00

The article explores the future of facial identities in the context of the metaverse. It analyzes how the relationship between face and future, marked by uncertainty and freedom, could be transformed by technological advances that threaten to turn the face into a moldable and appropriable digital interface. Through a semiotic reflection, the text addresses the risks of this transition, such as the loss of uniqueness and autonomy of the face. It also examines how facial identities could evolve in a virtual environment. Using examples from recent literature and empirical cases of digital design, it concludes with philosophical proposals on the preservation of freedom and uniqueness in the human face, even in a digitized scenario.

Reconfigurations of trans* identity in waiting territories

2024-06-24T12:04:14+02:00

Regional migration policies have led to the formation of what Musset calls waiting territories, with Tenosique in southern Mexico being a notable example. Waiting should not be understood as a passive space-time. In this paper, I analyze what takes place within this waiting territory during the migratory experience of Nikki, originally from Honduras, who arrived in 2018 with her mother seeking international protection. Bureaucratic measures of border externalization interrupted their transit and caused them to wait several months at La 72, a migrant shelter, between 2018 and 2019. Nikki began her migration with a masculine identity, although she had long desired a feminine identity. Through an affective ethnography and other qualitative techniques, I explore the reflective and material processes related to Nikki's desired feminine identity as a result of her experience in a waiting territory. The aim is to deepen the understanding of social relations and intersubjectivity woven into the time-space of waiting.

Signifying the People. Can the Social Majority be represented?

2024-10-08T17:32:03+02:00

The People is usually enunciated as immutable. Too frequently it is assumed that this notion refers to the social majority as if it was a unit. Behind this homogeneous view of reality, however, are hidden modes of discourse that legitimise the class structure. In this text I reflect on the political value of referring to the People by reviewing some of the most suggestive theoretical assumptions of contemporary critical thought. From a post-marxist and psychoanalytical approach, I define the popular as an «Empty Signifier» that makes its total identification impossible. At the same time, I also argue that its incompleteness does not deny the emancipatory potential of oppressed groups when the idea of the People is sustained by their symbolic and material experience. I conclude by affirming that the antagonism on which our societies are founded still makes viable forms of self representation based on the assumptions of Other Popular Identity.

Jost, François (2023). Dígalo con memes. De la parodia al mundo digital. La Crujía

2024-07-10T19:06:28+02:00

Conde Gutiérrez del Álamo, Fernando (2023). Big Data. Topología e Investigación Social. Editorial UNED

2024-07-10T18:55:19+02:00

Gatti, Gabriel, y Mengual-Rubio, Iñaki (Eds.) (2024). Contar el abandono. Paisajes de un mundo en ruinas. Bellaterra

2025-01-14T20:44:13+01:00

The identity of the youngest (ex)combatants

2024-12-05T00:35:20+01:00

This text offers a critical perspective on the identity markers upon which the figure of the “child/young (ex)combatant” is constructed. The text deconstructs three dichotomies that prefigure this notion, which have significantly shaped the understanding and treatment of these experiences: firstly, it questions the rigid division between childhood and adulthood that imposes a simplistic and essentialist view of childhood and the experience of (ex)combatants. Secondly, it challenges the war-no war dichotomy. This binary distinction tends to make invisible the ambivalent experiences and ways of life that develop in areas of armed conflict, where the lines between war and peace are often blurred. Lastly, it examines the entry and exit from war dichotomy. This linear perspective underestimates the complex and prolonged nature of armed conflict in people’s daily lives and overlooks the unique ways of processing the experience of war. The text thus discusses how these notions tend to configure ideal references from which the life experiences of the youngest (ex)combatants are interpreted and identity markers are fixed to accommodate them.

Tomorrow, a vast repertoire of identities. Presentation

2025-01-09T11:53:04+01:00

This text presents the monographic issue ‘Future identities”. It addresses the relationship between identity and future time. Although academic scholars have paid little attention to that issue, our futurocentric society speculates intensely on the future of identities; indeed, future identities abound in fiction and public discourse. The papers collected here focus on just a few of the expressions of futurible identities (ethnic, women’s, parental, extraterrestrial, class and individual) and although different perspectives are taken, the technological revolution appears as an important variable in all of them. The issue features contributions by Lena Kugler, Ezequiel Gatto, Jimena Escudero Pérez, Lidia Merás, Esther Marín Ramos, and Massimo Leone. Two critical papers by Javier Callejo and Lautaro Cossia complete the issue.