THE ENCOUNTER OF PHILOSOPHICAL ENUNCIATION IN OUR AMERICA

GEOCULTURE AND CORPORALITY IN GÜNTER RODOLFO KUSCH

Abstract

In this article, we seek to address two objectives surrounding the philosophy of Günter Rodolfo Kusch (Buenos Aires, 1922-1979). Our first objective will be to address the conceptual terrain of Latin Americanist philosophy and the conditions of possibility from which he developed his philosophy in terms of geocultural thought (Deep America, 1962; Indigenous and popular thought in America, 1970; Geoculture of the American people, 1975). We wish to understand aspects of Kusch’s contribution to the subsequent dialogues between Decolonial Studies and the so-called Intellectual History of Latin America, which led to theoretical consequences of impact on the Humanities, Social Sciences, and contemporary Aesthetic Theory. Next, we will direct our efforts towards the second objective, aiming to map how these ideas are expressed in their aesthetic approach based on an “ethics of encounter” with Latin American thought. We will investigate – in his proposal for the inversion of metaphysics in terms of “be situated being” (estar siendo, pre-enclosure of being) – how demonic and counter-hegemonic corporeality are dynamized to think about rural and urban Amerindian social dramas in geocultural and situated terms. In this sense, we will revisit his enunciation on corporeality in Andean dances, in Argentine zamba (The Zamba and the Gods, 1966) and in tango (Tango philosophy, 1952; The Moon and the Tango, 1966, among others). Kuschean write stile go beyond traditional philosophy and express in this aesthetic argument and in reflections on dance, elements that provide an original perspective on the body rooted and situated in the Latin American landscape. Through these clues, the philosopher confronts us with ancestral pre-Columbian knowledge and forms of popular philosophical enunciation. Following his methodological proposal of a “field philosophy”, his path accesses popular artifacts, rituals and bodily technologies that express possible forms of thought as co-creation and expression of community as American geocultural propositions.