Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Beyond Martyrdom: The Testimonial Voice of Ignacio Ellacuría and the Convergence of His Critical Thinking From Central America in Salvadoran Literature.

Hilgert, Bradley Robert
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429658235

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Spanish and Portuguese.
This dissertation analyzes the philosophical, theological, and political thinking of Ignacio Ellacuría, SJ. In it, I read Ellacuría’s work as a cultural text, or more specifically, as testimonio. In that light, Ellacuría’s work can be seen as resulting from and responding to the historical reality within which he was situated. In reading his work as cultural text, I place it in dialogue with a form of writing that is more widely considered to be a cultural text: literature. Doing this creates a dialogical relationship between Ellacuría’s writing and Salvadoran literature that allows the different texts to inform each other and us in a horizontal manner. I begin by comparatively reading Roque Dalton’s Clandestine Poems and Ellacuría’s philosophy of historical realism. The combination of these revolutionary and utopian projects move us toward a historical praxis that positions itself with those oppressed by the dynamic system of reality and attempts to go against the grain of history. I then move from Ellacuría’s philosophy to his theology in conjunction with Manlio Argueta’s One Day of Life. When read with his articulation of liberation theology, the subversive potential of the Christian-Jesuit spirituality that Ellacuría embodied emerges as both a basis for an alternative intersubjectivity and as an existential threat to the established order. In exploring Ellacuría’s philosophy and theology, the first half of the dissertation signals the potential contributions of a thinking geographically/epistemologically located with and from Central America. The second half of the dissertation centers on the years leading up to the Salvadoran civil war and the public debate around agrarian transformation. Two post-war novels, Horacio Castellanos Moya’s El arma en el hombre and Lucía Cerna’s La verdad register the need to historicize the concept of private property. Ellacuría’s political writings pose a methodology that responds to that need and reveals a necropolitical and parasitic system that produces violence and has its foundations in the colonial period. Finally, Claribel Alegría’s They Won’t Take Me Alive suggests that this ideologized notion of property was an active agent in the civil war and the text’s collective voices converge with Ellacuría’s to imagine alternatives to the unjust system structuring their reality. The primary objective of this work is to argue for the inclusion of Ellacuría’s intellectual production into the field of Latin American cultural studies.
Ileana Rodríguez, Ph. D. (Advisor)
Ulises Juan Zevallos Aguilar, Ph. D. (Committee Chair)
Laura Podalsky, Ph. D. (Committee Co-Chair)
282 p.
Comparative; Comparative Literature; Ethics; History; Language Arts; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies; Literature; Modern Literature; Peace Studies; Philosophy; Religion; Spirituality; Theology
Salvadoran literature; Latin America; philosophy; theology; Central America; liberation philosophy; liberation theology

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hilgert, B. R. (2015). Beyond Martyrdom: The Testimonial Voice of Ignacio Ellacuría and the Convergence of His Critical Thinking From Central America in Salvadoran Literature. [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429658235

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hilgert, Bradley. Beyond Martyrdom: The Testimonial Voice of Ignacio Ellacuría and the Convergence of His Critical Thinking From Central America in Salvadoran Literature. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429658235.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hilgert, Bradley. "Beyond Martyrdom: The Testimonial Voice of Ignacio Ellacuría and the Convergence of His Critical Thinking From Central America in Salvadoran Literature." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429658235

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1429658235
677
© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.