Edited by Carlo Salzani & Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte Saramago’s Philosophical Heritage Saramago’s Philosophical Heritage Carlo Salzani • Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte Editors Saramago’s Philosophical Heritage Editors Carlo Salzani Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte Independent Scholar University of the Free State Munster, Germany Bloemfontein, South Africa Pontifical University Antonianum Rome, Italy ISBN 978-3-319-91922-5 ISBN 978-3-319-91923-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91923-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018944604 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo Cover design: Thomas Howey Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland C ontents 1 Introduction: Proteus the Philosopher, or Reading Saramago as a Lover of Wisdom 1 Carlo Salzani and Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte 2 Correcting History: Apocalypticism, Messianism and Saramago’s Philosophy of History 19 Carlo Salzani 3 The “Dark Side” of History: Saramago, Foucault, and Synchronic History 39 Maria Pina Fersini 4 José Saramago’s “Magical” Historical Materialism 61 Andre Santos Campos 5 Some Remarks on a Phenomenological Interpretation of Saramago’s Cave 81 Giuseppe Menditto 6 Death by Representation: In Law, in Literature, and in That Space Between 101 Maria Aristodemou v vi CONTENTS 7 A Contemporary Midrash: Saramago’s Re-telling of the “Sacrifice of Isaac” 121 Federico Dal Bo 8 Female Representations in José Saramago: A Space for Oppositional Discourses from the Canonical Gospels to The Gospel According to Jesus Christ 143 Camila Carvalho Santiago 9 Saramago’s Axiology of Gender Difference 163 Ana Paula Ferreira 10 Saramago’s Dogs: For an Inclusive Humanism 193 Carlo Salzani and Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte 11 Traumatic Counterfactuals 211 David Jenkins 12 Bye Bye Bartleby and Hello Seeing, or On the Silence and the Actualization to Do … Not 233 Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte Index 253 n C otes on ontributors Maria Aristodemou is Reader in Law, Literature and Psychoanalysis and Head of Department at the School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research explores the intersections between legal and psy- choanalytic theory and practice, particularly in its Lacanian manifestations. She is the author of, among others, Law & Literature: Journeys from Her to Eternity and Law, Psychoanalysis, Society: Taking the Unconscious Seriously, and contributor and co-editor of Crime, Fiction and the Law. Andre Santos Campos is the principal research fellow at the Nova Institute of Philosophy (Ifilnova—Nova University of Lisbon). His research interests are in the early modern period, political theory and con- temporary jurisprudence, on which he has published in a wide range of journals and collective books. He is the author of Jus sive Potentia (CFUL, 2010), Spinoza’s Revolutions in Natural Law (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Glosas Abertas de Filosofia do Direito (QuidJuris, 2013) and the editor of Spinoza: Basic Concepts, Spinoza and Law (Ashgate, 2014) and Challenges to Democratic Participation (Lexington Books, 2014). Federico Dal Bo holds a PhD in Translation Studies (2005, University of Bologna) and a PhD in Jewish Studies (2009, Free University of Berlin). He has worked as a teaching assistant in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bologna and as a research assistant at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the Free University of Berlin. He is the recipient of a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in the international research project ‘The Latin Talmud.’ For more information: http://www.federicodalbo.eu/. vii viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Ana Paula Ferreira is Professor of Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota. She holds an MA in Hispanic Literatures and a PhD in Luso-Brazilian Literature, with an emphasis on the Neo-realist novel. She has published numerous essays and book chapters on, among others, women writers, feminisms, race and empire. Relevant books include A Urgência de Contar, Fantasmas e Fantasias Imperiais no Imaginário Português Contemporâneo (co-edited with Margarida Calafate Ribeiro), Para Um Leitor Ignorado: Ensaios sobre O Vale da Paixão e outras ficções de Lídia Jorge, and New Portuguese Letters to the World (co-edited with Ana Luísa Amaral and Marilena Freitas). Maria Pina Fersini is a research collaborator at the Faculty of Law, University of Málaga, Spain. She holds a joint PhD in Law from the University of Málaga (Spain) and the University of Florence (Italy), with the special mention of Doctor Europaeus. Her research is focused on law and literature, narrativist theory of law and cultural legal studies. She is an author of articles, essays and book reviews concerned with the way in which legal situations are presented in literature. David Jenkins teaches Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at the University College London. His research interests include distributive justice, political realism and debates surrounding the intro- duction and implementation of unconditional basic income. He has pub- lished in Social Theory and Practice, the European Journal of Political Theory and the Journal of Political Power. Continuing his interest in the connections between literature and political philosophy, he is working on a project that examines the politics of recognition within the work of James Baldwin. Giuseppe Menditto is an independent scholar specializing in phenome- nology, metaphorology and the history of culture. He was a teaching assis- tant for the course of Aesthetics at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He earned his MA in Philosophy from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2008 with a thesis on Edmund Husserl’s semiotics. In 2012, he obtained his PhD in Intercultural Philosophy from the Italian Institute for Human Sciences (SUM) in Naples, with a dis- sertation on the idea of East and West in Husserl and post-Husserlian phenomenology, and on the pre- and post-revolutionary intellectual debate in Iran. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR S ix Carlo Salzani has published on Benjamin, Agamben and contemporary German literature and philosophy more in general (Musil, Kafka), both in English and in Italian. He is the author of Constellations of Reading: Walter Benjamin in Figures of Actuality (2009), Crisi e possibilità: Robert Musil e il tramonto dell’Occidente (2010) and Introduzione a Giorgio Agamben (2013), and the co-editor of Essays on Boredom and Modernity (2009), Philosophy and Kafka (2013), Towards the Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben (2015) and Agamben’s Philosophical Lineage (2017). He has also translated into Italian, among others, some works by Walter Benjamin and Slavoj Žižek. Camila  Carvalho  Santiago is an MA candidate for the Lusophone Literature and Culture studies and a Portuguese teaching associate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is developing her master thesis on the Feminine Representations of the Portuguese author, José Saramago, through literary feminist theory. While living in Brazil and perusing her bachelor’s degree in Portuguese Literatures and Languages, she came across the Gospel According to Judas, a book written by a local writer, in the state of Minas Gerais. Since then, she has become interested and has continued to study the postmodern Christian religious discourse. Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte is a research fellow at the International Studies Group of the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, and an invited professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy. He studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven and obtained his PhD at the Pontifical University Antonianum. He studied Spiritual Theology at the Pontifical University Gregoriana and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. In 2010 he was awarded the European Philosophy from Kant to the Present Prize. He has published on topics in continental phi- losophy, patristics, theology- philosophy- politics interdependencies, edu- cational theory and soccer. A bbreviAtions References to the work of Saramago are made parenthetically in the text according to the following conventions: Portuguese English translation TP Terra do Pecado (1947). Lisboa: Caminho, 1997 PP Os Poemas Possíveis (1966). Lisboa: Caminho, 1982 BV A Bagagem do Viajante: crónicas (1973). Lisboa: Caminho, 1986 A Os Apontamentos: crónicas políticas (1976). Lisboa: Caminho, 1990 MPC Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia Manual of Painting and Calligraphy: (1977). Lisboa: Caminho, 1983 A Novel. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet, 1994 LT Objecto Quase (1978). Lisboa: The Lives of Things: Short Stories. Translated Caminho, 1984 by Giovanni Pontiero. New York: Verso, 2012 RG Levantado do Chão. Lisboa: Raised from the Ground. Translated by Caminho, 1980 Margaret Jull Costa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012 JP Viagem a Portugal. (1981). Lisboa: Journey to Portugal: In Pursuit of Portugal’s Caminho, 1984 History and Culture. Translated and with notes by Amanda Hopkinson and Nick Caistor. London: Harvill, 2000; New York: Harcourt, 2000 (continued) xi