Conceptual thinking / literary thinking / appropriation. Interview with Bernardo Subercaseaux

Abstract

Bernardo Subercaseaux Sommerhoff was born in Santiago de Chile in 1942. He studied Literature and Archaeology, graduating from the University of Chile, and later earned a doctorate in Literature and Romance languages at Harvard University. He has had a long and fruitful career in the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Chile. He has also taught at the Universities of Washington, Stanford and Maryland in the United States; at the University of Havana (Cuba) and at the University of Rosario (Colombia). In 2005 he received the Distinction for Academic Merit from the University of Santiago (IDEA-USaCh). He has been a promoter of the creation of the Centre for World Languages and Cultures at the University of Chile and a researcher and member of CENECA (Communication and Culture for Development). For a decade he served as director of the Revista Chilena de Literatura (Department of Literature, University of Chile). A specialist in cultural history, he is the author of a profuse production of essays and books on Chile and Latin America, most notably: El Trompo (novel); Cultura y sociedad liberal en el siglo XIX; Chile ¿un país moderno?; Chile o una loca historia; Historia de las ideas y de la cultura en Chile, desde la Independencia al Bicentenario (a three-volume work), Simón Bolívar: una figura en disputa. In this interview he talks to José Alberto de la Fuente about aspects of his itinerary and work, the relationship between conceptual thinking/literary thought and the problematic of reception/appropriation in a context such as the Latin American one.