Wrong and damned: the conquest of America from the work of Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio.

God, History and meaning

Abstract

Even before Spain in 1992 celebrated the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, Ferlosio published in the press several critical texts on the conquest that were later collected in Esas Yndias equivocadas y malditas. Comentarios a la historia. Starting from here, I raise the questions of what history is and how it should be written, and essay an answer from Benjamin's critique of violence and Ferlosio's identification of History, God, domination and meaning, the foundation of expiatory morality and the principle of exchange of goods for values. I will develop the thesis, shared by Ferlosio, Dussel and Lomax, that 1492 was the pivotal year between the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula and the conquest of America, go back to the fusion of Christianity and the Roman Empire at Nicaea, present Ferlosio's characterisation of eschatological war, whose guarantor is God, I will trace the Stoic antecedents of the rage for dominance. I will end with Dussel to show how historical discourse can be critical (Benjamin), transitive (Ferlosio) and congenital with its object (Timaeus) in such a way that it frees itself from the logic of Meaning (Ferlosio) and does not have to cover its eyes to what it says (Carson).