Ánima is a student-run academic monographic series of the Liberal Arts and Literature Departments of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (COCISOH) at Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ. It publishes research, reflections, and creative works in Spanish and English in the areas of Philosophy, Literature, Art History, and Creative Writing. It is an open access publication and uses a peer-review arbitration system through a double-blind review methodology. The objective of Ánima is to provide a space for undergraduate and graduate students to publish their research, reflections, poems, and short stories in these four disciplines. ISSN: 2953-6340
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms: Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication of their work, which is simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 License, permitting third parties to share the work provided that proper attribution is given to the author(s) and that the original publication in this journal is acknowledged. Authors may enter into separate, non-exclusive licensing arrangements for the published version of their work—such as inclusion in a monographic volume or other forms of reproduction—provided that the initial publication in this journal is duly acknowledged. Authors are encouraged to disseminate their work online: Prior to submission, authors may deposit their manuscript in preprint servers or repositories, including arXiv, bioRxiv, figshare, and SSRN, among others. Such deposits may generate scholarly exchange and increase citations of the published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Following submission, authors are encouraged to deposit their article in their institutional repository, personal website, or academic social network (e.g., Zenodo, ResearchGate, or Academia.edu).
Copyright (c) 2026 Adrian Vásconez Núñez, Carolina Gualpa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 María Belén Tite Haro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Saint Mariana de Jesús: Between Devotion, Virtue and Quito’s Memory
Drawing on the contrast between two pictorial representations of Saint Mariana de Jesús produced during Ecuador’s colonial and republican periods, this article analyzes the transformations of the model of femininity that circulated in each historical context. Through the study of a colonial portrait attributed to Hernando de la Cruz and Joaquín Pinto’s republican painting Santa Mariana catequista (1876), the works are read from the spaces through which the saint’s holiness is imagined and legitimized. Whereas the colonial image centers on penance and on spiritual experience lived out within a private sphere, the republican work relocates the saint into a social space of religious teaching and the community’s moral formation. From a historical-visual perspective, it is argued that this reconfiguration responds to the interests of the power structures of each period. Consequently, the representations of the saint are understood as devices of symbolic construction that articulate religion, gender, and social order, and that reveal the cultural expectations associated with femininity along the proposed timeline.
Copyright (c) 2026 Melissa Morales B. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Absurdity and Catastrophe in the Painting of Wilson Orellana
The emerging figure of Wilson Orellana (Cuenca, Ecuador, 1988) within contemporary Ecuadorian painting undoubtedly invites reflection on numerous philosophical aspects of the contemporary becoming. To relate the development of his work to the concepts of dwelling in catastrophe and the absurd links it not only to certain traits of the unhinged time we are living in, but also to the bold exercise of recovering ideas that have shaped, above all, twentieth-century and turn-of-the-century philosophy. This confirms the continued validity of these ideas as tools for understanding the present and the fundamental role of art as a generator of meaning—or simply of its lack and absence.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marcelino García Sedano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Undressing of the Letter in Latin America: Reflections on the Notion of Exscription
This essay reflects on the notion of the exscribed, developed by Jean-Luc Nancy, as a critical tool for thinking about contemporary Latin American literature and its literary, social, and political implications. Drawing on the critical-theoretical contributions of Josefina Ludmer, Maurice Blanchot, Cristina Rivera Garza, Eleonora Cróquer, and Diamela Eltit, it analyzes how exscription destabilizes traditional notions of authorship, body, language, and literary autonomy. Through the exploration of fragmentary writings, collective imaginations, and post-autonomous practices, the text proposes exscription as an aesthetic and political possibility for reading the Latin American present. Thus, literature is conceived not as representation, but as a material, relational practice open to new epistemes.
Copyright (c) 2026 Josselyn Añazco Torres https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Rudolf Carnap: the end of philosophy, the end of the theory of knowledge
Since its birth, philosophy has been considered as the foundation of all other sciences. The systems of metaphysical philosophy have tried to provide the epistemological method to all particular disciplines. However, metaphysics as a model of knowledge has been both defended and criticized, prized and despised. The author shows how metaphysics in the hands of Rudolf Carnap, through logic, receives another fatal blow to the point that it is reduced to a set of fictitious ideas. In this way it is argued that there is no place for philosophy unless it is the analysis of language.
The perception of the other for identity-building: the construction of a threat through the American identity.
The concept of threat is a wide concept to embrace because it can be associated with something unknown or something evil. However, the main idea of the concept is that it produces an existential fear. Hence, it must be eliminated or at least tried to be eliminated. These assumptions are quite limited because they cannot apprehend the polarity of things. The concept of threat and identity even though they seem mutually exclusive, are in reality mutually sustaining. Hence, this qualitative article shall argue that there is an existential need to have a threat or fear of the unknown for the construction of a strong identity. It explores the need to have a threat as a scapegoat and how these sorts of threats are pivotal to categorially understand our own identity.
A map "painted backwards": traversing the boundaries of the community lands in a colonial watercolor
This article explores the use of "legal cartography" by indigenous communities in the Real Audiencia de Quito, to overcome the neglect and inefficiency of colonial justice. It focuses on an eighteenth-century watercolor painting presented by the indigenous community of Collana, in Loja, to the judges in Quito. As evidence of territorial possession, the map invites the spectator to imagine travel along a distant geography. In using this map, indigenous litigants not only demonstrated their intuitive knowledge of the law and of the colonial justice administration, but also an extraordinary ability to innovate legal practice.
Copyright (c) 2022 Carmen Fernández-Salvador
Contemporary world values identities in a very strange manner. Everywhere, every single human being as well as every human group want its identity to be recognized and positively valued. Nonetheless, the author shows that the very concept of identity, whether though as sameness or as ipseity is by definition violent. In order to explain this violence, he analyses the new identities promoted within the fields of "fat studies" and "disability studies" to illustrate that identity is, always already, a king of prison.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tomás Loza Vera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 María Emilia Contreras https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A girl watches her mother on the verge of emotional collapse, while both participate in an act of remembrance in front of Carondelet. The mother, silent for years, breaks her mutism and publicly reveals the trauma that has marked her life: she was tortured and raped by the military during the dictatorship, and her daughter was born from that violence. The narrative, interwoven with a lyrical child's voice, explores the body, memory, and silence as territories of pain. The girl begins to understand that the fear, confusion, and wound she carries in her body are not hers alone, but an inheritance of the horror experienced by her mother. With metaphors of trees, flowers, roots, and broken bodies, the story-poem weaves a tale of mourning, resistance, and love.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maite Albuja https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Precarious Women: Tracing Feminization and Desire in Contemporary Capitalism
This work analyzes the phenomenon of precarity as a potentially formative aspect of contemporary subjectivity. Building on this analytical perspective, we explore various manifestations of precarity through a dialogue between two works: El entusiasmo, an essay by Remedios Zafra, and Supersaurio, a novel by Meryem El Mehdati. Through these two narratives, which emerge from different contexts, we examine how precarity enables us to trace the narratives that constitute desire in contemporary subjectivity—particularly that of the subject embodied by women.
Copyright (c) 2025 Laura García Vicente, Aitana Pérez Valera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The challenge of making a long-term commitment when dealing with an urgent situation
This work navigates the question of political immobilism in the present moment, and seeks to understand the relationship between climate change, inaction in the face of it, and the absence of alternatives for political systems. To do so, it draws upon Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s diagnosis of the broad present. Likewise, this work traverses Fisherian propositions regarding capitalist realism and the cancellation of the future. At the same time, to link the processes of capitalist exploitation, production, and accumulation with changes in nature, this analysis employs Jason W. Moore’s thinking. Through this approach, this work attempts to highlight the need to commit and construct an emancipatory politics in the face of the climate emergency.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucía F. Villalba https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
From locus amoenus to locus horridus in two images within an imaginary museum
The following article discusses the notions of locus amoenus and locus horridi, both part of the critical tradition that reads the crossroads between visual arts and literary representation, as well as the concept of musée imaginaire provided by Malraux to think upon the relation between photographic image and literature in two Argentine short stories: “Fotos”, by Rodolfo Walsh and “Apocalipsis en Solentiname” by Julio Cortázar, with the intention of pondering the possibility of two new inclusions – each one inscribed in each text – within the galleries of said museum with regards to Argentine literature of the second half of the XXth Century.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mateo Febres Guzmán https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Antiracism and Queer Theory in Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley, an Afro-descendant and homosexual artist, through his renowned portraits dignifies blackness within the racist and discriminatory American society. Through his artworks, characterized by the use of naturalistic symbolisms, he explores the masculinities and femininities' construction, and has become a visual artist who actively contests racism. His Art challenges the conventions and stereotypes of Western Art, especially religious, political and historical portraiture within the visual human representation. Critical, also, of the null or discriminatory representation, identified as the over-eroticization, objectification and commodification of Coloured People bodies, and the way in which they are aesthetically perceived within American Culture.
Copyright (c) 2025 Itzel Antonia Castro Vallejo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2024 Manuela Lopez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Antemurale Christianitatis: The Pictorial Sanctuary of Ferdinand von Quiquerez
Antemurale Christianitatis (1892) is an emblem of Croatian nationalism and is part of Ferdinand von Quiquerez-Beaujeu's works highlighting the role of the "Bulwark of Christianity" in the face of Ottoman invasions. This article will examine the work within academic art highlighting its detailed technique, symbolic use of color, and dynamic composition that evokes divine connection and resistance in view of preserving the ideals of the West. It discusses how the painting celebrates Croatian resistance by using historical figures and nationalist symbolism to defend cultural identity, religion, and European values in the face of external threats, serving as a reminder of Europe's ongoing struggle against the Ottoman Empire.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ivana Raquel Matijevic López https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Este artículo explora la producción y recepción de clusters de esmeraldas neogranadinas en intercambios diplomáticos entre las cortes de los Habsburgo de Madrid y Viena durante el siglo XVI. Centrándose en dos clusters de esmeraldas colombianas asociadas a las minas de Muzo y Chivor, el estudio sostiene que su estética biomórfica se adaptó al gusto, la moda y las nociones de lujo de la corte vienesa del siglo XVI de la Casa de Austria. Los clusters, intercambiados como regalos diplomáticos, reflejan la compleja interacción de dinámicas sociales, políticas y económicas de la época. Al aplicar el concepto de gusto de Bourdieu, el artículo destaca la propagación de preferencias dentro de círculos elitistas, subrayando la posición única de los conglomerados sin imitación por clases sociales más bajas. Se hace hincapié en el papel de los embajadores, como Hans Khevenhüller, en comprender y respetar los gustos distintivos tanto de las cortes emisoras como receptoras. Luego, se examinan los gustos específicos de los monarcas de la corte de Viena, Maximiliano II y Rodolfo II, enfatizando su interés por las ‘maravillas naturales’ y la alquimia. La capacidad de los clusters para adaptarse a los intereses idiosincráticos de cada receptor destaca una cuidadosa consideración por las preferencias individuales de cada corte. En conclusión, la estética biomórfica de estos clusters está intrínsecamente vinculada al gusto, la moda y las nociones de lujo de la corte vienesa del siglo XVI. Los clusters, con su apariencia única que se asemeja a formaciones geológicas, sirven como testimonio de las idiosincrasias de cada centro político y sus gobernantes dentro de la Casa de Austria durante el siglo XVI.
Copyright (c) 2024 Gabriella Jaramillo Arciniegas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Impulso poético y trauma en la novela Fiebre de Carnaval
This article aims to explore the handling of trauma in the novel "Fiebre de Carnaval" by the Esmeraldeña writer Yuliana Ortiz Ruano. It aims to understand how poetic language becomes a pathway to articulate an ineffable event and how Ainhoa, through her drive and creativity, grapples with the difficulty of addressing incestuous violation. The novel is analyzed with the support of trauma studies concepts, especially drawing on the works of Caty Caruth, Laurie Vickroy, and Dominick LaCapra. Ainhoa's use of metaphors, metonymies, and other linguistic resources, as well as the silences, omissions, and other difficulties within her family, are examined. Attention is given to the evolution of Ainhoa's language as she seeks self-expression and how nature becomes a symbolic refuge for her. The article argues that Ainhoa creates a narrative and poetry based on her experiences, embracing the traumatic event until it culminates in a gradual "unbecoming" or return to the origin in the water.
Copyright (c) 2024 Cecilia Miranda Garcés https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A partir de los planteamientos de Sloterdijk sobre el Humanismo se lleva a cabo una lectura de su definición y postulados con el fin de explorar su vigencia, posibles mutaciones y parciales radicalizaciones. Si el auge de medios telecomunicativos ha permitido el surgimiento de transmisiones que no requieren de sujetos para su circulación, otorgando un lugar privilegiado a la información, toda vez que el humano-agente queda dislocado de tales operaciones, apelar nostálgicamente al retorno del hombre, suponiendo una vuelta tras lo perdido, un reencuentro con el ideal originario, o apostar por su trascendencia, en un intento por rescatarlo de la aparente degradación a la que se enfrenta, no parecen alternativas viables ante el mundo que se nos presenta y la catástrofe que se nos avecina. Habría entonces que, desde la puesta en cuestión del Humanismo (y su deriva), lograr en la apertura una posibilidad de repensar la época, de tal modo que desde ella misma se de paso a la creación de lugares de resistencia que contemplen y sobre todo concentren sus esfuerzos en la defensa de lo existente.
Copyright (c) 2024 Esteban Javier Almendariz Enriquez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Paseando por los bosques narrativos: la intrincada conexión entre ficción y realidad según Umberto Eco
This commentary on Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Narrative Woods examines the relationship established by Eco between the narrative text and the reader, as well as the relationship between fiction and reality. Eco's "model reader" is a figure created by the text and conforms to the demands of the "model author." However, beyond interpreting a text, the reader turns to a narrative fiction to make sense of the complexity of the real world. For this reason, this commentary on Eco's work seeks to highlight through textual quotations the importance of interpreting according to the particular requirements of a text and, on the other hand, seeks to highlight the great role that narrative texts play in our daily existence. It is concluded, therefore, that reading would be a practice inherent to our human life.
Copyright (c) 2024 Manuela Loza Vera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2023 Valentina de la Torre https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Grace in the mundane in Caravaggio’s "The Seven Works of Mercy"
Caravaggio's naturalistic style caused critics such as Bellori and Baglione to question his artistic value; however, it is naturalism that makes Caravaggio's paintings come alive before the viewer and move them. In "The Seven Works of Mercy", the artist not only captures the reality of Neapolitan society, but shows the possibility of forgiveness and salvation, enabled thanks to the works of mercy. To better understand what was considered "good art" in the Italian Baroque, the original texts that Bellori and Baglione wrote regarding Caravaggio were used. Similarly, the painting was studied in parts in order to understand it in greater depth and to analyze the role of each character in the scene, and the light as a representation of Grace. Finally, it was concluded that the painting, by faithfully representing human nature, while giving it mysticism, gives the observer the hope that salvation is possible. Thus, the naturalism in this painting responds to the concerns of the baroque art of the Counter-Reformation, managing to move and persuade the observer.
Copyright (c) 2023 Carolina Gualpa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
she/her Myth and the constructed image of women in Rosario Castellanos’ poetry
Myth, as an instrument of power over women, is one of the issues that Rosario Castellanos, Mexican feminist poet, explores in her poetic work called Poesía no eres tú. In her latest literary works (En la tierra de en medio, Otros poemas, and Viaje Redondo), which Castellanos recognizes as her more mature and complete works, she proposes the rejection of the mythologized image of women. In consequence, she recreates a new and own female identity defined as a truthful way of being. However, what are the literary myths constructed about women that have distanced them from their human condition? How to subvert the definitions of beauty and femaleness and allow them to build an authentic image? This paper analyzes Rosario Castellanos' views about the constitution of women's image as a myth, as well as her solution to this problem, through awareness and the destruction of society's models of beauty and femininity, so that women may construct their own demystified identity.
Copyright (c) 2023 Viviana Paredes Guerra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Schemes of suspension: motives shared in some prologues of Macedonio Fernández's Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, "El milagro secreto" by Jorge Luis Borges and La ciudad ausente by Ricardo Piglia
This paper analyzes shared motifs in fragments of the Argentine Macedonio Fernández-Jorge Luis Borges-Ricardo Piglia genealogy. From the literary perspective, it is intended to establish parallels between philosophy and literature to explain the idea of ​​"literary influence".
Copyright (c) 2023 Martín Torres https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Literary masters trapped in a woman's body
The Latin American boom came to be, due to the sociocultural and literary context in which it developed: the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, the literary conception held by the movement can be attributed to the strong social influences of the time. One of the features of note when revising a list of boom authors is the lack of female names. While a literary explosion on such a scale cannot be expected to be thoroughly planned with equality in mind, this does not mean that the epithet "macho club" is inappropriate when characterizing the movement. With the goal of determining whether the above epithet can encompass the Latin American boom, the case of three authors will be studied: Albalucía Ángel, Clarice Lispector and Elena Garro.
Copyright (c) 2023 Emily Arevalo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This paper elaborates a defense of naive realism as a theory of perception. The starting point is to demonstrate that abandoning this position and opting for alternative theories is due to admitting the existence of an indissoluble gap between the contents of perception and the way things are in the world. With this in mind, it is argued that the plausibility of such a gap has as presuppositions: a) A world and a mind ontologically independent of each other; b) The passive character of perception; and c) The existence of an essence or noumenic character of objects. Subsequently, it is shown that by replacing presuppositions a) and b) by an embodied, situated, and active approach to perception; such a gap loses plausibility. Finally, presupposition c) is attacked to complete the defense of naive realism, and the peculiarity of the realism accepted here is explained, in that it does not admit pure points of view or knowledge of essences, but is based on the very limited character of human knowledge.
Copyright (c) 2023 Gabriel Nicolás Cruz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This article is an effort to advance a philosophical concept of silence. Properly, this investigation does not present an object, it only delineates the field through which this object has the possibility of manifesting itself. Our "object" is silence. Through a discussion and revaluation of related concepts, silence is glimpsed here as that instance that allows an essential saying to occur, an expression that we could affirm is the closest to silence since it manages to amalgamate discourse and language, existentiality and intramundaneity. The reader will notice that the playing field outlined here is one that is based, mainly, on Heidegger and that takes examples from the poetic work of Hugo Mujica; It should be noted, however, that this is not a study on silence in the works of the German author and the Argentine author.
Philosophy as care for the self and care for the other
The present article presents the common themes with regards to philosophy as care. The first distinction is between care for the self and care for the other. Within the framework of philosophy as care for the self, a next distinction is between a focus on different forms of happiness on the one hand; and a focus on the question of meaning on the other. Within the framework of philosophy as care for the other, a further distinction is between care for the other based on a shared vulnerability and the accompanying requirement to attend to the other in caring for themselves; and on a personal fragility in the face of the other and the appeal to our responsibility to care for the other. The aim of the article, beyond presenting a short presentation of the most important current debates about philosophy as care, is to show that in many ways such a concept of care from a philosophy standpoint will trump expectations and present philosophy as a practice that rather disrupt, problematizes and subverts common care practice, rather than reinforce it.