Ánima

The texts found in this volume invite us to reflect on our identity as contemporary subjects and how this identity intersects with the places we inhabit: a body, a country, a continent. In Art History, the article “Saint Mariana de Jesús: Between Devotion, Virtue and Quito’s Memory” explores the transformations of the saint’s figure and its adaptation in relation to the discourses on femininity of each era. In Literature, the article “The Undressing of the Letter in Latin America: Reflections on the Notion of Exscription” proposes an analysis of the writing practices that distinguish our region. The Creative Writing section features two texts: the poem “Autobiography: After Gloria Fuertes,” which evokes the transformations of the passage from girlhood to womanhood, and the short story “The Herons Left and the Guns Arrived,” which unleashes remembrance as an act of defiance and reclamation. The volume rounds out with the Philosophy article by Marcelino García Sedano, featured in the Contributions from experts section, “Absurdity and Catastrophe in the Painting of Wilson Orellana,” which explores and interprets Orellana’s artistic practice with regard to the contemporary Ecuadorian subject. Pause for a moment to read this series of articles and let them take you by the hand through the crooked writings of our continent and the world, through paintings of Mariana de Jesús and Wilson Orellana, through herons and through the body no one can escape.