Claudio Canaparo Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies at Birkbeck College in London. He has written as a literary critic, epistemologist, sociology of culture analyst and philosopher.
Canaparo was born in the city port of Campana, Argentina, to a mother of Hebrew origins and an Italian rooted father. And was a traveller, manual worker and scientific researcher before entering academia. He studied at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Rosario, at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) at Buenos Aires, at the DAMS delle arti, della musica e dello spettacolo) at the Università degli Studi di Bologna, and received his Ph.D. under the supervision of William Rowe at King’s College London in 2000.
Prevented to work in Europe as a philosopher or social scientist, he developed most of his projects in academia as a “Latin American specialist”. He joined the Faculty of Arts at Exeter University in 1995 where in 2004 he created the Centre for Latin American Studies. In 2009 he was appointed Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College. He is also Associated Researcher at the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. Themes of his works include sociology of knowledge (Muerte y transfiguración de la cultura rioplatense), epistemology and colonialism (Geo-Epistemology, El imaginario patagonia), authorship theory (The Manufacture of an Author), and science and writing (Ciencia y escritura).
Canaparo's work in Geo-Epistemology focuses on the development of a perspective named “reversal thinking” which tries to analyze the evolution of ideas and concepts in relation with a notion of an alternative concept of space as the main speculative stand point.
As part of this general approach Canaparo developed a number of aspects such as the relation between science and writing, [1] the construction of the concept of authorship, [2] and the re-configuration of some concepts of the history of European philosophy. [3] But the major work in this context is constituted by an analysis of a leading case of the cultural and conceptual evolution of space, in which space is considered as the most accurate speculative approach to the situation and development of knowledge in peripheral areas.
Lately his work evolved towards an analysis of the relationship between epistemology and colonialism from the conceptual and technical point of view. Under this context he developed a trilogy about Latin America which concentrates in the conceptual consequences of language, colonialism and what he calls post-territoriality. The first volume of these analyses of Latin America, from the point of view of knowledge and Diaspora, is entitled Viaje en Egipto. La formulación espacial del colonialismo y sus consecuencias. The second volume is El pensamiento del ojo en las colonias. La formulación espacial del colonialismo y sus visiones, and the third volume El autor periférico. La formulación espacial del colonialismo y su escritura.
(2009) Geo-Epistemology. Latin America and the Location of Knowledge, (ISBN 0-252-07311-8)
(2007) El enigma de lo real (ISBN 978-3-03910-893-0) (ed. with Geneviève Fabry)
(2005) Muerte y transfiguración de la cultura rioplatense, (ISBN 987-98184-6-6)
(2004) Ciencia y escritura, (ISBN 987-98184-2-3)
(2001) El perlonghear. Postulados de un pensamiento posracionalista, (ISBN 987-981-84-5-5)
(2000) Imaginación, mapas, escritura. Noción de espacio y perspectiva cognitiva, (ISBN 987-98184-0-7)
(2000) The Manufacture of an Author. Reinaldo Arenas’s literary world, his readers and other contemporaries, (ISBN 0-9515436-6-0)
(2000) Jorge Luis Borges. Intervenciones sobre pensamiento y literatura (ISBN 950-12-6515-3)
(1998) El artificio como cuestión. Conjeturas en torno a Respiración artificial, (ISBN 950-845-073-8)
(ii) Articles/ Chapters in books
‘Science and Empire. The Geo-epistemic Location of Knowledge’ in P. Lorenzano, H-J Rheinberger, E. Ortiz and C. Galles, eds., History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Oxford: UNESCO/EOLSS Publishers, 2008. Available at www.eolss.net.
‘La consumación del realismo’ in G. Fabry/C. Canaparo (eds.), El enigma de lo real, Bern: Peter Lang, 2007 pp. 199—275. (22.4 cm x 14.8 cm, ISBN 978-3-03910-893-0).
‘The in Latin American Science Publications’ in E. Ortiz/E. Fishburn (eds.): Science and the Creative Imagination in Latin America, London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2005, pp. 97—118. (23.0 cm x 15.3 cm, ISBN 1 900039 61 3).
‘Marconi and other Artifices: Long-range Technology and the Conquest of the Desert’ in J. Andermann/W. Rowe (eds.), Images of Power. Iconography Culture and the State in Latin America, Toronto: Books, 2005, pp. 241—254. (23.5 cm x 15.7 cm, ISBN 1-57181-533-3).
‘Medir, trazar, ver. Arte cartográfico y pensamiento en Jorge Eduardo Eielson’ in José Ignacio Padilla (ed.), Nu/do. Homenaje a J. E. Eielson, Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2002, pp. 289—314. (24.0 cm x 24.0 cm, ISBN 9972-42-509-6).
‘De bibliographica ratio’ in W. Rowe et al. (editors): Jorge Luis Borges. Intervenciones sobre pensamiento y literatura, Barcelona/Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2000, pp. 199—247. (23.9 cm x 15.5 cm, ISBN 950-12-6515-3).
Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997, 926 pp. (28.6 cm x 21.8 cm, ISBN I-884964-18-4). Articles on: (1)‘GELMAN, Juan (1930- ) ’; (2)‘Juan Gelman: el juego en que andamos’; (3)‘CAMBACERES, Eugenio (1843-1888)’; (4)‘ORTIZ, Juan Laurentino (1896-1978)’; (5)‘SORIANO, Osvaldo (1943- ) ’; (6)‘El juguete rabioso en las Aguafuertes porteñas’; (7)‘El astillero’; (8)‘IBARGUENGOITIA, Jorge (1928-1983)’; (9)‘YAÑEZ, Agustín (1904-1980)’.
(iii) Articles in journals
(Co-authored with Luis Rebaza-Soraluz and William Rowe) ‘Introduccción’, in Latin American Studies in the UK, Bulletin of Spanish Studies (Glasgow), volume LXXXIV, Numbers 4-5, pp. 441—445 (17.4 cm x 24.8 cm, ISSN 1475-3820).
‘Ciencia y tecnología en El Eternauta’ in Revista Iberoamericana, University of Pittsburgh, volumen 73, number 221, Oct-Dec 2007, 871-886 (15.2 cm x 23.0 cm, ISSN 0034-9631).
‘Arte y desencanto en Elias Ingaramo’ in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Liverpool, volume 84, number 3, pp. 335—346, 2007 (17.4 cm x 24.8 cm, ISSN 1475-3820).
‘La finalidad literaria’ in Pensamiento de los Confines, University of Buenos Aires/Fondo de Cultura Económica, número 19, diciembre 2006, pp. 112—118 (28.8 cm x 15.0 cm).
‘De poiesis sive poetica. Notas para una fisiología del lenguaje’ in Aleph. Revista de literatura hispanoamericana, Université de Liège/Catholique de Louvain, número 20, enero de 2006, pp. 81—104 (20.5 cm x 14.3 cm).
‘Un mundo modernista para la cultura rioplatense’ in Bulletin of Spanish Studies (Glasgow), volume LXXIX, numbers 2-3, March-May 2002, pp. 193—209 (17.4 cm x 24.8 cm, ISSN 1475-3820).
‘El mapa borgeano y sus alrededores’ in INTI. Revista Literaria Hispánica, Providence, Brown University, number 48, 1998, pp. 3—18 (22.8 cm x 15.1 cm, ISSN 0732-6750).
‘Juan José Saer interviewed’ in Travesia. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, [London], volume 4, number 1, June 1995 (24.9 cm x 17.6 cm, ISSN 0965-8343).
