Short biography

Short Biography

Abdel Hernández San Juan, 1968

   Teórico, pensador y escritor americano de origen cubano, sociologo, semiologo, antropologo cultural. Emigra a sus veinte años viviendo todos sus veintes en la Venezuela capitalista neoliberal de los noventas, luego se establece en Texas, estados unidos a dónde comienza a viajar desde 1996, vive desde 1997 y emigra en 1998.
    Desde muy temprano en su vida sus 17 años abdel estaba dedicado y consagrado al estudio, lectura y escritura de pensamiento filosófico teórico y ciencias duras, leyendo a Sapir, Chomsky, benveniste, Martinet, hemslev, saussure, Jacobson, y escribiendo alrededor de 30 cuadernos de sus primeros manuscritos filosoficos en los que priman las ciencias del lenguaje, lingüística teorica, teoría semiotica, sociología teorica y antropología cultural. 
  Aún muy joven estos cuadernos no llegan a integrar un libro
  De niño quería ser ingeniero naval a fines de la década de los ochentas concibe en sus manuscritos una teoría cultural e implementa en base a ella dos proyectos de trabajo de campo de sociologia basados en sus teorias. 
  Cuando emigra a Caracas escribe su primer libro una despedida al arte, un programa de revisión de la sociología elaborado para defender una teoría antiartistica que después de la muerte del arte,  teoriza la sustitución del arte por las ciencias sociales y la filosofía. 
  El proceso de migrar transforma su vida y subjetividad para siempre. 
  En Venezuela capitalista abdel lee la obra de junger habermas, Jacques derrida, Alfred shutz, jean boudrillard, jean francoys Lyotard, svetan todorov, Pierre Bourdieu, entre infinidad de otros autores continuando sus estudios y escritura de ciencias duras.
  En 1995 conoce a Surpik angelini y entre ambos surge una estrecha amistad que los conduce a implementar una curaduria llevando a la práctica las tesis teóricas de sustitución del arte por las ciencias sociales desarrolladas en su primer libro.
  Luego de presentar los resultados de esa curaduria en rice university, abdel restablece en Texas su escuela de pensamiento teórico y ciencias duras continuando ambas cosas la lectura y la escritura de filosofía y ciencias teóricas duras y promociona el programa de su laboratorio de ethnometodologia en sociologia, teoría de la performatividad y etnografia, desde donde concibe muchos de sus posteriores libros autorales
  En 1996 es profesor invitado del departamento de estudios clásicos e hispanos de la universidad de rice en su área de teoría semiotica, antropología y teoría de arte, entre enero y abril de 1997 es profesor invitado de la facultad de antropología de la universidad de rice, escuela de ciencias sociales y de la fundación transart de Houston, desde junio de 1997 es profesor investigador asociado complementario del departamento de antropología de la universidad de rice, imparte conferencia en un panel del congreso de etnometodologia en la universidad de Houston, departamento de antropología y es profesor y teorico invitado por el departamento de sociología y antropología de lake forest college, participando también en paneles AAA congreso nacional de antropología en Chicago y LASA en florida, imparte conferencias en la facultad de antropología de la universidad de rice desde donde desarrolla un intenso trabajo de teorizacion generando una nueva tendencia desde la sociología fenomenologica y la etnometodologia en diálogo con Stephen a tyler y quetzil Eugenio Castañeda, a la vez que funda junto a Surpik angelini la fundación transart de Houston en 1996 para investigaciones de arte y antropología en la cual trabaja en Houston  como teórico investigador director artístico hasta el 2002.
al igual que en Venezuela la experiencia como migrante en estados unidos transforma su vida y subjetividad para siempre de lo cual son resultados muchos de sus libros autorales.

Abdel es autor de los libros

El correlato de mundo: interpretante y estructura en la teoría cultural posmoderna
Pensando ciencia: nuevas avenidas fenomenologicas entre filosofía y sociología

El self y el Acervo: el self y lo social entre la escritura, el research y la cultura

El horizonte intramundano: fenomenologia y hermeneutica de lo cotidiano

Repensando la antropología urbana: el ojo del museo en el trabajo de campo

La verdad indeterminista: fenomenologia y hermeneutica en la observación participante/mercados populares en el capitalismo

Repensando la intertextualidad: método de investigación en sociología de la cultura

La elucidation semantica: teoría semiotica, sociolinguistica y semántica de la cultura

El presentational linguistico: intangibilidad, intersticialidad y Stratus en la sociedad mass mediatica

El ser y la monada: liminalidad y tecnología en las sociedades seculares

Lo dado y lo no dado: inner, estética y ritual en ambientes tecnologicos, entre otros
tiene los compendios de ensayos escogidos

El corazón de la experiencia: autopercepcion y sentido común en la sociología fenomenologica, 

La crisalida del ser: ensayos filosofico-antropologicos

Antropologia de la arqueología: una perspectiva desde la etnometodologia y la antropología cultural, y

Las couples de la epistemología: practicando sociología/componiendo antropologia

En estos libros proyectados y anticipados  como autor desde su vida y obra académica en Texas, y sus viajes de texas a Chicago, lake forest, new York, Oakland, Berkeley o new Orleans, abdel renueva hacia nuevas avenidas innovativas ambas cosas, la sociología fenomenologica y la teoría semiotica de regreso a la filosofía clásica y la lógica, hegel, Charles sanders peirce, iniciando nuevas formas de pensamiento teórico clásico entre filosofía y sociología, sociología de la cultura y antropologia filosofica, así como también en metodología de research.

Las influencias principales en su obra teorica han sido la sociología fenomenologica y del sentido común de Alfred shutz, la filosofía de jacques derrida y  la antropologia lingüística de Stephen a tyler, pero abdel ha desarrollado respecto a ello una obra original, innovativa y unica que lo diferencia de otros etnometodologos e interaccionistas simbólicos influidos por shutz, tanto como de las interpretaciones usuales y generalizadas de derrida, así como diferencia sus libros, rumbo, posiciones y avenidas del modo usual y general adquirido por la antropología posmoderna

una de estas principales diferencias estriba en el ultrateoricismo de su obra, tanto su sociología y etnometodologia como su filosofia y antropología son muy teóricas y abstractas tanto  o mas como pueden serlo hegel, kant, peirce o derrida, abdel es uno de los pensadores más teóricos y abstractos de las últimas décadas en estados unidos y europa y desde los ochentas y uno de los más complejos, difíciles por abstractos e intrincadamente teóricos a la vez que original y unico entre aquellos que transitaron del siglo xx al xxi y el más teórico de su generación.

Otra de las diferencias estriba en el altísimo rigor científico de su obra, así como el lugar prominente que tienen la semiotica teórica y la lingüística teorica tanto en su clasismo filosófico como en su sociología cultural y su antropología neohegelianas y neopercianas en sentido clásico.

Además de sus libros autorales antes mencionados es co-autor de dos libros de diálogos filosoficos: evocacion: diálogos filosoficos con Stephen a tyler y contrapuntos: diálogos filosoficos con Alberto Méndez suarez

"De un vuelo teórico de altura, de un rigor insuperable"

Por Alberto Méndez, philosopher, the internacional university of florida

On the book "The world correlate: interpretant and structure in posmodern cultural theory", of abdel Hernández San juan
Tomado de contrapuntos: diálogos filosóficos. Por abdel Hernández San Juan y Alberto mendez
As i tell you in my previous message, it remain to when kant sustained about Hume "he raise me up from a dogmátic dream", i would say, saving distance, that my meeting with your work raise me up from ignorance. It was the meeting with your work and thesis of the maker, the meeting with Abdel Hernández San Juan the subject of an enuntiation, of a manner to read adorno, benjamín, derrida, foucault, canclini, Levis strauss. This was the manner how your  work and our conversacions become a decisive and positive influence in my next readings and intelectual choices. As i tell you my readings become marked by the conversations we sustain. But fortunatly my next duty was about to find from there my own way to walk alone, with the handback of tools i finded with you in handway, overall with the wishes and impulse to know.
Abdel, i am very happy to know on your knowledge on how capitalism function. As theoretician of social sciences even from cuba before exiting, your concepts and ideas was of an amazing, tremendus clearity, a very ussefull tool to comprehension and objective análysis.   As an effect of my talks with you --basically speaking of a period between 1990-1991-- let in me a mark of an enormeous relevance in my philosophical vocatión
I am very interested in your visión of hegel
The sharp, penetrating and rigour of your thought mean a lot of benefits to me since having the posibility of our dialogue. Equally the phenomenological thesis of the imbrication you have made of Peirce semiótic in your work let and allow me to consider another ways to afford abstract thought, the philosophical thing, another points of view
I have recently finished to read all your last messages, your answers to my starting questions and your reflexións answers, intellectually of a rigour imposible to be superated of a superior quality with all that complex and structured elaborations and arguments of ever and theoretically very high in its fly. This in general
Particularly, i am interested to read your authorial work --books--, but also your explicitations around it becouse your reflexións allow me to a counterpoints very productive to my owns. Very interesting your last answer about our methodological differences, on the one hand, your phenomenological visión, dinamic in respect to the movements of the concept and it's adecuation to reality in which the concept itself is full of reality too and from which a sense of the real older than the linguistic developments of the concept overcome as a secound level of reality overordinated.
I am overlining here how epistemological terms that you use with skill and hability determine such phenomenological reality geeting there, on the one hand, the ethnometodological and on the other, the exegetic and interpretative sides of your work (influenced) by Gadamer as well as by Peirce starting to work the sense you have defined as "performative" and "intersubjective", habermas.
We must add thus the sincronic micrométric aspects of your phenomenological análysis and later hermeneutic of such reality and the "I", "the self" and "being", noumeno, and it's correlates and subject implied in it, phenomenological sociology, your influences of Shutz
Your reflexión of "the world of life", as a micrométric space, "intramundane horizont" and the " world correlate"
I am agree in that aspects, it is a phenomenological form without historicism, however, i think we must overline how your phenomenological developments evolved a certain diacronicity too, hegeliany, which gaze the movement of the world in it's own dialectique, something provoque that your relation with that world is unfolded alone a diacronicity as an observer who cutt and recutt from the weaves of the world a sincronic fragments to describe it's internal dinámics and it's becomings even seen micrometrically.
And all this bring us to a movement of the concept that works in a phenomenological before of the often structuralist framing and structuralism itself from which without doubt you have unmarked yourself rather than myself points of view more structuralist from my pospositivist empirist reflexion
    Perhaps, you are making Derrida say beyond him toward the way you have defined as "pasarelas" (narrow step level crossing) between language and non language, language and world, language and writing. You are moving derrida to it's own limits reinterpreting him from Peirce which in your phenomenological terms the use you are doing of Derrida might be defined as certainly masterly.
I am thinking here about Derrida phenomenologist reader of Hurssel, a Derrida asking about génesis at the phenomenological reflexion. As you know this Derrida is not the more saussurean one of another of his work. The text in question is a jewel of his phenomenological period that you know how to make it productive.
However, i see the interesting way you are taking distance in your book " The world correlate" from the gramatologist Derrida opening a posibility for this polarity inside/outside returning to the derrida phenomenologist.
I see it as logic inside the developments and elaborations of your theoretician work of an enormeous complexity and rigour. I see logic too your distance from ontological structuralism asuming it in a more táctical sense as eco sustained it "operative", meaning functional, ussefull.
I understand well as logic why you as thinker and ethnometodologist áre avoiding to asume the structuralist debate in a direct form to instead asume it in a tangential form from your phenomenological perspective
Realism at the same time seems to be not crucial in your work at least not in your book "The world correlate" perhaps one might read and move to read certain parts of your book from such direction setting it to be discussed with the philosophical debate on realism; the "how" and "what" of the world, but this is not in your main focuss of attention priority. We can discuss your book in that sense, the empiricist anglosajón debate around Locke distintions between first and secound qualities as a representative realism less than the idealist subjectivism of Berkeley, or as in xx century, hurssel, Bergson, also Russel, wittgenstein, Popper, carnap, Quine, Searle, Dummet or Putnam or even the sistematic view of Mario bunge as modalities of the positivist anglosajón debate. Your book can be very productibly discussed from this debate of realism while without recognizing that the issue of realism itself is not in the main focuss of your priority attention.
  I was thus re-reading dummet, Davidson, putnam, searly, rorty to answer you higly motivated by your extensive and complex and passionated reflexións in your deeper, profound level and rigour, the masterly  form  you have afforded the themes and issues in your reflexións on derrida
I am still working in my answer without stop to think in our counterpoints which is a priority to me after your extensive messages on your work with the concept of the interpretants and peirce, your reflexións on texere and your "pasarelas" (narrow step level crossing), and on derrida of an enormeous rigour and complexity, and sharp.
Very sharp also your apreciations on psychoanalysis, on the structure of the unconcient, and your questions on subject and unconcient in lacan very pertinent.
My intention is about to answer and react to all your conceptual developments and pointing messages on your conception of intramundanity, texere in derrida, the theoretical developments and descriptions of "pasarelas" (narrow step level crossing) very yours, your interpretation of peirce semiótic and it's theoretical consequences very your too
Traín to answer considering my own references in analytical philosophy around the Vienna circle and pospositivist anglosajón analytical philosophy, overall Quine and his holístic thesis, (the thesis Duhem-quine) and the analytical critique of the theory of sense, a certain límited aspects since Quine don't have a theory of meaning after the noerthamerican rejected reflexións on sense. I am discussing this límited given by my límited knowledge of peirce which instead you know and domain with rigour and profoundity.
I would like overall to focuss and set our debate to understand well the context inside which in your perspective the text is articulared as organized signs with a meaninfulness intentionality to operate the world correlate exactly as you have discussed it in the first chapter of your book " The world correlate". The interconexions that you have made between the kind of grammatological interpretations of saussarian inspiración in derrida, the text as an autónomous entity, the correlations between "lengua" (langue) and "speach" (parole) or between sintaxis (significance) and semantique (meaning) with all the developments phenomenological-hegelian, on the one side, and logical-empirist of peirce semiótic that you have theorized, your theorization evoques to me   my reading of Giddens "The new rules of the sociological method" of durkenian inspiratión or  more over the conexión of this book with " the constitución of society" one of his previous books something about which you must be well familiarized as a social science thinker and research.
   Regarding semiosis as the dinámic of culture that you defined as " inferential reality" it is fascinating the conceptual manner you have finded to rethink this phenomena which have it's original génesis in platón dialogues and seminal Aristóteles texts and the issues linked with the relation between thought and language, you have discussed Hermeneutically and semiótically issues conect the medieval patristic (San Agustin) and the Port Royal gramatists previous to the adveniments of saussure ginebra structural linguistic, Jakobson and the Praga school in earlier xx century, and peirce semiótic in xix century.
I must sustain in this point and affirm that within all the cuban philosophical thinking to today no one domain and know the semiótic of peirce and derrida philosophy as you, no one with your masterly and skill knowledge and the deeper form you have incorporated their sistem into a new theoretical constellation, into your own abstract articulated thought from hermeneutic to grammatology and  from your epistemological acervo to think from an anthropology frame, spetially from ethnometodology, and culture as text; as well as discussing gadamer, shutz, todorov, stephen a tyler.
Back to the issue of realism i think that such       " reality" as an endless red of interpretants as you have unfolded it with masterly might be seen as intimatly related with what octogenary quine defined at the end of his life "the webs of believes" to identify protocolar enuntiations and propositionality composed and constitute the sistem of science; his Duhem-quine thesis at the top of his carrier, something he references in the 50s at his seminal essay "Two dogmas of empiricism"
The notion of the "interpretants" you explain very well strongly influenced by peirce exactly as seen in its relation with the real substracts of prelinguistic experience, according to how you have reintérpreted it from the semiótic perspective of your books theoretical sistem keept up a relation of certain identity with from my point of view what carnap named as "protocolo enuntiation" perhaps quine defined this characteristic of predicative language as "observational sentences" something that some times entail with a reality before any phenomenological experience as regional ontologies phenomenological realities.
Equally when you defines your ideas of "An interelated red of interpretants", make me think in what epistemologíst  Karl Popper defined as "world 3". Sush a popperian "world 3" have a certain similarly with peirce semiótic interpretants objectibly as i can perceive it throught your own thinking now, i see certain points of similarities.
I would even sustain as trully subtantial aditionally to your complex reflexions of an enormeous epistemological values is your methodologícal theory, what you have defined as "methodology of research" in spanish, metodología de la investigación científica ( methodology of scientific investigatión) which in your own style of inquiries and questions generates deeperly prismas of interpretation.
But also your points conecting phenomenological research, hermeneutic and semiótic with ethnometodology and anthropology and this interconexions allows your theory of research methodology, you are thinking mainly methodologically as sociologist. While we áre both pasionately doing abstract thought.

Alberto Méndez suarez, analytical philosopher, international university of florida, Miami, florida

Tomado de contrapuntos: diálogos filosóficos. Por abdel Hernández San Juan y Alberto

One of the great philosophers of the continent/uno de los grandes filósofos del continente                    

Ernesto león, professor of visual art, Houston

Tambien ha escrito y colectado varios compendios de sus ensayos de teoría semiotica del arte y antropología linguistico cultural, compendios de ensayos de semiotica del arte contemporáneo que recuerdan la semiotica del arte de barthes pero con un mayor inmersionismo empirico sociocultural de campo y una mayor atención a los lazos entre semiotica del arte y antropología linguistico-cultural.

"In houston, sustained dialogues with abdel Hernández have been crucial to think throught all aspects of experimental ethnography"
Hernández, breglia and Armstrong Fumero actively participated in the lake forest installations. All of these persons and others who participated in the field school áre deeply appreciated for their contributions

Quetzil Eugenio Castañeda, between puré and applied anthropology: experimental ethnography in a transcultural tourist art world, NAPA boletín

Author of in the book in the museum of maya culture: touring chichen Itza, currently Senior Lecturer, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University 2016 – present Member Graduate Faculty, Indiana University 2003 – present Founding Director, Academic Coordinator, and professor, OSEA — The Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology. Chichén Itzá, México.