“The obsession with solutions is irrational”

Like a bass line that lasts for a song Wildebeest (anagram), from essayist Barcelona Pau Luquethere is a flow of experiences, Stories and reflections Threads that run through Genoa, the Catalan city of Vilafranca del Penedès and the Mexican city, among others. There are visits to a glowing cemetery, memories of a bar that many swinging couples use as a refuge due to confusion, dialogues with a poet via emails and phone calls, and much more.

Say something about a book like this It is “unclassifiable” is to assign a single gender to it, apart from the fact that it is a commonplace. Perhaps it is more appropriate to look at it this way a text that, like the wildebeests themselves, reflects on a species of African antelope. And this thoughtful nature of the work allows the author to dissect ideas and stories, at the philosophical core of which is the distinction between answers and solutions.

About meet, Clarion spoke to Luque, the 2020 winner Anagrama Essay Award from Things as they are and other fantasies. The contemporary obsession with Think about everything in terms of problem solvingthe role of social networksthe justification of the Conversationthe role of Music in his work and the international debate about it Universities appear in the lecture.

–The book contains elements from different genres. Was it a conscious decision at the time of writing?

–I’m not sure if the fact that it is so fragmentary is the result of an iconoclastic decision, but rather an expression of my limitations, my dubious nature, I suppose. I try to make up fiction and halfway through I lose heart. I’m trying to write a classic essay and halfway through I get discouraged. I start writing a chronicle and halfway through I get discouraged…then I add up all the times I got discouraged and then this book comes out.

– “Only conversations expand life,” emphasizes the narrator in Wildebeest. It seems that conversation is a devalued activity these days. Does it fit?

–Conversation increases in value because it has decreased as long as verbal interactions are conducted only with a specific goal or purpose. Nothing expresses this better than AI models that are given a goal: “I want you to tell me the best way to exchange dollars in Buenos Aires.” I feel like it’s the synthesis of a way we communicate. But the conversation has no end, you meet to talk to a friend and you never know how it will end. The beauty of the conversation is that it has no purpose, no goal.

–In Things As They Are, he noted that there is a “contemporary desire for clear answers.” Was the seed of Wildebeest?

–Yes, the other person saw an ad that said “We sell solutions.” This advertising assumes that the rest of the inhabitants of this Western society shape the world with the idea that everything is a problem and therefore there is a solution. But it’s not true that everything is a problem, and it’s also not true that there is only one solution. The idea that there is no one right way to do things has been floating around in my head for several years, but it has taken me a while to articulate this concern in writing in the way I wanted to express it.

–There is currently a very strong discourse that everything will be solved by certain technologies, especially digital…

–Throughout the modern history of the West, there are these high points, these bubbles, where some technological novelty bursts that really changes people’s lives and a kind of idea arises, almost by osmosis, that everything will look like this since this technological breakthrough has worked. There is a penchant for believing that AI can solve all the problems we have, in an elegant, ecological way, etc. And that is irrational. Major technological disruptions solve some problems, but are likely to make things worse in other ways.

– The same promises were made over the Internet in the 90s…

–Yes, and I remember that it was said on social networks: “The conditions for deliberative democracy are finally in place, the great dream of the Greek agora, finally we will achieve the best results for political decisions.” If social networks had any power, it was not precisely to exacerbate deliberative democracy. They not only restored the Greek Agora, but also destroyed what little we had been able to consolidate in this direction. These technological innovations are like medicines: you look for a medicine to cure allergies and then discover that antitamines promote sleep. I feel like these technological developments are similar. We believe that with social networks we have found the key to deliberative democracy and that we have achieved something different, such as great times full of fun and memes.

–Argentine writers such as Alejandra Pizarnik and Mariana Enríquez are mentioned in the book. What contact do you have with Argentine literature?

– Well, I have contact in a very disturbed sense. I have contact with Spanish, Catalan or Mexican literature, I was never ordained in this regard. There are two authors I really like: (Juan José) Saer and Martín Kohan. I know, I’ve read her too and I like what she writes, Mercedes Halfon. I read things by Fabián Casas, also by Margarita García Robayo, who is not Argentinian but has lived here for many years. Of the classics – Classics, Borges, etc. I would like to like Aira, but she writes so much that I’m afraid of choosing the wrong book and losing my desire to read it.

-In Wildebeest He says: “One writes to free oneself from the past, not to devote oneself to the future.” This idea clashes with those who believe it should be a combat tool…

–I feel that literature has a purifying, metabolizing, cathartic function when it works. Things happen, and I feel like being obsessed with the idea that we need to change and transform and commit to the future doesn’t have much to do with literature. I get along with people who do that, but I have a different temperament, which is not the case. If literature has a political function and can change things, it is because it is not militant, because its relationship to the future is much more subtle and complex.

– In your latest book there are many references to music: to Nick Cave, to Pink Floyd, to Tom Waits, to Last in Line, to Guns N’ Roses. Does music play an important role in your life and work?

–Yes, totally. Music is clearly the art that is superior to the others. It has a power of immediacy and synthesis of feelings that no other art possesses. It is far superior to literature, not to mention cinema, which is significantly inferior to these three arts. I say this in a slightly provocative way, but I really mean it. I would have liked to be a musician, not a philosopher.

–He has a doctorate in legal philosophy and is a teacher and researcher at UNAM. What do you think of the speech by certain international leaders like Trump against universities in general and the humanities in particular, accusing them of being an elite?

– Let us assume that the critical discourse against the humanities is not new, but comes from far away. In my opinion it has to do with a misunderstanding of the role that the humanities have to play in making sense of certain visions of the world. And it is true that a certain moral elitism has emerged in universities, certainly in the United States, which is, in this sense, the most toxic place in the world. And since they have a great capacity for vile cultural export, it reaches all places. Universities are now also hotbeds of resistance. And I suspect that in some places in the West, as I think may be the case in Argentina, they can become the focus of resistance more than a moral elite. I think that we are in a bit of a transition, certain universities have had the function of moral elitism and we are entering a state where they are fulfilling the role of resistance, which I think is the role that they have to fulfill; not the moralistic elite.

• He was born in Barcelona in 1982.

• He won the Anagrama Essay Prize 2020 Things as they are and other fantasies and is co-author of the short essay with Natalia Carrillo Moral hypochondria.

• As an employee of El País, he is interested in the interface between philosophy, morality and literature. Since 2014 he has lived in Mexico City and is a researcher in legal philosophy at the Institute for Philosophical Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

• His latest work is Wildebeestan extraordinary book, as brilliant as it is unclassifiable.

Wildebeestby Pau Luque (Anagrama).