From the Shadow of Universal History. Finis Terrae and Liberation in the Thought of Amelia Podetti and Enrique Dussel

This paper explores the respective interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy of history by Argentine thinkers Amelia Podetti and Enrique Dussel. Although they likely met, they shared a similar intellectual project, characterized by a critical appropriation of European thought, aiming to incorporate Latin America’s role in world history. For Dussel 1492 serves as the original and constitutive milestone of Modernity, and he argues that the Cartesian ego cogito is founded upon – and inseparable from – an ego conquiro that implies the hiding and expulsion of the Other. Podetti, conversely, asserts that only from Latin America, as finis terrae, is it “possible to perceive in its true form and dimensions the history of man on the planet”. Both Podetti and Dussel offer disobedient readings of Hegel’s philosophy. They strategically appropriate ideas and conceptual matrices from the philosopher of the Phenomenology with the aim to subvert his philosophical project and rewrite it, synthesizing it with entirely different paradigms of thought and novel philosophical-political experiences.