Seminar on Enrique Lynch 

With Gonzalo Torné, Santiago Gerchunoff, Ángela Molina Climent, Carlos Revetria Yannuzzi, Sira Abenoza

Enrique Lynch (Buenos Aires, 1948 – Barcelona, 2020) occupies a prominent place among the authors who redefined essay writing in our country from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, making it more relevant to the new subjectivities of the time.

A professor of Aesthetics at the Universitat de Barcelona and contributor to leading Spanish and Latin American newspapers and magazines, his books would introduce a new way of narrating cultural history that drew on scholarship, but at the same time with a certain caustic and incisive approach. A style that was both distinct from less sophisticated popularisations and free from academic endogamy.

Five years after his death, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge is paying tribute to Enrique Lynch with a seminar featuring various leading figures who will analyse the work of this Argentinian writer. His legacy even today remains an essential and somewhat anomalous reference point in contemporary philosophical, literary and visual essays.

The seminar is the continuation of a series of approaches to key figures in the Catalan context whose first instalment was a tribute to Romà Gubern in 2019.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday 16 December, 7 pm
Enrique Lynch: a philosophical journey
With Gonzalo Torné. Streaming: https://youtube.com/live/vwclfGgMykg

Thursday 18 December, 7 pm
Roundtable discussion with Santiago Gerchunoff, Ángela Molina Climent and Carlos Revetria Yannuzzi, chaired by Sira Abenoza. Streaming: https://youtube.com/live/QkbVIA0RqiU

BIOGRAPHY OF ENRIQUE LYNCH
A few months after commencing a degree in History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Enrique Lynch dropped out to dedicate himself to political activism. He returned to the university in 1971 but changed his major and enrolled in Philosophy, a degree he considered to be the most ascetic and demanding, as well as the least connected to any expectations of personal success. He completed his degree in Philosophy in 1975 and became an editor, but after the 1976 coup in Argentina, he went into exile in Spain and eventually settled in Barcelona.

After facing many difficulties, he managed to complete his philosophy studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with a thesis on obedience in Thomas Hobbes’ theory of power under the supervision of Josep Maria Calsamiglia. Between 1976 and 1991, he worked as a professional editor. He was the editorial director at Editorial Gedisa for ten years, an advisor to Carlos Barral at the now defunct Argos-Vergara, director at Muchnik Editores and a member of the editorial board at Ediciones Destino. During this period, he edited and coordinated the publication of works as yet untranslated into Spanish by authors such as George Steiner, Gianni Vattimo, Marshall Sahlins, Lipovetsky and Clifford Geertz. In addition to writing criticism for the press, Lynch translated a significant number of important classical and contemporary works in four languages, including books by Thomas Hobbes, François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Massimo Montinari, Jon Elster and Paul de Man.

Lynch initially began a unsuccessful doctoral dissertation on the rhetoric of legitimacy in political philosophy under the supervision of Salvador Giner, but later, deeply affected by his mother’s death in 1985, he focused on writing an essay about the relationship between philosophical discourse and narrative theory entitled La lección de Sheherezade: Filosofía y narración (The Lesson of Scheherazade: Philosophy and Narrative) (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1987). The work received immediate acclaim for its originality and literary merit. He was a finalist for both the Anagrama Essay Prize and the National Essay Prize in 1987. In this book, Lynch overturns the traditional hypothesis according to which philosophy is a variation or transcendence of mythical-narrative discourse, investigating the extent to which narratives possess a hermeneutics of the sense of time. After reviewing extensive semiotic theories of narrative, he postulated an original definition of mythos and ultimately discovered a close link between philosophy and literature based on narrative discourse. This led him to speculate on the possibility of philosophising without the need for an idea of truth.

He returned to the issues of the relationship between philosophy and literature in El merodeador: Tentativas sobre filosofía y literatura (The Marauder: Essays on Philosophy and Literature) (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1990), in which seven successive narrative readings of the works of Canetti, Freud, Ortega y Gasset, Shakespeare, De Quincey and Descartes put his proposals to the test regarding the relationship between the narrative model and the rhetoric of argumentation.

In his third attempt at completing his doctoral dissertation, Lynch devoted himself entirely to reading Nietzsche, especially the rudiments of his theory of language. Following a lead suggested by Paul de Man, he began studying Nietzschean texts on rhetoric and finally developed a theoretical model based on Nietzsche’s posthumous work concerning the rhetorical status of the sign. The result was “Aproximación a la teoría del lenguaje en la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche” (An Approach to the Theory of Language in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Work), a thesis supervised by José María Valverde and published in Barcelona in 1993 by Destino under the title Dioniso dormido sobre un tigre: A través de Nietzsche y su teoría del lenguaje (Dionysus Asleep on a Tiger: Through Nietzsche and His Theory of Language).

After obtaining his PhD in Philosophy, Lynch was appointed Professor of Aesthetics at the Universitat de Barcelona, a post that he held until his death.

In 1997, his most popular and significant work, Prosa y circunstancia (Prose and Circumstance) (Barcelona: Anagrama), saw the light of day, a literary exercise based on narratives of often autobiographical personal circumstances, presenting thirty-three different models of essayistic prose.

In 1999, he published a short history of the idea of beauty (Sobre la belleza [On Beauty]. Madrid: Anaya), using this idea as his guiding thread from the time of Plato to the present day. This enabled him to provide a swift yet thoughtful overview of aesthetic ideas in Western philosophy, beginning from the depiction of beauty in ancient Greece and culminating in its ironic portrayal in contemporary art and communication. The following year, he published another book, this time on television: La televisión: El espejo del reino (Television: The Kingdom’s Mirror) (Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2000). In it, he challenges the notion that television is a monster that distorts our worldview, dominates our consciences and imposes current moral and behavioural values. Against this apocalyptic depiction of so-called “audiovisual civilisation”, although without resorting to unjustified optimism, he argues the opposite thesis, in that television, far from imposing a non-existent standard or serving a supposed plan for the mass domination of individuals, faithfully reflects and reproduces existing values, and even defends and promotes them.

In 2003, he published In-moral: Historia, identidad, literatura (In-moral: History, Identity, Literature) (Mexico-Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica). In-moral places its focus on three areas: the philosophy of history, identity prejudices and the relationship between philosophy and literature. Judging by some of the key issues addressed in the book, these areas are revealed to have necessary moral implications.

In four lectures delivered at the Universidad de Navarra, Lynch revisited the relationship between philosophy and literature (Filosofía y literatura: Identidad y/o diferencia – Cuatro lecciones [Philosophy and Literature: Identity and/or Difference: Four Lectures]. Cuadernos de la Cátedra Jorge Oteiza, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, 2006, and Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007), adopting an approach to three discursive fields that unite them: poetry, myth and prose.

In 2004, he founded Las Nubes, a digital journal of philosophy, art and literature, together with Elisenda Julibert, Gonzalo Torné, Socorro Giménez and Antonio Gutiérrez Vara. Building on his productive work at Las Nubes, he published a compilation of short essays in 2014 that had originally appeared digitally in the “El Nubarrón” section of the magazine entitled Nubarrones: Breviario intermitente (Dark Clouds: Intermittent Breviary) (Barcelona: Comba, 2014). Thereafter then, until his death, he continued to publish these “dark clouds” weekly, which he defined as “daydreams or isolated thoughts, interrupted musings, quick scribbles, highly skewed observations and, at times, a touch bitter”. These have been collected and published posthumously by Ladera Norte in two volumes: Nubarrones I. Una filosofía a retazos (Dark Clouds I: A Fragmented Philosophy) and Nubarrones II. Arte, música y literatura seguido de lo que pudo a ver sido una biografía (Dark Clouds II: Art, Music and Literature Followed by What Could Have Been a Biography) (Madrid: Ladera Norte, 2025).

In 2020, he published Ensayo sobre lo que no se ve  (Essay on What Is Unseen) (Madrid: Abada Editores), the result of concerns that had accompanied him for more than ten years on the theme of the image, representation and the way in which we think, offering an extensive final analysis of Jeff Wall’s work Picture for Women.

Published works

• Hobbes: La gramática de la obediencia, seguido de una antología de textos de Thomas Hobbes. Textos Cardinales. Barcelona: Península, 1987.
• La lección de Sheherezade: Filosofía y narración. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1988. Finalist for the 15th Anagrama Essay Prize.
• El merodeador: Tentativas sobre filosofía y literatura. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1990. 2nd edition, Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2007.
• Dioniso dormido sobre un tigre: A través de Nietzsche y su teoría del lenguaje. Barcelona: Ediciones Destino, 1993.
• La lección de Sheherezade: Filosofía y narración. 2nd edition, revised and expanded. Mexico: Editorial Ariel, 1995. 3rd edition, Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2007.
• Prosa y circunstancia. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1997, and Buenos Aires: Alfaguara-Taurus, 1999.
• Sobre la belleza. Madrid: Anaya, 1999.
• La televisión: El espejo del reino. Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2000.
• In-moral: Historia, identidad, literatura. Mexico-Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2003.
• Filosofía y/o literatura: Identidad y/o diferencia. Cuatro lecciones. Pamplona: Cuadernos de la Cátedra Jorge Oteiza, Universidad Pública de Navarra, 2006, and Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007.
• Nubarrones: Breviario intermitente. Barcelona: Editorial Comba, 2014.
• Ensayo sobre lo que no se ve. Madrid: Abada Editores, 2020.
• Nubarrones (2 vols: Nubarrones I. Una filosofía a retazos and Nubarrones II. Arte, música, cine y literatura seguidos de lo que pudo haber sido una autobiografía). Madrid: Ladera Norte, 2025.

Gonzalo Torné (Barcelona, 1976) is a novelist. He has published Hilos de sangre (2010), Divorcio en el aire (2013), Años felices (2017), El corazón de la fiesta (2020) and Brujería (2024). He holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona and has also worked as an editor of classics: Montaigne, Pascal, Johnson, the Encyclopedists, Epicurus and Newton, among others. He currently directs the Alba Poesía collection and co-directs El ministerio, a cultural magazine associated with CTXT.

Ángela Molina Climent holds degrees in Spanish Philology and in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She was an art and literature critic for the newspaper ABC. Since 2002, she has been a regular critic for El País, writing for its cultural supplements Babelia, Ideas and Quadern. She is the author of several essays on feminist theory and gender studies.

Carlos Revetria Yannuzzi is a member of Las Nubes, a digital magazine created and directed by Enrique Lynch, where since 2012 he has served as webmaster and editor. For thirteen years, he has been responsible for programming the University of Barcelona’s summer school, “Els Juliols,” and the short courses Gaudir UB, an outreach initiative showcasing the university’s research and teaching to the general public. A philosopher and philologist by training, he compiled, selected and annotated Ladera Norte, the two-volume edition of Enrique Lynch’s Nubarrones, written between 2006 and 2020 and constituting the Argentine thinker’s final work. He has published scholarly articles and book chapters on Latin American philosophers and writers such as the Mexican Alfonso Reyes and the Peruvian César Vallejo.

Santiago Gerchunoff (Buenos Aires, 1977) has lived in Madrid since 1997 and is currently Professor of Political Theory at Carlos III University. He was a founding bookseller of the Muga bookstore and editorial director of Clave Intelectual and Siglo XXI. His research focuses on contemporary political theory, cultural criticism, and the public sphere mediated by communication technologies. His latest books are Ironía On. Una defensa de la conversación pública de masas (2019) and Un detalle siniestro en el uso de la palabra fascismo (2025), both published by Anagrama.