Goya, o de la Ilustración como adumbramiento: Variaciones contemporáneas de Farideh Lashai a Los desastres de la guerra de Goya

Abstract

Abstract Resuming the conversation on Goya’s oeuvre that took place in the special issue of Romance Quarterly in 2007, this article pays attention to Goya’s Disasters of the War. Through a comparative reading of Goya’s The Disasters of the War and the video-installation of Iranian artist Farideh Lashai’s When I count…, this article proposes a notion of “adumbration” that shifts our understanding of Enlightenment as a narrative of power, progress and humanism founded on light. By way of theoretical reflections and drawing from Derrida and Nancy, this article shows how Goya and Lashai reflect with their works on the condition of exposition and disappearance of bodies on our age of global war and the commodification of the image. I propose “an Enlightenment as Adumbration” as a critical alternative to cultural critique based on Enlightenment logocentric categories such as progress, representation, or agency in Modern Iberian Studies.