Francisco T Gallegos | Wake Forest University (original) (raw)

Books by Francisco T Gallegos

SUNY Press, 2020

This book analyzes the social and political philosophy of Jorge Portilla (1919−1963) and its rele... more This book analyzes the social and political philosophy of Jorge Portilla (1919−1963) and its relevance to contemporary debates about the politics of social and cultural identity, the nature of community, and the political role of affect and moods. The appendix offers English-language translations of three of Portilla’s essays, including the 1952 essay, “The Spiritual Crisis of the United States.” These essays, and the chapters that analyze them, shed new light on questions such as: What drives the impulse toward political nationalism? What sustains the myths that organize our political lives? And under what conditions do communities disintegrate?

Articles & Chapters by Francisco T Gallegos

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 2023

Do moods have intentional objects? If so, what kinds of intentional objects might they have? Some... more Do moods have intentional objects? If so, what kinds of intentional objects might they have? Some theorists hold that moods are objectless affective states, not "about" anything. Others argue that moods are directed toward a maximally general object like "the world," and so they are about everything, in some sense. In this article, I advance a new theoretical account of the intentional object of moods. According to what I call the "present-situation view," moods are directed toward, or about, the present situation. In other words, a mood is essentially an interpretation of one's current situational context. As such, our moods change over time in a way that tracks our changing sense of how things are going, here and now. This article aims to make the case that the present-situation view, so understood, offers unique theoretical resources to describe and explain how we experience moods and how they change over time, while also suggesting a helpful way to think about the functional role moods may play in our broader cognitive architecture, and pointing toward promising directions for future research into the ways that moods can be experienced, managed, and shared.

Horizons of Phenomenology: Essays on the State of the Field and Its Applications, 2023

This chapter discusses some contributions that Mexican and Latinx phenomenologists have made to t... more This chapter discusses some contributions that Mexican and Latinx phenomenologists have made to the critical phenomenology of home, i.e., the experience of “being at home in the world”—an experience that has always been both deeply cherished and bitterly contested. Tracing a line of thought that runs from the work of two Mexican phenomenologists in the 1940s and 1950s (Jorge Portilla and Emilio Uranga) to the work of two contemporary Latinx phenomenologists in the U.S. (Gloria Anzaldúa and Mariana Ortega), we find a shared view that the Mexican and Latinx experience has been marked by zozobra, an anxious condition characterized by the inability to be at home in the world. However, these philosophers disagree about the source of this zozobra, and even whether zozobra is something that should overcome or embraced and celebrated. Reading these thinkers together, we learn that home is several things simultaneously: an essential foundation for human existence; an illusory ideal whose pursuit leads us to exclude vulnerable others and vulnerable parts of ourselves; and a site for the negotiation of the circumstances in which one finds oneself, in the tragic and beautiful hope of creating a life to call one’s own.

Cultural Perspectives on Shame: Unities and Diversities, 2023

This chapter examines the nature and political significance of shame through the lens of Emilio U... more This chapter examines the nature and political significance of shame through the lens of Emilio Uranga’s 1952 book, "Analysis of Mexican Being." I argue that Uranga’s analysis of the phenomenological condition he calls "accidentality” advances the contemporary discourse on shame by adding depth and dimension to Dan Zahavi’s phenomenology of shame, while also
revealing important similarities between shame and angst. I then offer an interpretive exploration of Uranga’s thought-provoking suggestion regarding how members of marginalized, social groups can cope with the shame that is produced by their political and social subordination—namely, to embrace this shame, transform it into angst, and use it as a means of subverting colonial ideology and becoming more authentic.

Journal of Social Philosophy , 2021

This article proposes a novel conception of affective injustice, according to which affective inj... more This article proposes a novel conception of affective injustice, according to which affective injustice is a state in which individuals or groups are deprived of “affective goods” which are owed to them. On this basis, I advocate an approach to the philosophical investigation of affective injustice that begins by establishing which affective goods are fundamental, and then considers which subsidiary goods—such as freedoms, resources, opportunities, and forms of recognition—may be necessary for the provision of those fundamental affective goods. Drawing from and developing ideas in the extant literature, I argue that two such fundamental affective goods include subjective well-being and emotional aptness. I then show that by analyzing deprivations of the subsidiary goods that enable a person to pursue and attain subjective well-being and emotional aptness, it is possible to shed new light on the cases of affective injustice that have been described in the extant literature, while also identifying other kinds of cases that have not been theorized to the same extent.

APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, 2017

*Winner of the 2017 APA Essay Prize in Latin American Thought* This paper examines Jorge Portilla... more *Winner of the 2017 APA Essay Prize in Latin American Thought* This paper examines Jorge Portilla’s conception of zozobra, the anxiety
that arises when a community’s shared “horizon of understanding” becomes disintegrated and the basic norms that govern life in a society become unstable. Portilla argues that zozobra is not merely psychological but existential in nature, and as such, it undermines our freedom at a deep, structural level, while giving rise to tendencies toward quietism, cynicism, nostalgia, and apocalyptic thinking. I argue that Portilla’s analysis of zozobra sheds light on the current situation in the US in the wake of the extremely divisive 2016 presidential election, and that it can help us evaluate various strategies for engaging in cultural politics.

Philosophia, 2017

Being in a mood—such as an anxious, irritable, depressed, tranquil, or cheerful mood—tends to alt... more Being in a mood—such as an anxious, irritable, depressed, tranquil, or cheerful mood—tends to alter the way we react emotionally to the particular objects we encounter. But how, exactly, do moods alter the way we experience particular objects? Perceptualism, a popular approach to understanding affective experiences, holds that moods function like "colored lenses," altering the way we perceive the evaluative properties of the objects we encounter. In this essay, I offer a phenomenological analysis of the experience of being in a mood that illustrates the limitations of the colored lens metaphor and demonstrates the basic inadequacy of the perceptualist account of moods. I argue that when we are in a mood, it is common to experience a kind of "emotional disconnection" in which we perceive evaluative properties that would normally elicit strong emotional reactions from us, but nonetheless we find that, in our present mood, we remain emotionally numb to these perceptions. Such experiences of "seeing but not feeling" are difficult to understand from within the perceptualist paradigm. Building on the work of Martin Heidegger, I sketch an alternative, phenomenological analysis of moods that can better account for experiences of emotional disconnection. On this alternative account, being in a mood does not merely alter the content of our perceptions but, rather, alters the way we interpret the overall significance of what we perceive, relative to a certain situational context.

APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, 2013

This essay discusses Jorge Portilla’s phenomenological analysis of values and freedom in his essa... more This essay discusses Jorge Portilla’s phenomenological analysis of values and freedom in his essay, “The Phenomenology of Relajo” (1966). Portilla argues that genuine freedom requires seriousness and sincerity; it requires wholehearted participation in cultural practices that one finds truly valuable. To support his argument, Portilla examines the ways that values and freedom are undermined when cultural practices are disrupted and break down as a result of the antics of the so-called "relajiento," a kind of “class clown” figure in Mexican culture who refuses to take anything seriously. Carlos Sánchez has criticized Portilla's rejection of the relajiento, suggesting that the relajiento’s disruptive behavior may be a liberatory act of defiance against the legacy of colonialism. I argue, however, that Portilla was right to see the relajiento’s behavior as counterproductive in the fight for liberation from oppression.

Journal of Philosophy of Emotion vol. 3, no. 2, 2022

Unpleasant emotions can be strongly “propulsive,” spurring us to make changes to our situation, p... more Unpleasant emotions can be strongly “propulsive,” spurring us to make changes to our situation, perspective, values, and commitments. These changes are often positive, even crucial to our pursuit of the good life. But under what conditions are unpleasant emotions strongly propulsive? I argue that the source of affective propulsion should not be located in the mere unpleasantness of a given emotion, but, rather, in the emotional context in which the emotion arises. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s comparative analysis of “shallow” and “deep” boredom, I claim that the propulsive quality of an emotion arises not from its intrinsic properties but from the ambivalence generated when two affective states simultaneously influence our sense-making activity in opposing ways.

Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, 2018

It has been said that all philosophy begins with a set of concerns and a set of intuitions. With ... more It has been said that all philosophy begins with a set of concerns and a set of intuitions. With this idea in mind, we ask: Would it be helpful to understand Mexican-American philosophy as a kind of philosophy that begins with the concerns and intuitions of the Mexican-American community? On this view, what distinguishes Mexican-American philosophy is the orientation from which the philosophical investigation proceeds. Such an orientation is shaped by the experiences and relationships that are characteristic of those who identify as Mexican-American. We offer a list of concerns and intuitions that we suggest are widely held by the Mexican-American community. Focusing on questions surrounding linguistic assimilation in the U.S., we illustrate how beginning from these particular starting points might alter the way we think about philosophical issues.

Journal of Philosophy of Emotions, 2020

What would it mean for an emotion to successfully "recognize" something about an object toward wh... more What would it mean for an emotion to successfully "recognize" something about an object toward which it is directed? This article draws from Rick Furtak's Knowing Emotions (2018) to articulate a novel account of emotional recognition. According to this account, emotional recognition can be assessed not only in terms of the "accuracy" of an emotional construal in a strictly epistemological sense, but also in terms of the quasi-ethical ideal of responding emotionally to what we encounter in ways that are "specific," "deep," and "balanced."

Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction, ed. Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr., 2019