https://doi.org/10.37955/cs.v6i1.240
Received June 12, 2021 / Approved October, 01 2021 Pages: 63-73
eISSN: 2600-5743
The Topois: forms of linkage with
society or imaginary realities?
Los Topois. ¿formas de vinculación con la sociedad o
imaginario de las realidades
Labor equity: Gender perspective
Daisy Meza Palma
Ph.D. Universidad de Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Ecuador Daisy.mezap@ug.edu.ec,
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4423-9940
Rodrigo Valdenegro Cáceres
Master, Gestor de Docente Investigador, Universidad de Guayaquil. Guayaquil, Ecuador,
Rodrigo.valdenegroc@ug.edu.ec, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3612-370X
ABSTRACT
With regard to the term linkage, today it is urgent to redefine the
conceptualization that modernity has made of it in its current
moment of blurriness, in the hypertrophic concept that translates
into what citizenship with rights implies. The conceptual recipe
book inherited from modernity in the face of a context that is
configured and deconfigured socially, economically, politically,
culturally and educationally worldwide, invisibilizes in an
increasingly notorious way, the possibility of building new
civilizing fabrics embroidered with citizen rights and neo-
humanizing logics, from which the concept of Academy does not
escape.
RESUMEN
A propósito del término vinculación, hoy es impostergable
redefinir la conceptualización que de él ha hecho la modernidad en
su actual momento de borrosidad, en el hipertrófico concepto que
se traduce acerca de lo que implica ciudadanía con derechos. El
recetario conceptual heredado de la modernidad frente a un
contexto que se configura y desconfigura social, económica,
política, cultural y educativamente a nivel mundial, invisibiliza de
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forma cada vez más notoria, la posibilidad de construir nuevos
tejidos civilizatorios bordados de derechos ciudadanos y lógicas
neohumanizadoras, de lo cual, no escapa el concepto de Academia.
Keywords/ Palabras clave
Topois, linkage, imaginaries, realities, hypertrophic discourse,
pansyncretic discourse
Topois, vinculación, imaginarios, realidades, discurso
hipertrófico, discurso pansincrético
Introduction
Historically, when defining the term linkage in the context of what
the Academy originally meant, one cannot fail to highlight its
conception as a space for elites, illuminators of students who were
conceived as beings without light: A (without) luminis (light) and
thus, it was taking from this conception , everything that implied
social and educational practices of work towards realities, in which
the inclusion of social diversities as an integrating option of the
socio-cultural processes of the planet and therefore, the thinking
emerging knowledge of such realities without the service and
approval of the Academy were inadmissible.
The academic structure was conceived in a pedestalic way, in the
image and likeness of the prevailing social models of the time and
conceived as a space only for those who, from the truths built from
the enlightenment thinking from the discourse of the Social
Contract, weaved the course of non-inclusive practices, today very
much in force socio-historically and culturally in the peoples of the
world, with the same faces of the most primitive civilizations,
manifested in xenophobic, aporophobic, pedophilic and
misogynist expressions that aggravate the civilizational crisis.
Everything points to the consolidation of historically inherited
models that have not been consulted; well, like all inheritance.
Such continuation and reproduction represents the visibilization
of the imaginaries of the hypertrophic discourse generated in the
narrative and semiology of the enlightenment movement,
sustained and sustained in epistemic criteria of truth, veracity,
certainty and universality.
The narrative implicit in the course of modernity still in force,
crossed from a liquid society, with postmodern, complex and
transcomplex movements, of which some Latin American
countries are at the forefront: demands what Meza, D (2020:1)
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defines as the need for: "Conceptual reconfigurations for a model
of university education from the transcomplex vision in times of
global and planetary crisis".
Understanding this requirement implies overcoming worn-out
rationalisms, technocratic curricular models and moving towards
integrative models, which from the complexus or embrace of
knowledge, move towards real solutions given in the social
complexities prevailing in the century and civilizing processes in
force and to come.
It is necessary to ask ourselves if it is possible to achieve this from
the concepts of linkage - extension - work or community service
inherited from the blurred modernity? From where do we link
ourselves? What do we link ourselves for and how do we link
ourselves?
By linking ourselves as a structure, a conceptual hypertrophy is
established in which the term iluminis reappears and without
light, by extending ourselves, we reproduce the same imaginaries
of the Scholastic Academy towards the different spaces and
territories of social realities.
What do we link? What do we link ourselves to? Alvarez (2001:8)
warns: "The need to understand an academy and education linked
to life", so that from the fragmented, individualized knowledge,
loaded with technical and instructionalism and scientistic
egolatry, it becomes difficult to achieve resignifying processes of
social and human needs.
It is urgent, an Academy beyond the Academy, generator of Topoic
culture, understanding by Topois according to Meza, D (2020:15):
"The construction of healthy strong social groups to generate new
social models".
Topoic culture, according to the same author, leads to overcoming
divisions and building new forms of human relationality. So, what
are the processes of bonding with society about?
To overcome relations of power and subordination.
According to Punset, E (2006:10): "Recovering the soul that
is in the brain".
To build from what has been lived, what has existed,
without denying anyone.
Weaving between the light and darkness of citizenship
without borders, without stripping anyone's life or identity.
Building forms of relationality with society , which are
hopeful
Offer real solutions to real problems.
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Do not pretend to take the academy to society but to build
with society.
Building diversities and pluralities on respect and the
sensitive reason of Mafesoli, Honnet and Wilber.
Achieving the Dialogic Epistemological Synthesis, which
goes against the postulates of theories that stimulated
antagonisms of all kinds, makes it possible to build
processes from thesis and antithesis in complexus, embrace
or complementarity between different ones.
Eradicate what Boaventura, D (2010:32) defines as:
Positions of Social Apartheud from any class or socio-
cultural, economic, political and ideological territory.
Listening to silenced voices as knowledge to be built.
Building with and without original knowledge, from the
sociology of absences.
Raise levels of consciousness through healing practices.
The topoic culture as a tool of approach and social accompaniment
of the University towards life, does not consist of hypertrophying
the original discourses of the needs in each social reality, it is not
about the Academy illuminating, but sharing and weaving
knowledge, it is not about taking university knowledge to the
realities, but to interweave knowledge of everyday life, with tools
of high level of cognitive depth that promote solutions of all kinds.
Achieving this, implies what Facio, A (2010:23) defines as: "The
conversion of the personal into collective social policy", from the
sociology of absences, in recognition of all, transcending the soul
over the utilitarian body, with a path to citizenship formation.how
do we transcend then, from the Hypertrophic Discourse in Covid19
times in the Academy to the Pansyncretic Discourse with new
healthy strong social groups or topois without conceiving it as a
utopia?
Definitely, working the levels of individual and collective
consciousness, since the consciousness is generated from a series
of psychological, biological, social and spiritual situations, that is
to say, that the psychological, biological and social constitute a
mesh imbricated in the consciousness. These are difficult states to
understand because there is still no unified explanation. However,
to understand the consciousness, there is a phenomenological,
cognitive, gestalt, biological, behavioral, constellational,
humanistic and transpersonal approach.
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Materials and Methods
The phenomenological approach is based on European philosophy,
especially the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, the
study of the mind could not proceed according to the methods of the
natural sciences, but had to be based on a different method. For, Kant
believed that our mind builds its own internal experiences on the
external world. Therefore, the only way to know ourselves consisted in
introspection about our essential nature. Introspection is the method
most frequently used by phenomenologists. They seek a form of
knowledge that is not contaminated, as expressed by Salgado ,
E (2003:46) , by the "objectifying conceptualization
that suggests the search for external causes. In this sense, the
phenomenological approach gives a place of privilege to self-
knowledge, above objective knowledge". On the other hand, the
cognitive conception , according to Gardner (1985: 17), is
characterized by:
a) the use of representations (e.g., symbols, diagrams, images, ideas)
to explain human thought; b) the use of the computer as a model of
human thought; c) the downplaying of affect, context, culture and
history, which means that cognitive science aims at "pure" cognitive
explanations, independent of context; d) the grounding in classical
philosophical problems, such as the problem of mind and knowledge.
The cognitive approach has also been called computational since it
proposes, according to Churchland, (1984:92): "A system of internal
states governed by a system of computational procedures...". The
purpose as expressed by Churchland, (ob.cit). is: "To construct a
scheme of the real functional organization of the human nervous
system or of the nervous systems of any creature that is the object of
study".
In general, most cognoscitivists consider that the processes they study
are based on neural processes; others claim that the priority interest
consists in the program (the "software"), not in the structure (the
"hardware"). In this case, it would be irrelevant for the cognitive
sciences, according to Salgado, E (2003:47), whether: "A human brain
or a computer or any other organ carries out the processes we call
thinking".
The biological approach postulates according to Churchland's (1984:
15) that:
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Cognitive activities are ultimately activities of the nervous system.
Joys and sorrows, memories and ambitions, sense of personal identity
and free will, are in fact nothing more than the behavior of a vast
complexity of nerve cells.
Finally, the behaviorist approach is concerned with the distinction
between the objective and the subjective. Based on the philosophy of a
supposed realism, the methodological behaviorists attempted to
explain behavior in terms of the strictly observable. Introspection was
rejected as a method of psychological inquiry. Mentalistic terms were
banished.
While for behaviorism everything is subjective, the idea would then be
to respond conscious activity to observable notions. Therefore, for the
behaviorist approach, consciousness would be an effect where it would
not be necessary to meditate, analyze, investigate or deduce its origins.
These are the phenomenological approach that thinks that
consciousness must be sought within each subject, the cognitive
approach that thinks that consciousness is an effect of a process
similar to computers, the biological approach that thinks that
consciousness is an effect of a long evolutionary process and finally
behaviorism that considers that consciousness is nothing more than a
reduction to what can be observed with a high subjective load that falls
in practice on human judges who condemn others.
But, what triggers the state of consciousness, that is to say, how is
consciousness produced and manifested, that is to say, if an individual
consciousness exists, could it disturb a collective consciousness? Now,
if an individual consciousness exists, could it manage other states of
consciousness?
If we are not clear about this diatribe in terms of what is implied in the
conformation of individual and collective consciousness, how do we
approach the social and cultural worlds of differences of all kinds?
From an Academy that intervenes in spaces with pre-thought-out
projects or with projects constructed from topoic networks? In short,
the forms of consciousness are marking an important process to
understand social spaces without hypertrophying what they represent
in their essence. From there, the understanding that this will depend
on: The way we perceive reality.
Reality is also a complex phenomenon to define. What is reality for me
is not reality for someone else, therefore, the term realities, since
reality does not exist, it is only a social imaginary built from the visions
that homogenize and universalize everything as if it were about
humans and uniform cultures. However, we perceive it.
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Results
In general terms, perception can be defined as the set of processes and
activities related to the stimulation that reaches the senses, through
which we obtain information about our habitat, the actions we perform
in it and our own internal states. However, despite this general
definition, it is not enough to cover the whole map or the territory of
reality, because while I define it, it changes, modifies and transforms
itself. In fact, spaces of reality that cannot be perceived are usually
filled in with the help of others who have seen, perceived, felt, lived,
observed and even interpreted it. Therefore, as a fact is not perceived,
it is not conscious for some, and the question is: How to make a fact
conscious from a thought to an emotion? Hence, communities tend to
perceive realities according to collective imaginaries and social
representations installed by the structures that intervene them, in
which the academy is no exception.
In such a way that, when there is no awareness of a fact, a piece of
awareness is borrowed and assimilated, transformed and sought to be
understood. This is what usually happens when communities
intervene with projects that did not emerge from their real needs but
from someone who thought of them at a desk or intuited them as
indispensable or simply took on the task of interpreting them.
In liquid modernity, for example, there are devices or human
processes created with the purpose of being able to couple and
accommodate them to the supposed "consciousness". One of those
devices are social media, essentially radio, television and digital media
such as Facebook, instagram, tweeter, tik tok, among others, which,
without underestimating their usefulness, do not always represent the
reflection of real social realities.
Other ways of creating consciousness are all the institutional and
organizational organisms that mark and direct the way in which the
state of "consciousness" must function or at least move.
Thus understanding the construction of consciousness, in covid 19 and
post covid 19 times, it is really difficult to overcome the construction
of consciousness from the learned hopelessness to which the traps of
the hypertrophic discourse opened the doors, determined to interpret
everything in a biased, dichotomized, polarized and ideologized way,
from segmenting and separating perspectives of knowledge, people
and sciences.
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Then, how to understand that the pandemic is precisely the historical
moment to propitiate a driving academy, integrator of social fabrics
within the framework of their differences and builder of new social
knowledge? It is the stellar moment to introduce the benefits of the
Pansyncretic Discourse, understood by González, G (2001:15) as:
"Integrative forms of knowledge, consciences and humanities".
These ways of approaching social realities, give relevance to the styles
of university approach, conceived as accompaniments and not as
interventionist projects, in which it is worth the usefulness that today,
for example, television and mass media, who have changed the
communicative function they traditionally had, giving way to the
possibility of overcoming the hypertrophy that makes impossible the
formation of healthy topois or strong social groups, which in no way
constitute new forms of social movements, but rather the construction
of citizen networks.
Thus, there is an urgent need for new forms of symbolic mediation that
overcome the biases provided by a vision of reality, according to
Salgado, E. ( ob. cit): "Selected, sometimes intentionally manipulated
for specific purposes; in short, an atrophied, saturated, if not
spectacularized perspective". On the contrary, the pansyncretic
integrating discourse seeks to build from the fabric of knowledge and
humanities in constant dialogues, since it is not a matter of linking but
of accompanying in social constructions from an academy that thinks,
recognizes and lets think, with a conscience that admits that we all
need each other. The matter becomes difficult, but not impossible or
utopian, if we deregulate the egomaniacal vision of science and power.
The pandemic-post pandemic time, with an academy in human
attrition but with high technology, requires and will continue to
require strong healthy topois, new logics of insertion into society,
knowledge in complexus, and high vibratory states of individual and
collective consciousness and that, definitely, is not possible to solve it
from technology in monologue with itself or from knowledge that
already considers to have the answers to all the requirements of each
different social space. Therefore, the result of the pandemic and post
pandemic is always the same; fear, new social pathologies, separation
of humanities, anguish and learned hopelessness and therefore,
paradigmatic and social paralysis concealed in the instrumental and
now human machines.
The covid- post covid prompted the paralysis of the physical body, the
psychological body, the social body and the spiritual body, from which
another phenomenon is produced; which is delirium. Delirium is the
distortion of reality (if it exists) is the distortion of thought. In this
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sense, if there is a Hypertrophic Discourse in the Academy, it is
necessary to work on the clearing of a supposed academic knowledge
towards a knowledge of socio-cultural integralities at the service of the
requirements of the new era.
But what is academic knowledge, academic thinking and academic
results? It is something very simple: the constant search for truth and
certainties. It is a dynamic turn by the struggle and perseverance to
attack delusions and false knowledge. However, the search today from
some epistemological tendencies of the Academy, walks towards more
integrative forms of thoughts such as the Pansyncretic Discourse.
Covid 19 changed the world and continues to do so, and with it, it
continues to reinforce a narrative to understand social and human
problems from hypertrophies or interpretations either biased by
ideologies and sometimes, even by ignorance of reality, not admitted.
Hence the urgency of forming new social and academic topoic fabrics
with a vision of integrative pansyncretic thoughts, which do not
represent moments of utopias, since knowledge is integrated as the
same represents the loop of life.
Conclusions
To understand that consciousness does not yet have a place and its
complex understanding in phenomenological, cognitive, biological or
behavioral approaches, since it is not possible to reach higher levels of
consciousness simply by existing. Consciousness does not function like
a computer, nor is it generated solely through evolutionary processes,
and even less, it is the effect of observation. Consciousness is a much
deeper subject that should not only be understood through its effects.
To build social, human, academic, scientific and research fabrics based
on Topoic Culture, from a conception of strong socially healthy teams
with a transdisciplinary and integrative vision. Developing Topoic
Culture implies transcending the conventional concept of the Academy
inherited from the blurred modernity, which implies overcoming the
terms inherited from the same logic, referred to: Linkage, extension
and community service, all implied in the semiology of Positivism that
understands the social , in distance to the Academy and to this one , as
a base of enlightenment rather than as a space of accompaniments.
To form topoic fabrics from integrative knowledge in complexus or
permanent embrace between different, driving forces to overcome
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antagonisms of all kinds, inherited from modernity and other civilizing
processes.
It is urgent to promote an Academy that generates accompaniment to
new civilizing processes with new ways of approaching them. It is
necessary to understand the university link with society as an
accompaniment of projects that emerge from society itself and not as
projects thought from the Academy towards life. Socially relevant
answers are required, rather than effective and efficient, since both
terms delineate an educational and social model, marked by utilitarian
pragmatism that rather than contributing to the solution of problems
in depth, only offers immediate solutions in the short and medium
term that do not transcend the needs from their root or essence.
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