Abdel Hernández San Juan
Research theorist, author, thinker and professor (Language, communication and culture; Philosophy and religious studies; Education)
Caracas, Venezuela
Abdel Hernández San Juan, American theorist and thinker of Cuban origin who has developed a return of contemporary thought towards the most abstract classical philosophy (Kant, Hegel), while retheorizing the science of semiotics back to logic and exploring new intersections between abstract classical philosophy in a phenomenological and hermeneutic sense, logic (Hegel, Husserl), etc., phenomenological sociology (Alfred Schutz), semiotics of art and culture and cultural anthropology. Very abstract thinker of hard sciences (metatheory and metaempiria), empirically specialized in language sciences, theoretical linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Louis Hjelmslev, Emile Benveniste, etc.), semiotic theory (Charles Sanders Peirce) and in philosophy and theory of art, he has focused on the interdisciplinary development of the new field of anthropology and art, developing it both from the perspective of social sciences, linguistic anthropology, theory of culture, urban and rural sociology, as well as art interpretation and criticism, (art semiotics and cultural anthropology).
Works as single author/books:
"The Correlate of the World: interpretant and structure in postmodern cultural theory". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"Thinking science: new phenomenological avenues between philosophy and sociology". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"The enigmas of the ground: introduction to semiological sociology". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"The metonymies of the museum: The textual exegesis of visual culture between semiotic theory and postmodern anthropology"
"Rethinking intertextuality: research method in sociology of culture". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"Semantic elucidation: semiotic, sociolinguistic and semantic theory of culture". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"Rethinking urban anthropology". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"Anthropology of archaeology". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"The subject in Creativity: Subject and object from a new philosophy of art". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"Edges and Overflows of art: advents of Transarte". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"The self and the heritage". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
"The intramundane horizon". By Abdel Hernández San Juan
Compendiums of art criticism
An Expedition to the Threshold. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
The Subject in Creativity. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
Borders and Overflows of Art. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
Horizons of Exegesis: Archaeological readings of contemporary art. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
Cultural Bodies: Art Criticism as Anthropology of art. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
The Interpretation of Art: Essays on Venezuelan Art. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
The Interpretation of discourse: Hermeneutics and analysis of rhetoric and visual discourses. By Abdel Hernández San juan
The Reinscription of Culture: Reconfigurations of art, culture and identity in complex societies. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
Exchanging Domains: Aesthetics, Semiotics and anthropological approaches to art. By Abdel Hernández San Juan
Writing the Sublime: Art Semiotics and Cultural Anthropology
Understanding art in the post-avant-garde: An anthropological approach to Cuban art. By Abdel Hernandez San Juan
Influenced by structuralism in theoretical linguistics and semiotic theory, Hegel's science of logic, the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, and the cognitive anthropology of Stephen A Tyler.
He has been a prominent exponent in the new generation of postmodern anthropologists from Texas since the nineties, where he lived many years of his life, as well as from Caracas. His books The Correlate of the World, Thinking Science and Anthropology of Archeology have been published in English by the social sciences session of the publishing house Gyan books, New Delhi, India, which has also published Indian anthropology: an anthropological perspective, The unspeakable: discourse, rhetoric and dialogue in the postmodern world and Cognitive anthropology by Stephen A Tyler, as well as Anthropology as cultural criticism by George and Marcus.
1997-2003-Complementary research professor associated with the department of anthropology at Rice University
1996-2002- Researcher Artistic Director of the Transart Foundation for art and anthropology in Houston until 2002
1996- The Postmodern Work: Beyond the Intertextual. lectures given as Visiting Professor of the Department of Classical and Hispanic Studies at Rice University at Fondren Library
1997- Artists in Trance: New Methodologies, spring course on interdisciplinary methodologies of semiotic theory, art theory and cultural anthropology, taught at the Rice Media Center, as Visiting Professor of the anthropology department of Rice University and the transart foundation of Houston with the participation of the art and architecture departments
1999- Art Pizte: a Perspective from art criticism. Lecture given as Guest Professor of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College, in the department's auditorium
2000- Guest editor of the magazine artlies de Texas, where he edited number 28, bilingual, epistemes of art, Texas
1998-2000- Publishes critical essays in Sicardy Sanders
2001- Collaborations in the field, essay shared with George E Marcus, department of anthropology, Rice University
2002- Gives a lecture at the theoretical panel of the Los Angeles Art Festival, House of Japanese Culture, December, Los Angeles
2006- Theorist and critic chosen from the magazine digitalcultures.org, from Brunel University in London, edition curated by the German theater theorist Johannes Birringer
2006- George E Marcus publishes his essay Artists in the Field: Between art and Anthropology, published in Berg, Oxford in 2006 and then in Roudledge where he discusses Abdel Hernández San Juan in the context of "Writing Culture" in anthropology
Collaborations
Between Seeing and Scenes. By Abdel Hernández San Juan and Quetzil Eugenio Castañeda, Interdisciplinary Ethnography Essay, Rice University Department of Anthropology and University of Houston Department of Anthropology
Evocation: a philosophical dialogue. By Abdel Hernández San Juan and Stephen A Tyler, Department of Anthropology, Rice University
Counterpoints: Philosophical dialogues. By Abdel Hernández San Juan and Alberto Méndez Suarez
Rumbos: Explorations in Cultural Anthropology. By Abdel Hernández San Juan and Alberto Méndez Suarez
Art and anthropology in seven exhibitions. By Abdel Hernández San Juan and Surpik Angelini, series of exhibitions exhibited on the campus of Rice University, co/curated and co/presented by both
References to collaborations
1998- Artists in Trance: Various Artists. By thomas Mc Evilley, art in America, 1998, essay on the seven exhibitions co-curated by Abdel and Surpik in the spring of 1997 at Rice University
1997- Latin American Encounters: Anthropology at Rice. By David Kaplan, essay on co-curating Abdel and Surpik, published in the Rice University newspaper, Rice News
Texts and prologues about the author
2002- "The Phenomenological Sociology of Abdel Hernández San Juan." By Alberto Méndez Suarez, International University of Florida, author of Wittgenstein, from analytical philosophy to the interpretation of culture, published by Exodus
Abdel was Visiting professor at the College of Fine Art at the University of Texas at Austi, 1998, topic: Anthropology and globalization of culture, Documenta de Kassel, dialogues with Catherine David, coordinated by Harper Montogomery
Interviews
2024/25-"Plexuses of interstitiality: interviews with Abdel Hernández San Juan." By Alberto Méndez Suarez
1998-Interview with Abdel Hernández San Juan. By Harper Montgomery, University of Texas at Austin
2022- Interview with Abdel Hernández San Juan. By Alex Werner, Department of Anthropology Cunny University, New York
2020- Interview with Abdel Hernández San Juan. By David Morris, Saint Martins University, London