Juan Manuel Garrido

Chilean philosopher of science and technology, working at the intersection of philosophy of biology, phenomenology of life, and political theory of techno-science. Linked to the Granel circle (Granel was his teacher) and the late-Nancean orbit. Contributor to *The Fragile Skin of the World*, where his essay "Not the Universal, but the Unknown" forms Ch III. He has held positions at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Santiago) and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago).

Key Points

  • Essay in Fragile Skin (Ch III): "Not the Universal, but the Unknown" — diagnoses modern techno-scientific production as the production-of-self-as-not-ceasing-to-be. Life has become the endless production of the conditions for not ceasing to be. The Unknown is structurally distinct from uncertainty: uncertainty is what living beings manage; the Unknown is what knowledge produces. See nancy-2021-fragile-skin-of-the-world III.
  • The Unknown vs the Universal: Garrido's central polemical-philosophical contrast. Modern science is conventionally framed as the universalist discipline (producing context-independent truth); Garrido argues that what science actually produces — given the un-foreseen nature of research-outcomes — is the Unknown. "Knowledge produces nothing but the unknown."
  • Critique of Badiou's mathematician-Internationale: Garrido reads Badiou's "genuine Internationale of mathematicians" (In Praise of Mathematics, 2016) as a forced generalization of a local idiosyncrasy — "the position of a truth without context." Garrido's counter-proposal: liberate within institutions "the poem, not the matheme" (citing Badiou himself for the distinction).
  • Latin American techno-scientific colonialism: Garrido's essay extends the critique to peripheral countries (Chile, Latin America) whose technological transfer models reproduce hegemonic dependency. "Participating in 'global' science appears to be nothing more than a way of deepening and consolidating new forms of economic and cultural colonization." Cites Pablo Kreimer, Hebe Vessuri, Jean-Claude Guédon.
  • Granel inheritance: Garrido cites Gérard Granel's 1973–74 Gramsci seminar — "the production of the possibility of living is what each of us pursues through his way of dressing, his relationship to money . . . etc." The Granelian register (Marxist-Heideggerian-Derridean political philosophy) is operative throughout.

Connections

  • contributes to nancy-2021-fragile-skin-of-the-world — Ch III, the Unknown / Universal contrast as Nancean-affirmative continuation.
  • cites Badiou's In Praise of Mathematics (2016) — as polemical target.
  • cites Granel (1973–74 Gramsci seminar) — methodological-philosophical anchor.
  • cites Bruno Latour's Facing Gaia — for the geological-ecological Anthropocene framing.
  • cites Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Toward a History of Epistemic Things) — differential reproduction in the philosophy of science.
  • cited by jean-luc-nancy in the preface to Ch III: "I found the text of Juan Manuel Garrido that follows particularly judicious" (J.-L. N., chapter note 1).

Open Questions

  • Is Garrido's Unknown/Universal contrast Nancean or independent? The Ch III essay reads as continuous with Nancy's vanishing-ontology and singular-plural — but Garrido has a more Granelian-Marxist-political register that Nancy lacks. Future ingest of Garrido's monograph On Time, Being, and Hunger (2012) or Chance, Phenomenology and Aesthetics (2014) would clarify.
  • What is Garrido's relation to the Nancy network (the "Strasbourg School" of Lacoue-Labarthe / Nancy / Granel disciples)? His Chilean position adds a Latin American techno-scientific register the rest of the network lacks.

Sources