David Foitzick Reyes is Professor of Spanish Language and Communication, Bachelor of Education, Master of Science in Education with a major in Educational Management and Administration from the Universidad Mayor de Santiago de Chile, and PhD in Romance Philology from the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, with a thesis on poetry of southern Chile. He has participated as a speaker at various international conferences and has published books, articles in joint editions and in university journals. Between 2015-2020 he was Scientific Coordinator of the international and interdisciplinary thematic network "Transnational change, social inequality, intercultural exchange and aesthetic manifestations: the example of Patagonia" (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF] and directed by the German Academic Exchange Service [DAAD]). He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Center for Transdisciplinary Studies ARCOSUR and at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies CALAS.

Research focuses

Latin American Poetry

History / Memories

Identities / Territories

Knowledge / Epistemes

Symbolic-cultural matrixes

Publications

Books:

2023. Patagonia Literaria IX. Aluvialidad en la poesía del sur de Chile. (libro actualmente en proceso de revisión editorial)          Potsdam-London: INOLAS.

2020. Patagonia Literaria VII. Antología de poesía del sur chileno. Selección y compilación: Sergio Mansilla Torres / David Foitzick Reyes. Potsdam-London: INOLAS.

Articles in magazines and edited books:

2023. “La trascendencia del alerce: hacia la construcción de un paradigma más propio para poder interpretar esa ‘dulce lanza verde’”. En: Urbina, X. y Barichivich, J (Eds.). La sobrevivencia del alerce y su cultura: la historia de los alerzales de la Cordillera Pelada, Chile. Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaíso (en imprenta).

2020. “La revuelta chilena de octubre: el momento de los “alienígenas’”. Revista Pléyades de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Chile. Pléyade especial / Octubre. Claudia Maldonado / David Foitzick Reyes, pp. 99-102.

2019. “El logos de la civilización: la construcción de la comunidad civilizada en Reducciones de Jaime Huenún Villa”. En: Hammerschmidt, Claudia (ed): Patagonia literaria V. Representaciones de la identidad cultural mapuche. Potsdam-London: INOLAS, pp. 185-223.

2018. “Escribir de y en la frontera: el sujeto fronterizo en Comarcas de Bernardo Colipán Filgueira”. En: Hammerschmidt, Claudia / Mansilla Sergio (eds): Transculturalidad y transfrontería en la literatura patagónica. Potsdam-London: INOLAS, pp. 75-100.

2018. “Al sur de las alteridades: un recorrido por los territorios simbólicos del sur de Chile”. En: Hammerschmidt, Claudia / Pollastri, Laura (eds): Patagonia plural. Identidades híbridas e intersecciones epistemológicas de una región transfronteriza. Potsdam-London: INOLAS, pp. 341-366.

2018. “Poéticas del sur del mundo como formas de apropiación en la construcción de territorios transfronterizos”. Escrituras locales en contextos globales II. Estrategias de resistencia, hg. v. Hammerschmidt, Claudia. Potsdam-London: INOLAS, pp. 83-117.

2016. “La representación del sujeto lírico en Hijos y Baile de señoritas de Rosabetty Muñoz: con el ethos en la fisura”. En: Hammerschmidt, Claudia (ed): Patagonia literaria II. Funciones, proyecciones e intervenciones de autoría estratégica en la nueva literatura patagónica. Potsdam-London: INOLAS, pp. 503-518.

2016. “De la tierra sin fuegos. Identidades invisibilizadas de la Patagonia: selknam, yámanas y qawashqar”. En: Hammerschmidt, Claudia (ed): Patagonia literaria. Fundaciones, invenciones y emancipaciones de un espacio geopolítico y discursivo. Potsdam-London: INOLAS, pp. 185-203. 

2015. “Sergio Larraín: una visión poética de la realidad (1931-2012)”. En: Revista SOPHIA AUSTRAL (Universidad de Magallanes, Punta Arenas) Nº 16, 2do Semestre pp. 61-74.

Postdoctoral research project at CALAS

Title: Ancient knowledge to face multiple crises: the emergence of symbolic-cultural matrices of the native peoples of Abya Yala-Cono Sur.

Abstract: This research analyzes the emergence of ancient symbolic-cultural matrices, which can and must dialogue (this time on equal terms) with the knowledge of western epistemologies that have been violently imposed and that have resulted in the different processes of coloniality in the subcontinent.

The different ways of seeing and interpreting the territory, that is, the symbolic territorialization that is made of it, is relevant to the different symbolic-cultural matrices that describe it. This results in a multi-territoriality, since it is not a single community that imagines the territory and interprets it; it is therefore a collective imaginary composed of mixtures, hybrids, juxtapositions and contradictions that occur within and play a role in the representativeness and the struggle for cultural identities.

It is also important to highlight that, from a western perspective, the territory, while being an imaginary, is a construction, but from the perspective of some native peoples, the territory is also an entity; a spirituality and therefore there is a different ordering that comes to question, above all -and in function of the multiple crises-, the extractivist economic development models that have been carried out in the context of the Anthropocene in the Southern Cone.

The objective of this project is to analyze the memories and versions of history present in the literatures of the native peoples of Abya Yala - Southern Cone and to problematize them in terms of the current multiple crises. To this end, we propose to address the different and violent processes of colonization, the territorial and symbolic reduction of the 'original' peoples of Abya Yala - Southern Cone, the verticalization of space, the formation of national states with all their reductionist and unifying political apparatus, the development models that deepen the social gap where the descendants of pre-colonial peoples are clear losers, extractivism in modernity and a whole history of fractures that have occurred since the Anthropocene in these territories, among others. This reading movement is vital because it allows, not only the analysis of history for a given culture, but also, through the history-identity relationship, to decenter identities, question hegemonies, identify processes such as whiteness, patriarchy and the construction of the "civilized community", while providing light to understand the complexity and the different nuances with which these processes have been carried out in the subcontinent..