Presentation
INTERFACE Comunicação, Saúde, Educação (Communication, Health, Education) now reaches its third issue, and introduces a transformation of its textual and graphic design. Disregarding fixed formats, and avoiding the establishment of a hierarchy of concepts and experiences, it is a periodical publication that works around the idea of a project in constant motion. It takes on the challenge of searching for new interfaces, looking for the implications and intersections among different lines of discourse, and establishing connections between text and text, text and image, image and image, based on a non-linear concept of knowledge, in a manner reminiscent of hypertext.
The choice of a central theme for the essay section of each issue is one of the ways through which Interface traces more precisely the network of relationships of meaning that shape its identity.
Through the central theme and other sections, the periodical delimits its scope, both in terms of coverage and of depth, seeking out readers, in their full range of diversity, for an intense exchange. It questions those concepts and experiences which lend substance to the growing debates that occupy the end of this millenium, at the intersection of the three areas that are at the heart of its editorial project. Placing itself in the role of an arena for the said debates, Interface proposes to mediate conflicts between different analyses and theoretical reflections, probing into the plurality of themes and approaches, yet nonetheless making its own position perfectly clear.
In our contemporary world, science and technology progress at a rate far superior than our ability to interpret, analyze and decide, which threatens to transform the human body into a mere a commodity, in the near future. Within this context, Interface deliberately adopts a position heavily biased towards the human being.
In the current day and age, the dimension of the responsibility one must face, vis à vis the contradictions generated by modern science, is far to great to be captured through a formatting context characterized by technological automatism. On the contrary, it highlights the need to restore the value of a general and cultural, humanities-based upbringing.
The accumulation of irrationalities that threatens human life at the end of this century, the impending risk of an ecological catastrophe, the misery and hunger to which a major part of mankind is submitted, the violence and intolerance, drugs and medical orientation of life, together, place us face to face with the complexity of contemporary challenges. The search for a new balance between the capability for action and the ability to forecast the outcome of such action demand a new relationship between real knowledge and broad questioning of the meaning of life and society, as Boaventura Santos, whose ideas have grounded the editorial project of this periodical, has put forward so well.
Thus, to interfere in favor of human life, in this day and age, may mean committing oneself to revealing the social relations and the interests that constitute the building blocks of technological automatism. It might mean the creation of new alternatives, capable of leading to a more consequential relationship between action and the ability to forecast.
In a position of resistance against the dehumanization of life, an analogy by Boaventura Santos comes to mind, based on the attitude adopted by a guard in the Kassel art exhibition who, in defense of the autonomy of art, says: "do not touch. This is art." Perhaps, it would be equally fitting to state: "do not touch. This is human."
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
28 July 2009 -
Date of issue
Aug 1998
