Alfredo Poggi, Ph.D.

Dr. Alfredo Poggi was born in Argentina and also lived in Venezuela during much of his youth. After completing his undergraduate studies in Caracas, Venezuela, he worked in media as a producer and screenwriter for several years in various companies including HBO Latin America. Upon returning to academia in 2007, he pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy, theology, and literature while teaching at various universities, including Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Caracas), and Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.) before arriving at the University of North Georgia in 2018. Dr. Poggi’s research can be framed as a quest for theoretical alternatives to prevalent trends in contemporary literary and cultural studies. Since the 1970s, critical theory and post-structuralism (with its different branches, including gender studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, and more) have continued to dominate this field and the humanities in general. These theoretical articulations have contributed significantly to unmasking the devices of oppression and opening a much-needed space for minority voices to be heard. However, Dr. Poggi holds that the humanities cannot be reduced to an analysis of the power struggles between the oppressed and their oppressors. They should also provide edifying, constructive means of interpreting all dimensions of reality. Students should be encouraged to explore hermeneutical devices in narratives, metaphors, and images that enable them to understand their existence more deeply, even as fractured as existence may be by mystery and paradox. Moreover, the work of interpretation can also promote the search for unity and harmony between human beings and nature – extending even to the point of connection or encounter with the divine, the absolute, and the transcendent. As such, Dr. Poggi's research agenda takes into account religious experiences as real content in texts and not just as a poetic interpretive device. He believes there is an ontological value in the experience of divine encounter and a theology that provides existential meaning, enriches the humanities, challenges Eurocentric secularism, and inspires students.

• Ph.D., Spanish and Portuguese Literatura & Cultural Studies, Georgetown University, 2018
• M.S., Spanish and Portuguese Literature & Cultural Studies, Georgetown University, 2016
• MTS, Theology, Boston College, 2013
• M.A., Philosophy, Univ. Católica Andrés Bello, 2011
• B.A., Media Studies, Univ. Católica Andrés Bello, 2005

Books

Magical Realism, Latin American Theology, and the Appearance of a Pre-Critical Theory. Mary versus Ideology. Lexington Books, 2024.

This work explores why the greatest boom of Marian apparitions in history, related by poor rural women and children, occurred simultaneously with the rise of urban elites’ secularizing ideologies – and often in the same countries. The uniqueness of my research lies first in demonstrating how behind the simple stories and symbols of the Marian apparitions lies a critique of the modern and postmodern social imaginary that gave life to innumerable ideologies. Additionally, following the premises of liberation theology and magical realism, this work shows how popular religion – with its mythical-narrative nucleus – is a space of resistance against the totalizing projects of modernity; therefore, its articulations should be studied not as merely irrational and folkloric but as coherent and reasoned. Herein lies the second singular feature of my work: it uses Latin American hermeneutic lenses (magical realism and liberation theology) to study a global historical reality. Finally, over the course of its analysis of the Marian apparitions, this work identifies a theory of reality, which it calls Pre-Critical Theory. Modern proposals, such as the Marxist or poststructuralist ones, argue that one must use critical thinking to evade or at least expose ideologies. This manuscript, on the contrary, maintains that a “naïve” and “enchanted” perception of the world – like that of the poor children and women who witnessed the Marian apparitions – is the best starting point not only for understanding the phenomenon of popular religion but for challenging contemporary ideologies, since it arises from another social imaginary altogether.

Lope de Aguirre, Hugo Chávez, and the Latin American Left: The Wrath of Liberation. Lexington Books. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. 2020.

This book examines why anti-imperialist projects have the tendency to become tyrannies, with a focus on Latin America. Alfredo Ignacio Poggi discusses the figure of Lope de Aguirre, the first modern revolutionary leader, and his various historical representations in literature, essays, theater, film, and comics as a vehicle to interrogate the Latin American anti-imperialist imagination. Poggi argues that the experience of anger is a constituent element of Latin American anti-imperialism and that the social imaginary that emerged in the late nineteenth century – following the intellectual tradition of liberation and the continental political left – has a wrathful dimension capable of generating political programs of revenge, finding an echo in Latin American leaders like Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez. Poggi ultimately proposes to renovate liberationist thinking by offering mercy as an alternative anti-imperialist emotion that can overcome the dangers implicit in anger’s radicalization as wrath.

Articles

Ignacio de Loyola, la teología de la liberación y la opción preferencial por los pobres: La misión pedagógica jesuita en Latinoamérica y la transformación de la educación popular. A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos. Vol. 37, n.2.

Narratives of Christian Democracy: Six Characters in Search of an Ideology in Trotsky y La Marilyn by Genaro Arriagada Herrera. Confluencia. 37.2. Spring, 2022. University of Northern Colorado, US

“¿Existió el Jesús histórico?: Jean Baudrillard, hiperrealismo y el gnosticismo virtual en la edad del simulacro.” Teología y Cultura. Universidad del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos / Instituto Wesley, Argentina.

"The Opium of God’s People: Latin American/Hispanic Theology, Popular Religiosity, and the Challenge of Narcotrafficking". Theology Today. 2020.

"A Southern Gothic Theology: Flannery O´Connor and Her Religious Conception of the Novel".Theologica Xaveriana, vol. 70. 2020.

"Hacia una teoría literaria post-secular: Repensando la crítica liberal de la religión a través de Flora Tristán, Paul Gauguin y Vargas Llosa en El paraíso en la otra esquina". Pasavento. Review of Hispanic Studies, vol. VIII. n.1. 2020.

"¿Dios existe? El argumento existencialista de Hans Küng y su humanismo cristiano". Teología y Cultura, 21. 2019.

“Francisco, el Papa anti-populista y el péndulo de Laclau en tiempos de Trump, Maduro y Bolsonaro”. Revista SIC. Feb. 2019. Centro Gumilla: Investigación y Acción Jesuita, Venezuela.

"Filosofía y el giro post/decolonial: Aportes y peligros”. Lógoi. Revista de Filosofía. Nº34. 2019.

"El fin del deseo y el comienzo de la unión con Dios: Conexiones entre La Celestina y la literatura mística del siglo XVI a través del psicoanálisis”. Celestinesca, 42. 2018.

"Los primeros libros del Río de la Plata, una resistencia simbólica impresa con yerba mate en las misiones jesuíticas guaraníes”. Dieciocho, 40 (2). 2017.

"San Juan de la Cruz, Lacan y Kristeva, una fuga nocturna de lo simbólico a través de la poesía mística en el Cántico espiritual”. Hispanic Poetry Review, 11. 2016.

"La poesía de Ernesto Cardenal y su misticismo político. Una experiencia fronteriza en su Cántico Cósmico”. Ciberletras. 2016.

"El realismo mágico y la teología de la liberación: Una agenda en común frente a los discursos europeos de secularización y secularismo”. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 5 (2). 2015. 72–92.

"De lo etnográfico a lo teológico-político: investigación-acción ecuménica de La Rosca en las comunidades protestantes de Córdoba, Colombia”. Tabula Rasa, 23. 2015.

"Colonización española y tres perspectivas teológicas sobre cultura y fe cristiana”. Lógoi. Revista de Filosofía. Nº25. 2014.

"San Juan de la Cruz y el acto de narrar en tiempos de agorafobia”. Lógoi. Revista de Filosofía. Nº24. 2013.

From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural by Lynn Schofield Clark. Revista SIC. April. 2022.

Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States by Massimo Faggioli. Revista SIC. Feb. 2021.

Introducing Theological Method. A Survey of Contemporary Theologians and Approaches by Mary M. Veeneman, Perspectiva Teológica, Brazil, v. 51, n. 3, Sep./Dec. 2019. 601-603. 

Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-century Church by George Weigel. Revista SIC. May 2014. 184-185.

Theory at a glance by Barbara Rimer and Karen Glanz. Temas de Comunicación 19, Fall 2009,180-183.

Fiction/Poetry Books

La Espiritualidad de la Sencillez. Parábolas. Create Space, 2015.

Misericordia. Poesía. Create Space, 2014.

¡Nada! Poesía. CreateSpace, 2014.

Dr. Alfredo Poggi is married with two children, Mateo and Anastasia. He enjoys playing with his children, watching soccer, listening to podcasts, reading books, and playing the guitar. Related to his love for music, he has even spent many years as part of a rock-band with a few radio hits in Latin America. Lastly, Dr. Poggi has been very involved in Christian non-profit organizations that promote and support low-income families, both in Latin America and the United States.