Updated on 2025/10/31

写真a

 
ERBER, Pedro Rabelo
 
Affiliation
Faculty of International Research and Education, School of International Liberal Studies
Job title
Professor
Degree
PhD ( 2009 Cornell University )
Mail Address
メールアドレス
Profile

Pedro Erber is Professor of Comparative Literature at the School of International Liberal Arts and the Graduate School of International Communication Studies, Waseda University, Senior Associate in Research at Cornell University, and Editor of ARTMargins (MIT Press). Before joining Waseda in 2019, Erber was Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Director of the East Asia Program at Cornell University. He holds a PhD in Japanese Literature from Cornell University, an M.A. in Philosophy from PUC-Rio de Janeiro, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Erber's research and teaching spans the fields of philosophy, literature, critical theory, translation studies, political and economic thinking, Brazilian and Japanese studies, and contemporary art. His publications include Breaching the Frame: The Rise of Contemporary Art in Brazil and Japan (UC Press, 2014), Politics and Truth: Martin Heidegger's Political Philosophy (in Portuguese; Loyola/PUC-Rio, 2004), and numerous articles, catalogue essays, edited volumes, and translations. 

Research Experience

  • 2018.07
    -
    2019.06

    Cornell University   East Asia Program   Director

  • 2015.07
    -
    2019.06

    Cornell University   Department of Romance Studies   Associate Professor with Tenure

  • 2015.09
    -
    2016.05

    Waseda University   Department of Literature   Visiting Researcher

  • 2009.07
    -
    2015.06

    Cornell University   Department of Romance Studies   Assistant Professor

  • 2009.07
    -
    2011.07

    Rutgers University   Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures   Assistant Professor

  • 2005.08
    -
    2006.10

    Rikkyo University   Department of Image and Body Studies   Visiting Researcher

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Education Background

  • 2002.08
    -
    2009.07

    Cornell University   Asian Studies   Ph.D.  

  • 2000.03
    -
    2002.03

    The University of Tokyo   Culture and Representation   Research Student  

  • 1998.03
    -
    1999.12

    Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)   Philosophy   M.A.  

  • 1994.03
    -
    1997.12

    Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)   Philosophy   B.A.  

  • 1996.07
    -
    1997.07

    Universität Freiburg   Philosophy   Exchange Student  

Professional Memberships

  • 　
    　
    　

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)

  • 　
    　
    　

    Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA)

  • 　
    　
    　

    College Art Association (CAA)

  • 　
    　
    　

    Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

  • 　
    　
    　

    Modern Language Association (MLA)

Research Areas

  • Economic doctrines and economic thought   Human Economics / Literature in general   Latin American Literature / Comparative Literature / Area studies   Latin American Studies (focus on Brazil); Japan Studies / Aesthetics and art studies   Postwar Art; Art Criticism / Philosophy and ethics   Political Philosophy; Aesthetics

Research Interests

  • Critical Theory

  • Economics

  • Comparative Literature

  • Art and Criticism

  • Visual Studies

  • Political Thought

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Papers

  • “Oiticica’s Phenomenological Lyric; or, the Deintellectualization of Art”

    Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics. Translated by Rebecca Kosick    2023

  • "The Politics of Strolling" [Republished /Anthologized]

    Manifesting Democracy?: Urban Protests and the Politics of Representation in Brazil Post 2013. Ed. Maite Conde.    2022  [Refereed]  [Invited]

  • The West as a Form of Anxiety: An Interview with Naoki Sakai

    Pedro Erber, Naoki Sakai

    Diacritics   50 ( 2 ) 144 - 155  2022

    DOI

  • He Has Taken Me This Far and Afterward I Leave Him: An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy

    Pedro Erber, Marita Tatari, Facundo Vega, Jean-Luc Nancy

    Diacritics   50 ( 2 ) 156 - 167  2022

    DOI

  • What Is To Be Undone: An Interview with Bruno Bosteels

    Pedro Erber, Facundo Vega, Bruno Bosteels

    Diacritics   50 ( 2 ) 122 - 134  2022

    DOI

  • Why Heidegger in Dark Times Like Ours? An Interview with Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback

    Pedro Erber, Facundo Vega, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback

    Diacritics   50 ( 2 ) 76 - 83  2022

    DOI

  • Heidegger Today? Conversations on the Contemporaneity of a Thinking Legacy

    Pedro Erber, Facundo Vega

    Diacritics   50 ( 2 ) 4 - 10  2022

    DOI

  • “The Long-Lasting Present: Art, Duration, and Contemporaneity”

    Contemporary Art and Capitalist Modernization. Ed. Octavian Esanu    2020  [Refereed]  [Invited]

  • “Mapping, Coding, Translating: Concrete Legacies in the Work of Detanico Lain”

    Erber, Pedro

    Journal of Lusophone Studies   5 ( 1 ) 12 - 37  2020  [Refereed]  [Invited]

    Authorship：Lead author

  • Beautiful Money; Or, What Can Contemporary Art Teach Us About the Neoliberal Economy?

    Pedro Erber

    Revista Hispánica Moderna (Columbia University)   72 ( 2 )  2019.12  [Refereed]  [Invited]

  • Art and Contemporaneity: Three Critics in the 1960s

    Pedro Erber

    Todas as Artes. Revista Luso-Brasileira de Artes e Cultura   1 ( 1 ) 39 - 50  2018  [Refereed]

  • We Have Never Been Contemporaries: Anthropophagy Then and Now

    Pedro Erber

    Quandranti. Rivista internazionale di filosofia contemporanea   VI ( 1 )  2018  [Invited]

  • The Emergence of the Contemporary: The Japanese Avant-Garde Between Two Olympics

    Pedro Erber

    Revista VIS: Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arte - UNB   16 ( 1 )  2017  [Refereed]

  • The Politics of Strolling

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Perspectives    2016.05  [Refereed]

  • Introduction to Akasegawa Genpei's "The Objet after Stalin"

    Pedro Erber

    ARTMARGINS   4 ( 3 ) 103 - 114  2015.10  [Invited]

    　View Summary

    This introduction situates Akasegawa Genpei's text The Objet after Stalin and the events surrounding his reproduction of the 1,000-yen note in the art-historical and political context of Japan's postwar avant-gardes. It explores Akasegawa's conception of the objet both in terms of its lineage within the history of Surrealism and its reception in Japan and of Akasegawa's original theoretical claims concerning the political potential of artistic practice.

    DOI

    Scopus

    1
    Citation
    (Scopus)

  • The fashion and the fear of contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    Cenários contemporâneos da escrita, PUC-Rio    2014

  • ART AND/OR REVOLUTION THE MATTER OF PAINTING IN POSTWAR JAPAN

    Pedro Erber

    ARTMARGINS   2 ( 1 ) 37 - 57  2013.02  [Refereed]

  • CONTEMPORANEITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS

    Pedro Erber

    DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM   41 ( 1 ) 28 - 49  2013  [Refereed]

  • The Word as Object Concrete Poetry, Ideogram, and the Materialization of Language

    Pedro Erber

    LUSO-BRAZILIAN REVIEW   49 ( 2 ) 72 - 101  2012.12  [Refereed]

  • Comparison’s Dismeasure: Theory, Universalism, and Literary Studies

    Pedro Erber

    Literatura e Criatividade Ed. Heidrun Krieger Olinto and Karl Erik Schollhammer    2011

  • Politics of Abstraction: Painting and Criticism in 1950s Brazil and Japan

    Pedro Erber

    Revista Poiesis   14  2009.08  [Refereed]

  • The Japanese May: Art, Politics, and Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    Revista Praia Vermelha   18 ( 2 ) 1 - 14  2008  [Refereed]

  • Theory Materialized: Conceptual Art and its Others

    Pedro Erber

    Diacritics   36 ( 1 )  2006  [Refereed]  [Invited]

  • Martin Heidegger’s Political Thought in the Post-rectorship Period

    Pedro Erber

    O que nos faz pensar (PUC-Rio)     13 - 38  2002  [Refereed]

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Books and Other Publications

  • Descida ao cotidiano. O surgimento da arte contemporânea no Japão

    ( Part： Sole author)

    Zazie Edições  2023.02 ISBN: 9786599797125

  • Diacritics 50.2 “Heidegger Today?”

    ( Part： Joint editor)

    2023

  • “A Intervenção Crítica de Naoki Sakai” in Sakai, Naoki. A modernidade e sua crítica: o problema do universalismo e particularismo. Tradução de Rodrigo Carrijo.

    ( Part： Sole author)

    Zazie Edições  2021

  • A filosofia em quarentena [Philosophy in quarantine]

    ( Part： Sole author)

    Zazie Edições  2020

  • The Cosmic Space of Yutaka Toyota

    Pedro Erber( Part： Other)

    Yutaka Toyota (Artist Catalogue)  2019

  • Verge: Studies in Global Asias 3.2 "Between Asia and Latin America: New Perspectives in Transpacific Studies"

    Pedro Erber, Andrea Bachner( Part： Edit)

    University of Minnesota Press  2017

  • Breaching the Frame: The Rise of Contemporary Art in Brazil and Japan

    Pedro Erber( Part： Sole author)

    University of California Press  2014.12

  • Política e Verdade no Pensamento de Martin Heidegger (Politics and Truth: Martin Heideggers Political Philosophy)

    Pedro Erber( Part： Sole author)

    Loyola / PUC-Rio  2003.07

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Presentations

  • “The Neoliberal Contemporary”

     [Invited]

    The Twenty-First Century: The New Contemporary? Symposium at National Taiwan University 

    Presentation date： 2023.05

  • “Embodied Perception and Deintellectualization”

     [Invited]

    Durham University Symposium at The Place, London 

    Presentation date： 2023.03

  • “Capitalist Realism Revisited”

     [Invited]

    Writing the Margins: Investigating Art in a Global Field – ARTMargins/UCLA Symposium 

    Presentation date： 2023.02

  • “The Four Dimensions of Yutaka Toyota”

     [Invited]

    Dallas Museum 

    Presentation date： 2022.11

  • “Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Neoliberalism as Political Mythology”

     [Invited]

    Inverted Mythologies. Conference at Kyoto University 

    Presentation date： 2022.11

  • "Capitalist Realisms"

     [Invited]

    The Politics and Aesthetics of Migration. Workshop at Columbia University 

    Presentation date： 2022.09

  • “Between São Paulo and Kyoto”

     [Invited]

    Latin American Philosophy Symposium at Kyoto University 

    Presentation date： 2022.06

  • “Descent to the Everyday: The Politics of Abstraction and the Emergence of Contemporary Art in Postwar Japan”

     [Invited]

    Documenta Institut / Universität Kassel 

    Presentation date： 2021.12

  • “The Midnight Economy”

     [Invited]

    Symposium Nijinsky à Minuit, Ko Murobushi Archive, Tokyo (online). 

    Presentation date： 2021.08

  • “A Filosofia em quarentena [Philosophy in Quarantine]”

     [Invited]

    University of Brasília (UNB) 

    Presentation date： 2020.09

  • “Country of the Future: Neoliberalism and Brazilianization”

     [Invited]

    Stanford University, Stanford, CA 

    Presentation date： 2020.02

  • “Money is Beautiful: Aesthetic Underpinnings of Contemporary Capitalism”

    Modern Language Association (MLA), Seattle 

    Presentation date： 2020.01

  • Different but not Alien: Abstract Painting, Peripheral Modernity, Mário Pedrosa

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Global Art History and the Documentary Turn, NYU Abu Dhabi 

    Presentation date： 2019.09

  • Brazilian Anthropophagy and Its Others

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2019.05

  • The Aesthetic Economy of Neoliberalism

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2019.03

  • Specters of Uneven Development: Brazilian Anthropophagy and the Kyoto School

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Boston University 

    Presentation date： 2019.02

  • Belatedness and Other Peripheral Anxieties: On Overcoming Modernity in Japan and Brazil

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    East Asia Program Luncheon Series, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2018.11

  • Aesthetic Economies

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2018.10

  • Overcoming Modernity: A Comparative Perspective

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    WASON Conference, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2018.09

  • Specters of Uneven Development: Brazilian Anthropophagy and its Others

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Modernist Geographies Workshop, University of Syracuse 

    Presentation date： 2018.09

  • The Revolution as Play

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Words and Violence: Global History of the 1968 Protests in Japan and its Contemporary Meaning Leiden University 

    Presentation date： 2018.08

  • To Whom does Anthropophagy Unite US?

    Pedro Erber

    Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) 

    Presentation date： 2018.07

  • Figures of Finance in Brazilian Literature and Visual Arts

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2018.05

  • We Have Never Been Contemporaries: Anthropophagy Now and Then

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Poesis de Arquivo, PUC-Rio 

    Presentation date： 2017.12

  • The Politics of Play: Contemporary Art, Neoliberalism, and the Crisis of Labor

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2017.07

  • Between Asia and Latin America: Dislocating Area Studies

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2017.04

  • Mário Pedrosa and Art Criticism in Twentieth-Century Brazil

    Pedro Erber

    College Arts Association (CAA) 

    Presentation date： 2017.02

  • The Politics of Play: in Brazil and Beyond

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at SUNY-Oswego 

    Presentation date： 2016.11

  • Japanese Postwar Art in 21st Century Brazil: Performing Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    Syracuse University 

    Presentation date： 2016.11

  • Japan is Here: Inventions of the Contemporary

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    School of Communication, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2016.07

  • Roberto Schwarz, Machado de Assis, and the Economies of Literature

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2016.05

  • Comparison Beyond Measure: How to Think Transnationally after the End of Area Studies?World-Map and World Culture. Tsinghua-Cornell Symposium. Beijing, ChinaWorld-Map and World Culture. Tsinghua-Cornell Symposium. Beijing, ChinaWorld-Map and World Culture

    Pedro Erber

    World-Map and World Culture. Tsinghua-Cornell Symposium. Beijing 

    Presentation date： 2016.04

  • Art Without Borders? The Postwar Avant-Garde in Transnational Perspective

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at NYU-Shanghai's Perspectives on The Humanities Series 

    Presentation date： 2016.04

  • Heidegger and the Avant-Garde

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2016.03

  • A Master in the Periphery of Neoliberalism

    Pedro Erber

    The Interface of Literature and Economics, ELLAK International Conference, Daejeon, South Korea 

    Presentation date： 2016

  • Matter, Body, City: Art and Politics in Japan circa 1960

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Meiji Gakuin 

    Presentation date： 2015.12

  • The Art of Speculation: Capitalism and Aesthetic Judgment

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Keynote Speech at Chicago Graduate Conference, UIC-Northwestern-University of Chicago 

    Presentation date： 2015.11

  • Aesthetics of Speculation

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Rethinking Latin American Art and Culture, Columbia University 

    Presentation date： 2015.10

  • The Crisis of Criticism and the Economy of Spectacle

    Pedro Erber

    ] O Papel da Crítica na Literatura e nas Artes Contemporâneas, PUC-Rio 

    Presentation date： 2015.09

  • A Musical Introduction to Brazil

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Ferris University 

    Presentation date： 2015.07

  • Art and Criticism, Critique of Art, Artcritique

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Keynote Address at Seminário Internacional Diálogos Transdisciplinares: Arte e Pesquisa, USP, São Paulo 

    Presentation date： 2015.06

  • Art, Economy, Spectacle

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Intensive Seminar (five lectures) at University of São Paulo (USP)_ 

    Presentation date： 2015.06

  • Verbivocovisual: Art as Discourse and the Place of Criticism

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Perspectivestin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2015.05

  • A Brazilian Critic in 1950s Japan

    Pedro Erber

    Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 

    Presentation date： 2015.03

  • From the economization of art to aestheticization of economy

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    International Forum at Waseda University 

    Presentation date： 2015

  • The Avant-Garde as Narrative: In Memory of Akasegawa Genpei

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    East Asia Program Luncheon Series, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2014.11

  • Mário Pedrosa: Interpreter of Brazil

    Pedro Erber

    Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) 

    Presentation date： 2014.08

  • Anthropophagy, Resistance, Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    Intersections between East Asia and South America, Workshop at NYU Buenos Aires 

    Presentation date： 2014.05

  • The Politics of Strolling

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Latin American Perspectivestin American Perspectivestin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2014.05

  • Contemporaneity as Method

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    The Contemporary, Colloquium at Stanford University 

    Presentation date： 2014.05

  • Occupy the Shopping Mall

    Pedro Erber

    Occupation: A Critical Problematic for the Humanities, Conference of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2014.04

  • Who is Occupying Brazil?

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2014.03

  • Tetsumi Kudo at the São Paulo Biennale

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    International Symposium and Exhibition “Your Portrait: Kudo Tetsumi” at the National Museum of Art, Osaka 

    Presentation date： 2013.11

  • Contemporary Brazilian Politics: Contextualizing the Events of June 2013

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Democracy and Dictatorship in Latin America: Past and Present. Conference at Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2013.09

  • The Fear of Contemporaneity Revisited

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Literatura e Contemporaneidade: Espaços do Afeto, PUC-Rio 

    Presentation date： 2013.06

  • Materialism, National Literature, Roberto Schwarz

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Perspectivesin American Perspectivestin American Perspectivestin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2013.05

  • Developmentalism, Dependency Theory, Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2013.04

  • Gutai and Experiences with Performance in Japan

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Universidade Federal da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro (UNI-Rio) 

    Presentation date： 2013.03

  • Anthropophagy, Contemporaneity, and Uneven Development

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Universidade Federal da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro (UNI-Rio) 

    Presentation date： 2013.03

  • Participation and the Margins of Art

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Visual Culture Colloquium, Department of History of Art, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2012.11

  • Literature, Participation, Materiality

    Pedro Erber

    Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) 

    Presentation date： 2012.09

  • Contemporaneity and its Discontents

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Latin American Studies Program (LASP), Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2012.09

  • The Fashion and the Fear of Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Cenários Contemporâneos da Escrita, PUC-Rio 

    Presentation date： 2012.06

  • Art and/or Revolution: Japanese avant-garde art 1950-1970

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Centro de Arquitetura e Design, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2012.06

  • Spectator Participation and the Refusal of Metapolitics

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Perspectivesn American Perspectivesin American Perspectivestin American Perspectivestin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2012.05

  • Mário Pedrosa and Gutai: A Brazilian Art Critic in 1950s Japan

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2012.04

  • Exorcizing the Spectre of Comparisons

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Transnational Studies and Areas Studies, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2011.04

  • Art Criticism as Metapolitics

    Pedro Erber

    Janey Annual Conference: Latin America and Theory, New School for Social Research, New York 

    Presentation date： 2011.04

  • Revolution of Sensibility: Mário Pedrosa and Postwar Abstraction

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2011.02

  • Mario Pedrosa and Art Criticism as Revolutionary Weapon,”

    Pedro Erber

    Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 

    Presentation date： 2010.10

  • Between Painting and the Object in Brazil and Japan circa 1960

    Pedro Erber

    Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) 

    Presentation date： 2010.07

  • The Ticklish Object. Akasegawa Genpei between Art, Politics, and Theory

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at University of Chicago 

    Presentation date： 2010.05

  • concrete Art and Material Conceptualism

    Pedro Erber

    American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) 

    Presentation date： 2010.04

  • Ideogram as Poetic Utopia: The Space and Time of Concrete Poetry

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Columbia University 

    Presentation date： 2010.02

  • Materialist Painting: The Politics of Abstraction in Postwar Japan

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Rethinking Postwar Japanese Modern and Contemporary Intellectual History, Tohoku University 

    Presentation date： 2009.09

  • Avant-Garde and Contemporaneity: Prolegomena to a comparative analysis of the artistic context of the 1950s and 60s in Brazil and Japan

    Pedro Erber

    Brazilian Sociology Association (SBS) Conference, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2009.07

  • A Vanguarda Japonesa entre a Pintura e o Objeto

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Universidade de Brasília (UNB) 

    Presentation date： 2009.07

  • The Unsuitable Avant-Garde?

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Kulterelle Übersetzungen (Cultural Translations) at Abi Warburg Haus, Hamburg 

    Presentation date： 2009.04

  • Concrete Poetry and the Brazilian Ideogram

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Princeton University 

    Presentation date： 2009.01

  • Avant-Garde and Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    Desire Praxis and The Commons. Conference at SUNY Binghamton 

    Presentation date： 2008.11

  • Outside the Frame: Avant-Garde Art in Japan and Brazil circa 1960

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Visual Culture Colloquium, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2008.11

  • Concrete Poetry and the Brazilian Ideogram

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Rutgers University 

    Presentation date： 2008.11

  • Avant-Garde and Contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    The Digital Archive and the Future of the Humanities. Conference at Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2008.09

  • The 1960s Avant-Gardes in Brazil and Japan

    Pedro Erber

    XIX Encontro Nacional de Professores de Língua, Literatura e Cultura Japonesa, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2008.08

  • The Spectator as Artist and the Artist as Spectator. The Case of Akasegawa Genpei and Hélio Oiticica

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    RAJIKARU! Experimentations in Japanese Art 1950-1975. Workshop at UCLA 

    Presentation date： 2007

  • Voices from the Avant-Garde

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Presentation at The Japan Foundation Headquarters 

    Presentation date： 2006.11

  • Challenging the Monopoly of Fiction: Akasegawa Genpei vs. the Japanese State

    Pedro Erber

    The Force of Events – conference at Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2005.04

  • Tokyo 1969: Mishima Yukio x Todai Zenkyoto

    Pedro Erber

    XV Encontro Nacional de Professores de Língua, Literatura e Cultura Japonesa, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2004.08

  • Modernity and Cannibalism: Philosophy in the Periphery of the West

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Universidade Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2004

  • A New Politics for Latin America? Lula’s Victory in the Brazilian Presidential Election

    Pedro Erber, Razack Karriem

    Presentation at Cornell University 

    Presentation date： 2002.11

  • Desire in Heidegger and Levinas

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at Sociedade Psicanalítica Letra Freudiana, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 2000.03

  • Politics and Metaphysics in Heidegger’s Parmenides Lecture

    Pedro Erber

    III Simpósio de Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea at UNIOESTE, Toledo, Brazil 

    Presentation date： 1999.10

  • Martin Heidegger’s concept of Volk

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Congresso de Filosofia e Hermenêutica at U.F.S.M., Santa Maria, Brazil 

    Presentation date： 1998.12

  • O Conceito de Povo no Pensamento de Martin Heidegger

    Pedro Erber

    VIII A.N.P.O.F. in Caxambu, Brazil 

    Presentation date： 1998.07

  • The subject in Heidegger

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Jornada Anual da Sociedade Psicanalitica Letra Freudiana, Rio de Janeiro 

    Presentation date： 1998

  • Tokyo 1968: The Revolution as Play

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    May (19)68 as a Global Phenomenon: Representations and Reinventions, PUC-Rio 

  • Finance and Fiction: The Aesthetics of Capitalist Realism

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Seminar at Tsinghua University School of Humanities 

  • Art, Finance, Play: What can contemporary art teach us about neoliberal economics?

    Pedro Erber  [Invited]

    Invited Lecture at NYU-Shanghai 

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Research Projects

  • ブラジル国際俳句の多様性とラディカルな展開ー日本韻文史とのかかわりからー

    日本学術振興会  科学研究費助成事業

    Project Year :

    2021.04
    -
    2026.03
     

    久冨木原 玲, 福嶋 伸洋, 生田 慶穂, 前島 志保, 白石 佳和, 東 聖子, ERBER PEDRO, スエナガ エウニセ

  • Neoliberalism and the Limits of Knowledge: A Research on the Phenomenological Roots of Friedrich Hayek's Epistemology and Social Thought

    日本学術振興会  科学研究費助成事業

    Project Year :

    2021.04
    -
    2024.03
     

    ERBER PEDRO

    　View Summary

    With the extended restrictions on foreign travel during the 2021 fiscal year due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the archival part of my research had to be postponed. Under such circumstances, I dedicated this first year of my research project principally to bibliographical research on published works both on the phenomenological tradition and on neoliberal thought.
    Together with Octavian Esanu (American University in Beirut), I edited a roundtable discussion entitled Art under Neoliberalism, which was published in the anniversary issue of the journal ARTMargins (MIT Press). For this roundtable we invited some of the most prominent scholars working on the intersection of economic theory and the humanities today, such as Arjun Appadurai, Martijn Konings, and Lee Claire LaBerge, among others (https://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-abstract/10/3/126/109487/Art-under-Neoliberalism?redirectedFrom=fulltext). This publication has gotten significant feedback from readers and is destined to become an important document of the scholarship on neoliberalism and its impacts in the broader cultural realm.
    In addition, having been invited to participate in a symposium dedicated to the work of Butoh dancer Ko Muroboshi, I presented a paper entitled The Economy at Midnight, which highlights another aspect of the relationship between economic theory and artistic expression.

  • Contemporaneity and the World City

    Waseda University 

    Project Year :

    2019.10
    -
    2020.03
     

    Pedro Erber

  • Art and Economics

    Ishibashi Foundation / Japan Foundation 

    Project Year :

    2019.07
    -
    2019.08
     

    Pedro Erber

  • The Emergence of the Contemporary: Avant-Garde Art in Japan, 1950-1970

    Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship 

    Project Year :

    2015.07
    -
    2015.12
     

    Pedro Erber

  • Occupy the Shopping Mall

    Society for the Humanities, Cornell University 

    Project Year :

    2013.07
    -
    2014.06
     

    Pedro Erber

  • Translating the Avant-Garde

    The Japan Foundation 

    Project Year :

    2005.09
    -
    2006.11
     

    Pedro Erber

  • Kyoto School and the Metaphysics of Western History

    Monbusho  Monbusho Research Fellowship

    Project Year :

    2000.03
    -
    2002.03
     

    Pedro Erber

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Misc

  • “Visões sem Paraiso” [Visions without Paradise]

    Revista Peixe Elétrico. (Dossier especial)    2021.07  [Invited]

    Authorship：Lead author

    Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (other)  

  • “Primo Levi 100 Anos / A Zona Cinzenta”

    Pedro Erber, Laura Erber

    Epoca    2019.08  [Invited]

    Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (trade magazine, newspaper, online media)  

  • “Mapping Time” In: Detanico Lain: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (exhibition catalogue), The Club, Tokyo

       2019  [Invited]

    Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (other)  

  • À Suivre/To be Continued” (dialogue between Pedro Erber, Federico Nicolao, Angela Detanico, and Rafael Lain in Archipel

    Pedro Erber

    Cahiers de l’Abbaie Ste Croix   134  2019  [Invited]

    Other  

  • The Contemporary in Performance

    Pedro Erber

    The Emergence of the Contemporary: Avant-garde Art in Japan 1950-1970 / A Emergência do Contemporâneo: Vanguarda no Japão: 1950-1970. Exhibition Catalogue.    2017  [Invited]

    Other  

  • Art and Criticism, Critique of Art, Artcritique

    Pedro Erber

    Diálogos Transdisciplinares: Arte e Pesquisa. Ed. Gilbertto Prado, Monica Tavares, and Priscila Arantes    2016

    Research paper, summary (international conference)  

  • The Crisis of Criticism and the Economy of Spectacle

    Pedro Erber

    Literatura e artes na crítica contemporânea. Ed. Heidrun Krieger Olinto; Karl Erik Schollhammer, Mariana Simoni.     275 - 281  2016  [Invited]

  • Out of Words: The Spacetime of Concrete Poetry

    Pedro Erber

    Postwar: Between the Atlantic and the Pacific (Exhibition Catalogue)    2016  [Invited]

    Other  

  • The fear of contemporaneity revisited; art and contemporaneity

    Pedro Erber

    Espaços do Afeto. Ed. Heidrun Krieger Olinto and Karl Erik Schollhammer    2015  [Invited]

    Other  

  • Gutai and Brazilian Concrete Art

    Pedro Erber

    Gutai: Splendid Playground (Exhibition Catalogue)    2013  [Refereed]  [Invited]

    Other  

  • The Politics of Abstraction: Avant-Garde Art, Criticism, and Contemporaneity in 1950s Brazil and Japan

    Pedro Erber

    Kulturelle Übersetzungen [Cultural Translations]. Berlin: Reimer Verlag.    2012  [Invited]

  • Review of Ming Tiampo, Gutai: Decentering Modernism

    Pedro Erber

    College Art Association Reviews    2012

    Book review, literature introduction, etc.  

  • Review of Robert Patrick Newcomb, Nossa and Nuestra America: Inter-American Dialogues

    Pedro Erber

    Ellipsis   10   197 - 199  2012

    Book review, literature introduction, etc.  

  • The Postwar Artistic Avant-Garde in Brazil and Japan

    Pedro Erber

    Anais do XIX Encontro Nacional de Professores de Língua, Literatura e Cultura Japonesa    2008

    Meeting report  

  • Tokyo 1969: Mishima Yukio x Todai Zenkyoto

    Pedro Erber

    Anais do XV Encontro Nacional de Professores de Língua, Literatura e Cultura Japonesa     289 - 295  2004

    Research paper, summary (international conference)  

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Other

  • The Emergence of the Contemporary: Avant-Garde Art in Japan, 1950-1970

    2016.08
    　
    　

    　View Summary

    Exhibition Curator: “A Emergência do Contemporâneo: Vanguarda no Japão, 1950-1970” [The Emergence of the Contemporary: Avant-Garde Art in Japan, 1950-1970]. Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, July/August, 2016.
    Attendance: 36,591 people

 

Teaching Experience

  • Comparative Literature

    Rutgers University  

  • Japanese Literature

    Rutgers University  

  • Brazilian Studies

    Rutgers University  

  • Comparative Literature

    Cornell University  

  • Brazilian Literature and Culture

    Cornell University  

  • Romance Studies

    Cornell University  

  • Comparative Literature

    Waseda University  

  • Critical Theory

    Waseda University  

  • Translation Studies

    Waseda University  

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Sub-affiliation

  • Faculty of International Research and Education   Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies

Internal Special Research Projects

  • Contemporary Art at the Margins

    2024  

    　View Summary

    During the course of this grant, I pursued research on the intersections between Brazilian and Japanese avant-garde art, concentrating particularly on the work of Hélio Oiticica and Lee Ufan. This project builds on my long-term engagement with transnational contemporary art and aims to shed light on the shared philosophical underpinnings of artistic practices often considered in isolation.With the support of the grant, I conducted library research at Cornell University and Columbia University, where I accessed important materials related to this ongoing research and presented aspects of this research in international conferences at Cornell University and the University of Chicago. These research activities have directly informed an essay I am currently completing within the context of the project Translating Embodiedness, organized by Prof. Fusako Innami at Durham University. This project is now being considered for publication as a special issue of the journal Representation. My article for this project brings Oiticica and Lee into dialogue through their shared engagement with the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It examines Lee Ufan’s critique of conceptual art through phenomenology, arguing for an art grounded in material presence and embodied perception rather than abstract ideas. Drawing on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, I explore Lee’s rejection of the conceptual imposition of meaning, comparing it to colonial domination. The essay reflects on the challenge of translating non-verbal, sensory experience into language, both in art and criticism. Lee’s concept of encounter resonates with Hélio Oiticica’s notion of de-intellectualization, as both artists propose alternative models of thinking through matter, movement, and perception—reconfiguring the relationship between art, theory, and the body.My essay on Hélio Oiticica’s poetics, which appeared as the postface to the English translation of Secret Poetics, edited and translated by Rebecca Kosick, has received numerous excellent reviews and has been widely cited in recent studies of Latin American art. Additionally, I have continued publishing a series of interviews I conducted in Japanese with prominent figures of the Japanese postwar avant-garde, such as Hariu Ichiro and Akasegawa Genpei, in the weekly cultural newspaper Tosho Shinbun. These interviews have also generated highly positive responses from readers and scholars in Japan. The last interview of this series, with Lee Ufan, has been submitted to the journal and is currently waiting for copyright clearance by the artist. The activities supported by this grant—research, travel, writing, and dissemination—have been fundamental for advancing the philosophical depth and international resonance of my work on the transnational avant-garde. I look forward to continuing and expanding this project in future research and publications.

  • Postwar Avant-Garde Art Between Japan and Brazil

    2023  

    　View Summary

    During the course of this grant year, I deepened my research on the intersections of modernism, phenomenology, and the global avant-garde, focusing especially on artistic and literary practices in Brazil and Japan. My work explored how artists and poets challenged conceptual hierarchies through embodied perception, translingual experimentation, and alternative modes of knowledge production.I presented two major conference papers that reflected these concerns: “Haicai e o Orientalismo Modernista” at the XVI Encontro Nacional de Estudos Japoneses (ENBEJ), held at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niterói in August 2023, and “The Spacetime of Yutaka Toyota” at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Convention in Seattle in March 2024. The former examined the reception and adaptation of haiku in Brazilian modernism, situating poetic form within broader debates on orientalism and literary modernity; the latter focused on the temporal and spatial aesthetics of Toyota’s kinetic sculpture, read through a phenomenological lens.In terms of publications, my essay “The Task of Translation Studies” appeared in the Journal of Waseda University International House of Literature (March 2024), addressing the philosophical and political stakes of translation in transnational contexts. My study “Oiticica’s Phenomenological Lyric; or, the Deintellectualization of Art” was published as the postface to Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics (Soberscove Press, 2023), translated by Rebecca Kosick. The essay interprets Oiticica’s work through the lens of phenomenology, particularly Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, highlighting the artist’s call for a reinvention of artistic thinking through movement, rhythm, and sensorial immediacy.In addition to these scholarly articles, I published two interviews in Japanese serialized in Tosho Shinbun with key figures of the Japanese postwar avant-garde: Akasegawa Genpei and Hariu Ichiro. These interviews not only offer rare first-person insights into the development of Japan’s radical art scene, but also contribute to the preservation and dissemination of postwar artistic memory in Japan. Both received highly positive responses from readers and scholars, underscoring their importance to the field.Together, these presentations and publications reflect my ongoing commitment to theorizing the aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings of transnational avant-garde art, as well as my engagement with translation—not only as a linguistic practice but as a mode of embodied and conceptual negotiation across cultures and media.

  • Transpacific Contemporaneity: Poetic and Performative Exchanges between Brazil and Japan

    2022  

    　View Summary

    During the course of this grant, I have focused my research on the artistic and literary connections between Asia and Latin America, with particular attention to Brazilian and Japanese contemporary art. Drawing upon my previous research, I have pursued new avenues in the study of performance, visual arts, and poetics, in addition to revising my monograph for publication in Portuguese. My book on Japanese postwar art, “Descida ao Cotidiano: o surgimento da arte contemporânea no Japão [Descent to the everyday: the rise of contemporary art in Japan]” was published in Portuguese this year with Zazie Edições. This book was featured in an article in Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper. (https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrada/2023/03/livro-mostra-o-surgimento-da-arte-no-japao-do-pos-segunda-guerra-mundial.shtml) In addition, I have presented the outcomes of this research in six international conferences in Japan and abroad. The archival research, meetings, exhibition visits, and presentations conducted under this grant were crucial for the further development of my work on contemporary art between Asia and Latin America, which I plan to continue under the auspices of my current Special Topic Grant. 

  • The Contemporary as Method: Chronopolitics, Translation, and the World Economy

    2021  

    　View Summary

     During the course of this special topic research grant, I have pursued research on the concept of contemporaneity with a special focus on its relationship to the practice and theory of translation, on the one hand, and its implications to the hegemony of neoliberal ideology, on the other hand. My essay “Philosophy in quarantine (A filosofia em quarentena),” was published in Portuguese in September 2020 with Zazie Edições. In addition to this publication, two of my articles relating to this ongoing research appeared during the calendar year 2020: “The Long-Lasting Present: Art, Duration, and Contemporaneity” and “Mapping, Coding, Translating: Concrete Legacies in the Work of Detanico Lain.” My research on neoliberal thought conducted during this period resulted in a Kakenhi project proposal entitled “Neoliberalism and the Limits of Knowledge,” which was awarded a Kakenhi grant for the period from 2021 to 2023. 

  • The Contemporary as Method: Chronopolitics, Translation, and the World City

    2019  

    　View Summary

    For this project, I conducted research around the question of contemporaneity with a special focus on its relationship to the practice and theory of translation. During the period of this grant, my research was developed on two separate fronts. The first one focused on the intermedia translations by Brazilian artists Rafael Lain and Angela Detanico and the poets Kitasono Katsue and Luis Carlos Vinholes. On the basis of this research, I wrote the catalogue text for Detanico Lain’s exhibition at The Club, Tokyo and published a paper entitled “Mapping, Coding, Translating: Concrete Legacies in the Work of Detanico Lain,” in the Journal of Lusophone Studies (V.5, N.1). This article draws The second aspect of this project expanded upon my research on contemporary art and the remaking of urban space, which I conducted in Tokyo over the summer of 2019 as a Japan Foundation /Ishibashi Foundation fellow. For this stage, which focused on the city as a space of translation, I conducted research on the work of two writers from Trieste whose literary practice is deeply grounded on the poetics of multilingual urban spaces: Umberto Saba and Scipio Slataper.