¿Romantic and realistic? Dialogues on knowledge and politics

¿Románticos y realistas? Diálogos sobre conocimiento y política

This text is a response, and a proposal, to the article "Romanticism?", Written and disseminated by the Collective Situations on its website on the subject of a classic debate: the relationship between knowledge and politics. The text of Situations refers to a dialogue with Arturo Escobar that was published in this magazine, where a theoretical-methodological option between "romanticism" and "realism" is proposed in a section. According to Situations, the tension is between two dichotomous intellectual options: research militancy on the one hand; scientific or academic research by another. Here it is affirmed that the poles of this tension may have points of contact, such as when a political perspective is introduced in the comprehensive horizons in order to transform reality. But it also warns the need for a policy of research agendas and a policy of theory that face the tendencies to analyze actors that researchers like and that develop discourses and practices with which they identify.