24/05/2020 · 11:25

Public library, and tile

The university library is closed, but public library is open and the book I want is in it. This is rare. It’s even open now, and I can walk there. I’m going.

I’m mesmerized by the choices of tile for the floor.

My two other floors have tile by Segarra, and if I continue with his tile there will be a form of continuity. I’ve thought of  Kings Aurora Nero (it’s the same size as the others I have, and divided in 4); one could make a subtle checkerboard with this and Kings Aurora White. For something wild, Kings Etna Blue (13”, divided in 9), and it could be mixed or punctuated with Kings Etna Green.

Solid black, white, and bright colors are all bad on these floors, although black/white combinations seem shockingly good. Smallish patterns can be quite good. Saltillo tile ought to be good but seems boring and often, too orange or too brown, whereas similar tile in beige and cream, with golden undertones works well with the wood.

I discovered an amazing tile store in area code 512 (Austin), and decided I wanted to visit. Then I realized it’s actually in Leander, where my girl lives.

Finally, I took the D-score test and these are my results. They explain a lot; most other people have a higher, or much higher D-factor than I, and this is why I do not understand them.

Axé.

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20/05/2020 · 12:18

Farvel, farvel

For summer I am trying to step up my program of divesting myself of books and files. My focus is on copies of books I doubt I will read, and on journal issues now available electronically.

Yesterday I got rid of a nice copy of George Steiner, After Babel, because the pages are so yellowed. Going today is PMLA 134:1 (January, 2019). It has a special topic, “Cultures of Reading,” and it has this article about cataloguing, race, and classification, which is even more interesting than it sounds; this fascinating piece on Juan Moreira and the literary nation; a very good anticolonial theory of reading (related to the article on race and classification); and a piece on Fanon that is more than worthwhile.

And I am sure the rest of it would be interesting to me as well, but it is going nonetheless.

Farvel! Farvel!

Axé.

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13/05/2020 · 12:33

ERIP, and Disciplined Minds

So now I’m a council member of ERIP, LASA’s section on ethnicity, race, and indigenous peoples, and you can’t say I don’t do service. Ergo, 2020-2022: President, Louisiana Conference of AAUP; Vice-President, Feministas Unidas; Council, ERIP. The university does not value my views but these organizations do.

On being treated with disrespect: people who are feeling diminished should read this book and keep in mind that it doesn’t mean there should not be academic disciplines, or that there isn’t great value in in-depth subject knowledge.

I’m still going to send this paper to LACES, although I’ll have to write it first. I was going to send it there before I got elected to the council of the organization that publishes it but it is my current mode to change plans as little as possible.

Axé.

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10/05/2020 · 17:56

Sobre el modernismo

I recycled today this issue of Revista Iberoamericana because you can see it all online. It is thirty years old. When it came out I knew so many people in it, and I think it is a good issue generally, so it was hard not to keep as a memento of myself, things I read then, who I was then. Sitting on the shelf, of course, it was hard to recognize, so it is gone — but its energies remain.

Axé.

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06/05/2020 · 15:37

Reading stories like an underdog

This is an important little piece to read.

And I want this book Global Raciality, but not at its price. I wish we had a library, and that it kept up with things. They have it at LSU-S and I should get it by interlibrary loan.

And finally, I have always admired this article on Borges. Now I’ve discovered the author was an important writer in his own right. There is so much to know.

Axé.

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02/05/2020 · 11:36

Logs of May

1 Friday, planned: a/ work on classes, b/ buy tables, c/ decide yes or no on the AP reading, d/ do not work on research.
Actual: a/ worked on classes, b/ investigated tables and decided against, c/ decided no on the AP reading, d/ opened abstract.

2 Saturday, planned: a/ work on classes, b/ cleaning, file clearing; c/ go to nursery, other home related shopping.
Saturday, actual: a/ not done, b/ some cleaning done but no file clearing;  c/ done, but must be repeated, and also made decisions on furniture, namely: priorities are lap/standing desk, new couch, and tiling the kitchen floor.
d/ found a book I owned that talks of modernism and anarchism and it explains a great deal

– I work at the dining table and on the couch, and sometimes on the floor in the back bedroom. I should just face these facts.
– The back bedroom doesn’t want to be a study but a library / media / occasional guest room. If it becomes a study it may need a different bed — let’s say a single daybed, perhaps — and the desk will face into the room, not out of it.
– All of these things may change if the garden becomes more beautiful, but in the meanwhile the reason I turn toward the house and not the outdoors to work is the view.

3 Sunday, planned: a/ work on classes, b/ exercise.
Sunday, actual: d/ lazily read in the book on modernism and anarchism, and heard of some key Lorca links from Mayhew’s blog, including this 1953 radio broadcast of Montero and this article with links that I got from his Facebook page. I have to put all of these onto my Lorca course blog.

It was a pretty day but I was sad, feeling as though my life were over. It was my niece’s birthday and of course they did not call. There are other factors. I will go on more walks, sleep more, try to do more nice things.

4 Monday
a/ I did look again at my abstract
b/ I worked on classes, mainly writing and giving a final
c/ I looked at e-mail, did some service business for a national organization
d/ I want to work out in some way and will do as soon as the final is over. And I’ll write the other final TONIGHT. And the third one TOMORROW.

Axé.

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27/04/2020 · 20:22

Silvia Tandeciarz

I am not sure how easy it will be to get another copy of T’s important article on Spivak but I am recycling it because I simply must get a clearer desk, and clearer shelves.

She says that it is not so much that Spivak puts French feminism in an international frame but that she finds an international frame for French feminism. Spivak’s article is to read in France among the French but does not really speak to an international audience.

Said spoke of a conspiracy of theory, theorists all affirm each other and come up with a kind of orthodoxy. Is it ever possible to ensure the nonimperialist use and application of seemingly “politically correct” theoretical frameworks?

The Said article is in Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic. Said, in almost his exact words: In systems evidence gets homogenized very easily. Criticism as such is crowded out and disallowed from the start; hence, it is impossible. In the end one learns to manipulate bits of the system like so many parts of a machine. The universal system does not in fact take in a great deal: it screens out what it cannot directly absorb and repetitively churns out the same answers.

I think this is what happens to Anzaldúa and work on her. She says she is radical and of color and a fluctuating subject and then everyone else says so are they, and so are their objects of study, and a certain theoretical model of the subject is affirmed. It seems not to matter that the way she formulates this is by the same strategies elite Latin American subjects form themselves as allegedly oppositional to Europe–appropriating certain indigenous cultural material to do so.

 

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