Spanish literature is not the prefiguring, emanation, or multiple expression of a Herderian national soul, as we were taught. If we must say it is one thing then it is the sardonic laughter of witty people who caught in an irrational situation and commenting upon it.
Spanish literature is an adjective, not a noun. It is rich and strange, but more importantly it is always already comparative and transnational. These two last adjectives are important.
Spanish literature is more Arabic than people realize. It drinks Italian wine, speaks Portuguese when that is in fashion, and is not sure whether it should be French. It uses words from all the Iberian language, not just Castilian.
In daily life it is told off by Moorish girls in their language, and accosted by Catalan bandits in theirs. It could be marched off to Holland or embarked to Istanbul any day, or kidnapped to North Africa.
*
I woke up this morning thinking of the people who are not making tenure this year or not being renewed, and about teaching the courses of the departed.
I woke up this morning thinking about how, in graduate school, I would think about what I was doing every year, did I want to sign on for another session knowing it was a bad profession and there were no jobs?
I woke up realizing that I have not done this since becoming a professor or have done so unevenly. Or I have been in exile. In any case I appear to be returning now.
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When I was in the first grade Malcolm and Martin were still alive. It was the fall of James Meredith; we saw pictures from Mississippi and sang freedom songs. Unlike my students now I always associated school with liberty, which in those days lay just ahead.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 