I cannot find the sketch I made for that course so I only know its (then) title. I will not order books now — one can always get books and I will create a reading list as I keep working on my project. I will give the class as an almost history class and it will be about the (violent) adventures of the modernizing subject as it is remapped to race and state in the transition from colony to modern state, both of which are racialized although the signs of this are periodically driven underground.
The class will still cover about 1810-1930. In Sarmiento, for instance, the modern state is to be unitario and the savage subjects excluded. We go on from there. The historical hypothesis is that the transition out of coloniality is incomplete and so is the transition to modernity, and they overlap. The literary works are grappling with this situation, forming it and being formed by it, following it and resisting it. This seems to be the shape the book project is taking.
Plantation and city overlap; and many 19th century novels are tangled up in the semi-loss of the plantation (see Sab) and remapping to a new state formation. I like allowing myself to work on the foundation of this, it needs it. And it is going to let me end en vanguardia, so as to look at aftershocks and extensions in the second part, Pedro Páramo, Arguedas, multiculturalism and the state.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 