I will submit paper #2 to that journal. I will finish paper #1 and send it somewhere. I will write that op-ed and send it to The Nation. I have two book reviews to finish. I must also write this paper, although I do not have complete control of the material yet. Finishing paper #1 and writing this will be research.
Paper #2 is going off post-haste. Paper #1 needs to be finished in the next month, as does one of the book reviews. On vacation I can do the other book review and the Nation op-ed. Composing this, below, will be my first act of research in 2014.
“Race,” cultural exceptionalism and the modern world system
Mestizaje is a key justification of cultural exceptionalism in Latin America. As foundational myth it has often served to limit the analysis of race and racisms, in the social sciences as well as the literary field. Is it possible to consider questions of race, or race and culture, without taking recourse in exceptionalist logics? This paper considers that question in light of the work of ethicist Denise Ferreira da Silva, author of Toward a Global Idea of Race and other writings on race and racism. It will consider related work on alterity in the modern world system by Michel de Certeau and Michel-Rolph Trouillot.
According to da Silva, mestizaje is the process that produces the recognizable, yet subordinate racial “other” on whose ground the modern subject is sustained. For this reason mestizaje is precisely not “exceptional” in global processes. In order to analyze race beyond exceptionalism, we must also think outside coloniality/modernity (Walter Mignolo), and consider decolonial options. The paper suggests that the exceptionalist discourse on race and mestizaje in Latin America works not to highlight Latin American specificity but to obscure its role in the modern world system, which is also a racial system.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 