♦Freedom as death struggle (Hegel); “death or liberty.” Haitian independence slogan, apparently: Vive la mort! (But it is also a mercenary slogan.)
♦THE VIOLENCE AT THE ORIGIN, ORIGINARY VIOLENCE. Which must then be forgotten. Sommer says these “foundational” texts are intended to heal originary violence but do they really work that way?
♦Should I call the first chapter of my book “Fictional Foundations of Latin American Culture” (playing on Foundational Fictions)? Or, would it be better to just use that phrase in the text (and explain it)? A key part of my mission, it seems, is to engage and respond to that Sommer book. I think I am writing about race but perhaps this is the real center of the thing.
♦These “foundational fictions” do not found, but un-found, because they unravel (cf. María) as much as they posit or remain solid. They found fictionally, but not really, and what goes on in terms of policy and practice does not necessarily match what the letrados say.
♦Classic 19th century texts declare certain projects, but they also put much historical reality under some sort of erasure. They may function best as ways to form horizons of interpretation that become hard to see beyond … such that certain analyses are reproduced and others are interdicted.
♦Those are some rudimentary ideas AND they will help with the article I must finish NOW.
♦I should use, somehow, somewhere, the “Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires” and its idea of an illusory, shared past.
♦Also, Baldwin: “The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.”Blanqueamiento is not just a Latin American thing.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 