Kristeva has that famous title Desire in Language but what about joy in language? Arguedas referred to himself as a “demonio feliz” speaking in Quechua and Castilian. Vallejo is a similarly happy demon, surfing seas of metaphor, watching the dance of words. Logopoeia. This is fun to say but one cannot say it without looking … More Ce matin
The days are bright. I do not remember winter light being so bright here and pale, or there being as much sun. It is colder now for longer, as well. I woke up this morning thinking that I would like to understand Adorno, now because he and Horkheimer (1972) say that “homeland is the state … More Lundi encore
We must study this. Axé.
I am reading Francisco Goldman, The Interior Circuit; Pedro Granados, Soledad impura, and C. D. Wright, One Big Self: An Investigation. I do not have Deborah Luster’s book of photographs that accompanies this last, but you can look at part of it here, and part of it here. I am promoting Powell’s Books to get us … More And… reading for pleasure Sunday
It is easily possible to live yet better. To do so, one must remember not to torture oneself (I am so trained to that that I do it automatically unless I remind myself that I can be kinder, as I have in fact ben in some eras). One must also remember that one has rights … More Pour méditer cette semaine
This might turn out to be a Hollywood-style film, but one must see it for the soundtrack at least. I think I will show it at the beginning of my Colonial class in the fall, and then use the semester to show how the continent got to that point. Axé.
To make some decisions about software and train myself in current versions of it, I reformatted a short document with endnotes, that book review I struggled with and complained about before. As a rule one should not review what one does not like. But I find reviewing new poetry very instructive and I learned a … More Othering Spanish
One of the best media critics is Karl Kraus, whose Last Days of Mankind satirized the Viennese of his day in their love of gossip and gossip dressed up as news. Coffeeshops were abuzz with the latest rumors and disasters, culminating in the disaster of WW I. What I always remember from this play, a … More The past resembles the present
It’s interesting how relativist arguments get used in apologetics for institutions that claim to have had the absolute truth always and forever. C’est le post du jour et c’est très important. Axé.
There was something I heard from an unexpected quarter about nation and state as separate things, or things working separately, and that I would like to reencounter. I saw a film of an anti-MOOC symposium in which a literature professor talked about the large, live lecture as a way to model close reading and to … More Cette semaine
coldhearted scientist وداد 