“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if … More Audre Lorde, on the recognition and denial of difference

Apparently it only exists in theory. States do but the bounded hexagon with its homogeneous culture and so on doesn’t really exist. If that’s true, it would explain all the contortions certain authors go through trying to represent the nation. It’s not that it doesn’t exist yet, or that we’re creating the first ones, it’s … More The nation-state

And Latin American elites make moves around their constitutive others similar to what the Russians do. So the term colonial discourse remains relevant, it seems. Snyder keeps talking about empire, colonialism and representations of nation. The fact that Russia and postcolonial Latin American elite discourse use so many of the same “rhetorical patterns” (as Jennie … More More notes following Snyder

Essentially, you create a hierarchized racial division that puts you at an advantage, deny that it exists, but call yourself a victim of it. Part of it is what those students said, “to be a legitimate white Latin Americans you must pass yourself through Blackness.” Oswald joked that Brazilians were cannibalizing Western Civilization but it’s … More Evoke-and-elide, that colonialist move

Reviewing, to see how much of this I should bring up in my departmental context now. This is a good text but I don’t know how key for the current chair. Still, it’s good as an conversation opener and reminder for this chair and dean, to whom I have already delivered more recent writings in … More What Carlos Alonso said in 2007