From the files: a Nation article I had kept, on GW Bush’s use of language. He creates dependency by scaring people and painting himself as the savior, so people will do as he says. “Empty language” is one term the article uses; another is “personalization,” which he uses instead of argumentation. The third is “negative … More 2003
It was an old journal issue when I bought it and I’m only recycling it now, partly because it was the first issue of that journal I ever acquired, when I had just discovered it, and partly because it has an article by Jean Franco, now classic, that I still want to re-study. As an … More RCLL Year 2 Issue 3
I am recycling books by these authors, and in presses like Biblioteca Ayacucho, and one of them was my father’s copy and has his handwriting in it. All of them are classic, good, useful, in field, that I hope to need, but that I do not in fact open, and could reacquire. I have to … More Ades, Schwartz, Sucre, Osorio, Paz, Verani
Important things today: I had some progress on the MLA panel, and then started working on an abstract for the MLA that is based on what I need to figure out for C19. In both cases, I seemed to crack something. I also got the flights for California ready, and the hotels. I was too … More Mestizo Self-Fashioning
We have to watch this. On the Shah of Iran. The 2,500th anniversary, and all. Axé.
…or so to speak. Books now going, are going because they’re tattered and don’t look refreshing. There’s an English translation of Benítez Rojo, La isla que se repite, a good book, but I believe we have it in Spanish and anyway, this is widely available. On second thought I’ll take it home for my paper, … More Se me va la vida
There is a great 2004 article on Y tu mamá también by this title. Now, it’s available on JSTOR. It’s in a great issue of South Central Review on memory and nation in contemporary Mexico, now available in Project Muse. I could study this article and then build a course around all the films it … More Transnational cinema and the Mexican state
I should read Enrique Serna. Axé.
That is a chapter title in Sandy Petrey, Speech Acts and Literary Theory, a photocopied book I am recycling, and that I would like to study again. But it can be bought now, again, as a book, not a pile of paper. Petrey talks about the referent as something real. “The continental masters of doubt … More The Prose of the World
This is another valuable, photocopied book that I am recycling. And there are things in it like photographs of the cover of first edition of Rusia en 1931. Reflexiones al pie del Kremlin, marvelously ’30s, and a Soviet postcard to Orrego. I will keep some of these things. There are also all of Orrego’s journalistic … More Antenor Orrego, Mi encuentro con César Vallejo
coldhearted scientist وداد 