Joan Didion, again. “Writing is an aggressive, hostile act.” Trysh Travis: [In] graduate teaching, this means helping students figure out what they are arguing about complex and multifaceted topics with which they tend to have, in clinical mental health terms, deeply codependent relationships. . . . . . . bell hooks calls the process “coming … More Writing is the act of saying I
Here we have a very important article on the neoliberal university, that I will study, called “Contingent No More.” Related to it is the infantilization entailed in reducing citizens to consumers. This post mentions a book on advertising and persuasion, which according to Cliff Arroyo emphasizes infantilization as a key to coercion. This journal Transmodernidad, … More Mundos neoliberales
I want to read Bauman’s Social Europe book. Perhaps, since the book comes in non-traditional forms, this is something I will do while traveling. I submitted something to my writing group but must not forget to do something with it once I get it back. It has potential to be overshadowed but should not. After … More A chronicle of crisis
You have to order the version I want from France, it seems. Do you think I could get it in New York? And look, look at this film. Axé.
There are all these books, new books, amazing South American anthropology and theory books, that you can download from the Antropologías del sur site. There is also a really smart post about writing productivity. ♦ I keep forgetting that I am slightly dissociative, or slightly withdrawn. I forget because it is almost imperceptible, and then … More Antropologías del sur
The March 2006 PMLA (121:2) is one of those I kept, to study, and am no longer because those articles are now available online and: you must clear out bookshelves if you are to see what you have. I kept it because it had articles about the body and corporeality, including one on Descartes and … More Sur le corps
From Austerlitz, I learned about this Resnais short obliquely based on Borges, Toute la mémore du monde. This article, about architecture in the Bibliothèque Nationale of France, complements the film and the novel very well. And here is a set of 13 films of works by Borges and Bioy Casares. How do you see film … More Alain Resnais
There are so many things about Bourdieu. And Sánchez-Prado has some new edited books coming out: on Mexico and world literature, and Bourdieu and Latin America. The point is that Latin America is so often the beginning point, not the imitator of modern processes, yet the central countries do not recognize this. I said this … More Bourdieu
They are fascinating and addictive. The best so far is of Abraham Jones, who was born in 1825 and was therefore 112 when interviewed in 1937. He seemed half his age, it was said. He remembered the 1833 meteor shower, when “stars fell on Alabama.” There is also an interesting story of one Louis, who … More WPA slave narratives
This title uses, in English, my modified translation of a phrase from a 19th century text. That phrase is “un ojo conocedor” and my title is “That Discerning Eye: …”. I discovered by chance (well, by reading U.S. slave narratives) that slaves and, I assume others, referred to the “discerning eye” as one that could … More There might be a problem with my title
coldhearted scientist وداد 