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
On Heart of Darkness and Moby-Dick as examples of salvage capitalism: Moby-Dick tells of a ship of whalers whose rowdy cosmopolitanism contrasts sharply with our stereotypes of factory discipline; yet the oil they obtain from killing whales around the world enters a U.S.-based capitalist supply chain. Strangely, all the harpooners on the Pequod are unassimilated … More Anna Tsing
One of my students has been working in queer theory and there is far more of it than I had realized. This piece on “gay shame” seems important for a number of reasons, having to do in part with some people I once knew. Axé.
In shorthand. Important to note for this week is how I was taught that normalcy was a façade. In reality we were barely tolerated: we hadn’t been wanted, we were not liked, and it was wished that we would go away. Our successes were events carefully arranged for our amusement by our parents, and if … More Education and Reeducation
I really do not get out enough. My students should know about Mario Bellatín, Hilda HIlst, Pedro Lemebel, Naty Menstrual, and Eugenia Prado. It seems that they, together with Diamela Eltit and others, wrote or are writing the nueva narrativa femenina latinoamericana. I should have told my student about Sarduy, Escrito sobre un cuerpo, and … More Famous writers I should have known about, or should have worked with more
Alan Watts on Chesterton. Paul Preston on the Spanish Civil War — as holocaust. The Holocaust Encyclopedia actually has an entry on the Spanish Civil War. U.S. economists are always wrong. Hattie says: There was also an excerpt from Chris Hayes’s new book, A Colony Within a Nation. As he says, “In the nation, you … More Things people have sent me to try.
– Thursday is César Vallejo’s birthday and he will be 125. – This, as we know, could also be about Vallejo, as it is about many: Living in Budapest, connected to a self-confident and industrializing West but set apart from it by language and often religion, Polanyi and his contemporaries embodied one of the central … More Encore des nouvelles. On modernity, and on race.
coldhearted scientist وداد 