If you do not “cut corners on teaching” as one is supposed to do, you can learn from it and it will aid you in research. I am going to understand this essay by Walter Benjamin for class. The political consequence of the temporal naturalism underlying the idea of ‘progress’ is conformism. For Benjamin, paradoxically, … More SEP-Benjamin
Fíjense en lo que dice Ricardo Palma: “The principal cause of the great defeat is that the majority of Peru is composed of that wretched and degraded race that we once attempted to dignify and ennoble. The Indian lacks patriotic sense; he is born enemy of the white and of the man of the coast. … More Facebook is refusing to post
Unbelievably, I now have an official creative writing student and I am starting to compile a list of readings, in an attempt to begin answering the question, who and what taught me to write my sentences? Essay, chronicle, memoir ♦ Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo ♦ Joan Didion ♦ Mariano José de Larra ♦ Michel de Montaigne, … More Liste de lectures … en progrès … and constantly updating
I really must have this book because it makes my point about the role of the state in the creation and maintenance of racial hierarchies in Latin America. One more thing to buy. Axé.
Tell me anything you know about Ricardo Rivera Aybar. I really need to know. My notes on one novel, taken in a sleepy library, are: Lucanor Arias y Reynaldos, early colonizer, goes with 5 ships, and does not realize he will found a variegated tribe, a family tree with many different branches. He leaves Spain … More El reino de Mandinga
The cultural identities consolidated by writers like José Vasconcelos, Fernando Ortiz, Nicolás Guillén, Gilberto Freyre, and Oswald de Andrade, and naturalized as national discourses from the 1920s forward, are derived from earlier formulations. But their cultural emphasis is new, as are their proclamations that the mestizo is superior rather than degraded. The mestizo nation of … More Let us see if this is less boring: 162 words
Starting at page 306. A. Grammar and the Hispanic Text. Nebrija’s formulated a “grammatical contract of servitude.” Slavery was apprentice citizenship and was teaching people how to be Hispanic. On paper, but not in practice, differences were minimized as alliances were maximized. Nebrija provided the New World with the justification for a cohesive Hispanic Text. … More Continuing to break Piedra down further for the students — and to “touch work” for me
This is interesting on its own but it is mainly created to teach beginning graduate students how to read an article. They have to follow my notes, map them onto the article in question, fill in my gaps, and elaborate in a lucid way. I am using this piece because it is germane to the … More The complete Piedra article
More from Piedra (I love his English, I think it is Cuban and under the influence of Golden Age Spanish, but the marvel of it is, it is ultra-perfect English): To become Hispanic was to acquire “literary whiteness.” The concept of the Hispanic “race” grew in print … but there are Afro-Hispanic writings throughout the … More Rapacious grammar
Time time time: to some extent it is true, one is as harried as one wants to be. My overwhelmed friend teaches community college, 15 hours of class a week, 3 courses 5 days a week, plus meetings, office hours, planning, grading, and the exhaustion of working in a turbulent institution. That is of course plenty … More Fugue states
coldhearted scientist وداد 