There is this 2015 book I did not know about, that we even have in our library, and there is Kirsten Silva-Greuz’s work, including new work on the colonial period. I have to get on this. There is so much fascination in store. Actual academia is painful, but it was made for such interesting things. … More Hispanic and Latino New Orleans
I had a footnote using Jorge Klor de Alva . . . something smart from, I think, 1995 . . . and I am going to have to resurrect this in a next paper. What is the “colonial difference” (Mignolo)? In theory I know, but there is more to know about it. Is evoke-and-elide the … More Jorge Klor, “evoke-and-elide,” and the colonial difference
The text: I would add and emphasize that the literary construction of a national subject with indigenous roots, modern-democratic feeling, and transnational potential has been an elite, not a subaltern project in Latin America for over two hundred years. This subject is a product of colonialism, and it could be argued that it was crafted … More The last juicy footnote
These questions–raised by Medina, on whether you really can just take from a culture what you want and leave the rest, and by me [following others], on the distance between giving voice to the subaltern subject [that may be you, although the subaltern cannot speak] and creating a new, liberated subject–lead back to issues of … More More juicy footnotes — being excised, this is too complicated and has to be for another paper
Every footnote could become part of a new paper, and perhaps should. I cut from one footnote: Scholars like Peter Wade note that mestizaje as ideology has worked as a uniting force in some communities, but Bolivia is now a plurinational state and Ecuador’s most recent constitution gives indigenous peoples their own cultural rights. There … More Excised from footnotes
Look at this person’s bibliography: race and the state, and hybridity, and now Herzog. Admiration and envy are my feelings on this — I wanted to be in a position to spend time on these things myself. Perhaps I can now. Axé.
Race is about politics. The concept of race was invented in Spain in the 14th century. Originally this was about religion (the Jews) but then it became about social and political power — the idea being not to share power with the conversos. So otherness then became about genealogy, not current religious difference, and Jewishness … More Spain, race as a global construct, and lagniappe
On Bourbon reforms and slave societies. How modern Spain was created by its Cuban colony. Axé.
I really MUST study the Louisiana-Caribbean connection in greater detail — there’s a 19th century novel called Macandal, and Séjour has a short story, Le Mulâtre, about paternity as well as a play about Jewishness and limpieza de sangre. In police news, consider the story of Fred Hampton, some damning evidence on the FBI, and … More French Louisiana, and the police
For summer I am trying to step up my program of divesting myself of books and files. My focus is on copies of books I doubt I will read, and on journal issues now available electronically. Yesterday I got rid of a nice copy of George Steiner, After Babel, because the pages are so yellowed. … More Farvel, farvel
