In 1876, Dom Pedro II, the Emperor of Brazil, visited San Francisco and asked to meet the Emperor of the United States. They met at a royal suite at the newly opened Palace Hotel and talked for more than an hour. Dom Pedro never let on whether he realized that the United States really didn’t … More Emperor Norton
Facebook refused to post this: Bien, tenés razón Natalia, lo interesante sería ver literatura del mundo hispanoárabe actual. Yo en lo que pensaba para mi actual clasecita era alguna jarcha con fotos de Córdoba, algo así, y asustarlos con la noticia de que no es del todo cristiana la madre patria. Pero veo algo más … More Rebrillante
Now I see the origin of my dream: I was Chatting with a friend from long ago, and we were looking at pictures on Facebook of our mutual friends from then, and talking about how old everyone was now. I dreamed of myself. I was not like myself at all: I was an older lady, … More Dream
Look at the microphone: this is from KCRW. That is a radio station in the promised land. Agua de rosas she says, but it is citrus I remember. Axé.
“The ‘idea’ of America and of ‘Latin’ America emerged and has been maintained in the field of forces in which knowledge and wealth are unevenly distributed, and where the colonial difference has been silenced by the trumpeting and celebration of cultural differences.” –Mignolo 2005, 44. I know you are writing on this today, SMT. Axé.
There was Spinoza, contra Descartes and perhaps contra Kant. Explain/explore the possibility of not having the mind/body split. There was the counter-Enlightenment but what about critiques of Enlightenment that are not dully postmodern? Modernity carries values like authenticity, and believes in foundations, whereas the postmodern does not. This is why I am far more modernist … More Other sides of modernity
Jonathan may not have one weird trick for being a successful academic but I do: make very limited plans for what you can say in any conference presentation. In order to be sure to get into the MLA and LASA, I used to write these paper proposals which were really book proposals. Then they were … More Tight
. . . a broadly anti-intellectual professionalizing atmosphere that is inimical to the long, slow life of sustained thinking and unwilling to support it, with, I think, terrible consequences for the humanities—tellingly, the most productive scholars in my department have won multiple external fellowships that keep them away from campus; an administration that is indifferent … More A good essay
II “Among the most noteworthy characteristics of human beings,” says Lotze, “belongs… next to so much self-seeking in individuals, the general absence of envy of each present in relation to the future.” This reflection shows us that the picture of happiness which we harbor is steeped through and through in the time which the course … More Afsnit to (Benjamin)
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
