Nancy K. Miller’s “Changing the Subject,” Vallejo, and the (il)legibility of Cecilia Valdés

I have this as a journal article, in an issue I am recycling, but it’s available as part of Miller’s book Subject to Change, which can still be acquired. It’s a 1986 piece, from when I was worried about this question: was the decentering/death of the subject revolutionary if the subject to be killed, fragmented, … More Nancy K. Miller’s “Changing the Subject,” Vallejo, and the (il)legibility of Cecilia Valdés

A paper on Sommer and da Silva I had sketched out in longhand

And I won’t reproduce it all here. Point 1 was that Sommer says romance makes nation, but the families in the novels she discusses aren’t stable; they’re unhappy, disintegrating, and so on. Family is not peace and conciliation. Examples: Ma.: ella muere y Efraín se va a la nada; C.V.: los personajes mueren y las … More A paper on Sommer and da Silva I had sketched out in longhand

Cecilia again

Glissant in Poétique de la relation talks about the mestizo as the one who confounds categories, disturbs whiteness. That’s not how they’re constructed in Spanish America, they’re a nation-building category. But it does seem to be how Cecilia works in Cecilia Valdés. Is this further evidence of that novel being written in the United States … More Cecilia again

Ideologies of Hispanism (more notes to frame Cecilia and plaçage) … these 13 points are a fairly good blocking out

FACE YOUR FEARS [I am transcribing these notes to avoid doing that, but it isn’t a bad form of procrastination as it is helping me get something else necessary done]. ALSO REMEMBER: Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II was a Confederate ally who had sheltered and supplied Southern ships during the Civil War. Then he offered … More Ideologies of Hispanism (more notes to frame Cecilia and plaçage) … these 13 points are a fairly good blocking out

Those notes

I need to organize my notes. And files. As we know, and in a better way than making these blog posts. But for today: we will start here, anyhow, any way. Cecilia Valdés the novel is anti-colonialist, pro-elite, pro-white and pro-patriarchy (and check Doris Sommer on this; I am in the whole project arguing against … More Those notes