Viveiros de Castro and Oswald de Andrade know Marx and Freud, the ethnographic and blind discourses of “the savage” created in the XIX Century, and the critical paradigms that have shaped the anthropology and the production of cultural artifacts in the West, and by extension, in Latin America. I want to highlight the time distance […]
Keeping Up on Sundays
This weekend I find myself consuming and being consumed, now entertaining the ways in which this state can be one of sordid “glass half empty” or blissful “glass half full” existence. As Diana Taylor says in Dead Capital, we are at once the spectator and the product (15), both the almond milk and the almond […]
Becoming and the Pact
In Cannibal Metaphysics, de Castro writes, “Every becoming is an alliance. Which does not mean, once again, that every alliance is a becoming” . I am fascinated by this sentence because it reminds me of the idea of the “pact,” which I am writing about for my group’s final project. According to the Oxford English […]
o meu avô
Na sua Pedagogia das Pedras, Jesusa Rodriguez nos conta como o nascimento é a materialização da energia vital que está dispersa e atuante no Universo. Ao nascermos, essa energia primordial se torna uma pequena faísca, que habita o nosso coração. Para nos reencontrarmos com a nossa vitalidade, é necessário travar a Xochi-Yolotl (flor-coração), a Guerra […]
The Question of Present(E) Form
“Presente”, to be present, in the present, a wrinkle that merges time and space together, to be present, a call for embodiment and attention to our surroundings, an interpellation of the environment …. shouting to us: “stop… and listen”. Reading Diana Taylor’s text “Presente” is especially relevant in the progression of our class, the text […]
Past Tense, Future Perfect
“Past tense, future perfect” is a combination of words oft-used by author Zadie Smither in her 1999 novel White Teeth about immigrant identities and dehumanization in late 20th century London. Something between past and future is a desiring, unrepresented present. This gap is widened by the the physicality of “tense” versus the grammatical association of […]
ABC- A B C
Quijano, Rivera Cusicanqui, and Mbebe all explore the implementation of rigid power structures as mirrors through which individuals are allowed to see themselves. Either in the forcing of a conception of a “History” told as historical chains characterized by a framework of progress (Quijano), by the violent and forceful reorganization of sacred territories in Bolivia […]
for the week ironically titled “theories”
These texts come together as a braid, entangled and loaded with tension. Instrumentalizing human existence (and demise) like puppeteers (Mbembé, 14), the conquerors mentioned in these readings weave bodies and borders, denying the physical pain of tearing at roots. Most touching were the explorations into “body as place” (Mbembé, 28) and the very ways in […]
Mascaras y Traducción: Trayectorias de la Hegemonía en Rivera Cusicanqui y Mbembe
Había leído hace un tiempo el gran ensayo de Achille Mbembe donde se acuña el tan necesario concepto de “Necropolítica”. Sin embargo, leerlo de nuevo a la luz del “Principio de Potosí” de Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui fue revelador; la forma y el lenguaje del texto de la última no se parecía en nada a la […]