[In the process of forming my reading lists for the qualifying exam, I’ve been led to multiple reflections and, as is to be expected, multiple drafts. I have since moved away from geopolitical economy, becoming more conscious of and interested in, for lack of a better word, the overwhelming power of the established order, what…
Category Archives: État
The graduate students of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, invite submissions for its annual conference: Impasse University of California, Irvine Friday, March 2, 2012 Humanities Gateway 1030 Website: impasse-uci.tumblr.com Keynote Speaker: Professor Homay King, Bryn Mawr College In a climate of seemingly insurmountable economic indebtedness, a poisonous and ineffectual…
Tony Perez’s Cubao-Kalaw Kalaw-Cubao (1995) begins after a gruesome crime. Some terrible event—criminal rapes kid, criminal kills kid, cop chases criminal, criminal kills cop, criminal kills self (xii)—is briefly sketched in the prologue that serves as “a short history before the novel begins” (prologue title) (xii). The novel itself (separated by a section title, “Kid,…
[The statement of purpose I'm using for my MA Review at UCI. Please leave comments and suggestions, especially before my exam (on 15 Feb)!] My main interest is in political economy. I am interested in the ways in which material scarcity (real and imagined) leads to some kind of system or regime, a certain way…
[The introduction to a current project:] There is something nomadic about Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006). While the novel, so far Pynchon’s longest, takes place in a specific context—the Progressive Era in America up to the chaos of World War I—it nonetheless moves back and forth across space—across America, the globe, and beyond, including…
[The Tupinambas; Image from wikimedia] In his provocative Society Against the State, Pierre Clastres draws from his ethnographic work to provide a theory of a society that, rather than developing into the state, operates directly against it. By ‘operating against’ I mean, following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s reading of Clastres in A Thousand…
[The Pintura of Chimalhuacán-Atoyac, an Amerindian "map"] Walter Mignolo’s The Darker Side of the Renaissance explores different practices of representation/expression (literature, history, cartography) and the way in which in their respective registers (language, memory, space) they have been shaped and utilized by the imperial power (Europe, Spain in particular) for its colonizing project (of the…
[João Biehl and Catarina in Vita; image by Torben Eskerod from the book] There is a place outside of Porto Alegre in Brazil where families leave behind “undesirable members” (14) (mostly sick) to wait for their death. It is called Vita, what João Biehl, in an ethnographic work, describes as a “zone of social abandonment.”…
It has been a looong time since I last posted something here. Partly because I took a break (from writing, at least), partly because I had to move to my new settlement for the next few years (beautiful SoCal). To restart another period of (hopefully prolific) activity, I significantly revised the profile page of (mass)think!…
[A revised version of the “purpose of study” I sent out when applying for the PhD, written with the feedback of professors, friends, and family] I have taken a long and unusual route to decide what kind of work to do for the PhD. Partly this is due to my Third World background. Focused on…
