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April 14th, 2008
11:38 pm - SPAN 312
Now that I have finished both the wikipedia and blogging experience I definetely see how they summed up the theme on writing and power for me. This encyclopedia, written by the people, is perhaps the anti-dictator novel in itself. Or perhaps it turns us all into dictators.
I was not looking forward to starting the wikipedia assignment, although I was excited that a professor had a new idea to do something different in the course work. It forced me outside of my traditional paper-writing formula. Once I got started with the wikipedia experience it sucked me in and I found it exciting to interact with other people while putting a page together. It would consume me for hours and I found it much easier to focus on than I had expected.
I had no idea what I was in for when I registered for this course. I did have a few assumptions though. I assumed we would read a few novels and write a couple argumentative 5-10 page papers. However, my assumption, at least about the format of the assignments, proved wrong. This class would lead me to experience all the glories and frustrations of the internet through blogging and wikipedia. I've always known a bit about blogging, but I'm not going to lie, I've also always been proud not to have a blog. I always thought was blogging was sort of a self-obsessed indoor time-consuming activity. I have learned to enjoy it a bit more, as it has encouraged me to keep up with the readings more than I usually am able to do in traditional classes, which has made in class discussion all the more interesting. I have also enjoyed reading other people's blogs and am a little excited to be more aware of the blogging world.
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11:24 pm - Feast of the Goat
I found the use of the second-person in the narrating technique applied by Mario Vargas Llosa in Feast of the Goat to be a creative way to show a different kind of psychological realism than what we saw in Miguel Angel Asturias's writing. It showed a glimpse into the way someone might think while at the same time being removed from the character. In the chapters about Urania it was interesting to see how the use of second person and third person (through refering to "Urania") combined, especially since we know from the first page that she does not identify with her own name. Does the continued use of this name by the narrator demonstrate her father's power or at least emphasize her connection to her father, almost like a scar that is repeatedly used to identify her. The mixed tenses makes me wonder if she even uses her own name that she does not identify with when she thinks about herself, or if it is only the more removed narrator that is doing so.
I found the intimate descriptions of Trujillo to be exciting since I knew a little more about him than the other dictators we have read about -- espeacially since many of them were supposed to be more general figures loosely based on specific dictators. My introduction to Latin American novels was through my adolescent fascination with the Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez. Her most famous novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, tells the story of the Maribel sisters living under Trujillo, so I at least was aware of her fictionalized portrayal of his rule. To have another, more intimate, look at this dictator in Feast of the Goat was both a frightening and fascinating experience.
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April 8th, 2008
02:55 pm - back for The General in his Labyrinth, part II
After a bit of a blogging break I am back to report on the rest of Garcia Marquez's The General in his Labyrinth. I found as I continued the book I developed more pity for the General, although this continued to be balanced by a bit of disdain for his ego. The narration leaves us in a strange place between the General and the people, so we can feel on one hand disgusted by the gossip, "They say Your Excellency is well but pretends to be sick so people will feel sorry for you" (181), yet on the other hand see where the impressions people have come from, as the General is no doubt a bit unreliable in his last days, a bit more talk than action. As everyone else expects we observe how he does have more trouble leaving the region than he anticipates. Even if as readers we really want to believe that he wants to leave, "I'm determined to go anywhere than die here" (240), he never runs out of excuses for staying. Did the words of the honored general always lack his honor, or did he just honor his own words less during his dying days? However, honor is very important to him, as he states his decision to go Riohacha instead of continuing his trip is a "question of honor"(243). This honor is important to him more than to the dictators we have read about as he does care about how others feel and think, although we see that this caring does not really fit with the amount of power he has, so that others often cover up dissent just in order to please him(246) and perhaps this worry and caring has led to the very "moral torment" (248) that is playing a role in killing him.
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March 10th, 2008
10:59 pm - The General in his Labyrinth
While the summary on the back of the book and the map on the first page give away that Garcia Marquez's story is about Simon Bolivar and although I looked at both of these before starting the book I didn't make the connection between Bolivar an d the initial introduction of the book's subject as a "his"(3) and a "him"(3) and then as "the General"(3). I think Garcia Marquez has kept it ambiguous on purpose since he is such an important name in Latin America. When I remembered I was reading about Simon Bolivar I was a little shocked. I was reading about the general as I had read about Asturias' brutal President (although with a little more sympathy). But while I do not know much about Simon Bolivar, I have always heard his name in more of the heroic liberator sense. However, I guess the dictators of both The President and I the Supreme also took pride in their position as 'liberators' and at times the supreme even pulled out slight sympathies from the reader. What does the word liberator really mean though, and how can it be used? Does an active 'liberator' imply a passive 'liberated' with a total lack of agency? In the General's memory of 'liberating' Queen Maria Luisa, we learn of a beautiful slave who he basically rapes "she gave herself to him not out of desire or love but out of fear. She was a virgin. Only after she regained her courage did she say: 'I am a slave, sir.' 'Not Anymore,' he said. 'Love has made you free'"(50) and goes on the buy her from her owner and grant her "unconditional freedom" (50). Is this unconditional freedom? Being loved by the general entitles one to liberation through rape (does this apply to a nation or a people as well as to this one woman?)? This is not how I imagined Simon Bolivar. And in one of my other classes an article we read cited Miguel Angel Asturias' racist thesis on promoting eugenics practices in Guatemala, which is not how I imagined Asturias either (although maybe Sarmiento).
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March 7th, 2008
09:24 pm - I the Supreme, final blog
This book has required a level of engagement I will be happy to be released from once I'm done with this blog. While this engagement has been enjoyable it has mostly been exhausting and I think I will appreciate the more traditonal and hopefully more coherent novels that will follow.
Throughout I the Supreme I found myself most interested in the role of the compiler and his notes. Not only did they offer a break from the dense paragraphs of dictatorship, they also offered an intriguing and mysterious character role.
I remember way back at the first compiler's note, I read it as a footnote I chose to read after finishing the page. I do not always read footnotes in articles. I read them if they offer a break from a text that is frustrating me and if they seem to offer interesting facts at first glance. I usually wait until I finish the page I am reading before I read the footnote at the bottom, and this was the way I practiced footnote reading with those first compiler's notes.
However, as I got further and further into the book I began to notice I would rejoice at the sight of the compiler's text on the page. The scattered italic paranthesis-ed messages and footnotes became the objects of my immediate attention when they appeared on freshly turned page or in any periphery of my sight.
Perhaps this ability to choose in which order to read the material on a page is part of what we have discussed of liberating the reader. Now that I think of it, I did find these passages empowering in some way. Is this because much of Roa Bastos text is indeed an assault on the reader as Jon suggested in class? However, I do not mean to suggest that the dictatorship and conversation were by any means all bad, and the fact that conversation and different layers of text existed in the novel did actually provide some of the same relief the compiler did. The story was not purely the dictator, the supreme, or his own representation of himself which may have been written in a more traditional sense if the book existed, but would probably be much less engaging and somehow more difficult to read because of it's lack of challenge to one line of thought. We are often reminded that the dictator or the supreme does not have the last say (everytime he tells Patino to leave something out of the text or cross something out or even by the presence of the note that opens the book) about what is included in the book. The compiler has considerably more power as the author of the representation that we read, even if he has not written the words.
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March 3rd, 2008
08:18 pm - I the Supreme - first half
Augusto Roa Bastos' I the Supreme opens with a decree posted on a cathedral door. When I first read this notice I was shocked by what it said and even read it aloud to my friend. It created enough mystery to pull me into the next few paragraphs fueled by my curiosity. Once it became clear that the dictator had not actually written the note, it made me less trusting of everything I read. If the first words of "I the Supreme" did not actually come from the dictator, how could we be sure the rest of the words we attribute to him actually come from him. In fact, I guess it serves as a reminder that none of the words are from the dictator, but are from Roa Bastos. Challenging my trust of who was speaking became even more complex as the speaker is never stated, the question of who is speaking is never answered by the author. We only see characters verified in the form of "compiler"(17) or "in the private notebook" (17) of the supreme.
I never came to understand the way the words were supposedly documented. The bulk of the book does not appear to be Patino's, the secretary's, notes as we may assume, unless he is actually writing down every word of their conversation, including the supreme's corrections: "Make a footnote: Eupatrid means possessor... No, just cross out eupatrid," (37) and "Aren't you copying down what I'm dictating to you? I'm enjoying so much hearing you tell this droll story of the talking skull, Sire... I'll copy the text about the gravediggers later, Sire" (82). But there are even parts where it would be impossible for Patino to be writing the words we read, for example when the dictator is trying to teach Patino how to write he instructs "Right/left. Up/down...You have just drowsily written: I THE SUPREME... I've ordered you to think of nothing at all" (58-59). I do not understand who has documented all this and Patino's responses as well. However, perhaps Roa Bastos is not concerned with the legitimacy of the story and who is speaking, since the characters speak of the dictator's death before it happens as well "The Festival of Judgment, which coincided with my death" (72). The dictator's and Patino's fascination with mysticism, from magical stones (22) to sexual fantasies (50) and philosophies about writing (58-59, and almost every other page too) also emphasizes the philosophical nature of the book as more based in theory than in literal meaning.
In this case deciding who is saying what and the practical parts of the story are less important than the way breaking these boundaries and creating confusion opens space for discussion and affects our understanding of the written dialogue and compilation of texts.
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February 4th, 2008
10:42 pm - The President - second half
Damn. If nothing else, this novel has taught me that psychological realism is dangerous. It took me a full 24 hours to rise out of the depression that finishing Asturias' The President left me in.
At the end of the novel Angel Face is no longer as beautiful and wicked as Satan, but has become a faceless prisoner in the dark shadows of cell Number 17. While Asturias' writing brings us inside the mind of this prisoner, he does not neglect to demonstrate the complex relationship between the psychological and the physical. His thoughts of Camila are interrupted by his ejaculation, "the spasm would come about gently, without the slightest contortion; a slight shiver would pass along the twisted thorns of his spine, there would be rapid contraction of the glottis, and his arms would drop to the ground as though amputated... The disgust it caused him to satisfy his needs in the tin, multiplied by the guilt that devoured him for satisfying his physical needs in so barren a matter with the memory of his wife, left him without the strength to move," (281). This passage affected me sharply, and does not really leave Angel Face's struggle between his emotions and his body resolved, as it most likely cannot be. But does cartesian dualism exist for his torturers? Carvajal's wife does not understand the ability of people to torture otherwise, "How could men like him, with eyes, with a mouth, with hands, with hair on their heads, with nails on their fingers, with teeth in their mouths, with a tongue, witha throat," (219). Asturias also discusses the way a dictatorship effects Descartes' mind-body split with a twist on "I think therefore I am," when Angel Face announces, "We've got enough to live on anywhere; and I mean live, really live, not just go on repeating all day long: 'I think with the President's mind therefore I exist, I think with the President's mind therefore I exist,'" (262).
The struggle for power between body and mind parallels the struggle between weapons and words with which we opened our course. However, in the President words and weapons are both used effectively for torture. It seems they are most powerful when used in careful collaboration. Maybe we should be asking less about which method is stronger, and more about the effects of both methods, as we must remember that neither words nor weapons are powerful without an active user.
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January 29th, 2008
12:26 am - The President
I find it interesting that Miguel Angel Asturias book about the most powerful man in the nation, The President, begins with detailed descriptions of the nation's least powerful, the homeless. Until they are useful for the president's plans they are not even important enough to be harassed by the police, as Asturias tells us "the police wanted nothing to do with the beggars. None of them had enough money to pay a fine" (8).
Our glimpses of the president are quick and mysterious, while we get to know the other characters in much more depth and detail. The character of Angel Face, or the "favorite", also intrigues me. Asturias applies a sort of interactive musical call and response technique with the reader each time Angel Face is introduced, as following his name we often expect to read "as beautiful and as wicked as Satan,"(37) as though it is part of his name. This character is also as mysterious, if not more so, than the president. While we read much more about Angel Face in these pages it is hard to know how to relate to a man who is "as beautiful and as wicked as Satan." He seems cruel and emotionless in parts ("she would be his either willingly or by force" (85)) and then immediately after he shows signs of empathy, (his expression changed and he took the cup from her hand with a fatherly air, saying 'Poor little girl!" (84)). This is also demonstrated when he helps the woodcutter carry Zany out of the woods (27) and when he thinks about the plot he has planned at the orders of the president, "the idea of kidnapping the daughter of a man doomed to die seemed to him as horrible and repungent as it would have been congenial and pleasant to help him escape" (69). It is difficult to understand where Angel Face lies morally, which makes his actions hard to predict, I am curious about what more will happen with him throughout the book.
I think a lot of the descriptions in the book have lost something in translation. They often seem to convey beautiful ideas, but also seem a little wordy and awkward in English, like "Like whitewash mixed with pink paint the light of dawn colored the horizon and shone between the objects in the room and under the doors" (84). I think I would like to try struggling through this book in Spanish once I have finished the translated version
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January 21st, 2008
11:52 pm - Facundo: Chapters 6-15
While I was reading Facundo the other day, my roommate had the movie "300" playing loudly. This movie seemed to be an epic tale of Spartan battles taking place in ancient Greece. I could hear the narrator's voice echo through my house as I read Sarmiento's words, but this voice did not leave me once the movie was over. No, in fact it fused with Sarmiento's voice and made me come to a new realization about the power of translation. Ancient Greek epics come to us fused with the language of a romanticized British interpretation of the classics so that the way the characters speak seems to call to mind the 19th or 18th centuries more than ancient Greece. Language is not static, and the language of a time period can affect translation like I never realized or thought about.
I found the content of the second half of Facundo much harder to get through than the first half. Much of it read like what it was, a list of notes and references Sarmiento had found about Facundo. Most the stories seemed disconnected and in rapid succession, as though they were evidence in support of his argument (which I guess they were) more than the poetry of the first half. The only part that really grabbed my interest was leading up to his assassination, where Sarmiento's storytelling style from earlier in the book came back. I didn't believe it as first when I read that he was killed. How could the "bullet in the eye, [leave] him dead" (203)? I had expected him to have a way out, which perhaps he expected as well. His attempt to use diplomacy, by asking "What is all this?" is response to the attack he was expecting, failed him miserably. Perhaps his time in Buenos Aires left more of an impact on him than Sarmiento likes to acknoweldge.
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January 14th, 2008
10:50 pm - Facundo: Chapters 1-5
After I read Sarmiento’s introduction to Facundo, I was not looking forward to the following pages. I initially found his tone to be abrasive and was taken aback by some of his attitudes, which at first appeared to be Eurocentric and inspired by notions of manifest destiny. However, as I began to read the novel I soon came to find myself enjoying the trek of Sarmiento’s “path” (79) through Argentina’s countryside. I also came to realize his first words were not as ignorant as I had perceived. While his arguments may have been Eurocentric, these claims were based on his own observations and reflections, which actually often revealed his hidden love for the 'barbarous' American side of Argentina. I believe his initial praises of European civilization are a strategic method to gain European readership, fore as the book progresses he comes to the defense of the American 'barbarian' as much as he criticizes him (his criticism and defense are both limited to men, his only mention of women is purely a descriptive one as unpaid domestic laborers). For example, he demonstrates his appreciation for the genuine passion and creativity of the ‘uncultured’ and ‘unlearned’ country Argentines, and states that their contributions to the arts can actually serve to “beautify civilized life”(63). However, as the character of Facundo demonstrates, Sarmiento sees no proper place for power in their uncivilized hands.
I found the comparison of Buenos Aires to Babylon (first made on page 47) to be especially interesting, as I am more accustomed to hearing about Babylon from a more negative Rastafarian understanding. Marcus Garvey and others in the Caribbean spoke of Babylon as a symbol for a materialistic and slave-run urban center. While this perspective may maintain the urban-rural dichotomy to some extent it served to remind me that within a dichotomy there must be at least two different perspectives. Sarmieto acknowledges this himself, when he notes the rejection the people of the country have to the mindstate of the city.
While I was first stricken by the extreme binary Sarmiento creates between civilization and barbarianism, I do acknowledge that life in the country is quite different from life in the city. So, it does not surprise me when this leads to civil war. Different lifestyles require different kinds of political leadership. This is relevent today, and has been visually represented on U.S. political election maps in recent years. The majority of the country is usually red, symbolizing the Republican Party, while there are dots of blue, symbolizing the Democratic Party, to represent all the urban centers. Although our leaders may no longer sew enemies into fresh animal hides to wait for death (82), Sarmiento’s words about the struggle for power over each other between rural and urban peoples is very pertinent today, and probably will be far into the future.
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January 11th, 2008
03:30 pm - test entry
Here we go. My very first blog...
That's all I've really got for now.
I'll be back soon though.
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