1. In the first entrance in this blog I said my relationship with theory was not the best since I always have felt it cold and distant, and it did not gave me the warm sensation that literature gives me. Well, today, three months later, I think that some of these fast brushstrokes of theory are still cold. Some of them are also distant. But not all of them. I have found some authors really inspiring and warm: Lorde, Anzaldua, Fanon, Morrison, Barthes, Foucault, Thiong’o, Bakhtin, Schlovsky, inter alia. Also when I read Friedberg and Fiske I also noticed that television its a really interesting topic. Even thought in this very moment I will not able to remember all their definitions and terms, some of their ideas still resonates in my head.
2. Lorde, Anzaldua and Thiong’o made me think about how a theory or theoretical reflection could be proposed from a personal perspective, with an emotional ingredient which remembers a little the sense of literature. When I read them I thought: “It is possible create and the same time theorize! There is an alternative and it not contradicts the academy!” I actually felt very excited. However, when I asked in class if is possible to write down a paper in this way, from the first person who elaborates academic reflections based on personal experiences, the answer was negative. I felt disappointed. Well, it was explained to me that it is possible to write some papers, perhaps for conferences where you can make performance-papers, but not for academic work, nor for a thesis. So, maybe is a contradiction that we read alternative models for creating theories but we are not able to apply those models in our work, right?
3. In that order of ideas, I think, also, the alliance between arts and theory should be accepted in our programs. Is part of making real the interdisciplinary studies. When I watched “Blow Up” by Antonioni (I know this is not part of the readings, but we should watch it for our second writing assignment) I asked myself if a work of art, a film in this case, is also understandable as a analytical reading for a short story. I think the film is: Antonioni offers a point of view, and highlights what he thinks is the most important of the short story. However, I am not completely sure if a student of our programs would be allowed to present a film, a painting, a novel or a group of poems as a thesis. Maybe is possible if the student argues with a solid theoretical frame, but I am not sure if the academy will validate it. Maybe. Maybe not. I do not put much hope on that.
4. The course more than answers, give me questions. One of them is how to put in practice these theories, not only in an article or essay but in the “real” world. If we are learning to deconstruct, an idea that for me is still ethereal, how can we teach or apply this concept to our societies; how to use deconstruction in a practical way, linked to the problems of our countries, to our works. I have to think more about this.
5. I also asked myself which one of this theories could be useful for my thesis research. So far, I am not sure. Maybe a combination of concepts/authors could work: Said + Fanon + Thiong’o? Perhaps. I think I have to read them more profoundly and see how to use them. But I least I have an idea for where to begin with.
6. Last, but not least, I think the blog is an useful idea. I understood better some concepts here than in the readings! When someone explains tricky ideas in a simple way it was really helpful. Thanks to everybody! Sometimes this blog was a space for dialogue, for thinking in different ideas, and it worth it. However, in several occasions I felt frustrated because the authors we talk about here in the blog were not discussed in class. Anyway, is a great space but it deserves a better connection to the class.
7. Gracias. Merci. Thanks.

People of my country, including me, are football’s fan. When our team plays, I mean the Colombian Selection, the country just stops because almost everyone is watching the game. A game, let’s say, against Argentina is an event which compromises our jobs, classes… and if you can not skip a meeting or a class, usually the radio takes places and, as I experienced while I was teaching, students and workers have their earphones connected and listen at the same time they are “taking notes”.

From my perspective, this huge fanaticism has increased last twenty years since a traditional broadcastings developed a particular way of transmit Colombia’s games. When our team plays, the anchors and reporters increase the national symbols, and the semiotics of language changes completely. When they start to talk about the Colombian team they use on purpose the possessive our for identifying themselves and the audience with the team. For instance, several times they omit saying the “Colombian team”, but rather they say “Colombia” and when you hear the name of your country besides the name of a team, something different is perceived.

Probably a decade ago, the fashion of using the Colombian’s team t-shirt the day of important games started. TV promoted, in a subtle way, that if you use the colors of your country, you help the players “to fell that they count on you”. Of course, the majority of TVs anchors, some in the news some others in talk-shows, wear their yellow shirts with the Colombian Football Federation symbol. They also spread this idea since it’s very common to adapt yourself to social norms proposed on TV.

Before the game, the TV news is almost completely absorb by the football information so, from the two hours that usually the news takes, only thirty or forty five minutes are dedicated to the news of the country, and the other part is dedicated to players interviews, reports, images of the last game… and a frequents visits to the stadium, interviewing the public and make seem happy. In that way, the audience is all the time expecting the game starting, and we can not change the channel, of course.

When the game is on, the publicity becomes crazy: a lots of ads appears during the whole game, even the narrators announce products and in the half is almost a fifteen minutes of commercials.  If Colombia’s team scores is like a tsunami of nationalism: “This is my dearest homeland!”, the narrator says, “This is my country, this is the people who give us hope!” (and you should imagine the voice of the narrator almost crying of “happiness”). And then a popular Colombian music resonates to increase the sense we are building a new country because of one goal.

Actually, I think when the TV takes advantage of football for creating a sense of hope, is because t is used as part of creation of the subject-in-ideology, as Fiske explains Althusser’s concept (1270). The reproduction of the ideology is that “this is a great country and we can get better, but we need the team wins because it represents the state”. Even, the current president has visited several times the Colombian’s team trainings and give “his support”, and he calls the football team as part of the state. But most of these players play in Italy, France, Spain, Argentina… they grew up as players in those countries, they had to travel and got other economical support and better teams since Colombia football or economical possibilities were not good for them as players.

When all advertisements and all this symphony of nationalism take place, it is really hard to see what is really happening with the country. The purpose of the TV transmission is not other than to sedate the sensation of inequality or indifference that Colombians feels constantly, and create and stimulate a system of values based on believing in football, and in that way in the state, since is really hard to create confidence with politics or social justice.

Football, used in that form, seems like a strong make-up for covering for some hours what is really happening and construct this “national we”, as Fiske reminds (1272) for not reading what is really happening. In that order of ideas, this is a sad example. In November 6th, 1985, the  M-19 guerrilla took over the Palace of Justice and the most violent military answer occurred causing hundreds of dead and disappears. The radio and TV broadcastings that were transmitted that event, suddenly stop because the Communications Cabinet Minister from that time commanded to intervene the media and. All the the broadcastings, then, started to transmit a football game that was taking place at the same time in other place of the country.

I do not want to finish with this sad episode. Actually, last week Colombian government recognized that the state had a big responsibility on this tragedy and apologized with the victims. This has being a huge step. And also, Colombian team is already qualified for the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014, so it is great motive for celebrate. That is my team! Thanks for giving me hope!

In “Decolonizing the mind”, Ngugi wa Thiong’o  presents a reflection about how the English language and academia built on Kenya a way of perceiving the world through the eyes of the British culture and imperialist language.

The text structure addresses different stages. After a brief introduction about the topic, the author explains his own experience remembering how in his natal place and his home, he used the Gĩkũyũ language and it works for every single aspect of his everyday life, including oral stories that identify him with his community. Later, the appearance of the colonial language, the English, transforms his life completely since in the school he has to learn a new code, a new structure and a new culture since the books that the British brings are those that represent the European values. The reflection take him to analyze the importance of the language for building the culture and how the language is culture itself for three reasons: 1) the culture is product and reflection of human beings communicating with each other; 2) language as culture is as an image-forming agent in the mind of the child; 3) culture transmits those images of the world and reality through the written and spoken language (1134). In that order of ideas, when the English language is imposed in Africa, the African culture is submitted to the English culture.

Thiong’o notices that this process is more clear in the writing language, where the child can not express his or herself in an emotional way, but the writing becomes a “cerebral activity” (1135), since the school language is not related with the language of home.

The article turns to question aloud what to do to decolonize the mind of children that have received or are receiving classes about European literature and not African in English language. The conclusion is a “quest for relevance”, process in which Thiong’o wants “to look for at it far as relates, not to just the writing of literature, but to teaching of that literature [African literature] in schools and universities and to the critical approaches” (1138). So he summarize discussions about how to propose the African literature as centre and not periphery of the literary education, and how this literature should nurture from the others literatures. He even mentions that Indian, Caribbean and Latin American literature should be add to the academic programs since they share a lot of things in common.

Thiong’o extract make me think about how the education I received also perpetuated colonial ideas. For instance, when I study my B.A. in Literature in Universidad Nacional, many of the professors who taught me had obtained their Masters and PhD in French universities. For that reason their classes cover a lot of European literature but, over all, French literature. For instance, the Literary Theories that I took were specific studies about one or two authors, some of them were Barthes, Lukács, Goldman, Saussure, Ubersfeld, Bourdieu, Gennete, a little of Benjamin, who is not French but German (but we read his text about Baudelaire) and Bahtin. Actually, I did not receive much information about North American or British theorists (perhaps Raymond Williams and Northrop Frye), but almost nothing about Latin American approaches. Literature classes were about Colombian, Latin America and Spain; but we also had these group of classes called “Universal Literature”, and this classes were about important authors of the world in different historic moments but we did not read Li-po, Chinua Achebe or Tagore, we read Dante, Bocaccio, Flaubert, Dostojevski, Kafka, Ionesco…  European authors. I think is important to recognize when my professors studied their B.A., during the 1970’s and 1980’s, many of them studied in the very same Universidad Nacional, a public university deeply politicized to the left, so the United States were seen like the epitome of the “yankee imperialism”, and not many students look for North American universities to complete their graduate education. I do not know about Canada, but probably it was not seen with good eyes. So the majority of students, who later would be professors in this university, saw Europe, but over all France, as the possible place where they can improve their knowledge.

Anyway, the theoretical perspectives I received from my professors were, in its majority, the French perspectives. I can not say these perspectives are not interesting or not useful to analyze or criticize literary texts, but after reading Thiong’o I think I would like to have learned not only North American. African, Asian approaches, but, more important, Latin American theoretical approaches for analyzing Colombian and Latin American literature. I do not know how is the Literature program currently, I supposed it have changed since there are new professors, new times, new reflections, and a new relationship with the North American academia, since many students, including me, have come to US or Canada for obtaining post graduate titles (the brain drain that perhaps is a new form of colonialism in the academy, but this is other topic).

So far I do not know much about Latin American literary theories, I think is one of my task as student to get to know them. Actually, one of the my conclusions of these postcolonial readings is that is really important for me to know some of them. Just checking online, I found the “Grupo Latinoamericano de estudios Subalternos”, headed by Walter Mignolo, inter alia, and the “Grupo modernidad/colonialidad” headed by Anibal Quijano and also by Mignolo, authors or theories that we will not be able to read or analyze in the course, since we have not enough time of it, but I am really eager to read.

Perhaps, under the light of these postcolonial readings and thoughts, in the future this Introduction to Literary Theory course could include Latin American theoretical approaches. I know time is short but maybe if they are included would help to some students from Hispanic or French Graduate studies to think about their projects. Maybe?

I know is not related (or is it?) with our topic of the week, but I found this great definition of ideology, one of the terms we probably will have to define in our exam.  Here, a commentary by Zizek about the movie “They live”, in the film The perverts guide to ideology, where the philosopher and the director Sophie Fiennes deepen in how Hollywood maintains the ideology (I would really like to watch this movie before the exam!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4WAXQJyxCo

Have a nice weekend!

The first I remember, before arriving to El Paso, was the color: I have never seen the profound orange and yellow that the Chihuahuan desert showed me when I was close to the city. “Where the hell are we?” I asked my wife. “I do not know” she mumbled astonished while the desert run and run and run without end. Finally, a small city appear in middle of the desert. We arrived. A friend picked us up. I remembered when I passed the door of the airport to get to the parking lot, I felt like I was really close to hell: it was hot, probably close to 40 degrees. We arrived in August. The summer was in its peak.

After two sweaty days, I remember we went to this store to buy some groceries. I was not sure how to ask for things, I mean, I knew some English grammar, but one thing is when you are in classroom full of students practicing how to say “Can I have a Coke?” and other being in a real store where your language is not the official, is the alien one. When I was making the line, thinking in how to say the correct words, repeating in my head the small phrase, counting in my pocket the dollars, that were also a new currency that I did not understand, I asked in my “correct” English  “How much is that?” and the answer was “Son diez dólares y catorce centavos”. The cashier spoke to me in Spanish! I was so relieved. I paid and thank her and then we leave the store. But after a while, walking under that shiny and eternal sun, I said to my wife: “Wait, why she did answer in Spanish?”. “She probably noticed your accent”, she replied. “My accent?! How is my accent like?” “I do not know, probably a Colombian one”. (It is funny to write this in English). And then this occurred several occasions. I asked for something and immediately I received and answer in Spanish or Spanglish (expression that Anzaldua evades, but perhaps it could be useful for describing this double condition of the language).

Later I understood that people from the border have a great hearing capacity: they can easily notice when a person is from the region, from the Southwest, is mexicano or mexicana, suramericano, American, pocho, or if is from El Chuco, the name that Chicano people call El Paso. This hearing capacity let them identify how to treat the other in order they do not seem excluded, or less excluded. It is a perceptive attitude. Perhaps is related to the form that many of immigrants were treated when they started the school, the difficulties they lived in a world that demanded the use of correct English, while in home was necessary to speak in Spanish in order your parents can understand you. They live between this two languages that can be jails, or freedoms, as Anzaldua well presented.

I also noticed in some El Pasonians the characteristics that Anzaldua mentions in her text. They spoke in several levels of the language in the Academia, in the street, with their family. I remembered some of my classmates speaking this kind of mix between a high elaborated English, that they learnt in their schools, with this “rural” Spanish, that their parents and extended family speak at home, since they were campesinos immigrants with no formal education. For me it was a new phenomena since I am a Spanish speaker, and I can understand English, but I can not switch from Spanish to English that easy. I need a moment. They do not. That moment is part of them.

And I think Anzaldua makes also a defense of this condition. They can move from one shore to the other thanks to this amphibian capacity to share different spaces, and languages. This natural bilingualism let the people of la frontera to understand two ways of thinking at the same time, and they can live with these two structures in an easy way. They also have to deal with the racism of both sides: the Mexican, that notice in their accents and expressions and “incorrect” Spanish; and the American, that emphasizes in the Mexican origin.

It is true that Chicanos and Chicanas have created a new language. I am not sure if is that rebellious as Anzaldua shows it, perhaps for her, but it is a language that is alive and, in the future, I think it will input some of its expressions to English, or at least in the spoken English in some specific places in United States. I think the forked tongue is also an advantage for a world that needs people could step in someone else’s shoes to identify, to criticize and to abolish the racism in our societies.

Extra:

Question. The book emphasizes that this Ethnic and Cultural differences are important in relation with United States… but is the same in Canada? Does Canada deal with the same racial differences? Are the Chicano or African-American or Asian-American reflections the same in Canada than in USA? What about France? What about India? China? Latin America? I am not sure if these discourses, that are questioning the white-men-American supremacy, work for all these countries in the same way. Is the Nationality part of this phenomena?