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I will like to start this post quoting one of the most outstanding lines of the paper: ” Fanaticism is the only force that God gave the heart to win its battles”. I feel like the first is very political and how that environment affects people, and she …

What is The People? Eva Peron and Jose Luis Borges’ pieces characterize the Argentine people during the Peronist regime. Both authors attempt to define who the people are, a task more daunting than I originally perceived. Evita wrote In My Own Word…

These two articles give us two different representations of  "the people" .  What is the people?  Who are the masses? These questions are somewhat tumultuous but continually fascinating and thought provoking.

Evas, "My Message"  was full of emotion and created a sense of national identity. Eva has the persona of a caretaker and mother figure of the exploited, under represented and basically the majority of Argentina.  She says multiple times that she loves them, the "descamisados, the women, the workers…the world’s exploited people, condemned to death by imperialisms…"  Evas charismatic manner enabled her to mobilize the masses. It is interesting to question who the people are that she is seemingly representing. It seems as though there are two groups, "the workers/the people" and "the elite". Eva was hated by the elite. Political and military members hated her power she had with the people and what she could do with it. One thing that made her a great partner to Peron was that she unlike him, came from a modest background and could directly identify with "the people". The working people saw her as an almost spiritual leader.  She identified her people and in turn took action for them where they could not. She was highly invested in workers rights especially for women in labor, and supported unionization. Ultimately  within "My Message" Eva speaks of the many evils she came face to face with  in her position of power and gives instruction to her people about what they must do and be aware of in order to liberate themselves. Eva and Peron worked as a team under the Argentine political movement of Peronism, which was basically a social justice party. Eva was beautiful and a great public speaker, which combined allowed her to capture the support of ‘the people", "her people". It seems to me that the problems that Eva wishes to abolish are still around today, all over the world. The hope to erase social lines and borders between people is very difficult, and perhaps unrealistic. The idea that a politician or leader of any sort really can be on the exact same level or page as "the people" is nice to imagine and hope for but rarely found in "real life".

The next article is about (I think) a man in the Argentine military. It seems that Eva’s speech did not have a positive effect on all people. I found this article a bit harder to follow. The man tells of "the monster", the gang or group that he is part of. They seem unorganized and chaotic, as well as dangerous. This is very different description of Argentine people. Perhaps both articles need to be looked at for exactly what they are, just one side of a story. Eva was seen by many as a saint, but there were also many discrepancies regarding her principals and then her actions.  Some people say that she was indeed a social climber despite her statements against that very thing.. she did end up in a pretty good spot at the end of the day.  For the second article, we get just another point of view, and a much harsher one at that. It could be that this is a more realistic point of view on the Argentine army/people.

Hi again, I would like to start this post by saying that I found amazing Eva Peron’s “My Message” It’s amazing how with her deeply sincere words she can transfer all the emotion and sentiment that she is feeling when she is writing. The purpose…

Under this weeks topic of What is the people? two diverse essays were presented. Both essays of, In My Own Words  by Evita Peron, and A Celebration of the Monster by Jorge Luis Borges brought with them two very different perspectives. Peron’s ext…

Hey class! My name is Javier and I joined class a little late but better late than never!! I am excited to learn about Latin American culture as I have some ties to that area of the world with my family originally being from Cuba. I am new to this blog…

I had a little technical difficulty with posting the first week’s responses so I had to break the two articles up this week. In response to the Keesing article, I agree with the theme of his argument that “culture” is very complex and cannot be concept…

The two articles assigned for this week were intended to answer the somewhat vague question of “what is the people?” After reading both articles, I have some ideas about what “the people” can be described as and how they find their legitimacy in societ…

Who are the people? What do they represent? How are they incorporated into the creation of the Nation?In Eva Peron’s “My Message”, the People, above anything else, is the focus. The ultimate epicenter of her piece. Eva, taking on a somewhat mothe…

The concept of ‘the people’ is complex and may have very different meanings to different people. Like the concept of ‘culture’ it is something that may seem straightforward at first, but is multi layered and loaded with many different interpretations. …

The “exploited people”:

As we saw with Williams, culture is ordinary which it means that culture is made by people, but which kind of people? A nation is an heterogeneous group of people, a nation is made of different social classes. In My Message, Eva Peron keeps speaking about “her” people which means the Argentineans but especially her sustainers, the Peronist ones. She keeps claiming universal messages such as solidarity, togetherness or social cohesion but we do not really know to who she is speaking to: which people does she describe?  “Her” vision of the people is a very including one but by reading her message, she creates divisions and categories: the workers, the women but also the people’s enemies like the oligarchies, the clergy and the ambitious. Her discourse is not balanced: there are the people’s enemies and the people’s defenders but her conception of the people’s defenders is very restricted to the Peronist.  She seems very close to the people: she speaks about sleeping, living with the people. On the one hand, she’s totally devoted to the people but on the other hand she seems also very populist. Obviously she does not have the same living conditions that the majority of the Argentineans and she wants to describe herself as non ambitious but she has been animated by a certain ambition before reaching the power even. To be ambitious could be a very good quality and does not mean necessarily to think only about its own interests. I do not really like her way to create special categories and to extract herself from others. She seems wanting to be so close to the people that her discourse becomes not credible so that we could wander which people does she target?

The ”people-target”:

The people could also be a target.  She wants to win over the people by erasing the frontier between the people and the politicians but this frontier is normal. The politicians are the representatives of the people but they are not the people. It is not a mirror representation but a representation by delegation of power.

An imperfect people:

The text written by Borges is the opposite.  He describes some people who do not like Peron and its regime. They do not manage to identity, recognize themselves in Peron’s speech. They are very skeptical and ironical with the notion of “togetherness”.  At the end of the text, they kill a Jew, this murder is the symbol of the total disunity of the people which is totally opposed to Eva Peron’s speech about unity and solidarity. Borges’s text describes an Argentinean people which seems more real. Contrary to Eva Peron’s speech he emphasizes the people’s flaws that’s why for me his description of the people seems more realistic and convincing.  

What is the people?After Reading the two articles for this week I started thinking how difficult is to define the meaning of “people” that formed a society, in this case the people of the Argentinean Nation. I do not think that is fair to attribute…

Williams- “A culture is common meanings, the product of a whole people, and offered individual meanings, the product of a man’s whole committed personal and social experience” (Williams, Pg. 15). Williams argues that culture is indeed very ordinary due…

After reading both articles I thought to myself to which one I prescribed to more.  I thought at times I truly feel part of a greater thing, being part of a people but at other times, I love the quiet and can’t imagine living in a loud, populated environment. 
I love Evita Perons view as she is someone with a certain amount of power and yet she truly thinks of herself as a lower class.  She findsher strength within the people, all people of Argentina, even those who are poor and have little to offer but faith to something greater.  I love the thought of a belief in something greater than oneself.  I enjoy the idea of finding strength in numbers with people who all have the same common beliefs and values.  I really got a picture of strength from Evita’s message.  She truly portrays someone who deeply cares about the people she is serving, or helping.  She denounces all the people who are against the poor people and any person who falls for wealth and power.  She defines wealth in the form of the people of Argentia, the people who believe that they can make a change and control their destiny. 
Any ordinary person can find strength and understand what she is saying, as we are also ordinary.  We the people create our own reaities and the environment around us, which in turn creates the world we live in.  I find Evita’s message very empowering as she speaks to the lower levels of society, the people with all the heart and soul of the Nation.  She is sincere which helps bring her closer to the people in every aspect of society as they start to believe and find strength in her words.
The second reading was not as much so cut and dry.  His essay was busy and seemed filled with anger and resentment for the people around him.  It seems as though all he wants to do is flee from his current situation but he is kept to still tell his story.  It seems he is constantly making fun and putting down the people around him as lesser beings in the grand scheme of things.  He calls them by nicknames always punting out their faults as people.  This reading shows another side to the people.  It shows the horrible side of togetherness, the confining aspect of it. 
Both readings speak about freedom in different ways.  Evita is searching for the freedom for her people and the second reading seems to be constanly trying to get freedom, to escape the constancy of the people.  Both shows freedom in a different light, the achievemtn of freedom with or without the help of the people.  It kinda shows us how freedom can be achieved no matter what you believe in. I found the second article interesting in the way he was writing, busy, all over the place at times confusing, which seems to me how a busy metropolis of people would be. 
As both these article talk about people in different ways, I am more inclined to feel warmth and comfort and strength in Evita’s message to the people.  I am a huge fan of bringing the poor up to a place of power, and I truly believe that power and strength do lie within the people, which brings a smile to my face.

I think that Mackenzie’s description of culture as ordinary makes sense in the context of why people come together and pay attention to each other. Human beings need each other, for survival as well as self-awareness and expression. Mackenzie believes …

I’d like to start off my saying that this is a couple days late because I accidentally made two separate blogs and posted my first response there, anyway here it is in the right place.I began the first reading by Williams with much enthusiasm and enjoy…

Hi fellow classmates! My name is Mercy and this is my blog. I’m a first year arts student and very excited about this course.

Hey there, I could not agree with you more with regards to the branding of culture as either good or bad. I think that if we assume that scholars or elites to decide what culture is. I mean, when the European colonial powers went into the Americas (specially the Spaniards) they decided that much/must of […]

I think the term culture is multidimensional. As Roger M. Keesing explains, the first meaning of a culture is a human construction based on the emphasis of a radical alterity. Thus, culture is regarded as an entity which acts behalf on the community it represents. This raises an important issue : Is a culture a […]

Well as I started to read both articles, I was quite into them, wondering what each author was trying to get at.  Of course I had set aside a couple hours to do the lengthy readings and was excited about writing my first blog.  About halfway through the first article my cell phone rang and it was my mom on the call display.  I thought it was a little strange as it was in the middle of the afternoon and she should have been at work. 
Her tone seemed fine but I knew something was wrong.  She preceeded to tell me there had been a death in the family, a close family friend and all of a sudden the details of the freak accident were all my mind could contain.  As I hung up the phone with her, I tried to continue reading and realized that there was no way I could even begin to read about culture or to even write about it when someone\s life close to me was literally falling apart.  I decided to put the readings down and focus on my family and the loss it has had.
That is the reason I have no culture blog up here and why I won’t be commenting on any of my classmates blogs for this week.  I will continue with the readings next week and know that everyone will understand my situation.
Just a quick note that we should all cherish every moment we have with the people we love as noone knows when our time will be up.  Sorry for that somewhat depressing last comment….but it’s so true.

Week 1 Readings

The reading “Culture is Ordinary” centralizes around the idea that culture originates from ordinary people. Often culture is associated with the elite of a population, as they are the main producers and consumers of arts and knowledge. However, it is obvious that that there is a kind of “working class” culture that has emerged, that is quite different from the typical idea of refined, luxurious, high-class culture. Williams brings up an interesting point that often the makers of art have a hostile view towards the elite, making their consumption of the art somewhat ironic. The article goes into great detail about the Marist take on culture, stressing that “culture is interpreted in relation to its underlying system of production”, that his English society was a “class dominated culture”, just as Marxist thought states. I find these two things very interesting, because you at first thought I would not think that a system of production would have very much to do with culture. But when looking at a modern culture, such as the United States, one can see that the constant production and flow of goods, and their wide availability and marketing, are all directly tied to the consumerist aspect of American culture. Also, I found interesting the statement that only the “deserving poor get much educational opportunity” in relation to his earlier Marxist statement about the bourgeoisie being the dominant class in a class dominated culture. I had not really thought about this, but after reading this I find it especially true. The rich can buy their education, with not much regard to whether they are actually “deserving” of it or not. There are requirements to be able to attend educational institutions, but in many cases it is money that is the determining factor in one’s acceptance. For a poor individual to receive an education such as the one that members of the elite receive, he must do extra work in order to excel academically, athletically, etc.

I am not sure I really agree with Williams talk about “bad culture”. When talks of the “cheap feelings and moronic arguments” shown in popular culture are a “deeply degrading version of the actual lives of our contemporaries”. I understand where he is coming from, as anyone can see that much of our modern culture is, as he says, vulgar. But on the other hand I don’t really agree with his immediate branding of this culture as “bad”, just because it is new and not produced by the upper class. Perhaps I am not fully grasping his argument, but his label of modern culture as “vulgar” seems to be a little pretentious.

Keesing’s article talks about the way we stress the differences between cultures while analyzing them. I found it interesting how Keesing explained how the focus on cultural difference is a search for the exotic. One can see this everywhere: when tourists travel to tropical places, when people dress in the style of a different country, when people take dance lessons, etc. These are pretty trivial searches for alternative expressions and experiences, but it they are everyday examples of the “search for the exotic” that Keesing speaks of.

I also really liked how the article brings up the irony of the fact that it is fashionable to be different in a globalized world, where boundaries between cultures are vanishing. Not so long ago, distinct cultures where shrouded in mystery due to lack of contact between them. Now that much of this mystery has disappeared, and a kind of global culture is emerging, people have decided they want to stand out from the crowd, either individually or by uniting their people to show they have a strong, vibrant culture.

Both these articles were quite interesting, but a little hard to grasp the main concepts. They both taught me a lot about the production, reproduction and consumption of culture that I had not thought about before.

These readings offered a unique perspective on what “culture” truly is. It is a difficult concept to grasp, especially as a Canadian living in a multi-”cultural” society. With such a vast mix of characteristics in all Canadians, how can we pick out certain elements to classify our culture with? Especially with the wealth of North America, and all the examples […]

Today I like write in spanish, In the class are some people who would like practice it, so I think it´s a good idea…Definir qué es cultura es algo que pareciera muy complicado ya que el término ha ido variando con el paso de los años, tal es el c…

And I thought I knew culture…

After the first reading of the term, I find myself more confused than before. When reading “Culture is Ordinary” I realized that there are a whole bunch of implications when one refers to culture that I had never taken into consideration. I like that he starts by arguing that a […]

Hello internet, how’s it going? My name is Andrew Matasovsky and this is my first blog. I’ll give you a quick synopsis of my life story so you know where I’m coming from. I was born in 1988 to a construction worker and a freelance writer in Minneapolis…

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