I began reading Evita Peron’s My Message this week. The first thing that stood out to me was the ease with which I could read her writing. I think that her style ties in well with her message that she is a person for the people; her simple way of writing makes her accessible to larger audiences of varying levels of education.
A few of her phrases also struck me as particularly notable. On page 57, she writes, “Fanaticism turns life into a permanent and heroic process of dying; but it is the only way that life can defeat death.” In general, I think her use of the term “fanaticism” is intriguing, since it is a word that can hold both positive and negative connotations depending on how it is used in context. Evita Peron chooses to interpret the term in a positive sense. This quote left an impression on me since it presents fanaticism as both the path towards dying and the way of overcoming death, which is rather contradictory.
Her comparison of fanatics, enemies, and those who are indifferent is also worth mentioning. Peron seems to oppose “the indifferent” more than she opposes individuals who she perceives as “enemies” of the people. On one hand, this makes sense because at least enemies present stronger emotional sentiments and voice/take action on what they believe. In contrast, the indifferent show no passion one way or the other. However, I still don’t think it is logical for her to so strongly oppose the indifferent in reality, since they pose an obstacle to her desire to empower the working people. While the indifferent show neither support nor threat to her cause, I feel like it is practically backwards for her to speak more negatively towards them than towards those who are active enemies of the people.
In the Jorge Luis Borges reading, I am confused about who/what “the monster” is. Since Borges writes, “What I didn’t figure on was that member of the opposing team, healthy patriotism”(p. 203), is the monster a dictator of some sort? While the casual terms that Borges uses make the text more difficult to comprehend (since I couldn’t always tell when he was using one of his own terms and when he was using the real word for something), they also made me smile when I was reading. Is he supposed to be portraying a particular ethnicity?
That is a very interesting point. Perón raises the question of whether fanaticism and revolution go hand-in-hand. Borge just critiques the idealistic views that ‘the people’ have that spur them to revolution. Perón and Borge provide two different ways of viewing ‘the people’: as you have written, Perón critiques those who are indifferent, but Borge seems to be prefer indifference over revolutionary.
I think your first point is a really good one. Evita isn’t trying to justify the legitimacy of the people to her skeptics, she’s creating a collective atmosphere among her people. And her writing style works really well to inspire people by telling them repeatedly what they already know.