Here, the signs and impact of the sovereign, the legacy of a bitter past, are everywhere to be seen. But he is haunted by murmurs, voices, that never entirely go away.
Author Archives: Jon
The Kingdom of This World
It is the fact that in Haiti—and the Americas more generally—two (or more) perspectives rub up against each other and clash, shattering the notion that they can harmoniously be contained within the same organic totality, that provokes the surprised awe and wonder that Carpentier reports experiencing, and attempts to recreate in this novel.
On Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
A conversation for SPAN 312 about Jorge Luis Borges’s collection of translated stories and other short texts, Labyrinths. With Daniel Balderston and Jon Beasley-Murray.
Labyrinths
Borges exposes secret complicities, as when apparent oppositions hide more fundamental similarities. But he is also concerned with how novelty and change emerge from repetition, how real difference arises from the most minor of variations.
Madwomen
Mistral takes advantage of her status as representative, and the representational capacities of language, to make visible the traces of what otherwise escapes the official order of things.
On Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems
A conversation for SPAN 312 and RMST 202 about Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. With Brianne Orr-Alvarez and Jon Beasley-Murray.
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
A great writer not only writes great work, but also, more fundamentally and importantly, changes our sense of what great work is, and even charts a new role for the writer in society.
On Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs
A conversation for SPAN 312 about Mariano Azuela’s novel of the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs (Los de abajo). With Ignacio Sánchez Prado and Jon Beasley-Murray.
The Underdogs
Azuela reveals aspects of the Revolution that are apolitical, anti-political, or even infrapolitical (the non-political conditions of possibility for the political), in that he depicts it in terms of drives and emergent habits that have not yet fully coalesced into political form.
On Nellie Campobello, Cartucho
A conversation for SPAN 312 about Nellie Campobello’s novel of the Mexican Revolution, Cartucho. With Ryan Long and Jon Beasley-Murray.