Well, reflecting on this course as a whole, I have to say that it pretty much met my expectations, and it certainly proved to be an interesting experiment in terms of class format. Going into this class, my main goal was to find out more about Latin-American revolutionary history, which – Euro-centric education obliging – I had never really learned about outside of the context of decolonisation. The material we read and discussed definitely satisfied me in that regard – especially since it covered 20th century revolutions for the most part – and I found the texts and films were a great way to delve into Latin-American history. As for the unusual and experimental format of the class, it led to some interesting results, although I’m not certain that it ended up being necessarily better or worse than the “traditional” university course structure.
While the topic of Latin-American revolutions could have warranted a course in and of itself, studying it through literary works offered an interesting variety in perspectives. When thinking of revolutionary texts, I would probably have limited myself to works with a political and strategic orientation, such as Guerilla Warfare, The Coming Insurrection, or the Communist Manifesto. However, getting to discover revolution through different literary genres, be it biography (Che, Fire from the Mountain) or poetry (Cartucho, Invisible) allowed for reflections on revolution that concerned themselves with different notions, such as violence or the place of the individual within revolution. It also outlined the singularity of the revolutionary moment, and its existence as a complete disruption in the typical course of everyday life. Beyond literary genres themselves, the variety in the authors of these portrayals also offered some insightful grounds for thought and discussion: a revolutionary uprising does not look the same through the eyes of a Mexican child than it does through those of an American writer or film director, and exploring these different perspectives shed light on the variety of significances revolutions can hold.
As for conclusions regarding revolution itself, I don’t really get the impression we’ve reached any clear way of evaluating or even defining revolution, probably owing to the open-ended nature of the course. Nevertheless, I do think the class agreed on certain broad points, and I believe we can safely characterise revolution as the overturning of dominating power structures and relations – often upheld and perpetuated by the existing state – with the aim of eliminating the oppression they cause. Domination and oppression in this case can take on many different forms, be it capitalism, colonialism or patriarchy, and studying specific instances of revolution showed the specificity of these forms in time and place, through examples such as American imperialism in Latin America or indigenous struggles in colonial and post-colonial nations. While the ways in which to rid ourselves of these forms of dominations can be obscure and debatable, the drive to constantly fight against them is probably the closest thing there is to a true revolutionary sentiment.
I completely agree that oppression or violence from the state can take on multiple forms. Often times it is overlooked that economic or systemic violence is a real threat that impacts the working class.
I agree with you that we didn’t really come up with a clear and definite understand and definition for a revolution, even though I feel like it’s okay that we didn’t. Something that we kept on seeing throughout the class was that each revolution had its own topics, drive, motivation, with each revolution being so unique it’s hard to come up with a complete definition.