This is an interesting video biography, in Spanish, of the great Peruvian thinker José Carlos Mariátegui. And this site, remember, is mainly a backup for my old site on Blogger. My current site is Professor Zero on WordPress, where I also maintain my auxiliary research site. The post most recently added to this archive was Hey Pocky A-Way.
Axé.
This is a great documentary, and uplifting. There is more information on Chávez: Inside the Coup/The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and its contexts at the film website.
Axé.
This blog grows backward, not forward in time, as it is the backup for my first Professor Zero site, on Blogger. Professor Zero is still current on WordPress. The post most recently added to Z Blackground was Signs and Symptoms.
I also have a new and different blog, Seminario Permanente de Teoría y Crítica, for aficionados of literary criticism and theory. Despite the title, it is primarily in English. I would be delighted to receive comments on it, including comments on the header image.
Axé.
My journal recommendation for today is Pleine Marge, with modern poetry and art. It is beautiful, unusual, and classy, and I like it.
Axé.
My ceramics class had its first midterm-like event today. This involved showing our work in progress and discussing it, both technically and thematically. Conversation turned to body modification and its relationship to self-fashioning.
My own body modifies itself automatically. Right now it is traveling backwards in time due to all the lifting, jumping, and throwing of heavy objects in which we engage at the studio. My work on modification and self-fashioning takes place in that much-maligned locus I rebelliously like, the mind. The Shadow may have lifted, but I am still boiling down the erroneous principles I learned in Reeducation, so that I can banish them when they flash up.
Reeducation is designed to modify its subjects, and its objects. That is, after all, why one goes. But one of the most interesting sentences I read when I did some research on the nature of abuse, was that one of its principal effects was to modify, and not merely coerce its victims. I ought to have known this, since it is common knowledge that modification is a principal objective of torture, but when I read that sentence, it seemed new. In Reeducation, I expected to be modified. It was fashionable at the time to say that this modification would be uncomfortable. So despite a certain unease, I allowed a negative modification to continue unidentified.
Reeducation had many principles and sentences, which I have tried at various points in these pages to decode. I now discern that the most basic sentence was Doubt yourself and mistrust your environment. This sentence is the One Ring which rules them all, and binds them together in the land of shadows.
If you mistrust your environment in a global way, you have fear. But if you trust yourself, you will know whom, or what to mistrust. That, of course, is why the ancients emphasized self-knowledge. This weblog is a great spell I have cast to get mine back.
Axé.
This is Z Blackground, the WordPress backup of Professor Zero’s original blog, on Blogger (18 February-26 November 2006).
The current PZ blog has been on WordPress since 16 September 2006. As there is at this time no import utility to WordPress I know of for the new Blogger, I will move posts from the old blog to this archive site one by one, as I have time. Comments, links, and other ephemera will remain on the old site. Once again, Professor Zero’s writing from September, 2006, to the present is at http://profacero.wordpress.com.
The font size on this template is irritatingly small. To increase it, please go to the “view” tab at the top of your browser. In the drop down menu, choose “font size” and then “increase.”
Axé.
We watched the news last night and I saw an advertisement for an airline sponsored credit card that accumulates frequent flyer miles with every purchase. After explaining how the card works, the announcer sums things up: “Toda tu vida sirve para acumular millas y viajar gratis.” “Your entire life serves to accumulate mileage and travel for free.” Do I hear reification?
The poetry presentation went well, so we are singing. I am expanding my understanding of the cueca, which is a song and a dance. I do not have speakers on this computer, but it seems that we can hear famous cuecas on the site of the Cancionero tradicional.
Axé.
From Google Video: The Criminal Order of the World, a TVE production with Eduardo Galeano and many others. It comes with this blurb:
El programa ‘En Portada’ de TVE ha puesto en Internet el magnífico documental: EL ORDEN CRIMINAL DEL MUNDO, en el que algunos intelectuales describen lo que está pasando en nuestra sociedad, en el que el modelo socio-económico que algunos han impuesto nos lleva irremisiblemente a la autodestrucción y por tanto desaparición de nuestra especie sobre el planeta y acaso arrastramos también al resto de los seres vivos. Si esto no se frena nuestro destino está definitivamente marcado, el problema es que cuanto más tiempo tardemos en frenarlo la probabilidad de que esto ocurra aumenta.
The video is a critique of the globalization of capital. One of Galeano’s phrases is, “It is a universal system of power which has converted the world into a madhouse – and a slaughterhouse.” Galeano has a number of other very expressive images, his hallmark, including a comparison of fear to a “paralyzing gas.” Everyone is afraid of everything now: of losing one’s credit, one’s job, or losing one’s job and not finding another. It is difficult to see outside the parameters of the system.
Axé.
The radio just played a mountain song, accompanied by a banjo, sung in a minor key. It was first heard during the Civil War, but white caskets are also coming home now. Activities continue abroad, at black sites.
Axé.
From the photograph on my office wall the face of a man from an indigenous Amazonian tribe looks evenly at me.
Contemplating this picture, thinking about colonialism, reason, and reasons of state, a very basic perception came to me, with the requisite sense of déjà vu. This time, however, it settled in differently.
The most frustrating aspect of being colonized is, having to negotiate with, and being expected to submit to, someone who does not see you as you are, who insists upon imposing their own image of you. Who, furthermore, does whatever they can to further your internalization of this image, and expects you to be grateful. Who will, if your internalization is perfect enough and your gratitude great enough, offer you a fellowship to study in their country.
I have not reported on Da Whiteman lately, so I will offer some brief takes. Da Whiteman, as the assiduous reader will know, is a composite character. He is not always white, and he is not always a man; he is Da Whiteman.
I.
PZ: Please do not behave in this manner.
WM: I do not know what you mean. When you find me behaving in this manner, please let me know at the time.
PZ: I am referring to issues of common courtesy. I do not wish to engage in the teaching of basic manners to adults. As an adult, you should already be aware of the rules and principles of common courtesy.
WM: I am not a mind reader.
Translation: I am committed to poor behavior.
II.
WM: In the spirit of equity, democracy, reason, progress, openness, and affirmative action, I hereby decree that the graduate fellowship this year shall be granted to a whiteman, respresenting the class most in need of support!
Translation: stand aside, colored girls. Whiteman coming.
Thank you for reading this post, in which I oppress the Whiteman by pointing out oppression.
Axé.
