most of the grades have been posted and the rest will follow shortly
I am writing because three or four folks have comments but no grade. I do not know why that is but i have to go back to the papers and find the grades and re enter them. if you are one of the afflicted please let me know It is not personal it is a glitch and can be repaired
sorry for this
these are the folks on line who want to be in the lottery
I am choosing the names this weekend (with my other classes)
If you cannot go please tell me so i dont give you a slot and then you cant go. If you cannot be certain you best not say yes- space is so tight.
We will need to car pool too since parking is limited and reserved for visitors of prisoners.
You must wear no jeans no blue no red no raiders jackets or SF jackets or any clothing that might indicate you are affiliated with a gang. You may have no cell phone or money on you only a car key and a picture ID. You will be required to give me your drivers license number your phone number and soc sec number so that a preliminary check can be made of your identity etc NO ONE has ever been turned away so far buy hey Lt Crittendon isnt running our show and for years we all had to go thru the changes to get into the prison.
SO here are the names who have replied:
Mc Carthy
Sheridan
Atkinson
Perkey
Thompson
Jade Elyse
Duff
basque
Vanderberg
cook
Mc Graw
Confirm in an email to me with your soc sec and driver license and phone thank you for helping things go smoothly
Last week I asked everyone to read S Jay Gould and Jamaica Kincaid but only a few did.
Therefore this week you need to read those two the last of STP and the material that is a link on columbus and the world’s fair. which is a good bit.
I am almost done with the prison bios and they ranged from super to average with no one doing a horrible job. Some did not follow the instructions and were penalized but most of you did fairly well.
I am reading the material on STP now too and find that you do not read the material closely. What is an unthinkable history? Why does it matter? How does that relate (as i asked last week to Jamaica Kincaid’s article or to Blumenbach or to Columbus) Where does that put guilt or blame? Can we make a distinction between something that had horrible consequences and something which had those consequences but could not be thought of in the framework of the time? Where does that leave history?
Go back to my last post of the same title and get the questions for Kincaid etc so you can do a proper job. As i said it will be four pages two on STP and two on the other pieces The worlds fair info is just to help you see what Trouillot was talking about since we were not alive for the fair itself.
The claim that what is missing in Trouillot is the idea of perception is erroneous. Perception is covered in great detail because he calls it context . Perception he says is bounded by discourses- how we speak and address things.
Some of you imply and perhaps even say that Trouillot asserts that both slavery and the holocaust never happened. This is to be bald, NUTS and an incorrect reading of the material. It is worth it to read for meaning in STP You seem to check only the surface and miss his arguments. there is a difference in what you want him to say and what he says. The latter takes several readings
Someone also mentioned that power is about writing NONONONO
The power is already always there even in cultures that have no written word. Power can be cemented by writing and in fact if we look at colonialism in the 19th century you will see that the Americas were written into being as the product of the western gaze at that time. The words formed an idea of the colonial subjects for the people at home not for the people in the Americas.
The best book on that topic is Imperial Eyes by Mary Louise PRatt.
1. Trouillot does not say that history is made by the victors those who won. power is not just about winning that is the whole point of Foucault- commit it to memory. What he says is that it is the accepted history in the dominant culture ie It is in the interest of those in power to have their side dominant. He says that someone else says that history is written by the victors BECAUSE he is trying to point out that just because you are not in the history that you are given does not mean that you do not have a history- which problem has been the trajectory of the West.
2. Jews and the Holocaust: Trouillot is talking about the holocaust because in fact the history of the holocaust made our history books because survivors refused to let the topic die. This is over an above the horror. One of the first prim ministers of Israel said If it hadnt been for hitler we never would have had Isreal. If just horror determined our history the civil war and stalins purges would make more sense. So from time to time for reasons that are themselves historical certain communities etc etc
The reason that Haiti is written out of the history is because France lost its largest colony and when they attempted to re capture it (with Le Clerc and Rochambeau) they lost 20,000 men and had to sell Louisiana- which was until that time one of France’s footholds in the Americas.
To isolate the world into them vs us as some of you have done does a disservice to all of us. One thing Trouillot is clear on is that there a multiplicity of narratives. These all share differing perspectives like the old saw that says When you are up to your armpits in alligators it is difficult to remember your original objective – to drain the swamp. IE things intervene When we are at war we miss a lot because we are focused on the “enemy” not on the flowers or our friends altho they come into our consciousness and are ALSO part of the historical narrative. When we choose what to tell we edit our remembrances and those memories are not full and correct but merely impressions of the past. like Anna Karenina’s view from the train.
more later
1. You are responsible for the questions and general commentary that is in the syllabus for Trouillot and you are to read
Jamaica Kincaid and S Jay Gould which are in the links.
these sets of articles mesh with one another.
Last week you were to choose several of the theoretical aspects of STP intro and chapter one and comment on them but most of you took a few of Trouillot’s words and then launched into your own feelings. This is not a substantial reading of this material. I didnt see quotes from the text .
You did try to tell me what the one segment means but you didnt seem to extrapolate the words and the context of the narrative of the book itself. This is a grave dis service frankly and since most of you paid even less attention to it than to foucault the results are very problematic. Further since you made only a minimal effort to detail his argument you cannot see the ramifications of what he is writing about. It is as if, when you read, you feel that this sort of book is a once over gloss and you will understand it. In that you are very very wrong. Sometimes, I got the same feeling in your reading of Foucault.
Students continue to discuss power as if it is exercised on someone- when in fact power makes us see and speak a certain way… ie it functions as a CAUSE . The goal of knowledge is to express fully this cause concerning its substance. One of the two places where Foucault shows the relations of power is LANGUAGE how we speak and write about things. (from a book draft i am reading)
Trouillot writes on pg29, In history Power begins at the source. . . The play of power in the production of alternative narratives begins with the joint creation of facts and sources for at least two reasons. 1. Facts are never meaningless and second facts are not created equal. what does that mean in the context of his writing???
What does Trioullot mean when he asks Can we trust an American history in which the men who write it never wanted to be Indians?
This week I want you to return to Chapter one and tell me what Trouillot means when he wrote on pg 15 Can we confidently exclude from ones history all events no experienced or not yet revealed including for instance and adoption. . .The past does not exist independently from the present . .. Indeed the past is past because there is a present.. . . . Pastness is a postion.
Further I want you to explain and offer me examples of the times when silences occur/exist in the narrative of history. there are four on pg 26
Chapter three uses the Haitian Revolution as an example of one of the really important theoretical constructions in this book: the impossible history. What does that mean?
Is there an example of that history in Jamaica Kincaid’s article? Is there one in Gould’s? What is Kincaid arguing- she has a delicate style which includes a variety of important ideas and lines that you might commit to memory. Not the least of these is ”. . It is a rape and an erasure, a spiritual padlock to which the key has been thrown irretrievably away” ; what does that mean??
i dont want to be harsh with you but i dont want you to shine it on with regard to these books and articles. they are important. If you cannot understand the material after three readings you will have at least grasped what you do not know and can put that into your commentary. It can read thusly:
On page 6 Trouillot says x or y what does that mean. This will open up the discussion of the material to everyone and you will learn something that you didnt know and offer others a chance to learn something too.
i am having mad trouble with my wrist and arm and have to keep my typing to a minimum (the doctor says NONE but lol ) anyhow i hope to have some help posting comments on your papers and get the to you by monday. thank you for your patience.
Yes it WIL be more than two pages this week Maybe as many as four
here are some notes that i wrote earlier about the paper that some of you disregarded completely. plagerism is a crime not just an oh well. . . . . What are you folks thinking?????
want to point out about plagerism again. When something is NOT common knowledge and you write it in your paper it REQuires a foot note no matter what. To jack stuff from a website and not credit the website is plagerism.Also on a different note. For reference Wikkipedia is fine. For academic investigation it is not acceptable.
and again. . . .
Basically I am interested in research- using academic materials corroborated by magazines and other related materials. Wikkipedia is NOT an academic source.
