Week One: Elsewheres

  NB:  We will come back to José Rabasa’s idea of elsewheres in week 6.  Here are some tips for your first read:

1.     read through pages 193-197 and make a list (elsewheres = ?)

2.     Don’t get caught up in words or references you don’t know.  Keep a list of them and try to puzzle them out as we go.

3.     In reference to elsewheres embodying the ability to move between worlds:  “This coexistence with one indigenous subject and culture would entail a porosity between the modern and the nonmodern in which life-forms belonging to these worlds would travel from one location to the other, providing elements for self-critique.”  P. 196

4.     Plural-world dwelling:  “Offers a perspective in which universalities coexist as independent worlds that can no longer be subsumed into a single all-encompassing world.”  P. 197

5.     “Categories crafted in the Greco-Abrahamic tradition cannot be merely transported to life-forms existing elsewhere.”  P. 197

6.     Points out the “limits on conversion and conquest and the necessity to recognize the existence of elsewhere that elude the categories the west has created to inscribe all cultures into a single history”  p. 199

7.     Remember to move beyond comparisons!