ESPN article
I once heard Tony Palomo say something very interesting, and beyond what I'll say after this sentence, its even more interesting considering how many different ways the statement could be taken.
When asked during a documentary interview, if he could, what would he say to the United States of America, what would he tell them about Guam/Chamorros, what would he want them to know? Tony slyly responded, that maybe he didn't want Americans to know about Guam.
Isn't the ESPN's recent article on cockfighting in Guam a good example of why Tony Palomo might have a point? (If you haven't seen it already here's the link http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=ogle/050524 )Any piece of knowledge from here can be lifted and spirited away, taken wherever and made to mean practically anything. Once it leaves, it loses any temporal fixing, any fixing of cultural or historical meaning.
For those who recall the Marie Claire incident, the lesson seems to be that having other people know about us can be a very dangerous thing. For those who don't know about Marie Clare, they published an article on interesting facts from around the world, and one of said pretty much that on Guam having a daughter who is a virgin is shameful and that its practically a job to go around and deflower girls. The problem with this was that they had taken a practice from ancient Chamorro society, prior to colonization by Spain, and then used it to make a claim about the present, used it to create a very gross representation of Chamorros today, which sharply contradicts with main current Chamorro Catholic ideas and self-beliefs.
But now we reach the aporia. Representations are ever under anyone's complete control. They float around, just like knowledge and anyone can snag them and try to make them mean something. As Chamorros seek to fend out the limiting invisibility that Western notions of history and geography have forced upon them, this is the danger. Any attempts to put ourselves out there, to publicize our existence, can be flipped around, made to mean something completely different.
When asked during a documentary interview, if he could, what would he say to the United States of America, what would he tell them about Guam/Chamorros, what would he want them to know? Tony slyly responded, that maybe he didn't want Americans to know about Guam.
Isn't the ESPN's recent article on cockfighting in Guam a good example of why Tony Palomo might have a point? (If you haven't seen it already here's the link http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=ogle/050524 )Any piece of knowledge from here can be lifted and spirited away, taken wherever and made to mean practically anything. Once it leaves, it loses any temporal fixing, any fixing of cultural or historical meaning.
For those who recall the Marie Claire incident, the lesson seems to be that having other people know about us can be a very dangerous thing. For those who don't know about Marie Clare, they published an article on interesting facts from around the world, and one of said pretty much that on Guam having a daughter who is a virgin is shameful and that its practically a job to go around and deflower girls. The problem with this was that they had taken a practice from ancient Chamorro society, prior to colonization by Spain, and then used it to make a claim about the present, used it to create a very gross representation of Chamorros today, which sharply contradicts with main current Chamorro Catholic ideas and self-beliefs.
But now we reach the aporia. Representations are ever under anyone's complete control. They float around, just like knowledge and anyone can snag them and try to make them mean something. As Chamorros seek to fend out the limiting invisibility that Western notions of history and geography have forced upon them, this is the danger. Any attempts to put ourselves out there, to publicize our existence, can be flipped around, made to mean something completely different.
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