Yanggen Pinino' Maisa Decolonization...
I just finished my conference circuit for the year, three in the fall of last year and then four in the spring of this year, makes way too many for this school year (especially since each of them was a different paper).
Now that my conference circuit is over, that means its time for, ai lana, the conference submission period to begin again! Next year, I think I'll do way less conferences, since I won't be writing as much in terms of my school work. The reason last year's was so packed was because my papers were in different ways related to the thesis I am writing right now for Ethnic Studies at UCSD.
I'm pasting below my most recent abstract, which I've discussed on this blog before a few times. Its building off of a short zine article I had published in Third Space last year, and I'll be expanding it to become the conclusion for my current master's thesis, as well as my presentation for the CCCC in New York in 2007.
Just thought I'd share it below:
“Things to Do in Guam When You’re Dead.”
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
University of California, San Diego, Ethnic Studies
mlbasquiat@hotmail.com http://minagahet.blogspot.com/
Given that Guam is one of the last “official” colonies in the world, and one of the United States’ most strategically vital military assets in projecting its military power in the Pacific, you might think that local cries to decolonize the island would be common. Such is not the case as discourses on Guam/Chamorro dependency upon the US are far louder than any pleas to please decolonize. I refer to this resistance as the decolonial deadlock, a pervasive miasma and opposition to any transformative form of decolonization.
Discussions of decolonization by the majority of Guam people, Chamorro and non-Chamorro alike are a cruel mixture of impossibility and death. Questions of “how will we survive?” persist, not in an earnest desire to know, but in a concerted attempt to push the possibility of decolonization away. These false questions are supported by delusions of the decolonized Chamorro as bringing about “the night of the world” and the end of modernity as Guam descends into social chaos, drug addiction and is invaded by Chinese communists without the saving presence of the US. The sinthome that binds this ideation together is the commonly said, but more commonly thought notion that, “decolonization is suicide.”
My argument for this paper, is that per the theories of Fanon, Lacan and Zizek, decolonization as suicide, meaning the death of the Chamorro entangled in colonizing desires, is the way to break out of this decolonial deadlock. Therefore, the ultimate thing to do in Guam when you’re dead, is decolonize!
Now that my conference circuit is over, that means its time for, ai lana, the conference submission period to begin again! Next year, I think I'll do way less conferences, since I won't be writing as much in terms of my school work. The reason last year's was so packed was because my papers were in different ways related to the thesis I am writing right now for Ethnic Studies at UCSD.
I'm pasting below my most recent abstract, which I've discussed on this blog before a few times. Its building off of a short zine article I had published in Third Space last year, and I'll be expanding it to become the conclusion for my current master's thesis, as well as my presentation for the CCCC in New York in 2007.
Just thought I'd share it below:
“Things to Do in Guam When You’re Dead.”
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
University of California, San Diego, Ethnic Studies
mlbasquiat@hotmail.com http://minagahet.blogspot.com/
Given that Guam is one of the last “official” colonies in the world, and one of the United States’ most strategically vital military assets in projecting its military power in the Pacific, you might think that local cries to decolonize the island would be common. Such is not the case as discourses on Guam/Chamorro dependency upon the US are far louder than any pleas to please decolonize. I refer to this resistance as the decolonial deadlock, a pervasive miasma and opposition to any transformative form of decolonization.
Discussions of decolonization by the majority of Guam people, Chamorro and non-Chamorro alike are a cruel mixture of impossibility and death. Questions of “how will we survive?” persist, not in an earnest desire to know, but in a concerted attempt to push the possibility of decolonization away. These false questions are supported by delusions of the decolonized Chamorro as bringing about “the night of the world” and the end of modernity as Guam descends into social chaos, drug addiction and is invaded by Chinese communists without the saving presence of the US. The sinthome that binds this ideation together is the commonly said, but more commonly thought notion that, “decolonization is suicide.”
My argument for this paper, is that per the theories of Fanon, Lacan and Zizek, decolonization as suicide, meaning the death of the Chamorro entangled in colonizing desires, is the way to break out of this decolonial deadlock. Therefore, the ultimate thing to do in Guam when you’re dead, is decolonize!
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