1,263 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2015
    1. He answered that it was no longer a time in which one should com- mand another] but that each should do what he thought best to save his own life ; that he so intended to act; and saying this, he departed with his boat...

      Every man for himself....seems like a fateful decision, but props to de Vaca for always trying to keep the group together...

    1. caused their interpreter to tell the Indians that we were of them, and for a long time we had been lost; that they were the lords of the land who must be obeyed and served, while we were persons of mean condition and small force. The Indians cared little or nothing for what was told them; and conversing among themselves said the Christians lied : that we had come whence the sun rises, and they whence it goes down : we healed the sick, they killed the sound ; that we had come naked and barefooted, while they had arrived in clothing and on horses with lances; that we were not covetous of anything, but all that was given to us, we directly turned to give, remaining with nothing; that the others had the only purpose to rob whomsoever they found, bestow- ing nothing on any one... Even to the last, I could not convince the Indians that we were of the Christians...

      One of the most famous passages in CDV. What do you think of it?

    1. e told the natives that we were going in search of that people, to order them not to kill nor make slaves of them, nor take them from their lands, nor do other injustice. Of this the Indians were very glad.

      Hmmm...is that really why they are looking for the other Spaniards?

    1. we knew not how to construct, nor were there tools, nor iron, nor forge, nor tow, nor resin, nor rigging; finally, no one thing of so many that are necessary, nor any man who had a knowledge of their manufacture;

      Basically, there is no infrastructure to build what they need, and these gentlemen have no survival skills...or skills at all...

    1. They go naked, are large of body, and ap- pear at a distance Uke giants

      A famous like in Cabeza de Vaca. Why do you think critics are so interested in this line? (Uke is typo for "like.")

    2. for whom the good armor they wore did not avail. There were those this day who swore that they had seen two red oaks, each the thickness of the lower part of the leg, pierced through from side to side by arrows

      Interesting characterization of the Indians' weaponry as advanced/effective.

    3. In view of the poverty of the land, the unfavorable accounts of the population and of everjrthing else we heard, the Indians making continual war upon us, wounding our people and horses at the places where they went to drink, shooting from the lakes with such safety to themselves that we could not retaliate, killing a lord of Tescuco,^ named Don Pedro, whom the Com- missary brought with him, we determined to leave that place

      Basically does not sound good...

    1. I have written this with much exactness ; and although in it may be read things very novel and for some persons difficult to believe, nevertheless they may without hesitation credit me as strictly faithful. Better than to exaggerate, I have lessened in all things,

      Appeal to truth, but also an acknowledgment of the drama of the story....

    1. And in the case of humanistic critique from the left, the critic holds that their own engagement not even produced by the defense or advancement of self-interest.

      I guess I feel like we all know this. But is the idea here that knowing this does not shield us from the problematic effects of this?

    2. E.g., the reason you believe you can play the chess game of framings and positionality is that you know more and know better than the plebians you’re trying to move and mobilize.

      Yes, for sure. Which is what someone like Freire argues about the challenges of liberationist pedagogy, right?

    3. What’s the politics, so I know where to place this experience in my catalog of affirmations and confirmations. It was in its own way as instrumentalized a response as an engineering major listening to a presentation by a cosmologist about string theory and then saying, “Ok, but what can I make with this?”

      Ok, I need to mull this over. Especially since both "what can I make" and "what are the politics" do not need to be questions that foreclose possibilities or subjectivities... they could still be process-related answers, right?

    4. Nothing much depends upon such arguments except our own individual sense of self in relation to our profession.

      Quite a radical statement, no? I am totally in, but still-- don't want to skim over its radical implications.

    5. the academy as professors have known it in their working lives is. It is in its forms of labor, in its structures of governance, in its political capital, in its finances. That’s what makes the tension within the ranks of the few remaining tenured faculty who work at financially secure private institutions so interesting (because otherwise they are so atypical of what now constitutes academic work). Why should anxiety about the future afflict even those who have far less reason for anxiety?

      Yes-- nicely observed.

    1. It can be qualitative leading the way to our asking better questions, developing empathy, and deeply understanding what matters in education.

      Love this...

    1. think that the Indian who told me this story (P.) was aware of its feebleness, and was ashamed to attribute such nonsense to Glooskap,

      Ouch. That seems offensive?

    2. He wished to have his mother christened. It was done. They called her Molly. 

      Hmm. Ok, so why does he want his mother Christened? To understand this, I think we need to understand the history of the tribe, paticularly at the time that this story is being written down.

    1. And since that day the Indians, who should have been great, have become a little people. Truly it would have been wise and well for those of early times if they could have held their tongues.

      So somehow the inability to hold their tongues is involved with them being a "little people?" Confused about how colonialism and genocide figure in...

    1. cults

      So right away when I see this word, I am alerted to the fact that it's clearly not written by a Native American...since nobody ever calls their own religious practices a "cult."

    1. need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention.

      For me, this is key: what do I need to do to become a better online reader? How do I need to address the focus issue in order to read well off a screen?

    1. is there any intellectually sound reason for examining arbitrarily anthologized particles of many separate tradi- tions in connection with each other

      This seems like the central question for me, and also a really direct challenge to our syllabus...

  2. Aug 2015
    1. the technical at the expense of the human.

      I am still trying to define "human." Audrey talked about it as intimately related to "care," and that makes a certain degree of sense to me. But I like how Lisa seems to equate it with connection and process over tools...

    1. lament completion rates

      Again, as I talked about during #digped, completion seems a greater failure than non-completion. What message does it send to suggest that education can be bounded and ended in the way that most courses enact?

    1. almost as a matter of faith.

      This is so interesting to me, since I am thinking about how all of this suggests the presence of an "authentic" self, which we either choose to share online, or which we package up and manipulate. But I am not sure if such an authentic self exists. If it does, it might be like what some people call a "soul"-- which is where the language of faith comes in, I think. It's tricky for me, as a poststructuralist, so feel comfortable with this... Though I don't entirely deny my own hope that there is such an authentic me...

    1. Meet face to face, without your phones every so often. Make your offline time valuable. Read old books. Love things without shame and take time to consider who you are away from all the things in the world trying to tell you who to be.

      This seems sort of sadly nostalgic. I don't see real resistance here. Almost more of a strengthening of the net by creating such a nostalgic sense of escapism around leaving it. I get it, but I am also wondering how the movement to "unplug" in order to recharge and stay connected to our "authentic" selves creates all sorts of false promises related to truly escaping. Does the Matrix like a vacation from the Matrix, because that vacation makes the Matrix look like a harmless geographical space that you can willfully enter and exit, rather than a new identity that actually fully contains us all the time?

    2. digital literacy is our best chance at true freedom

      Interested in what this freedom/liberation means? How can our awareness translate into our liberation? False consciousness is clearly bad...but what exactly does awareness do to protect us? And what is the real threat of losing our privacy and being "known" by the market?

    3. I would know you better than your family does, or perhaps even than you know yourself.

      Also wonder about identity here. Is there anything outside of the feed that defines us? Can I fully exist online, or is there something about me that only exists in a nondigital world? Is this too religious a thought for me to stomach? Maybe...

    4. net

      "Net" as limiting, policing... maybe verses "network" which is less controlled and more tied to the will of the users? Not sure. Seems like resistance to the "net" has to be in the network, but not sure how...

    5. radical openness

      Yes- this is one idea I am so interested in, having invoked in myself. But I don't want to be naive in thinking my aggressively public digital persona is really all my own will... Is there a way that "open" can serve the common good and not the radically unequal economic status quo?

    6. radical openness

      Yes- this is one idea I am so interested in, having invoked in myself. But I don't want to be naive in thinking my aggressively public digital persona is really all my own will... Is there a way that "open" can serve the common good and not the radically unequal economic status quo?

    7. database marketing — what’s more commonly called analytics now.

      Semantics are so interesting. Marketing has become a dirty word as the selling gets embedded in experiences, and we can no longer isolate the products... Maybe because WE are the products? And suggesting that WE are being marketed seems too gravely inhumane?

    1. I’m not yet really a part of the academic — or any other — profession

      I understand this in the sense that there are real repercussions for living and researching when you are not necessarily paid for your academic labor, or when you don't have the security of tenure to protect academic freedom or of benefits like health care to allow you to focus on work even when personal challenges pop up. It's probably worse for contingent faculty than for grad students, too. But even so, I don't know if I would go so far as to say that grad students aren't part of the profession. What realities do we deny when we claim that only profs produce the frameworks for our field? What possibilities do we foreclose if we talk about our field in these conscribing ways?

    2. “real”

      Yes, this word belongs in quotes, and I love how complex it becomes when we talk about relationships and how they are measured in f2f vs. online spaces.

    3. it’s especially difficult if (like me) you’re an introvert,

      Funny to read this on the eve of DigPedLab, as I prepare to meet lots of folks who I've only known so far in the Twitterverse. I'm excited, but also there's a kind of trepidation about "real world" interaction, and a fear of what could get lost as exclusively online relationships become f2f...