The Revolutionary Rupture: Slavery, Latifundio & Rev. in Caribbean & Lat. Amer. Lit. & Cinema (FYS)

Description

The word "Revolution" often evokes a vertical and/or eruptive image: a standing militant who was once a "premodern," non-European figure; a bottom-to-top explosion of imperial and colonial disorder and normative violence; a rising and world-overturning wind or "natural event." Does the eruption of an "event" worthy of the name "Revolution" begin on the imagined x-axis, say, of the earth's surface? Or does it point beyond that plane of seemingly commonly shared life? Or to that notion itself--i.e., commonly shared life--as a question? How do configurations of hell, heaven, God, Satan, the dead--what's below, what's above--come to bear in representations of "Revolutions"? In this course, we will slow down, read, and work through these and other questions and figurations on the verge, in the midst, and/or seemingly on the other side of revolutionary ruptures--ruptures which are also returns. We will read select literatures and cinemas of Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Cuba that convey refusals of "given" life and death and that render different imperial, colonial, and neo-liberal systems of oppression and their attendant philosophies of the human, non-human, animal, native, enslaved, and blackened. The Haitian Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century, insurrections in Chiapas before and after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and 20th-21st century armed movements against U.S. economic and military invasions of the Caribbean and Central American regions would be the historical "flashpoints" of the course. While de-romanticizing the commercialized Che-t-shirt notion of "Revolution" in the U.S., we will, more importantly, encounter and deconstruct discourses of hetero-masculinity, modernization, mestizaje, whitening, and "development" that sometimes appear radical and/or revolutionary. Offering: Crosslisting Grading: OPT Credits: 1.00 Gen Ed Area: HA-ENGL Identical With: ENGL141F Prereq: None