In last months of reading which I have not been good about listing here, one of the things that has stayed in memory as useful has been Laura Doyle’s reading of race in Stein’s work in “The Flat, the Round and Gertrude Stein: Race and the Shape of Modern(ist) History” Modernism/Modernity 7.2 (2000), 249-271. Mainly because she can negotiate through the trickster, joker part of Stein and yet doesn't let her off. Her argument basically is that Stein is aware that she is engaging racial tropes in her work and yet this awareness doesn't mean she doesn't fall into racism at moments. Something about her giving Stein awareness in her writing of "Melanctha" feels like such a relief.

Work keeps getting the way of my ability to do work.

Dussel's The Invention of the Americas: The expositions of these thinkers explain modernity by referring only to classical European and North American authors and events. My undertaking here differs from theirs, since I argue that while modernity is undoubtedly a European occurrence, it also originates in a dialectical relation with non-Europe. Modernity appears when Europe organizes the initial world-system and places itself at the center of world history over against a periphery equally constitutive of modernity. (9-10)

reading for class...

Good introduction by Kwame Dawes in the House of Nehesi Publishers edition of Somebody Blew up America.

"Aquifer" in Kaia Sand's Interval.