NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Every September 11th since September 11, 2001 has a surreal quality to it. As if in a world where history repeats and meaning is always muddled, somehow the events of that day achieved a special, extra level of meaning for those that were alive and of age to experience it. At least this is what they say, and how true this seems depends a lot on your relationship to the US and what type of imaginary tissue connects you to it.  9/11 always means another set of memorial or retrospectives. These commemorative acts help us lock in a particular narrative for conceiving what happened that day, what it means, and whether or not we allow any understanding of events that helped led to that attack. At these memorials people recall where they were when they learned of the attacks and reminders of how scared they were, but how America rose again from those ashes.  Mixed into this naturally is a lot of what you might call blind patriotism or shallow patriotism. September 11 th , as the US se

One passage that has long stayed with me in terms of understanding ethics is from one of Slavoj Zizek's books, where he mentions the Egyptians being swallowed up by the Red Sea as they trail the escaping Israelites. According to Jewish tradition he writes, when the Israelites celebrate the death of their long-time enemies, God chastises them. He tells them, how dare they celebrate that which he created. Who are they to celebrate the destruction of something that comes from God. Even if they were opposed in the drama of life on earth, they come from the same source and they have right to celebrate something which is equal to them in its origin. This type of repositioning is the basis for many types of ethical engagement. The idea that there is always some deeper level, some deeper intersection of humanity that we can and should appeal to in order to create something that is more just and more moral. But we can become so comfortable in our identities, so stuck in them, that it

The late French philosopher Jacques Derrida referred to “justice” as a term we use for impossible things. It is a word that we use for things that we can’t ever seem to resolve, about the problems of the past and the present. When a wrong is committed, justice is the word we use for things done in the name of fixing the problems that emerge from that violence, from that harm. But there is no precise science to justice, no easy way to agree upon what is the appropriate means of making amends for something. Criminal justice systems, restorative justice, reparations, apologies, these are all ways that we try to channel the trauma of the past. There is no equation for justice equivalence. Whatever happens in the name of justice will either be too much or too little. It cannot replace what was taken away, or those who have to give up something in the name of past wrongs will insist that they shouldn’t have to sacrifice for the sins of others. But the conversation and the process of de

My first forays into the world of public discourse and engagement came on the pages of the Pacific Daily News through letters to the editor. For years I conducted research in the Micronesian Area Research Center library and through interviews with politicians, activists and manåmko', but the thoughts and ideas that were spawning in my head didn't have many outlets save for discussions in classes or with trusted elders or friends. In 2004 I gave my first public presentation on the issue of decolonization or critical Chamorro Studies, when I shared a section of my research at a forum titled "World War II is it Over?" organized by the Guam Humanities Council at the Agana Shopping Center. I spoke alongside Dr. Patricia Taimanglo, the late historian Tony Palomo and Guam military historian Jennings Bunn. After that, I spent several years in graduate school presenting at conference around the US, often times to empty rooms, as Guam papers tended to be very low on the prior

--> English is my mother tongue, in the sense that it is the language that I grew up with and speak most comfortably. It is my first language. It is however not my favorite language, not the best language and certainly not i mas takhilo' para Guahu. I am a non-native speaker of the Chamorro language as I learned to speak it when I was 20 years old. It is natural for me in some ways, but still unnatural in others, primarily when talking about things that are difficult in general to express in a Chamorro lexicon. This is not only something that I struggle with, but as the Chamorro language has become more and more limited in how and where it is used, many people find themselves constantly switching to English since a potential part of their conversation is something few people have actually used the Chamorro language to convey. For example, on the rare occasions that I've tried to discuss Foucault or Derrida in Chamorro, when speaking in general about it, there

History is important because it holds the truth. The problem, like everything else dealing with the truth, is the uncertainty over what people should do with truths they don't like. History is filled with things you will like, things you won't really care about, and things you will hate hearing about. There are things that fill you with inspiration, love, hope and faith in the world around you, and things that make the world around you feel hollow, terrible, disgusting and make you wish you could leave it all behind, time travel or be sent to another universe. One of my favorite quotes about history is the notion that "Happy people have no history." This is something that I don't agree with as something that produces happiness, but I do believe that many people relate to the concept and force of history with this in mind. The less you know or the narrower your knowledge is about history, the happier you might seem to be. If you come from a community wi

Around this time last year Howard Zinn passed away. He was most famous for his seminal counter history of the United States A People's History of the United States, but he wrote many other works as well and was a long time activist and support of numerous progressive causes. After I began teaching World History last year, I found that much of the way I talk about things, even history, tends to be at a level which is hard for your average UOG undergraduate to understand. When you starting talking like Levinas, Derrida, Benjamin, Slavoj Zizek and Avery Gordon to talk about history even if students are interested, they sometimes lack the vocabulary or a friendly framework to even engage with what I'm saying. The first time I taught World History 2 (from 1500- the present) I made the mistake of giving my students Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, without prepping them much or giving them an idea of what it was about. Needless to say the discussion was gut

It has been quite a white since my last installment of Fun With Footnotes, where I post on my blog some of my more excessive or informative footnotes from my academic work. I wrote a poem several years ago which described Guam as one "Big American Footnote," and that was in one way the first seed which later became my dissertation, various articles, some of my favorite talking points and numerous posts on this blog. The metaphor of the footnote was something I felt could help me explain Guam and its colonial predicament, and how it exists, it means something, it matters, it reveals something crucial or important, but like most footnotes it is assumed to matter in a way that doesn't matter. I remember when I was in grad school at UCSD and in one class, another student who had read a draft of my Masters Thesis noted that my long footnotes were irrelevant and pointless since she, like everyone else in the world didn't read them anyways, and to make them any longer than