NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Whenever I read about some new development in Arizona, it constantly reminds me why Ethnic Studies is important as an academic discipline. Since graduating from Ethnic Studies UCSD, I've been trying to get a job at the University of Guam. I haven't been successful yet, and sadly I don't have much hope for the future either, lao sinembatgo bai hu konsigi. One of the reasons why I don't have alot of hope, is because while you could say that all academic departments or schools have their conservative or archaic elements, UOG, as a mixture of a colonial and a "isolated" institution is tough to beat. Most of the faculty, in all departments at UOG have never heard of Ethnic Studies (or many other similar critical disciplines which have come into being over the past 40 years), and have no clue as to what it could be. I'm used to non-academics not knowing and assuming that the degree has something to do with anthropology or "mere" culture, but its stran

I got an email yesterday, that I seriously hadn't been expecting. I posted several months ago an abstract that me and my buddy Theo had submitted to the Pacific Epistemologies conference at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, which will take place in July 2006. The abstract was pretty decent, but I felt kinda sure that the form of our paper didn't quite match what is generally considered to be "pacific epistemology" or "indigenous epistemology." I felt that the critique we were making could easily be construed as outside of indigeneity, and therefore we probably wouldn't fit the intent of the conference. No, no, I haven't suddenly realized that there is no such thing as "inside" or "outside" of cultures, if anything the untenability of this distinction makes it return even more forcefully. (case in point, isn't interesting how all the wonderful globalization literature out there on crossing borders, just enables new f

Despensa yu', sa' ti fihu pumost yu' gi este na simana. Gof tinane' yu' put eskuela so hassan i tiempo-ku para este. So what I thought I'd do is have another edition of Fun With Footnotes, where I share with everyone the sprawling, almost jaw shattering footnotes that I often put in my academic papers. There are several reasons for making footnotes of this size, but the one that has served me well most recently is that I use them, or the rambling discussions I start in them as the basis for my next papers. One footnote from an article that will hopefully get published this year, has provided me with the basis for an article I'm working on with a friend of mine Madel, for an article we plan to try and submit to The Journal of Contemporary Thought. The following footnotes are from an article titled Everything You Wanted to Know About Guam But Were Afraid to Ask Zizek: Part 1, that I first presented at the Sovereignty Matters Conference April 2005 at Columbi

In my work I often use movies to help me illustrate my theoretical points. Sometimes the ideas come out of watching movies and making connections between whatever I'm reading (ahhhh, so Herbie the Love Bug is the death drive! ). When this happens, life is easy. Just a matter of writing this insight down and then finding someplace to put it. But other times, the insight comes differently, through some sort of cruelly vague resonance. It hits you, or rather blindsides you and vanishes before you can see what it is. Several weeks ago while working on my master's thesis, I was blindsides by some absolutely archetypal scene, which I nonetheless can't pin to any particular film. I was trying to make a point about indigenous peoples and how even the ways we think where to look to find ourselves are conditioned by modern knowledge and a way out of this, lies in recognizing this fact and not denying it. To do so a movie scene popped into my head which would fit perfectly, however n

This year is looking very exciting in terms of my work and research, especially in the ways I will conceptualize the Pacific and therefore situate myself in it academically and theoretically. In the past few days I've worked on two abstracts for conference papers, and the only thing that's more exciting than the shifts in my own work is the fact that I'm working with others on these directions and on these projects. The first abstract is for a paper me and my friend Theo are working on. We're both in the the Ethnic Studies department at UCSD and very interested in moving beyond the US People of Color paradigm that traditionally movtivates and therefore inhibits Ethnic Studies, by articulating what the indigenous (non) subject is in relation to the nation (and not just assuming that its just another person of color). We're submitting this to the Pacific Epistemologies conference next year in Fiji. If it gets accepted it'll be a real big deal for both of us. For

For those familiar with my work (I'm sure there are a few of you) as well as those who frequent my blog ramblings, you know how important movies are to my analysis and rants. Alot of times they lighten the mood, other times they can help illustrate a densely theoretical point. Most of the time its just because I want to be a punk. After giving a presentation at a conference where I used several films to make theoretical points, which to most people probably didn't make sense (such as Weekend at Bernie's and images of fallen soldiers), someone asked me what theory of film interpretation I'm using when I analyze films. I thought about that for a moment, because I'd never really thought about it before. I don't really know any film interpretation styles, having never taken any film classes, but always just made shit up about movies, or used stuff from other disciplines to analyze. One thing that passed through my mind was saying Zizekian style (lana, ti ya-hu est