Library

I'm going to be spending a lot of Spring break in the library, or with library books. The paradox of the library is that you can get out 8 books and find that only a chapter or two in one or two of them is really what you need. A lot of what seemed relevant to you from a distance is not really relevant when the book is on hand. This is easily seen when you realize that all these books and articles are in order to write a 30 page chapter.

The part that's not relevant, though, provides a context. Learning extra things you don't have to learn to write a particular chapter could be useful in the future.

I am getting books on the history and theory of Hispanism, mostly. Hispanism is my own discipline, but sometimes I go through periods in which I hardly think of it from the metacritical point of view.

There is a moment when the reform of Hispanism seemed to be coming from French theory. That was about '90 give or take five years on either side. Hispanism can be critiqued on racial, class, gender, and nationalistic lines. It has its own ideologies and internal contradictions.