Appadurai
Which minority is temporary and solely based on opinion?
Procedural minority.
What month and year did Columbus arrive at the Americas for the first time?
October 1492
Nixon 2011
"Dispute such vitally important initiatives, the environmental humanities in the United States remain skewed toward nation-bound scholarship that is at best tangentially international."
(Nixon, p. 34)
Which identity is built on the extinction of other identities and understanding oneself as a threatened majority?
Predatory identity.
What feature of nation-state governance makes it so difficult for countries to address long-term climate change crises?
"Casualties from slow violence are...out of sync...with the swift seasons of electoral change."
What was Columbus' primary fascination in his discovery? What does he seem to take little interest in?
The nature, landscape, etc, with little interest in the humans.
Name one reading focused on explaining the nature of the self and the other.
Appadurai or Nixon.
"Minorities are not born, but made."
(Appadurai, p.45)
What is the "anxiety of incompleteness"? Give a real-life (ongoing or historical) example.
"Small numbers represent a tiny obstacle between majority and totality or total purity... the smaller the number and the weaker the minority, the deeper the rage about its capacity to make a majority feel like a mere majority rather than like a whole and uncontested ethnos" (p. 53).
Give two examples of "spectacular violence", as discussed by the author.
9/11; falling bodies; burning towers; exploding heads; avalanches; volcanoes; tsunamis; mushroom clouds
Name two reasons that Columbus set out on his voyages.
1) To discover gold and riches for the King and Queen.
2) To fund a conquest of Jerusalem.
3) To propagate Christianity
4) To meet the Grand Khan
Name the victims of the types of violence described in each reading.
Todorov: The Native Americans
Appadurai: Minorities
Nixon: The poor
"It is a wonder to see how, when a man greatly desires something and strongly attaches himself to it in his imagination, he has the impression at every moment that whatever he hears and sees argues in favour of that thing."
Historia in Todorov, p. 21
Appadurai discusses the "dual pressures" of globalization as sources that mobilize majorities towards ethnic cleansing (p. 65). What are the two dual pressures?
1) Pressure to liberalize markets, economies, and commodities.
2) Pressure to manage their own minorities who had begun to use the language of human rights to claim their right to cultural dignity and recognition.
The author discusses the ongoing and neglected consequences of the Vietnam War as proof of slow violence.
Provide another example and explain how it relates to slow violence.
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"[Columbus] decides to eliminate all information tending to prove the contrary [of what he already knows]."
Give an example from the reading where Columbus seems to do so.
- The signs he see indicating that land is near (p. 20)
- Dismissing information from the Native Americans that Cuba is an island, and not the mainland (p. 21)
- Are the Native Americans the most generous people in the world? (pp. 39-40)
- Insisting they are not idolators (p. 41)
- Assuming the Native Americans are ready to accept Christianity (p. 44)
Apply Nixon's discussion of slow violence to the genocide of Native Americans after the advent of Columbus to America.
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"The Other—other in relation to myself, to me; or else as a specific social group to which we do not belong."
(Todorov p. 3)
How is it possible that a taxi cab driver in America hates the American way of life and yet gave up everything to go there?
Appadurai explains that "[immigrants] seek opportunities as facts, not opportunity as a norm...practical pleasure in life in the United States...can be consistent with a deep moral resentment of American polity and the American government as global forces." (p.126)
How does Nixon suggest that our "rapidly eroding attention spans" affect our perception of climate change?
"Speed has become a self-justifying, propulsive ethic that renders 'uneventful violence'...a weak claimant on our time" (p. 8)
What are Columbus' two opposing perceptions of the Native Americans?
(Hint: both are grounded in egocentrism, and contributed to Columbus' genocidal justifications)
1) The Native Americans are not only equals but identical, and this behaviour leads to assimilationalism.
2) The Native Americans are fundamentally different—the others are treated as inferior.
How might you apply Appadurai's analysis of the majority's fear of small numbers to the Spanish colonization of Native Americans?
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"Confronted with the militarization of both commerce and development, impoverished communities are often assailed by coercion and bribery that test their cohesive resilience."