Houyhnhnm LandEarly Modern Thought for Rational Animals

New Mexico: Governor Vargas orders fifty of his men to accompany him on his return to Awatovi Pueblo, with the rest to remain at the campsite guarding the horses.  The fifty are to organize into four files and be alert in the plaza while the priests are active there.  Once these orders are given and received and the men are ready, they proceed to Awatovi.

When they arrive, Vargas enters the plaza with the men following him on horseback.  When they are there, he and the priests dismount and the rest of the men remain mounted.  Vargas orders the people to set up a cross in the plaza, which they do immediately, and the priests stand in front of the cross and grant the people absolution.  They then baptize 122 people of all ages and both sexes.  When the baptisms are complete without incident, Vargas appoints Miguel, the leader of the pueblo, as its governor, and he takes the oath of office.  Miguel then invites Vargas up to his house to eat, and Vargas accepts the invitation and does so.

After the proceedings and festivities are complete, Vargas and his men return to their campsite for the night.

      

As someone who spends a lot of time talking to people in other departments, I often find myself having to explain what I do to people who have no clue about what “research” in literature would consist of.   Are there grants for that kind of thing?  If not, then why bother?  Or, as a friend once told me over drinks, “With all due respect, Dave, whar the fuck is your expertise located?”

–In a body of texts and traditions , I said, though precisely which texts and which traditions were always matters of fierce contention.

And he, poor soul, couldn’t imagine a world in which anyone could get a fellowship to study a twentieth-century poet.  “Well, cheers, then, and good luck to ‘em,” he concluded.

At times, it’s not much easier in my own department, because creative writers and rhet/comp people can be as casual about our working categories as people outside literature departments.  In the meantime, newer specialties like ethnic lit or area studies cut across the period grid quite differently than the specialties defined by chronological, national, and linguistic boundaries.

So I’ve often wondered why the basis for so much of our literature curriculum, at both the graduate and undergraduate level, remains this linear model of a succession of dominant styles (medievalism, renaissance, classicism, romanticism, realism, modernism, post-modernism, etc. etc.).  Was it imported into literature from architecture and the visual arts?  And is there some other, more general framework available, if the linear model of periodization is no longer considered the most “general” framework?

Which is why I was really interested in this post from Siris, who writes a history of philosophy blog, when he described this online taxonomy of philosophy being produced by David Chalmers and David Bourget.  Siris, I think, asks the right question when he asks: “how best to organize information in History of Philosophy?”  And we could use Siris’s reflections to help us learn how best to organize information in literary or cultural history, especially when we feel that periods and periodization are not adequate to the research tasks we’re defining for ourselves right now.  So what if periodization is nothing more than the most convenient way for us to group and store information?

What Siris notes is that the Chalmers/Bourget taxonomy is specifically unsuited for the history of philosophy, because philosophical inquiry seems to be organized along two very different axes, a set of interlocking or nested synchronic individual “problems” and a linear, diachronic “history of philosophy.”  Individual writers like Hume or Locke can be classified on the basis of the problems they have tackled or their actual historical or personal relations with other philosophers.  And the history of philosophy seems to appear in the C/B taxonomy twice, in two apparently unrelated domains.

The field of inquiry for HoP [history of philosophy] naturally organizes itself along two completely different lines, each of them important and essential to the field. On the one hand, what historians of philosophy study is naturally seen as a complicated historical system of networks: networks of influence, networks of institutions, networks of oppositions, networks of personal interaction, along with the individual thinkers at the nodes of these networks. On the other hand, they study not only networks but themes, which we usually call, somewhat misleadingly, problems. Thus historians of philosophy do philosophy by tracing both the history of networks of various kinds and the internal structures of problems discussed and investigated within those networks; and what is more, they do so simultaneously, and doing so simultaneously is essential to the approach.

Siris points out a number of interesting effects of this kind of taxonomy, which relate to the fact that the core of philosophy is usually felt to be on the “problem” axis, because these problems are the focus of individual inquiries, meaning high profile articles and books, etc.  Yet individual philosophers have no way to communicate with one another except through these ad hoc and unrecognized “infrastructures” for their field, which are the kind of thing people construct for undergraduates, but rarely take seriously for themselves, unless they really are professional historians of philosophy.  But the history of philosophy is still considered something of a lesser endeavor compared to really “doing” philosophy, probably because it’s considered a preliminary, information-gathering step preparatory to the real work of inquiry.

After looking over the C/B taxonomy, my question would be: what kinds of persistent, collectively pursued issues would literary or cultural studies offer as counterparts to the “problem” in philosophy?  And to what extent are these conceived within or apart from our periodizations?   How should we be organizing the information for our inquiries?

DM

      

Join me on November 8 as Zorra shows us how foodies learn to choose and use their cameras for the best food photography!

New Mexico: In the morning Governor Vargas sends Salvador and Sebastián, the two Hopis from Awatovi Pueblo who greeted him on his arrival at his campsite the previous night, to Awatovi to inform the people there of his arrival.  He gives each of them a rosary as a sign of his good faith.

Between 1:00 and 2:00 pm Vargas and a few members of his expedition leave their campsite and head for Awatovi.  A short while after they leave four men from Awatovi ride up to them on good horses to welcome them.  They are armed and wearing leather jackets.  After riding with the Spanish troops for a short time, they leave and ride ahead to the pueblo.  Vargas proceeds without the fear and suspicion he might have had about the Hopis’ motives, because his impression from the reports he has heard about their attitude toward his arrival is very reassuring.  This in contrast to the impression he had at certain other pueblos, such as Jemez and Acoma, where he remained a bit suspicious despite the apparent friendliness and openness of the people, since he had heard many reports about their treacherous intentions.

When the expedition reaches a mesa near Awatovi a large group of men comes out from the pueblo to receive them.  Some are on horseback, others on foot, but all are heavily armed; some even have guns.  More and more come out until there are at least 700 men present.  They adopt an aggressive posture, making provocative gestures and shouting at the Spanish.  They are led by Sebastián’s father Miguel, the literate, Spanish-speaking man to whom Vargas sent a letter on November 12 explaining his intentions.  The warriors tell him and another Spanish-speaking man named Pancho to ask Vargas if the Spanish are going to harm them.  When they comply, Vargas answers that they should calm down and that he has come only to pardon them and make them Christians again.  He points out that he has brought priests with him, along with the image of the Virgin Mary on his royal standard.  He therefore asks them to lay down their weapons and dismount.

The warriors, still somewhat resistant, talk for over an hour about what they should do, until Vargas asks Miguel to dismount and lay down his own weapons to set an example for his men.  He does so, and this finally gets them to listen to him when he tells them to do likewise.  Vargas then asks him to make them be quiet, as they were taught to do in prayer when they were Christians.  He does, and they all kneel in obedience.  Vargas then dismounts and enters the pueblo through the small door in the wall that is the entrance.  His officials follow him in.

Once inside, Vargas formally reclaims possession of the pueblo for the king, and does so again when he reaches the plaza, where he has the assembled people kneel in silence again to receive his pardon.  He then says that the priests are tired and will therefore wait until the next day to return to absolve them and baptize their children.  He tells the people from other pueblos to return to their homes and tell the people there to wait for him to come to them.  Miguel and Pancho translate all this for the people.

Miguel then asks Vargas to come up to his house to eat.  Vargas explains that he cannot leave his men alone and asks that the food be brought out instead.  Miguel complies with this request and brings food for Vargas and his men, which they eat on the plaza.  Vargas then tells him that he will return to his campsite at the waterhole to sleep.  Miguel tries to get him to stay at the pueblo, but he insists that he can’t leave the men still at the campsite alone since he was warned at Zuni that the Apaches are intent on attacking him and his group.  Miguel replies that he will show him a better place to camp near the water hole.  He then mounts his horse and leads Vargas to a campsite a little ways off, which Vargas agrees is better and brings the rest of his men to.  They camp there for the night.

      

Massachusetts: James Stevens of Gloucester appears before Thomas Wade and Daniel Eppes, Justices of the Peace in Ipswich, and testifies that he saw Mary Fitch, while she was ill and bedridden, said she saw a woman on her bed and felt that she was being “squeezed to pieces,” but he saw nothing.  Stevens was one of the three men who filed a complaint against three Gloucester women on November 5 for afflicting Fitch.

New Mexico: Governor Vargas and his men leave their campsite at the water hole of Los Chupaderos and march as far as the water hole of Magdalena, arriving after dark.  At Magdalena they find two Hopis from Awatovi Pueblo named Salvador and Sebastián.  The latter says he is the son of Miguel, the literate leader of Awatovi to whom Vargas sent a letter on November 12 explaining his mission.  He says his father waited at Magdalena all day for the Spanish to arrive, but left around sunset after concluding that they weren’t going to show up, charging him and Salvador with remaining there to greet Vargas and his men whenever they did show up.  Vargas is happy to hear this as he makes camp for the night.

      

Or, more accurately, “Noted ages ago (was it really less than 2 weeks?) after That Election and sadly neglected in my drafts folder”… I Have Until January 20!  Rob MacDougall rounds up some 'good crazy' responses to That One's election Obama’s Disastrous Gaffe-Laden Press Conference  Jon Swift is really, really, really enjoying himself this week On centrism  the 'centre' can shift: [...]

Well, I have many updates to make, now that I am back home from a lengthy research and conference trip to the UK.

My first stretch was at the Wren library in cambridge. It was a wonderful place to work, although it was very intimidating having multiple busts of newton glowering at me as i leafed through his bible. he dogeared a lot of the naughty parts of the bible, including that section about lying with whomever being wickedness. At first I wanted this to mean that he was either titillated or naughty himself.

Then I started thinking about the kinds of sermons I’d choose if I were preaching to Cambridge university students during the 1660s, and realized that all of the parts about not sleeping around might be exactly what I’d choose. so the marking up of dirty parts might just have meant he was a good churchgoing boy.

More clear-cut is Newton’s love for the book of revelation, thumbed and annotated like crazy. But who can blame him?

I also looked at his copy of the Principia, possibly the most expensive/priceless thing i have ever touched, his copies of literary texts (whose pristine condition implies that most of them were less fascinating to newton than the bible), and lots of other random things.

I also saw his death mask — newton had a hell of a nose.

i think my favorite part of the library was that stained glass window above the work table. when the sun would shift, little patches of red and blue would sometimes slide across the table. my least favorite part? when tourists would come to see the library and stare at me like i was some kind of nerd exhibit.

coming up: adventures at the british library, conference experiences in manchester and oxford, our trip to the cotswolds, and more love and adventures in london.