HTA 32.1; Lugones, Pilgrimages / Peregrinajes [2003]; Second Leg; Part One

Abstract

This episode is part one of four of the lecture series [HTA 31] on the ‘second leg’ of María Lugones’s Pilgrimages / Peregrinajes_ Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions [2003].

Primary Source

Lugones, María. Pilgrimages / Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Laham/New York/Boulder/Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003.

• HillJ_ Teacher Exemplar Annotations.

Guiding Questions

• Why is Lugones concerned with sameness and difference?

• How does a respect for difference honor intermeshing oppressions?

• Why is the logic of purity contrary to resisting intermeshing oppressions?

• What does it mean for people to be multiple, and why does this change where we must start in resisting intermeshing oppressions as well as the logic of purity?

• Why does learning to see resistance require us to learn to see domination, and how does this relate to how she explains what it means to witness faithfully?

• Why does Lugones’s Mamá speak ‘nonsense’?

• What does Lugones mean by pilgrimage, and how does it offer us resources for resisting domination?

• What does Lugones mean when she says that “you” may go anywhere but not as “you” per se? Who would you be instead, were to go anywhere carte blanche?

• What is the meaning and value of trespassing?

• Explain the polyvalence of mistakes and sabotages in acts of resistance.

• What does Lugones mean by traveling?

• Why is Lugones concerned with seeing others as pliable, foldable, file-awayable, classifiable and how does this relate to categorial fragmentation?

• What is the relationship between bourgeois travel, tourism, epistemic imperialism, practices of domination, logics of purity, and narcissism?

• How does Lugones define worlds? Why are they always lived? Why are they multiple? Why do they always have multiple real, actual orders of meaning [not just interpretations]?

• Why does Lugones “use worlds against the grain of atomic, homogeneous, and monistic understandings of the social in any of its dimensions”?

• Why does Lugones recommend playfulness, and what does she mean by this? How are fear and playfulness related?

• What method of explication and writing does Lugones utilize instead of “getting to the gist” or reducing her thinkers’ arguments into atomic readings?

• What does Lugones mean by curdling separation, and why does it offer us a crucial notion for resisting colonialism, patriarchy, and ethnocentric racism?

• What does streetwalker theorizing offer us, and how does it do so?

• Why does Lugones include images by Mildred Beltré, and how do they intersect with the rest of the text?

Please use these questions for the entirety of Unit 4, choosing 1-3 new questions each week, as Lugones does an excellent job articulating her main ideas in the Introduction.

YouTube Lecture

YouTube: HTA 32.1; Lugones, Pilgrimages / Peregrinajes [2003]; Second Leg; Part One.