(no subject)

It is ridiculously hot upstairs today. I have to take my air conditioner out of the window once I get home.

See, My room is on the second floor at the top of the stairs and under a peaked roof, so all the heat in the dwelling settles in up here. Meanwhile, the air conditioner's fan setting does not let in any outside air; it just recirculates air in the room. Even if it's cooler outside than inside (and it often is), I can't cool the room off by turning the fan on. Since I only very rarely use the air conditioning, I end up with a much warmer room than it really needs to be.

(no subject)

I *was* going to bike to field school today, but it seems we have a day full of possible rain, preceded by some actual right-now rain. As of now, the rest of the week is expected to be similar. I wonder how much digging we're actually going to get done this week....

(no subject)

I've been fighting a headache all day, and I think I'm going to go to bed early after studying some Spanish.

I just looked through some more anthropology programs, mostly in Canada. Tomorrow after field school, I'm going to write some emails to ask about meeting with folks while I'm in Canada with Danae.

I also learned today that a group presentation I'm involved with was accepted for presentation at the largest anthropology conference in the US in November. That's pretty big, and I'm very excited by that, but I'm also a bit stressed. I need to do a lot of work to be ready for that, and I'm worried about time constraints. Field school ends at the end of this week, but I also have to do research for an independent study I'm working on before school starts. And then, of course, there's school to deal with in September.

I'm going to need to really be on top of things.

One other note: I really need to read this man's book once it's released. It sounds amazing.

I recently completed a book manuscript entitled Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction (forthcoming with Duke University Press, Spring 2014), based on fieldwork conducted at the eastern foot of the Andes between 2003 and 2007. The book is a theoretical, ethnographic, and historical meditation on the destruction of space, the sedimentation of historical processes of confrontation in the physical and affective texture of landscapes, and the ways in which people evoke the past, and act upon the present, by drawing upon spatial traces from prior eras. Aiming to rethink the concept of “ruins” as a nodal trope of modernity by grounding places and objects in ruins amid wider, living spatial constellations, the narrative examines the palimpsest of rubble produced by colonial violence, missionization, and capitalist and state expansion during the conquest of the Gran Chaco, the vast lowlands east of the Andes that until the late 1800s were beyond the control of the state. Inspired by authors such as Lefebvre, Adorno, Benjamin, Spinoza, and Deleuze, I argue that ruins and debris can be conceptualized as generative spaces and objects: ruptured spaces haunted by absent actors that are also affirmative presences that affect the living and have, as Benjamin would put it, an afterlife (you can read a more detailed overview of the book here).

http://anth.ubc.ca/faculty-and-staff/gaston-gordillo/

(no subject)

It wouldn't do to forget to take my daily picture. I've been doing quite well and have a picture for every day of the project so far, even though I don't post them all here.

We got another rainshower earlier this evening. The day's been terribly hot and humid. I stepped outside to get a photo with this tree, who has hopefully been enjoying the weather more than I have.


Crown of Leaves - Pic-a-day 8 July 2013

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