Back in the Day; Nostalgia For/With Derrida

Careful readers of this blog may know that I carry a torch for our sadly departed guru of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida--evidence appears throughout Tex[t]-Mex as well as here, here, here, here, here, here, and, last but not least, here, a syllabus for my 1998 seminar on Borges and Derrida. Dr. Michael Mahin, one of the stars of that seminar, and now a lecturer for our department, just passed me a fragment/shard from that class, a collective letter we wrote to Jacques, then at Irvine, to come attend our colloquia.



He didn't show.

But we were not hard on the guy! We toasted him and as well as the shade of Jorge Luis "Georgie" Borges with love and good cheer; it was quite a seminar. It boasted the talents of now Dr. Mahin, Tomás Riley, late of the Taco Shop poets, Vincent Biondo, now a Professor of Philosophy at Fresno State, my old GTA Michael Leamy, Carlos Amador, now finishing his PhD at UT Austin, and a host of others. Gracias to Michael for pushing me into a vat of luxurious deconstructive nostalgia!

Birth of a Book

I just found, revived, spruced-up, and re-engineered the website for the 1998 SDSU English graduate seminar that gave birth to the whole notion of Xicanosmosis--a key "ghost" haunting the final, hopeful movements of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America.

Also, from 1998, a vintage year, now a decade past? The Beastie Boys and "Intergalactic."