1. "Border Boda" talks a lot about the concept of racism and sexism being linked. Waller writes, "there might be a quasi-sexual pleasure involved for some Anglo-identified spectators of images of Mexicans as abject." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Is racism and racist images or thoughts in any way related to a fetish of power and control over abjected peoples?

2. Both "Border Boda" and inSITE are art/performance events meant to bridge the gap between the border through thoughtful art and bilingual/binational debate. However, it seems that it solely represents a liberal political view. Can an art or performance event such as these really be called binational when they exclude the views of many "conservatives"? Couldn't one argue that these events just further propogate the idea of "us vs. them" by essentially doing the same thing to conservatives as these "bigots" "racists" and "Anglo-identified" peoples do to them?

Week 3 readings

An image that jumped out at me a good bit as I perused the inSITE file was the "Good Neighbor" installment. "Good Neighbor" was a large table bisected by a saw. The table was covered in ground chili peppers and had, at either end, a large metal chair. The initial image of the saw and the silver area immediately to either side of the division it created was pretty startling. It was suddenly not a difficult task to picture the actual border fence as a cerated, vicious piece of metal threatening to destroy those who came into contact with it. But once I sat back and took in the scene of the installment in its entirety, I noticed the saw seemed ominously positioned to thrash through the metal chairs (which were meant to signify the powers that be), too. It made me think...we have been studying how the border manifests itself in the culture on and around it. But how does the border affect those in power, those that (however unknowingly) create the culture we study? By creating a monster of the border, are they (namely the U.S. government) creating a monster that could pose a threat to their own infrastructure?

Something else that stood out to me, this time in the Teddy Cruz reading, was the frequent mention of the "hardening of the post 9-11 border wall." It surprised me to some degree that the terrorism our country faced on that day effected such change on the U.S.-Mexico border. I realize that, after 9/11, the U.S. strengthened security measures in most respects, but I wonder whether the collective "we" became more wary of the collective "other," which expanded to include anyone who was not in the "we"? Did the events of 9/11 create a new rhetoric Americans would end up using against any foreign body?

One more thing that sort of struck me pretty hard... Teddy Cruz says: "I believe the future is small, and this implies the dismantling of the LARGE by pixelating it with the micro: an urbanism of retrofit." Cruz, I believe, means this most directly in terms of architecture. I do wonder, though, whether this type of claim (that the future is small) would be acceptable in a global sense. Is it possible the technological train that is currently steam-powering its way to virtual domination can be stopped in favor of the old-time, home-based human interactions? I suppose perhaps a better question to entertain is: Will the increasing emphasis on virtual interaction make our future world bigger? Or smaller? Does the Internet mean globalization on a scale larger than ever before? Or does that accompany a privatization more intricate and pixelated than could otherwise be imagined?