Interview I: October 22, 2013
LB: So where are you originally from?
CG: I’m from Argentina; I’m from Buenos Aires but not the the capital city. I mean I’m from the state of Buenos Aires. So basically it’s like New York, New York.
LB: I see, yeah, the state of Buenos Aires.
CG: The state of Buenos Aires not from the capital city, so I grew up in a small neighborhood in Buenos Aires, it’s a textile neighborhood that worked with, actually they produce clothes. That’s how many factories clothes factories there. So I grew up there.
LB: And when did you move to the United States?
CG: I moved in 2003… My god, oh my god, ten years (laughing).
LB: And what did you do before you came to the U.S.?
CG: Well I started I basically I mean I started kindergarten and I didn’t stop since, I always been in educational institutions if you want, so sad, no? It’s like trapped.
LB: No, I like, if I could go to school forever I think I would.
CG: Yeah yeah but yes, it’s true it hard perhaps there’s something there that I have to explore with my therapist – that would be outside this. But that’s part of the Argentinian idiosyncrasies oh like you go to therapy being able to talk and talk with a therapist. It’s a really um, popular profession and it’s something that we do normally, I mean, wouldn’t you, no? You just want to share your story, your concerns, your daily, everyday life with someone that’s not your partner or your family or burden other people with things in your life. Sometimes you do but do that but… So it’s really common to do in Argentina. I don’t know why I started to think about psychoanalysis’s, okay. But it is related.
So basically what I did is I just I finished high school and I went to University of Buenos Aires and studied philosophy there. And in Argentina the education is like in Europe, you know study one thing and you start with that career until you finish. It’s not like you know, take classes of chemistry, or no. It’s just I started philosophy and was like six years of philosophy, seven years of philosophy. Hardcore, nothing else. And then started journalism and then I started that in two different universities because the University of Buenos Aires didn’t have journalism or um, I would say faculty so what they had was communication, communication studies, communication sciences but not journalism so I started journalism in a small uh college of 500 students, it was really exclusive, so I studied that and then I studied philosophy in two different universities at the same time. So yeah I didn’t have anything, I didn’t have a life but I had much more fun I mean, which is like I really had an amazing social life and, and friends that I like see and I don’t know I don’t regret about like studying or sacrificing this for anything.
LB: Well yeah and you’re here now so.
CG: Well yeah that’s another sacrifice (laughs). But to tell you the truth in Argentina education is free so basically if you decide to go to university you don’t have to pay for the university, you don’t pay tuition, you don’t pay anything. You have to only pay for transportation and books but you can still get fellowships or some kind of funds in order to buy books or to get your um, you know the uh, some kind sort of stipend to go to university to pay the bus and this and that and the train. So it’s a different access to education that was why I took advantage of that I think. And my parents always you know encouraged me to do that. It’s a very common thing in Argentina people will study precisely because of this you know, public system of education is so so I studied that, talking about psychology I was almost finishing the the, philosophy I finish journalism I work as a journalist and I start giving classes in high school philosophy then I was, I start helping people in the University of Buenos Aires in history of psychology. So I was kind of teaching or starting to teach history of psychology.
LB: So did you like teaching? Was it how was that for you?
CG: That was the thing, I one of the things I discovered this was in 2000 no? I always thought that I wa-, I wanted to be a park ranger to tell you the truth.
LB: [laughs] really!
CG: Yes! And my mother said yeah my mother said you never going to be a park ranger that’s why my mother said why don’t you study a different thing so that was my mothers suggestion. So yeah I did wanted to be a park ranger, I don’t know what I wanted to do with that, but I guess it’s to say what was my original drive, no? And then I, I decided discovered journalism and I thought this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life but unfortunately in 2001 with the economical crisis of Argentina I couldn’t, you know, develop the skills that I had or I couldn’t have I didn’t have the chance to have a job. So it was really hard for me to get a job – I work in radio, mostly in the sports sections. I was you know um working with uh soccer games, mostly soccer games; you know football as we say in Latin America. Uh mostly in football so I was working radio and it was something that I really really enjoyed and then you know suddenly in 2001 the crisis started and I became completely unemployed and I start to find different venues to get a salary, you know? Because the situation was also felt in my in my house you know, my parents couldn’t support me because, while I was studying I wasn’t working, that was one of the advantages I had being middle class in a way. So I didn’t have to work and study at the same time one of the advantages that I had thanks to my parents of course. But that was during 2005 there was a terrible crisis in my family my mother became unemployed so it became a complicated situation. So what I did is that I started to explore different venues and I discovered, uh part of my I guess part of the communication thing no? Teaching that’s what I’m not saying there’s not a lot of work in journalism no, but in journalism you have this one of the bases there is communication, and not communication that’s part of being a journalist. Saying and not saying, you know kind of like Hermes and Mercury you know these gods of the news at the same time they were the gods of secrets. That’s basically part of being a journalist, being able to manage you know manage an economy of the secrets no? How do you say those thing so that’s one of the communication I was always really intrigued and I thought I could use that in order to work with some people and I start teaching classes of literature in high school. I don’t know why because I love literature I never studied literature and I started teaching philosophy in high school and then um I applied to the University to um Master and PhD in romance languages at the University of Michigan and when they accepted me, I had to change jobs because basically in the University of Buenos Aires they were paying me twenty dollars a month and in high school it was like 15 dollars a month. So I couldn’t get the money for a plane ticket for a plane ticket to buy a plane ticket, so I started working delivering mail and cleaning toilets. Where I worked for kind of a year doing that working with mail and toilets so that was (laughs) my job experience.
LB: Yeah, but it got and so you ended up in Michigan…
CG: I ended up in Michigan, yes, thanks to in that moment it was my girlfriend now it’s my wife, she is also here… We both went to Michigan – I mean she met a professor, during the moment she was teaching also at the University of Buenos Aires, golden age literature, so she met someone from the University of Michigan and this professor told her why don’t you apply for the graduate program, we have a really nice program. We weren’t planning on doing that, no, we were planning on staying in Buenos Aires and staying Argentina and work in education – it was part of like all my friends from the all my classmates from university did. Now they’re I know their teaching they’re still teaching in two or three universities it’s hard to get a salary. But still they’re working, everything is much more they have opportunities, some of them are writers, have like tons of novels published. We developed in different ways all musicians – all these people that I met in the University of Buenos Aires especially in philosophy, none of them teach philosophy. For some reason we just kind of like love it or hate it or something, we recycle the ideas of the things were studying and put them into different things. One of them teaches politics and one of them is musician, the other is a novelist, um I, two or three friends that are also writers and, so basically I’m sorry I’m just like digressing.
So I we got that offer I got that offer to go the University of Michigan in 2003 started the graduate program, we did the masters first and then the PhD. And that’s why we chose the United States and not some other country, following the questionnaire.
LB: Yeah, it’s like these are guiding questions, I also cause I know I get sidetracked very easily and wanted to I just was really interesting in how you were received when you moved to the United states, being Latino, being Spanish speaking, what was it like getting to Michigan? Which is really interesting for me I’m from the southwest I’m from a predominantly…
CG: Where?
LB: South Texas.
CG: Oh yes.
LB: It’s like entirely Latino and so I’m really interested in the Latino experience up north just because it’s something I’ve never heard about.
CG: Midwest. Oh yeah.
LB: Yeah.
CG: Well, it’s a tricky thing especially if you get, I mean if you interview I guess like perhaps if they have different experiences, but if you interview people in the academic field you know professor, people going to a PhD. All the Department of Spanish, it was Romance Languages at University of Michigan all the department of Romance Languages were Latinos – I mean some Latinos, some Latin Americans, and I discovered that difference, the first thing that I discovered being Latino is completely different from being Latin American, no? It’s a completely different identity. I actually got the chance to teach Spanish 8, which is a class here at Dartmouth it was, we don’t have it anymore we are reformulating it with another class here because it didn’t work. We have a class especially for Latinos and I got the chance to teach that and it was really hard for me to make some contact because I was more like their parents no? I, the experience I had was more like the first migration.
LB: Oh interesting.
CG: Kind of like pioneers no and then of course my kids will be Latinos because they will be born here and the contact I had with them was a weird transfer of energies because some of them saw me as a parent for the first had this kind of emotional link because I was like their parent coming here to the United States.
LB: First generation?
CG: Yes first generation and it was super emotional. But for other students it was also emotional but like in a negative… they had this kind of rejection of their parents because they don’t want to assume heritage because perhaps the experience or something for like, that identity it’s complicated for them. So I had these two reactions I was this center of, being a professor the students always put you in that place although you always try always to displace no? But it’s hard.
LB: But it’s kind of hard being, um especially in at least what I found in New Hampshire because there are so few people who are Spanish speaking, who share this experience, you find a connection, that like, because like I had a professor last term that kind of looked like my mom. I was like okay cool this is the first time this has happened at Dartmouth!
CG: (laughs) Exactly!
LB: So you do find those connections, I guess.
CG: Yes I do find those connections but it’s a different connection I think it’s a different thing. When I moved to Michigan so many people from Latin America from Spain also, we have a really complicated relationship with Spain.
LB: Argentinians?
CG: Argentinians and Latin Americans in general. You know it’s just like this kind of this history of oppression of, I don’t know, so many dynamics that have to be with a colonial power no? That is still there. It’s a history that you can’t erase, in a away. They’re still there. So I learned how to have this relationship with people that I was like I was really Argentino-centric and everything was Argentina and then I came here and I was full of prejudices from… towards Americans and towards the rest of Latin America because I didn’t have the chance to travel that much and here’s something about the Argentinian identity that is like really strong.
And that was one thing the, traveling. The experience of immigration that we have, it is really strong in Argentina. Well with my wife’s family they are Italian, my wife parents are Italian and they migrated to Argentina during the war. And in my family and most of my family is from Spain and Italy and the Basque country in France and in the north of Spain. So we do have experiences with immigration but you never know if you’re going to be a one of those one of the immigrants and I did. It was a great experience for me, I was welcome but because the I was say the group of immigrants, it was a group of immigrants already. And it was a city based on the diversity of the university brings, Ann Aarbor is a wonderful city, of course you have racial tensions and class tensions but those tensions are kind of like kind of dissolved in a way because it’s like this racial mixture they have in Michigan in that in that city of Michigan. I didn’t felt that you know some sort of segregation or anything because of being because of my identity as a Latin American, I will say that’s my identity… white Hispanic Latin American.
LB: How did that compare with coming to Dartmouth? I know this was after you came [to the United States], but how did the colleges compare? The campus cultures?
CG: Well first the numbers there is like a quarter of million students, it’s insane, and here is like barely 4000. And the Latino population is really small and practically all the Spanish speakers are here [in the department of Spanish and Portuguese] and for me and it’s really important for me because I live my life in Spanish and now I started living my life in English. So the language was a huge thing when I moved to Dartmouth, no? Languages are huge things and I noticed that when I bring my parents. When I bring them for vacation and they went to Michigan and somehow they could manage. We went to Chicago is a really they have a huge Latino presence, or if you go to we went to Miami and there it’s kind of hard to speak English. There are like stores with signs that say we speak English so and here it was completely the opposite; you feel a little more alienated if you don’t speak the language or ostracized in a way, you feel segregated if you don’t have access to the language. The main fear that I think immigrants have when, or, that I experienced when I came here okay what’s going to be my level of English what kind of English will I speak because everything is going on in English, so your English has to be at least decent. Whatever that means. I know that I work with language and the goal of language is not perfection but communication. It’s not being prolific you just, you know, have to communicate you know. I had to, my fear was a fear of communication, which is tied to being a journalist which is tied it was all the anxieties I had ‘what if I cannot perform English?’
LB: And that must have been more difficult in the Upper Valley because there are so few people who are multilingual.
CG: Yeah it was, it was not a problem but I always have this expectation. I was anxious about what was going to be there and if you want to have contacts with the rest of the college you have to do it in English here. That is unfortunately one of the main differences I will say in this college and another university you have less chances of teaching in Spanish because of the population. Different topics every year it is more often it’s not like we teach only literature, I teach classes in visual arts, in philosophy, now I’m teaching a class on Marx and the nineteenth century and nineteenth century novels in Spanish. We have this flexibility, there classes of film in Spanish but if you want to have access to another unit of the college it has to be in English. It means that you have to do something about that you have fix that, cross that bridge that’s how I learned to go to LALACS, to comparative literature. But that was one of my mains fears and of the limits of the experience of immigration, language. And I always going to be I never want to speak as a native and that’s one of the things that I always teach my students, you’re never to be native. You’re never going to be native! And that’s okay, it’s not like… Okay, I think that we have to address the radical difference of being not from here, that the difference that the language has no? Which is being Spanish speaker, you never going to be an English speaker. You could fake a really good accent but there still something some things some words some like phrases some grammar that people will tell that you’re not from the area and they will always mention that. That’s one of the things they always mention to me in the Upper Valley. “Where you from?”
LB: Because of your accent?
CG: They always assume that I’m not from here it’s because of my accent, and sometimes because of my clothes here it’s too Upper Valley.
LB: It’s kind of crunchy.
CG: Yes or too formal or too like they’re going to hike no? There’s no in-between either your Vermonter with a beard and a polar thing or formal towards preppy… I’m sorry I’m reproducing stereotypes.
LB: No no but that’s, I have the same image in my mind. It was like during homecoming with all the football players and the ties and the collar and the D sweater and slacks. I was just like okay.
CG: There’s something there about the way in which you perform your activities that tells you that you are an immigrant or you’re not from here. What is being from here anyways? But still you still wonder in a way when everywhere you go they mention where you from, or what is that accent, it’s something about the accent again, the language thing, there is something that is always here is being in the Upper Valley.
LB: That was my next question what similarities do you see between Dartmouth and Argentina?
CG: This wealthy class that exists, that has always frightened me because thanks to that class we have the collapse of 2001, no? This kind of neo-liberal policies and adopting different models or economic plans from different countries to see if it works in Argentina, although we have a different culture than Japan and we use the Japanese model I mean and it didn’t work. And so many other models that come form Europe or the United States and they don’t work because we have a different society, different culture. There are so many things that I can tell that are kind of the same thing. Especially this ruling class and it was related to this white, whiteness that is here um, but it’s hard to explain because I’m working here (laughs) so in a way I am that, you know?
LB: But I think you can be part of a system and critical of it at the same time.
CG: Yes and I’m not going to revolt or anything I mean I’m not a proletarian or fight… It’s impossible, in a way, to be an old fashioned proletarian. Or to do an old fashioned revolution, you have to do something completely different, no? Sometimes you meet with immigrants and you don’t have anything in common, especially Argentinians.
LB: That’s so, so did you go to the Junot Diaz talk?
CG: Yes.
LB: My roommate and I were talking about his, how he conveyed the immigrant experience and just how none of it really resonated with us and between my apartment like half of us are from either Latino community or immigrant families and it was interesting because it didn’t match up and we almost expected to.
CG: Right, whoa.
LB: Sorry that’s not a question; do you have any feelings on that? It seems like your experiences with other…
CG: With other Argentinians, we say that Argentinians we like to be special. Argentinians we always want to be special. Though we are not, we want to be completely different and we say that Argentinians are like Japanese’s fishes that fight each other.
LB: Beta fishes?
CG: The beta fishes! The ones that if you put them in the same thing they kill each other? When we are outside Argentina we don’t, it’s hard to have a community of Argentinians. But I don’t know for some reasons with Spanish people, people from Spain they are completely different they get together they are already playing cards and cooking.
LB: (laughs)
…and they all the Latino communities all tend to bond Argentinians are more like you know and we always do the same thing. When you run into an Argentinian outside Argentina you ask always the same question, “When did you came to the United States?” The year will tell you if they came during the dictatorship; they will have a different political profile. If they are from the left, they have social conscious. If they came when the democracy came, it just like they flew Argentina because the democracy and you know Perón-ist the left, it’s not left but the Peronist party, Partido Peronista, well going back to power, actually when the democracy came it was the radical party, Partido Radical, with Raul Alfonsín but there some people they leave Argentina because they thought with the military they were better. So now it’s the chaos will come so you, you – it’s one of the first things that you ask when you meet an Argentina where did you, when did you come to the United States? And you will have this kind of prejudices, who you are. It’s impossible to be an Argentinian outside Argentina we carry on our identity like…
LB: That’s so interesting.
CG: …too much. It’s a national thing that you just carry.
LB: Do you think it’s a connection, like an affiliation with Argentina or just something that’s left?
CG: Yes yes it’s always you’re always trying to find an affiliation with Argentina and I do the same. No, especially it’s like and it’s really emotional in a way, I go back to Boston and I buy dulce de leche or yerba for my mate that I have here and I try to drink every day or buy Argentinean products or grilling no? The asado grilling meat, beef… Something that I do because it connects me to my family, to things that I really miss. Being in Argentina all the things that I really miss um, or people want to come back no? Spanish they always have this dream of coming back to Spain but Argentinians we don’t have that we take advantage of the nostalgia that produces immigration and we live in that nostalgia, we like to reproduce it.
LB: Yeah nostalgia is an interesting thing. I think sometimes it’s better than actually being in a place. That’s how I feel about Texas anyways.
CG: It is a place! It’s a place.
LB: …So you spoke about language being a challenge in the US, have you faced any other challenges or um maybe advantages that have come with living in the US as opposed to living in Argentina?
CG: The first one is economical. That’s the most …and the other thing is education, you have this access to education that you have here is really. I mean, it’s not public education, so when I talk about access you have the opportunity to get some sorts of the resources that no other places will be kind of hard to get because here everything is more organized, the archive are more organized no part of this knowledge.
LB: And just the resources that the college has.
CG: Yeah the resources, they are amazing and part of this achieve is just the formation of knowledge. It’s part of what Foucault says talks about power one of the things that comes with power is the organization of the archive, is the organization of knowledge, what is the knowledge, what are the things that are going to be transformed into knowledge and what are the things that are going to be put away from knowledge. And one of the things you need to do to reproduce that that is to form a really effective archive. Which is the base of knowledge. So here we have the archive we have the archive no? It’s amazing that sometimes I do research on Paraguay and Brazil, and I find do it much more better and faster here in the US than in Paraguay. They don’t have the resources and the University of Texas at Austin they have so many things and the collection of Latin American things they have is amazing. It’s impossible to compare you know not even with Latin America – that’s what I’m saying. It seems like most of, this knowledge not talking about knowledge with capital, most of this knowledge are here it’s the knowledge that we reproduce in our classes. What is, trying to have an idea of what is Latin America to what is Latin American culture it starts from these knowledge that are here in the United States that sometimes are different to access in Latin America that’s one of the advantages. And then the other advantage for me was the community you can form here. You have a real community you have a real community. It’s really strange it’s like a community doesn’t know how to express itself. Because the community express itself through the difference and disagreement, that’s the only base of community being able to express disagreement. And not like you know you still have this idea of equality but equality doesn’t work in communities, it’s always a community of difference. The only way to connect that community is though disagreement that’s what I think. That’s why I remember in the spring when we have this movement, this day of refection you know they interrupted this – that was a beautiful thing. It’s was one of the ways the community expressed disagreement then we had this day it was kind of you know where we tried to reestablish this movement and we know nothing about that anymore. What happened this fall, there’s no stories about that – what they do with the students?
LB: Yeah sometimes I wonder if Dartmouth has an institutional memory because the things that get forgotten over the course of 10 weeks is…
CG: It’s amazing. Everything happens so fast here.
LB: How is that as a professor like being here, you have been, how long have you been at Dartmouth?
CG: Four years. Four years, yeah four years. …there’s something that about like behind that hiding but still you can see what are the plans they have, you can actually run into the president, no? And that’s one of the things that I liked.
LB: We see each other, it’s really funny so the rugby team we played sevens over the summer, that’s my next questions I wanted to hear about your rugby experience, but we see him like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the gym and we say hello and he knows who the rugby team is now.
CG: Yeah he goes to the gym, yeah he goes to the gym.
LB: Yeah and it’s different from other I think schools, I don’t know I really like it about Dartmouth I see Charlotte Johnson all the time. I don’t know her, she doesn’t know who I am, but we like kind of wave at each other because we see each other so often.
CG: That one of the things that I really enjoy no this idea of um closeness you have in other institutions I don’t know if you can experience that. Especially like research University of Texas or Michigan, they’re big universities and so many things we don’t have access. Although here we don’t have access but we have this fantasy that everything is more connected. It’s like the fantasy that you can see what’s going on it’s not like you here you can see politics. Here you have the fantasy that everything is transparent, perhaps that what we need sometimes no? I don’t know (laughs).
LB: So how did you start playing rugby?
CG: I started playing rugby when I was 9. Because my father…
LB: Is it a big sport in Argentina?
CG: It’s the 2nd most popular sport in Argentina. We have uh, it’s still amateur, so it’s not professional but there’s a lot of people, immigration is also marked through sports in Argentina a lot, especially with football, soccer and rugby. Rugby players they go to France and Europe and it’s something that like all the international team is part formed by players that immigrate to Europe, due to the crises, they play pay better. In Argentina if you want to dedicate your life to rugby you don’t get any salary, so you have to be from the high class. So it’s uh it’s complicated I started when I was 9 because my father and I started playing with my brother and we played together and I started playing since and actually talking all about immigration, when I knew I going to go, to come here to the United States and to Michigan, the first thing I thought was okay I’m going to play rugby, where? Where is going to be the close the club or the, I just wanted to know where they play rugby. One of the connections I did one of the first thing I did when I got into Michigan is I put myself into contact with the rugby team and I got there started playing in the Michigan Rugby and Football Club, which is in the US Rugby Union. And that was one of the most amazing experience I had because all of them were kind of American, some of them Canadian or from the islands but I had a different community so all the experience I had with American communities are mediated through sports that they put they have this strong emphasis on the community of players. So the rugby was a way to ease all the frictions you have as an immigrant no? It just like, ‘oh where you from? Argentina, that’s so nice’ and they play rugby and they’re so informal with that they were happy to have someone from a different country playing rugby and here the rugby tradition is not that good, especially in men. It’s starting, it’s starting.
LB: Yeah most get their start in college.
CG: In women it’s different it’s a part of the US is a pioneer like soccer one of the best teams in the world. So it was a beautiful experience so I always try to put myself in these situations, situations in which in the nuclei or the center is the community.
LB: Yeah because I think rugby culture is really unique in that like you pound each other for 80 minutes and try to kill each other and then afterwards together you get lunch and share beers.
CG: And the practices all the practice we had with your own team, you just talk with people and you have something in common. It’s amazing culture, rugby culture is like one of the most unique things I’ve experienced, ever not even in other sports even. More professions it’s something with rugby culture that is international in a way, so uh I was lucky to play rugby in a way and coming to the United States. I was lucky to do that just like think about this protection that I need, something familiar for me and I think most immigrants, I don’t know that depends on the person but one of the things that is kind of a motive that I have. It’s like I try to don’t do anything stupid or protect myself and try to be happy in a way and playing rugby was part of this, this protection that I needed feel safe in a way in a foreign country. I don’t know, that’s rugby that was rugby that was rugby for me…. I had so many things and grade exams, writing, working well rugby is my life I love to do that and sometimes you can’t. I mean I’m not going to dedicate my life to that, my life is my teaching but it’s something that I really miss, I really miss playing rugby. And here it was different, I mean after I blew my knee playing at Michigan I have ACL repair playing indoors sevens I got stuck in the turf. After that it was different.
LB: I’ve had both my knees reconstructed too, it’s not fun.
CG: It’s not fun and I was getting old, it’s different when you’re in your twenties it’s okay, you can get better, you can have a really nice rehab. Although I had an amazing rehab, my body works in a different way. So I have to be more careful, that’s what my wife told me she told me don’t play rugby anymore okay no so.
LB: I think that’s all the questions I have we didn’t I think this was really successful even though we didn’t’ get to all these. It was plenty of time.
CG: Is something else, language?
LB: Was there any question that you have for me? Or just something you wanted address that you think is interesting.
CG: …about about the experience of…
LB: …of immigration, of being at Dartmouth?
CG: No.
LB: I’m actually interested in how you perceive the Dartmouth community, and I’m not sure how to phrase this but just how you know as a your experiences with your students like with the protests this past spring, what impressions do you have of the Dartmouth community, do you feel that you have a different perspective because you’re an immigrant or because you’re newer to the college than other, you know like some professors have been here for many years.
CG: They naturalize perhaps I don’t know I mean perhaps it’s both things being a young people um to tell you the truth all the students I have here in Spanish and Portuguese Department they are more open to difference than others I don’t know about the other departments.
LB: I think they’re kind of self selecting in a way, at least my experience with the LALACS department and the classes I’ve taken is that for better or worse it’s a lot of people who think like me.
CG: Exactly in a way it’s just like I mean the classes of people that are speaking Spanish, they are already open to another culture so they have a different idea. So I never had the chance to deal, except in the Spanish classes that they have to take the language because it’s a requirement. You get into a different population and that population perhaps because they are learning the language you don’t have a chance to get into a really deep debate on traditions. But I always try to include in my classes a discussion of that we are having or how can we pass this discussion about topics that we are working in class to Dartmouth life. And sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t work there are people that didn’t want to talk because I notice they don’t want to talk because I can tell there are radical differences and they don’t know how to deal with those radical differences. They think we should reduce the difference and talk about equality and acceptance, I don’t agree with that discourse. I agree with the idea of disagreement. I think they should be able to express different opinion I think that that is the only uh right and duty that we have, is to express a different opinion. Well what happen with that different opinion is being that reproduce is for to I don’t know, produce oppression, no? Gender oppression, racial oppression, sexual oppression, class oppression, what happen when that different is that. So far we are what we see here at Dartmouth is that the majority have these really binary structure of like rich class poor class, men women, heterosexual homosexual, white uh eh white black, they really don’t know what to do with mixed races. So I notice that this been a reproduction of that. But I think that the hope that we have is sometimes we get these people that they are doing something different they are complaining. And actually I used to live in a house here on North Park and I used to live in that house that they kick me out because they’re going to put uh uh um a house, how do you call these houses…
LB: Like an affinity house?
CG: The affinity hours, the LGBT house is built where I live is amazing thing I was really sad it’s just like because the experience of immigration is sometimes is hard, they kick you out your house it’s like my god! (laughs) They told me they put an affinity house it’s like I told them okay great, they should have done it before they kick me out. Sometimes you have these spaces of for different voices no? And I think that’s kind of the, I’m repeating something Jack Ranciére says a long time ago, that I think that our task as critical thinkers or as independent intellectuals should be to articulate these noises that we have into a voice, no? The things that are invisible into a visible presence. That’s one of the things that we have to do. These voices of complaining, these noises that something they don’t like, the disagreement thing, we should be able to articulate it into a voice. We have these space for it but we still need more, it’s a working process and I try always to help my students do that in different fields I hope they learn something.