The Transnational Rhetoric in Cabeza De Vaca’s La Relacion

Abstract on La Relacion by Cabeza de Vaca Identity is an important concept in postcolonial literature, especially when one’s identity is achieved rather than inherent. It is interesting to pursue how Cabeza de Vaca, the protagonist of La Relacion undergoes a transformation from his initial identity as a Spanish colonizer to a transnational hybrid, the Spanish-American. Despite multiple critics’ argument that La Relacion is “a discourse of failure” that “subverts the established order,” my paper rereads the narrative as a transnationally successful rhetoric by incorporating multiculturalism and hybridity. Thus Cabeza de Vaca becomes a hero if we accept his story as a successful, although altered, version of conquest; he is a “hero” because his military and political failures pave way for the spiritual success even though he has not conquered Native American territories and enslaved no Native Americans for the Spanish crown. The Narrative, as a tale of religious and cultural tolerance, rather than military conquest, becomes an even more persuasive tool for a broader transnational perspective. In the early stages of his narrative, Cabeza de Vaca constructs the native as Other, as warrior, pagan, savage, in effect everything that the Spanish colonizers are not. But in his transformative phase Cabeza de Vaca acquires new knowledge about the natives through a new way of thinking about them (the change in his outlook from I to We), and he continues to employ linguistic and religious/social/cultural strategies to identify with the natives. By making his strategies increasingly more visible in his La Relación, a new ideology of transnationalism emerges. Thus my paper looks forward to legitimate cultural explanations through a postcolonial-transnational perspective in present day multicultural world to explore the interrelations across barriers

Deadly Cyber Geography, Jihad goes Social: ISIS and Media (Panel A)

I use the Scalar platform to trace how ISIS creates deadly geographies around the world through its “terror talks.” This project will analyze how these deadly spaces are created—cyber space/geography through social media, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (the processes of blogging, hacking, tweeting etc.) It is interesting and at the same time emotionally challenging to trace the history of ISIS’s deadly violent propaganda, and how it terrorize the cyber space and create deadly geographies within it. And it uses a media strategy as aggressive as its military tactics to extend its influence around the world and adopts the most violent tactics for propaganda such as beheadings. It is surprising that online jihadists adapted very fast to the migration from internet chat forums to social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. ISIS is also strategically very successful in creating its own secluded extremist forums, hierarchies and trusted inner circles. I draw on Michael Taussig’s theory to gain a scholastic understanding of my project. To use Taussig’s words from “Terror as Usual,” there are “terror talks” circulating about the dangers of the deadliness of ISIS. Thus my paper looks forward to promote a scholarly conversation about how these kinds of violent religious, inter-racial, inter-ethnic, sectarian spatial interactions, can become fatal and problematic in a multicultural world. As a Digital Humanities scholar working towards the goal of common good through collaborative knowledge sharing, through this project I also aim at creating an awareness about the precarious deadly cyber space or even you can call it, “the maze of terrorism” in which people from across the world are lured into and trapped in

Civilizational Memory: The Transformation of Palmyra asa Cultural Patrimony of The West

A UNESCO-listed world heritage site located in the Syrian desert, Palmyra has been an ancient global crossroads of trade and culture. It has drawn tourists and scholars from all over the world and represented a palimpsest of eastern and western histories and cultures. In August 2015, the advance of ISIS into Palmyra and its calculated destruction of ancient monuments in Palmyra shocked the global community and led to an outpouring of grief. This dissertation examines the ways in which institutions and scholars in Europe and the United States responded to this sense of intense loss and argues that the international effort to rescue and preserve Palmyra has made Palmyra a cultural patrimony of the West. Focusing on digital and physical recuperations of Palmyrene monuments by various Western-based digital initiatives, I argue that Palmyra has been appropriated into an archive of Western civilizational memory. Edward Said’s scholarship on the east/west binary and colonial discourse provides a framework for my analysis of the West’s appropriation of Palmyra as its cultural heritage and the visual colonialism that is exemplified in the recreations of Palmyrene artifacts and monuments. I engage the scholarship of Maurice Halbwachs and Astrid Erll, among others, to explore the role of memory in transforming the significance of Palmyra and the perceived threat to Western civilizational memory. Virtual collaborative projects on Palmyra such as the #New Palmyra project, The Palmyra Portrait Project, “The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra,” and the Institute for Digital Archaeology serve as key sources in this dissertation. These efforts to reclaim Palmyra by the West as a patrimony of the West must be juxtaposed against the reality that Palmyra’s antiquities have always remained present in the lives of Syrians and people living in the region. Therefore, the real Palmyra that once stood majestically in the Syrian desert is lost in translation and transference