CORE Themes

Knowledge, Power, and Ethics

• Colonialism & Resistance Borges, The Ethnographer – Shows how Western academia treats knowledge as something to extract and publish, raising ethical questions about ownership, secrecy, and respect for Indigenous wisdom.

• Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Argues that traditional education reinforces power hierarchies by treating knowledge as property of the oppressor rather than something created through dialogue.

• Frankenstein – Depicts scientific knowledge pursued without ethical responsibility, leading to destruction when creation is severed from care.

• AI Snake Oil – Extends Shelley’s warning into the modern era, exposing how technological knowledge is marketed as neutral or inevitable despite real social harm.

• The Embrace of the Serpent – Critiques colonial science as extractive and spiritually empty, contrasting it with Indigenous knowledge grounded in reciprocity and memory.

• Lispector, The Hour of the Star – Questions who has the authority to narrate suffering, revealing how storytelling itself can become an act of domination.

Colonialism & Resistance

• The Tempest – Dramatizes colonial domination through Prospero’s control of land, language, and bodies, while Caliban represents the colonized subject denied autonomy.

• Retamar, Caliban – Reclaims Caliban as a symbol of Latin American cultural resistance, transforming colonial language into a tool for liberation.

• Brathwaite poems “Caliban” and “Letter SycoraX” – Uses fragmented form and Creolized language to resist colonial authority and recover suppressed histories.

• Montaigne, “Of Cannibals” – Undermines colonial moral superiority by exposing European violence and questioning who truly deserves the label “barbaric.”

• Neruda, Canto General – Rewrites history from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and workers, asserting collective resistance against imperial erasure.

• The Embrace of the Serpent – Shows the long-term psychological and cultural devastation of colonialism, emphasizing survival through Indigenous resistance.

• The Popol Vuh – Preserves Indigenous cosmology in defiance of colonial attempts to erase native memory and language.

Language Shapes Reality

• Kimmerer, “Grammar of Animacy” – Demonstrates how grammatical structures influence ethics, with English promoting objectification while Indigenous languages foster respect.

• Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Frames language as a site of liberation or oppression, depending on whether it silences or empowers dialogue.

• Brathwaite, “Caliban” and “Letter SycoraX” – Rejects standardized English to reveal how language itself is a colonial weapon and a means of cultural survival.

• Lispector, The Hour of the Star – Exposes how narrative voice can distort reality, showing language as unstable and ethically fraught.

• Góngora, sonnet – Illustrates how elite, complex language reinforces social hierarchy and cultural authority.

• Shakespeare (The Tempest) – Shows language as a tool of control, with Prospero “educating” Caliban to dominate him.

Indigenous Worldviews & Relationality

• Kimmerer “Asters and Goldenrod” – Presents ecosystems as cooperative networks, rejecting Western notions of dominance and competition.

• Skywoman Falling – Emphasizes gratitude, balance, and mutual responsibility at the heart of Indigenous cosmology

• The Popol Vuh – Defines humanity through humility and relationship to the world, not mastery over it.

• Tao Te Ching – Aligns with Indigenous relational ethics by advocating harmony, humility, and non-coercive power.

• The Embrace of the Serpent – Visualizes relational knowledge as spiritual survival rather than data accumulation.

Law, Authority, and Moral Resistance

• Antigone – Stages the conflict between human law and moral obligation, portraying resistance as ethically necessary despite punishment.

• Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Argues that oppressive systems rely on obedience and silence, while liberation requires conscious resistance.

• Paris Is Burning – Depicts marginalized communities creating alternative systems of value in defiance of legal and social exclusion.

• bell hooks – Challenges the illusion of visibility as liberation, insisting on structural critique over surface inclusion.

• Retamar, Caliban Notes – Advocates cultural resistance as a political act against imperial authority.

Creation, Responsibility, and Monstrosity

• Frankenstein – Frames monstrosity as the result of abandonment and ethical failure, not creation itself.

• AI Snake Oil – Shows how modern “creators” evade responsibility by obscuring accountability behind innovation.

• The Tempest – Positions Prospero as a creator of social order whose authority depends on coercion and illusion.

• Skywoman Falling – Offers a creation story grounded in care and reciprocity rather than domination.

• The Popol Vuh – Portrays creation as iterative and communal, emphasizing responsibility over perfection.

Voice, Representation, and the Marginalized

• Paris Is Burning – Highlights performance as survival for marginalized identities denied institutional voice.

• bell hooks – Critiques who controls representation, revealing how visibility can coexist with exploitation.

• Lispector, Hour of the Star – Centers an invisible protagonist while foregrounding the narrator’s intrusive power.

• Brathwaite, “Caliban” and “Letter SycoraX” – Restores silenced voices through poetic form that resists colonial readability.

• Sor Juana, La Respuesta – Claims intellectual authority in a system designed to silence women.

Gender, Power, and Intellectual Authority

• Antigone – Challenges patriarchal and political authority through female moral autonomy.

• Sor Juana, La Respuesta – Directly confronts gendered restrictions on knowledge and education.

• Lispector, Hour of the Star – Exposes how women’s lives are narrated, minimized, or aestheticized by others.

• Paris Is Burning – Redefines gender and family outside heteronormative power structures.

• bell hooks – Insists that gender liberation must address race, class, and power simultaneously.