Pick one prompt to write a five-page, double spaced paper with standard margins, standard font, and no special headings. You must find at least one additional quotation/moment from one of the texts to constellate with the ones provided here.
A title for each option that determines the critical focus of the discussion, and a set of 2-3 quotations to use to help you elaborate. The point is to draw relationships between two texts, to apply the terms of one to that of another in order to establish your own critical discoveries.
Option #1: James Baldwin and Aime Cesaire: Metaphors of Affliction
“A universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to
spread… a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe” (“Discourse on
Colonialism,” 29).
“It was the Lord who knew of the impossibility every parent in that room faced: how
to prepare the child for the day when the child would be despised and how to create
in the child—by what means?—a stronger antidote to this poison than one had
found for oneself” (“Notes of a Native Son,” 14).
“One is always in the position of having to decide between amputation and
gangrene” (“Notes of a Native Son,” 18).
Option #2: Edward Said and Moustafa Bayoumi: Discourse and Policy
“Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing
with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of
it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it” (“Orientalism,” 11).
“My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot
possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European
culture was able to manage—and even produce—the orient” (“Orientalism,” 11).
“And he sounded like he was lecturing them, telling them with a kind of official
nonchalance that we’re cleaning out the country and you’re the dirt” (“Rasha,” 94).
Option #3: Moustafa Bayoumi and Alberto Rios: The Duality of Language
“And there they were, a group of old men surrounded by marines armed to the
teeth. The men were all on their knees in the gravel, looking lost and pathetic”
(Sami, 113).
“We try to do what people want, but they have to know what they’re asking for. That
search for understanding is often itself a search for, and an act of, translation as
well” (“Translating Translation” 2).
