August 22, 2020

One of the best parts of studying for my Ph.D. in Literature at UCSD was taking a seminar on Caribbean novels and poems with Professor Winifred Woodhull, and getting a chance to examine that region’s cultural cartography as a result of being a major nexus of the “Black Atlantic.” It was in her seminar that I got the idea for looking at Hart Crane’s sheaf of poem, “Key West” in relationship to THE BRIDGE for the ways in which that shorter project both revealed and concealed the imperialist ideology at work in his major long poem. I went on to write that paper in John Carlos Rowe’s seminar. I was really lucky to be there at that particular moment in the program: Louis Montrose, Marcel Henaff, Michael Davidson, Donald Wesling, Kathryn Shevelow, and Page DuBois were all there, too (Rowe was a guest professor for one quarter; he taught at that time at UC Irvine, and then went to USC.) My guess is that Kamala Harris’s mix of Caribbean and Indian genealogy will probably generate a renewed interest in the presence of Indian immigrants in the Caribbean and their impact on that region.

The election itself is going to be a tight race, in part because I can see how Trump is going to use Harris to demonize the Democratic Party. Harris’s ambitions are no secret; after all, she formally ran for the office of President in 2019 and was a candidate listed on several primary ballots. With Biden’s appointment of her as his candidate for VP, he has all but said to the white supremacists who voted for Trump, “Hey, here’s your president in 2024.” Biden is a corporate centrist, but make no mistake about it. He has challenged Trump in an area that he has no reluctance to exploit, and Trump is going to play that card to roil his followers with fears of a female version of Obama being inaugurated by John Roberts in 2024. From Trump’s point of view, if you can’t find a Willie Horton, then find a former district attorney who can be used the same way.

These prediction was first passed on to me in a secret coded message from Uanon (parody intended). I suppose it should be UAnon, but I like the lower-case “a” better.