Sesión 4

Hoy iniciamos el día platicando un poco sobre la película que veremos la próxima semana (Cabeza de Vaca) y hubo un poco de controversia sobre exactamente quién fue.

The Spanish conquistador Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked in 1528 on what is now Galveston Island. He lived among America's native peoples for the next eight years, transcending enslavement to become recognized as a great spiritual leader. Cabeza de Vaca was the first European to explore what is now Texas and the Southwest. His account, La relación, offers a remarkable historical portrait. It is also one of humankind's great adventure stories.



También se habló un poco sobre Noam Chomsky y su Power and Terror:

Whether Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist and political philosopher, is the most important intellectual alive, as the New York Times once famously called him, is open for debate. But without a doubt, Chomsky, now 73, is one of the most straight-talking and committed dissidents of our time. A steadfast critic of United States foreign policy for decades, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, his profile took a quantum leap as he provided much-needed analysis and historical perspective to concerned citizens throughout the world. In the months that followed, he gave dozens of talks on four continents, conducted scores of interviews, and wrote a book 9-11 that was published in 22 countries and became a surprise bestseller in many of them, including Japan. Chomsky's voice may be unpopular, but his incisive arguments, based on decades of research and analysis, are heard and considered in this chronicle comprised of interview footage, and various talks he's given. Chomsky places the terrorist attacks in the context of American foreign intervention throughout the postwar decades--in Vietnam, Central America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Beginning with the fundamental principle that the exercise of violence against civilian populations is terror, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a well-organized band of Muslim extremists, or the most powerful state in the world. Chomsky, in stark and uncompromising terms, challenges the United States to apply to its own actions the moral standards it demands of others.

Terminamos también de platicar sobre el capítulo 4 y la comunicación. Sediscutió un poco sobre qué es comunicación, comunicación intercultural, obstáculos, como aprendemos, etc.

Me parece interesante mencionar aquí algunos conceptos sobre:

Hermenéutica: el arte de traducir e interpretar. Interpretamos todo lo que vemos/escuchamos/etc. a través de nuestros horizontes (culturales, etc.)

Estereotipos: imagen mental simplificada, producto de nuestra educación, cultural, experiencias (de nuestros horizontes básicamente)

Nosotros pensamos que los demás verán en nosotros (interpretarán) lo que queremos a través de cómo nos vestimos, qué llevamos (libros, ipod, el celular). Categorizamos de acuerdo a lo que conocemos.

Al final hablamos sobre algunas situaciones y los 10 mandamientos que tienen los girngos (algunas frases que intentan descirbir su estilo de vida, su cultura. Descubirmos que casi todos van orientados hacia tener "éxito" (que usualmente se refiere a dinero) y en general, se contradicen al señalar que ellos "just do it", pero al mismo tiempo tienene structuras y les gusta tener el control, quieren divertirse y son tolerantes, pero aún se oponen a otras formas de pensamiento.