"The seminar was an excellent opportunity to discuss how ”race” is constructed in terms of power relations. Through the philosophical writings of Charles W. Mills and Giorgio Agamben, the group discovered how the category of “race” triggers different exceptionalisms in most modern societies, but especially those in the West. As a result, nations and societies routinely suspend their highest ideals for the sake of maintaining oppressive and often horrifying power relations.

SMU-in-Taos allowed us to study these ideas in great depth, and in the best possible environment for both reflection and repose. It was a week to remember." – Prof. Dickson Carr

Taos: Three Snapshots

By Kayla Walker Edin

Tuesday, July 22^nd, 9pm

“One Year Later”

My husband and I drove a U-Haul across the country last summer and landed in Dallas, Texas. Exactly one year later, year one of my Ph.D. program under my belt, I find myself in Taos, New Mexico, on the grounds of what was once a pre-Civil War military base. How did a pacifist from Portland, Oregon end up here? A copy of Benito Cereno and a cup of mint tea lie beside my laptop as I prepare for a group presentation on the gendered and racialized “gaze” in Melville’s text. It’s refreshing to approach a new text, one that I’m so hopelessly unfamiliar with. Over the past few weeks I’ve made its acquaintance, marking up the margins of each page and arguing with John along the way as we wrestle with “Critical Race Theory” for the first time. A year ago, I begrudged Melville for the summer I squandered attempting to wade through Moby Dick on my own. In between shifts as a barista in my first oh-so-glamorous post-college job at “Seattle’s Best Coffee,” I tried to appreciate the “metaphysical” text my advisor had so frequently and inexplicably lauded during our Emily Dickinson seminar. Now I’m excited about Melville, excited about American literature, and how much is left to know. Yesterday I roasted marshmallows and practiced yoga; today I toured the Taos-Pueblo; tomorrow I’ll present on Benito Cereno, and this time when I wrestle with Melville, I intend to win.

Thursday, July 24, 2008, 4pm

“Co-Exist”

It’s a balancing act, the guide tells us, between intellectual curiosity and ethical responsibility. We’re standing at the Pot Creek Archeological site, the largest archaeological dig in North America, overlooking the remains of a pre-historical culture that made its home in New Mexico nearly one thousand years ago. The guide is describing the ethical questions that arise when outsiders attempt to “study” lands that their neighbors hold sacred. I stand at the center of a “Kiva,” a sacred site where indigenous cultures worshipped, prayed, played. When the early inhabitants left this place, our guide continues, they burned their homes and their sacred spaces. They left nothing behind.  Back at the SMU-in-Taos campus, balancing a laptop on my ridiculously tiny bunk bed while eyeing the inhabited spider web on my window sill, I think of them. One of the particular pleasures of spending a week in the mountains of New Mexico sans cell phone service or a working hair dryer is the gift of psychological space it opens up to write, to work for the sheer joy of working. It’s a welcome compensation for the bunk bed, at least. I return to an article I’m trying to publish. I feel the familiar suspicion that I’m revising a manuscript that may not be worth the effort. The spontaneous downpour of rain encourages me to keep at it. The rhythm of my fingers on the keyboard soothes me into a familiar pattern of cut and paste. The spider keeps its distance and we decide to coexist. I choose what to create and decide what to leave behind. Submitting myself to the process of revision and submission is an act of faith, a sacred process of trial by fire that challenges me to surrender everything I have. I must leave nothing behind.

Sunday, July 27^th, 9am

“Truth or Dare”

I jumped into an ice-cold lake today, shed my warm outer jacket and stumbled in, immersed myself in the murky unknown of bottomless sand and rocks I can’t see. I can hear myself laughing, breathless (it’s colder than I thought it would be), and yet the climb up the mountain, the blisters and bruises, have surely earned me this. It’s a shock to the system, like altitude sickness or a very late night with a thesis statement gone terribly wrong. But in the middle of Lake Williams, at the end of our week in Taos, it’s impossible to be aware of anything but the moment. My feet have gone numb and later, the pictures I see reveal that they’ve turned somewhat blue. In the photos, I am awkward, stumbling, arms flailing, attempting to grasp some type of balance. But I know differently: I am alive, graceful even, like a fish returned to water who remembers what creation feels like.

The impromptu swim lasts a minute or two, mere moments compared to the trek back down the mountain. Only later do I realize that I’ve left a little piece of myself behind—my sandal nestles into the cold nothing of the lake’s murky floor where it waits until next year to see if I’m brave enough to jump back in.