Honors 402: The World of the Other

Honors 402: The World of the Other is a course created by Professor Mario Saenz. The course is team taught, and Mario led the class in 2002 (with Professor Orlando Ocampo), 2003 (with Professor Jennifer Glancy), and 2008 (with Professor Ocampo). He and Professor Ocampo will be leading another group of students in 2010.

Course Description

Honors 402 is an interdisciplinary course on the contemporary world that will address philosophical, social, religious, literary, and scientific issues from diverse perspectives, within a context of modernization, underdevelopment, and dependency.

Objectives

  • * To acquaint the student with the lives and experiences of people in another culture.
  • * To help the student appreciate the artistic and literary achievements of Indigenous and Latin American artists.
  • * To sensitize the student to the effects of globalization in a poor country.
  • * To help the student reflect on the consequences of an unequal distribution of wealth.

The course will include readings, but it will emphasize discussion and observation. The country itself and our experiences will be our most important texts. Students will be encouraged to pursue personal interests (e.g., the study of music; the making of masks; critical examination of Latin American literature, for instance, magical realism, one of the better known products of Latin American literature; huipil weaving; pottery; ecological study, indigenous cosmovisions; archaeological exploration), and to weave them with issues of globalization and postcoloniality in the contemporary world.

When we come back to Le Moyne, and as part of the grade, students will be expected to organize a conference on Guatemala and give a presentation to the Le Moyne community on some aspect of their studies, experiences, and compositions done/lived/created for this course.

On The Teaching of the Course in Guatemala

An understanding of globalization—one of the major issues of the day—requires an understanding of its effects on the poor of the poor countries. It is widely known that 1.2 billion people live today in abject poverty, and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing. As some countries of the so-called third world have become wealthy, a larger number have become poorer. A more direct experience of some negative effects of globalization will help you appreciate better both the negative and the positive aspects of the new global conditions that have been emerging during the past two decades.

In many respects, Guatemala is not like most of Latin America. The gap between rich and poor is greater than average; the cultural, economic, and political separation between “ladino” and indigenous is deeper than in most of Latin America; the economy is not nearly as developed as it is in many other places in Latin America. So, in those respects we will not be traveling to a “typical” Latin American country.

In terms of cultural production, elán vital, and the aesthetic sense of life, we will learn quite a bit that will be worthwhile for our spiritual development. The sense of religiousness (that is, the feeling for the transcendent) and—for those of us who are philosophers—the intellectual attitude of wonder and amazement regarding the totality of the horizon, are both highly developed in Guatemalan culture. The atunement to absolute alterity, whether religious or philosophical, brings together and at times keeps separate Mayan, Catholic, and syncretistic religions and philosophies. As we open ourselves to novelty, Guatemalan “metaphysics” will prove to be quite challenging.