I find it really ironic that we are reading the Todorov book this week. Of course, this week is thanksgiving, where we celebrate being together and being alive with mountains of food and time off of work and school. Of course, on the Original thanksgiving, the feast they made came from the help of the Native Americans, who taught the settlers of the Mayflower how to farm and hunt, and they celebrated the fact that the native Americans pretty much saved them from death. Then we go on to read Todorov, that offers deep insight into how the European settlers destroyed the Native American populations by killing them and giving them diseases. When I actually realized what was happening, I kind of laughed a little bit.
I thought about it a little more, and I realized how much the institution of thanksgiving in general directly correlates with constructivism. Thanksgiving is a purely American institution, where people spend hundreds of dollars traveling to family homes to spend a long weekend together, while for the rest of the world it's just another weekend. Thanksgiving gives the American public an identity completely unique to them, which distinguishes them from the rest of the world. And so thanksgiving also contributes to the theory of constructivism.
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