For most of my life, I have naturally been inclined to read a text of marginalized communities due to my own identity. These historical writers who have been marginalized from the mainstream context of scholarship are often criticizing the establishment or pushing back against the norm. As someone who has had schooling in both an American and non-American (Cuban) context, I have had two different pieces of training when it comes to heterodoxy scholarship and activism in scholarship. Growing up, the premier scholar that ruled most of the schooling in Cuba is Jose Marti, a thinker and extremely revolutionary writer with a clear call for activism and nationalism. This is mostly because the nationalist message of his writings integrates well with many of Cuba’s current issues, while in an American context thinker like Hobbes and Locke make more sense for the American debates.

From these last two week’s readings and discussion, I often wondered if reparations for the scholarship is merited when the work of great thinkers is marginalized due to their temporal situation. On one hand, it is a very rational feeling to try to right the wrongs of the past and shine light onto those who were pushed in the darkness, at the same time however, there is the possibility to think that we are reflecting our own contemporary views onto the pass and in an attempt to balance the historical field we pay more information to thinkers that were not as influential as the mainstream thinkers. There were comments made in our class discussion that I agreed with the most, sentiments that argued that we must recognize the institutional disadvantages that existed in any given time which might have prevented the work of a scholar from being influential, but that doesn’t mean that we must shift the reality of those who really made an impact and decide to focus on them.

Ultimately, I would argue that it is not societies decision whether a historical character should be separated or not. We must continue to study the most influential and impactful scholarship to best understand the greater dialog, but we should always be aware of the marginalized scholarship and why such thinkers were marginalized. This framing helps my research because I am often questioning whether or not I should be focusing on sources from the “exile”, Cuban’s who live outside of Cuba and normally attack the Cuban government. So far in my work, I have worked almost exclusively on Cuban government sources because it is the most influential source and scholarship on the island. Many scholars are marginalized in Cuba for their political stances and therefore are not able to be as influential as those who are given the means to really create motions and change in my specific research. This debate has helped me understand how to frame the scholarship of those who are left outside the margins and allowed me to help justify my major focus of government sources.