Personification-representing a thing or an abstraction as human-is a master trope of storytelling... more Personification-representing a thing or an abstraction as human-is a master trope of storytelling. This article looks at Filipino literary and political uses of personification (pagsasatao) as a rhetorical device to depict and narrate everyday as well as organized resistance against state surveillance and repression. The revolutionary organization Katipunan invoked the personifications of Spain and the Philippines as Inang Espanya (Mother Spain) and Inang Bayan (Mother Country) respectively in their foundational documents to justify the Philippine archipelago's separation from Spain. This article focuses on two exemplary literary works by Filipino women activist-writers Ninotchka Rosca and Adora Faye de Vera. Rosca's novel State of War (1988) and De Vera's short story Culasi, sa Muling Pagbalik (1998) demonstrate the ways in which personification and related issues of character mask/ing are not only strategies for survival, but also weapons of the weak (to use James Scott's term) that bear eloquent testimony to the self-reflexive capacity, endurance, and resilience of resistance movements.
The speech was delivered online during the 111 th General Commencement Exercises of the Universit... more The speech was delivered online during the 111 th General Commencement Exercises of the University of the Philippines Diliman held last July 31, 2022 at the University Amphitheater. In her speech, Professor Hau reflects on the event's theme "dásig"-a Cebuano term which means "liveliness" and "determination.
Abstract:Both Chitra Konuntakiet from Thailand and Lillian Too from Malaysia capitalize on their ... more Abstract:Both Chitra Konuntakiet from Thailand and Lillian Too from Malaysia capitalize on their claims of and access to “Chineseness” and “Chinese culture” to pursue successful careers as “ethnopreneurs”. The historical timing, political and economic contexts, and intellectual and ideological underpinnings of their acts of cultural arbitrage account for how these “Anglo-Chinese” women can profit from national and cultural differences within and between nations to promote hybridized national identities and propound gendered visions and practices of entrepreneurship that draw on, but are not reducible to, the prevailing ideologies and imageries of male-powered “Chinese” transnational capitalism.
Edel Garcellano's coruscating wit, trenchant analyses, and principled critical stance and interve... more Edel Garcellano's coruscating wit, trenchant analyses, and principled critical stance and interventions on literary, cultural, social, and political issues have made him one of the most influential, though underappreciated, critics of our time. This article combines personal reminiscences with an attempt to provide a preliminary overview of Garcellano's key ideas about the inter-disciplinal task of imagination and criticism, the role of "the Filipino critic in a time of war" (to use Garcellano's term) and the necessity of engaging in "contrapuntal readings" that interrogate the politics of reading, writing and the text, while remaining vigilant about the location and locution of the critic herself/himself.
Chinese ethnicity is an elastic and contested, though nonetheless useful, concept for making sens... more Chinese ethnicity is an elastic and contested, though nonetheless useful, concept for making sense of the histories, cultures, politics, and societies of Southeast Asia(ns). As a marker of identity and difference, homogeneity and diversity, fragmentation and community, it calls attention to the ways in which subjectivity, group identification, social location, and claim-making are shaped or informed by the legacies, discourses, and practices of, among others, colonialism, state formation, nation-making, geopolitics, economic development, capitalist globalization, transnational migration, and diaspora. Chinese ethnicity also foregrounds questions of scale-local, national, regional, global-that probe the potentials and limits of national and Southeast Asian studies. This article looks at the historical evolution and contemporary (re-)articulations of the "Chinese Question" in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Despite the ongoing normalization of ethnic relations between "Chinese" and Southeast Asians, there exist cultural and political faultlines that generate ethnic and co-ethnic differentiation and cleavages. The circumstances and challenges confronted by ethnic Chinese and new migrants provide a valuable case study that illuminates the critical role of locality, diversity, and place-making in the ongoing contestation over ethnic identification and non-identification in Southeast Asia, particularly in the wake of the rise of China.
This article examines the rise and spread of the American discourse and ideology of hyperconsumpt... more This article examines the rise and spread of the American discourse and ideology of hyperconsumption in the 1980s through the popularization of sociological types called the “yuppie” in the 1980s and the “bobo” in the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, these types would be part of the “global elites”. The article discusses two iconic cultural texts— Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street (1987) and Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho (1991)—that sought to intervene in debates on the perils of hyperconsumption through their portrayals of the male criminal financier, even as real-life politicians like William Clinton and Donald Trump became figures and active promoters of the self-branding elite.
This glossary, by no means exhaustive, presents potted histories of keywords and phenomena that ... more This glossary, by no means exhaustive, presents potted histories of keywords and phenomena that are evocative of the Marcos era (1965-1986) in the Philippines. Terms in bold font have their own entries.
Forthcoming in Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Mary Grace Concepcion, JPaul S. Manzanilla, and Ruel V. Pagunsan, eds., "Remembering Martial Law"
Cross-border movements are often discussed as a high-level abstraction, but people cross borders ... more Cross-border movements are often discussed as a high-level abstraction, but people cross borders as individuals. Their lives are reshaped by the experience, and in some cases they in turn reshape their own environment. For the ten individuals whose biographies appear in this volume, travel and its contingent and uneven processes of translation, circulation, and exchange helped forge patterns of political thought and action, and defined their contribution to the process of nation-making in Southeast Asia. Mariano Ponce, Pham Hong Thai, Hilaire Noulens, Vu Trong Phung, Du Ai, Lin Bin, Ruam Wongphan, James Puthucheary, K. Bali, Connie Bragas-Regalado, and Imam Samudra each traveled within and beyond Southeast Asia. The accounts in this book discuss how travel shaped their lives and careers, and explain the transformative effects it had on the intellectual, political, and cultural trajectories of nationalism, communism, Islamism, and other movements in the region. The volume illuminates...
Personification-representing a thing or an abstraction as human-is a master trope of storytelling... more Personification-representing a thing or an abstraction as human-is a master trope of storytelling. This article looks at Filipino literary and political uses of personification (pagsasatao) as a rhetorical device to depict and narrate everyday as well as organized resistance against state surveillance and repression. The revolutionary organization Katipunan invoked the personifications of Spain and the Philippines as Inang Espanya (Mother Spain) and Inang Bayan (Mother Country) respectively in their foundational documents to justify the Philippine archipelago's separation from Spain. This article focuses on two exemplary literary works by Filipino women activist-writers Ninotchka Rosca and Adora Faye de Vera. Rosca's novel State of War (1988) and De Vera's short story Culasi, sa Muling Pagbalik (1998) demonstrate the ways in which personification and related issues of character mask/ing are not only strategies for survival, but also weapons of the weak (to use James Scott's term) that bear eloquent testimony to the self-reflexive capacity, endurance, and resilience of resistance movements.
The speech was delivered online during the 111 th General Commencement Exercises of the Universit... more The speech was delivered online during the 111 th General Commencement Exercises of the University of the Philippines Diliman held last July 31, 2022 at the University Amphitheater. In her speech, Professor Hau reflects on the event's theme "dásig"-a Cebuano term which means "liveliness" and "determination.
Abstract:Both Chitra Konuntakiet from Thailand and Lillian Too from Malaysia capitalize on their ... more Abstract:Both Chitra Konuntakiet from Thailand and Lillian Too from Malaysia capitalize on their claims of and access to “Chineseness” and “Chinese culture” to pursue successful careers as “ethnopreneurs”. The historical timing, political and economic contexts, and intellectual and ideological underpinnings of their acts of cultural arbitrage account for how these “Anglo-Chinese” women can profit from national and cultural differences within and between nations to promote hybridized national identities and propound gendered visions and practices of entrepreneurship that draw on, but are not reducible to, the prevailing ideologies and imageries of male-powered “Chinese” transnational capitalism.
Edel Garcellano's coruscating wit, trenchant analyses, and principled critical stance and interve... more Edel Garcellano's coruscating wit, trenchant analyses, and principled critical stance and interventions on literary, cultural, social, and political issues have made him one of the most influential, though underappreciated, critics of our time. This article combines personal reminiscences with an attempt to provide a preliminary overview of Garcellano's key ideas about the inter-disciplinal task of imagination and criticism, the role of "the Filipino critic in a time of war" (to use Garcellano's term) and the necessity of engaging in "contrapuntal readings" that interrogate the politics of reading, writing and the text, while remaining vigilant about the location and locution of the critic herself/himself.
Chinese ethnicity is an elastic and contested, though nonetheless useful, concept for making sens... more Chinese ethnicity is an elastic and contested, though nonetheless useful, concept for making sense of the histories, cultures, politics, and societies of Southeast Asia(ns). As a marker of identity and difference, homogeneity and diversity, fragmentation and community, it calls attention to the ways in which subjectivity, group identification, social location, and claim-making are shaped or informed by the legacies, discourses, and practices of, among others, colonialism, state formation, nation-making, geopolitics, economic development, capitalist globalization, transnational migration, and diaspora. Chinese ethnicity also foregrounds questions of scale-local, national, regional, global-that probe the potentials and limits of national and Southeast Asian studies. This article looks at the historical evolution and contemporary (re-)articulations of the "Chinese Question" in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Despite the ongoing normalization of ethnic relations between "Chinese" and Southeast Asians, there exist cultural and political faultlines that generate ethnic and co-ethnic differentiation and cleavages. The circumstances and challenges confronted by ethnic Chinese and new migrants provide a valuable case study that illuminates the critical role of locality, diversity, and place-making in the ongoing contestation over ethnic identification and non-identification in Southeast Asia, particularly in the wake of the rise of China.
This article examines the rise and spread of the American discourse and ideology of hyperconsumpt... more This article examines the rise and spread of the American discourse and ideology of hyperconsumption in the 1980s through the popularization of sociological types called the “yuppie” in the 1980s and the “bobo” in the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, these types would be part of the “global elites”. The article discusses two iconic cultural texts— Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street (1987) and Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho (1991)—that sought to intervene in debates on the perils of hyperconsumption through their portrayals of the male criminal financier, even as real-life politicians like William Clinton and Donald Trump became figures and active promoters of the self-branding elite.
This glossary, by no means exhaustive, presents potted histories of keywords and phenomena that ... more This glossary, by no means exhaustive, presents potted histories of keywords and phenomena that are evocative of the Marcos era (1965-1986) in the Philippines. Terms in bold font have their own entries.
Forthcoming in Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Mary Grace Concepcion, JPaul S. Manzanilla, and Ruel V. Pagunsan, eds., "Remembering Martial Law"
Cross-border movements are often discussed as a high-level abstraction, but people cross borders ... more Cross-border movements are often discussed as a high-level abstraction, but people cross borders as individuals. Their lives are reshaped by the experience, and in some cases they in turn reshape their own environment. For the ten individuals whose biographies appear in this volume, travel and its contingent and uneven processes of translation, circulation, and exchange helped forge patterns of political thought and action, and defined their contribution to the process of nation-making in Southeast Asia. Mariano Ponce, Pham Hong Thai, Hilaire Noulens, Vu Trong Phung, Du Ai, Lin Bin, Ruam Wongphan, James Puthucheary, K. Bali, Connie Bragas-Regalado, and Imam Samudra each traveled within and beyond Southeast Asia. The accounts in this book discuss how travel shaped their lives and careers, and explain the transformative effects it had on the intellectual, political, and cultural trajectories of nationalism, communism, Islamism, and other movements in the region. The volume illuminates...
The contributors to Siting Postcoloniality reevaluate the notion of the postcolonial by focusing ... more The contributors to Siting Postcoloniality reevaluate the notion of the postcolonial by focusing on the Sinosphere—the region of East and Southeast Asia that has been significantly shaped by relations with China throughout history. Pointing out that the history of imperialism in China and Southeast Asia is longer and more complex than Euro-American imperialism, the contributors complicate the traditional postcolonial binaries of center/periphery, colonizer/colonized, and developed/developing. Among other topics, they examine socialist China’s attempts to break with Soviet cultural hegemony, the postcoloniality of Taiwan as it negotiates the legacy of Japanese colonial rule, Southeast Asian and South Asian diasporic experiences of colonialism, and Hong Kong’s complex colonial experiences under the British, the Japanese, and mainland China. The contributors show how postcolonial theory’s central concepts cannot adequately explain colonialism in the Sinosphere. Challenging fundamental axioms of postcolonial studies, the volume forcefully suggests that postcolonial theory needs to be rethought.
Contributors: Pheng Cheah, Dai Jinhua, Caroline S. Hau, Elaine Yee Lin Ho, Wendy Larson, Liao Ping-hui, Lin Pei-yin, Lo Kwai-Cheung, Lui Tai-lok, Pang Laikwan, Lisa Rofel, David Wang, Erebus Wong, Robert J. C. Young
Edited by Leia Castañeda Anastacio and Patricio N. Abinales, this book brings into conversation h... more Edited by Leia Castañeda Anastacio and Patricio N. Abinales, this book brings into conversation historians, journalists, political scientists, pundits, lawyers and economists across generations as they engage in a collective assessment of Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr.’s regime. Extensive as well as incisive, the essays in this unprecedented anthology appraise different facets of this seminal period’s policies, programs, and personalities and reveal a complicated legacy whose full import and impact have yet to be thoroughly unpacked.
Contributors include Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr., Leia Castañeda Anastacio, Lisandro E. Claudio, Christianne F. Collantes, Jayeel S. Cornelio, Sheila S. Coronel, Marites Dañguilan Vitug, Teresa E. Encarnacion Tadem, Glenda M. Gloria, Caroline S. Hau, Meynardo P. Mendoza, Thomas M. McKenna, Michael D. Pante, Jan Carlo B. Punongbayan, Manuel L. Quezon III, Vicente L. Rafael, Eduardo C. Tadem, Mark R. Thompson, Criselda D. Yabes
Preface
This little book collects two long essays on Jose Rizal and his writings. The essays a... more Preface
This little book collects two long essays on Jose Rizal and his writings. The essays are both concerned with interpretation and its role not only in imagining Rizal, but also in making, unmaking, and remaking community.
Generations of Filipinos have read Rizal and his writings in accordance with their (and our) own times, in light of their (and our) own interests, concerns, and agenda. Such fantasies about Rizal are by no means limited to latter-day Filipinos who have come to look at Rizal as national hero. Rizal in his time also inspired the Katipunan, even though Rizal would disavow his authorship of the 1896 revolution.
Rizal would also inspire non-Filipinos. A chance encounter in the late 1880s between José Rizal and Japanese people’s rights activist Suehiro Tetchō gave rise to elaborate fantasies about Asianist solidarity on the part of Suehiro, as seen particularly in the comic travelogue Oshi no ryōko (1889), but, tellingly, not on the part of Rizal, whose sober, realistic assessment of the geopolitical situation in his time made him more wary of Asianism as ideological and political project. In the decades to come, different kinds of nation- and region-based “social daydreaming” and political projects would animate scholarly and popular accounts of the Rizal-Suehiro meeting.
The variegated, contested nature of these diverging and converging interpretations of Rizal and his writings is the subject of this book. It argues that interpretation constitutes a major theme of Rizal’s novels, which have played important roles in conjuring the Filipino community by nurturing political fantasies of revolution and freedom. In so doing, however, they would delineate the possibilities and, just as important, limits of community in local, national, regional and global terms.
Rizal’s novels conjure and question community through the important role they assign to readers to make sense of them, and through their own representations of people from all walks of life—particularly ordinary people—in the acts of moving, doing, and talking. Rizal himself would reflect on the possibilities and limits of political solidarity in his assessment of colonial Filipinas and Asia more generally, and on the fraught question of revolutionary violence and its role in advancing or obstructing the quest for social justice and political transformation.
These essays emphasize the cosmopolitan range and depth, and the worldliness of Rizal and his novels in particular, as shown in the ease with which Rizal moved from delineating colonial Filipinas and Philippines-Europe inter-continental relations in the Noli to the wider, transcontinental, and trans-oceanic world in an age of revolution in the Fili. The Japanese writer-activist Suehiro similarly found in his encounter with Rizal inspiration for rethinking and re-envisioning Japan’s place and role in the Asian region and world. This intellectual breadth is not always evident in our world (and our scholarship), despite all the talk of border-crossing, multicultural cosmopolitanism, and globalization.
Co-edited with JPaul S. Manzanilla. Published in Manila by Anvil, 2016.
In the thirty years sinc... more Co-edited with JPaul S. Manzanilla. Published in Manila by Anvil, 2016.
In the thirty years since the "People's Power Revolution" of 1986, there is still no consensus on what EDSA was and what it means. Prominent participants and members of the Church, the military, the business community, the middle classes, and even the U.S. State Department have claimed credit for the February event. This anthology gathers together the reminiscences and reflections of activists, academics, and artists, focusing not only on those who took part in the event, but also on those who came of age in the wake of EDSA. The act of remembering becomes an occasion for rethinking and critically reassessing the contested legacy of EDSA and its continuing implications for present and future generations of Filipinos.
Contributors: JPaul Manzanilla, Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr., Alice Guillermo, Jose Santos Ardivilla, Jose Ma. Sison, Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, Lualhati Milan Abreu, Dominique Caouette, Joel David, Eulalio Guieb III, Luis Francia, Angela Stuart-Santiago, Ramon "Bomen" Guillermo, Katrina Stuart Santiago, Lisandro Claudio, Michael Pante, Patricio Abinales, Mark Angeles, Maricristh Magaling, Soliman Agulto Santos, Mark Benedict Lim, Gemino Abad, Edel Garcellano, Kendrick Bautistat, Jose Tence Ruiz, Carlos Piocos III, Mark Thompson, Teresa Encarnacion Tadem, Vicente Rafael, Patrick Flores, Luis Teodoro, Teo Marasigan, Neferti Tadiar, Caroline Hau
Co-edited with Kasian Tejapira. Kyoto and Singapore: Kyoto UP and NUS Press, 2011.
Cross-border ... more Co-edited with Kasian Tejapira. Kyoto and Singapore: Kyoto UP and NUS Press, 2011.
Cross-border movements are often discussed as a high-level abstraction, but people cross borders as individuals. Their lives are reshaped by the experience, and in some cases they in turn reshape their own environment. For the ten individuals whose biographies appear in this volume, "travel" and its contingent and uneven processes of translation, circulation, and exchange helped forge patterns of political thought and action, and defined their contribution to the process of nation-making in Southeast Asia. Mariano Ponce, Pham Hong Thai, Hilaire Noulens, Vy Trong Phung, Du Ai, Lin Bin, Ruam Wongphan, James Putcheary, J. Bali, Connie Bragas-Regalado, and Imam Samudra each "traveled" within and beyond Southeast Asia.
The accounts in this book discuss how travel shaped their lives and careers, and explain the transformative effects it had on the intellectual, political, and cultural trajectories of nationalism, communism, Islamism, and other movements in the region. The volume illuminates some of the pathways by which people in this region worked to realize their intellectual, aesthetic, and political visions and projects over the last tumultuous century.
Contributors: Resil Mojares, Lorraine Paterson, Peter Zinoman, Takeshi Onimaru, Caroline Hau, Kasian Tejapira, Khoo Boo Teik, Hiroyuki Yamamoto, Odine de Guzman, Takashi Shiraishi
"On the Subject of the Nation" looks at fiction and nonfiction produced since the martial law era... more "On the Subject of the Nation" looks at fiction and nonfiction produced since the martial law era in light of two historical developments that have definitively shaped Philippine experience: revolution and migration. This book examines the critical interfaces between the personal and political that frame the utopian visions of Bai Ren's fictional autobiography about the education of Filipino-Chinese sojourners, Robert Francis Garcia's firsthand account of the Communist purges, Cesar Lacara's memoirs of a veteran revolutionary, Zelda Soriano's feminist narratives, Peter Bacho's novelistic dissection of Filipino-American identity crisis, and Rey Ventura's ethnography of illegal migrant workers in Japan.
These writings illuminate the ongoing transformation and redefinition of the Philippine nation-state while highlighting the ways in which the individual and collective experiences, struggles, dreams, and aspirations of Filipinos serve to rethink and reinvent notions of belonging, sacrifice, learning, labor and love that underpin the theory and practice of nation making.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 The Question of Foreigners 2 Revolutionary Excesses 3 Autobiography and History 4 Engendering the Revolutionary Body 5 Feminine/Philippine 6 Nation and Migration Notes Works Cited
Co-edited with Katrina P. Tuvera and Isabelita O. Reyes. Manila: Anvil, 2013.
Whether vilifie... more Co-edited with Katrina P. Tuvera and Isabelita O. Reyes. Manila: Anvil, 2013.
Whether vilified as "No. 2" or analyzed as an institution or celebrated as a lifestyle choice, the querida is at once commonplace and complex. This anthology spans one hundred and twenty-five years of Filipino literary portrayals of "the mistress" and its variants, from Jose Rizal's Dona Consolacion in "Noli me tangere" to Angela Manalang Gloria's nameless "other woman," and Ricardo Lee, Raquel Villavicencio and Ishmael Bernal's Marilou in "Relasyon." "Querida" offers not only a feast of prose, poetry, and drama from the Philippines' most accomplished and distinguished authors as well as talented emerging writers, but also insights into what Lina Espina-Moore calls the beloved's "illicit, illegal lives."
Necessary Fictions examines the intimate but fraught connection between Philippine literature and... more Necessary Fictions examines the intimate but fraught connection between Philippine literature and nationalist discourse during the post-war period. Through close readings of the fiction of Jose Rizal, Amado Hernandez, Nick Joaquin, Edgardo Reyes, Ricardo Lee, Kerima Polotan, Carlos Bulosan, and Mano de Verdades Posadas, this book argues that the long-standing affinity between Philippine literature and nationalism is rooted in part on the power of literature to formulate, and work through, a set of questions that are central to nationalist debates on the possibility and necessity of social change: What is the relationship between knowledge and action? between the personal and the political? between the foreign and the Filipino? between culture and history, culture and politics, culture and economics?
Moreover, Philippine literature does not merely illuminate and deepen our understanding of the fundamental assumptions which inform nationalist discourse and practice. It also registers the contradictions which exceed nationalist attempts to intervene, intellectually and politically, in the complex realities at work in Philippine society. These “excesses”, which bear the ineradicable signatures of the oppressed and the marginalized, expose the anxieties—and the liberatory potential—underpinning the difficult creation of Philippine modernity in the twentieth century and beyond.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: The Problem of Consciousness 16 CHAPTER TWO: The Fiction of a Knowable Community 53 CHAPTER THREE: Literature and History 105 CHAPTER FOUR: Alien Nation 150 CHAPTER FIVE: Authorizing the Personal and the Political 198 CHAPTER SIX: Unfinishing Revolution 242 CHAPTER SEVEN: The Politics of Criticism 277 CONCLUSION 311 WORKS CITED 324
Oligarchy, principalía, cacique, ilustrado, dato, "haves", maykaya, makapangyarihan, may pinag-ar... more Oligarchy, principalía, cacique, ilustrado, dato, "haves", maykaya, makapangyarihan, may pinag-aralan. Who are the Filipino "elite"?
This anthology, co-edited with Katrina P. Tuvera and Isabelita O. Reyes, collects some of the most memorable, multi-faceted literary portraits of the elite: as dynastic founders, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and patriots, but also as killers, opportunists, and purveyors of greed and corruption. These stories and poems can be read not only as works of art, but also as collective biography and as critical ethnography of the tribal customs of the wealthy, powerful, high-status, and educated cohort who have long been heroes and villains in Philippine history, society, culture, politics, and economy.
Over the past few decades, the rise of East Asia and mainland China has spurred the revival of “C... more Over the past few decades, the rise of East Asia and mainland China has spurred the revival of “Chineseness” in the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia. Defined during the Cold War era as economically dominant, politically disloyal, and culturally different, the “Chinese” are now not only politically integrated into the Filipino imagined community, but also held up as models of entrepreneurship and key players in East Asian regional economic development.
The revaluing of Chineseness in national, regional, and global terms is borne out by the resurgence of “Chinese” mestizoness in both its racial and cultural senses. The Chineseness of the majority of Philippine mestizos (people of mixed ancestry) who form an important sub-group of the Filipino elite had been occluded in the process of their “disappearance” into the emergent Filipino nation in the late nineteenth century. For most of the twentieth century, mestizo hybridity had been defined and privileged on the basis of Filipino claims to “white” ancestry and ability to mediate the culture and power of the metropoles in America and Spain/Europe. Mestizos are now actively reclaiming their “Chinese” ancestry, even as Chinese Filipinos parlay their culturally mestizo heritage and connections into all kinds of capital, whether cultural, social, symbolic, or economic. Moreover, princelings at the helm of mainland Chinese state companies are becoming increasingly visible and weighty players on the Philippine stage as they enter into politico-business alliances with the Filipino national elite.
The Chinese Question looks at the evolving meanings of “Chinese” and “Filipino” and explores the cultural implications of the rise of East Asia and mainland China. Focusing on cinematic and literary works (such as Jose Angliongto’s The Sultanate, Charlson Ong’s An Embarrassment of Riches, Du Ai’s Fengyu Taipingyang, Dragnet, Mano Po, and Crying Ladies) the book shows how questions of race, class, ideology, nationality, territory, sovereignty, and mobility shape the discourses of national integration, regional identification, and global cosmopolitanism, while also pointing to irresoluble contradictions at the heart of concepts of citizenship and national belonging in the throes of transformation.
The Filipino “elites” have a starring role as heroes and villains in Philippine history. So-calle... more The Filipino “elites” have a starring role as heroes and villains in Philippine history. So-called “ilustrados” were vanguards of the Propaganda Movement whose writings helped inspire the Philippine Revolution in the late nineteenth century and from whose ranks have been drawn many of the country’s “National Heroes.” The urban middle sector and municipal elites actively participated in the Philippine Revolution. But the Filipino elites have also been taken to task for “betraying” the Revolution, for putting their selfish, factional interests above those of the nation and the “masses”, for collaborating with the colonizers, and for being the principal beneficiaries of the American-era “colonial democracy” and post-war “elite democracy” that have plunged the country into crisis for most of the twentieth century.
This book shows how Filipino literature has intervened in the intellectual and popular debates on the historical origins, ascendancy, power, and legitimacy of the elites. Writers like Jose Rizal, Nick Joaquin, Ninotchka Rosca, Miguel Syjuco, and Ramon Guillermo are unsparing in their criticism of elite authorship of the Philippines’ past and present woes while seeking to recuperate the critical stance once represented by the “ilustrado.” The book identifies a number of emblematic cosmopolitan figures— the “middle sector” or “middle element” in Manila and other urban areas, Manila men and musicians, Overseas Filipino Workers, intellectuals, and Fil-foreigners—whose emergence as social forces points to the ongoing redefinition of the elites and the transformations of Philippine society, politics, and economy.
Table of Contents
Introduction: "Patria e intereses" 1 Who are the "Elites"? 2 Portraits of the Elites as Filipinos 3 The Misadventures of Ilustrado Nationalism 4 Ilustrados and OFWs 5 People's Power, Crony Capitalism, and the (Anti-)Developmental State 6 Transnational Elite Alliances 7 Overseas Filipino Intellectuals and Fil-Foreigners Epilogue Notes Works Cited
The tropical gothic genre holds up a mirror to the country’s so-called best and brightest. What d... more The tropical gothic genre holds up a mirror to the country’s so-called best and brightest. What do we see?
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of sociological types called the “yuppie” in the 1980s and the “bobo” in the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, these types would be part of the “global elites”. The article discusses two iconic cultural texts— Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street (1987) and Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho (1991)—that sought to intervene in debates on the perils of hyperconsumption through their portrayals of the male criminal financier, even as real-life politicians like William Clinton and Donald Trump became figures and active promoters of the self-branding elite.
Forthcoming in Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Mary Grace Concepcion, JPaul S. Manzanilla, and Ruel V. Pagunsan, eds., "Remembering Martial Law"
of sociological types called the “yuppie” in the 1980s and the “bobo” in the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, these types would be part of the “global elites”. The article discusses two iconic cultural texts— Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street (1987) and Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho (1991)—that sought to intervene in debates on the perils of hyperconsumption through their portrayals of the male criminal financier, even as real-life politicians like William Clinton and Donald Trump became figures and active promoters of the self-branding elite.
Forthcoming in Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Mary Grace Concepcion, JPaul S. Manzanilla, and Ruel V. Pagunsan, eds., "Remembering Martial Law"
Contributors: Pheng Cheah, Dai Jinhua, Caroline S. Hau, Elaine Yee Lin Ho, Wendy Larson, Liao Ping-hui, Lin Pei-yin, Lo Kwai-Cheung, Lui Tai-lok, Pang Laikwan, Lisa Rofel, David Wang, Erebus Wong, Robert J. C. Young
Contributors include Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr., Leia Castañeda Anastacio, Lisandro E. Claudio, Christianne F. Collantes, Jayeel S. Cornelio, Sheila S. Coronel, Marites Dañguilan Vitug, Teresa E. Encarnacion Tadem, Glenda M. Gloria, Caroline S. Hau, Meynardo P. Mendoza, Thomas M. McKenna, Michael D. Pante, Jan Carlo B. Punongbayan, Manuel L. Quezon III, Vicente L. Rafael, Eduardo C. Tadem, Mark R. Thompson, Criselda D. Yabes
This little book collects two long essays on Jose Rizal and his writings. The essays are both concerned with interpretation and its role not only in imagining Rizal, but also in making, unmaking, and remaking community.
Generations of Filipinos have read Rizal and his writings in accordance with their (and our) own times, in light of their (and our) own interests, concerns, and agenda. Such fantasies about Rizal are by no means limited to latter-day Filipinos who have come to look at Rizal as national hero. Rizal in his time also inspired the Katipunan, even though Rizal would disavow his authorship of the 1896 revolution.
Rizal would also inspire non-Filipinos. A chance encounter in the late 1880s between José Rizal and Japanese people’s rights activist Suehiro Tetchō gave rise to elaborate fantasies about Asianist solidarity on the part of Suehiro, as seen particularly in the comic travelogue Oshi no ryōko (1889), but, tellingly, not on the part of Rizal, whose sober, realistic assessment of the geopolitical situation in his time made him more wary of Asianism as ideological and political project. In the decades to come, different kinds of nation- and region-based “social daydreaming” and political projects would animate scholarly and popular accounts of the Rizal-Suehiro meeting.
The variegated, contested nature of these diverging and converging interpretations of Rizal and his writings is the subject of this book. It argues that interpretation constitutes a major theme of Rizal’s novels, which have played important roles in conjuring the Filipino community by nurturing political fantasies of revolution and freedom. In so doing, however, they would delineate the possibilities and, just as important, limits of community in local, national, regional and global terms.
Rizal’s novels conjure and question community through the important role they assign to readers to make sense of them, and through their own representations of people from all walks of life—particularly ordinary people—in the acts of moving, doing, and talking. Rizal himself would reflect on the possibilities and limits of political solidarity in his assessment of colonial Filipinas and Asia more generally, and on the fraught question of revolutionary violence and its role in advancing or obstructing the quest for social justice and political transformation.
These essays emphasize the cosmopolitan range and depth, and the worldliness of Rizal and his novels in particular, as shown in the ease with which Rizal moved from delineating colonial Filipinas and Philippines-Europe inter-continental relations in the Noli to the wider, transcontinental, and trans-oceanic world in an age of revolution in the Fili. The Japanese writer-activist Suehiro similarly found in his encounter with Rizal inspiration for rethinking and re-envisioning Japan’s place and role in the Asian region and world. This intellectual breadth is not always evident in our world (and our scholarship), despite all the talk of border-crossing, multicultural cosmopolitanism, and globalization.
In the thirty years since the "People's Power Revolution" of 1986, there is still no consensus on what EDSA was and what it means. Prominent participants and members of the Church, the military, the business community, the middle classes, and even the U.S. State Department have claimed credit for the February event. This anthology gathers together the reminiscences and reflections of activists, academics, and artists, focusing not only on those who took part in the event, but also on those who came of age in the wake of EDSA. The act of remembering becomes an occasion for rethinking and critically reassessing the contested legacy of EDSA and its continuing implications for present and future generations of Filipinos.
Contributors: JPaul Manzanilla, Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr., Alice Guillermo, Jose Santos Ardivilla, Jose Ma. Sison, Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, Lualhati Milan Abreu, Dominique Caouette, Joel David, Eulalio Guieb III, Luis Francia, Angela Stuart-Santiago, Ramon "Bomen" Guillermo, Katrina Stuart Santiago, Lisandro Claudio, Michael Pante, Patricio Abinales, Mark Angeles, Maricristh Magaling, Soliman Agulto Santos, Mark Benedict Lim, Gemino Abad, Edel Garcellano, Kendrick Bautistat, Jose Tence Ruiz, Carlos Piocos III, Mark Thompson, Teresa Encarnacion Tadem, Vicente Rafael, Patrick Flores, Luis Teodoro, Teo Marasigan, Neferti Tadiar, Caroline Hau
Cross-border movements are often discussed as a high-level abstraction, but people cross borders as individuals. Their lives are reshaped by the experience, and in some cases they in turn reshape their own environment. For the ten individuals whose biographies appear in this volume, "travel" and its contingent and uneven processes of translation, circulation, and exchange helped forge patterns of political thought and action, and defined their contribution to the process of nation-making in Southeast Asia. Mariano Ponce, Pham Hong Thai, Hilaire Noulens, Vy Trong Phung, Du Ai, Lin Bin, Ruam Wongphan, James Putcheary, J. Bali, Connie Bragas-Regalado, and Imam Samudra each "traveled" within and beyond Southeast Asia.
The accounts in this book discuss how travel shaped their lives and careers, and explain the transformative effects it had on the intellectual, political, and cultural trajectories of nationalism, communism, Islamism, and other movements in the region. The volume illuminates some of the pathways by which people in this region worked to realize their intellectual, aesthetic, and political visions and projects over the last tumultuous century.
Contributors: Resil Mojares, Lorraine Paterson, Peter Zinoman, Takeshi Onimaru, Caroline Hau, Kasian Tejapira, Khoo Boo Teik, Hiroyuki Yamamoto, Odine de Guzman, Takashi Shiraishi
These writings illuminate the ongoing transformation and redefinition of the Philippine nation-state while highlighting the ways in which the individual and collective experiences, struggles, dreams, and aspirations of Filipinos serve to rethink and reinvent notions of belonging, sacrifice, learning, labor and love that underpin the theory and practice of nation making.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1 The Question of Foreigners
2 Revolutionary Excesses
3 Autobiography and History
4 Engendering the Revolutionary Body
5 Feminine/Philippine
6 Nation and Migration
Notes
Works Cited
Whether vilified as "No. 2" or analyzed as an institution or celebrated as a lifestyle choice, the querida is at once commonplace and complex. This anthology spans one hundred and twenty-five years of Filipino literary portrayals of "the mistress" and its variants, from Jose Rizal's Dona Consolacion in "Noli me tangere" to Angela Manalang Gloria's nameless "other woman," and Ricardo Lee, Raquel Villavicencio and Ishmael Bernal's Marilou in "Relasyon." "Querida" offers not only a feast of prose, poetry, and drama from the Philippines' most accomplished and distinguished authors as well as talented emerging writers, but also insights into what Lina Espina-Moore calls the beloved's "illicit, illegal lives."
Contributors: Exie Abola, Jose Marte Abueg, Arbeen Acuna, Dean Francis Alfar, Estrella Alfon, Benedict Anderson, Mark Angeles, Ishmael Bernal, Marivi Soliven Blanco, Lesley Bries, Ines Taccad Cammayo, Charmaine Carreon, Jhoanna Cruz, Jose Dalisay, Jr., Ricardo De Ungria, Lina Espina-Moore, Aida Rivera Ford, Edel Garcellano, Vicente Garcia Groyon, Fanny Garcia, Angela Manalang Gloria, Nick Joaquin, Mercedes Jose, Elaine Lazaro, Ricardo Lee, Paolo Manalo, Maynard Manansala, Princess Marasigan, Joanna Nicolas-Na, Voltaire Oyzon, Jasmine Nikki Paredes, Chuckberry Pascual, Kerima Polotan, Danton Remoto, Jose Rizal, Dante Rosales, Ninotchka Rosca, Lakambini Sitoy, Socorro Federis Tate, Denver Ejem Torres, Alvin Capili Ursua, Marianne Villanueva, Raquel Villavicencio, Alfred Yuson
Moreover, Philippine literature does not merely illuminate and deepen our understanding of the fundamental assumptions which inform nationalist discourse and practice. It also registers the contradictions which exceed nationalist attempts to intervene, intellectually and politically, in the complex realities at work in Philippine society. These “excesses”, which bear the ineradicable signatures of the oppressed and the marginalized, expose the anxieties—and the liberatory potential—underpinning the difficult creation of Philippine modernity in the twentieth century and beyond.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER ONE: The Problem of Consciousness 16
CHAPTER TWO: The Fiction of a Knowable Community 53
CHAPTER THREE: Literature and History 105
CHAPTER FOUR: Alien Nation 150
CHAPTER FIVE: Authorizing the Personal and the Political 198
CHAPTER SIX: Unfinishing Revolution 242
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Politics of Criticism 277
CONCLUSION 311
WORKS CITED 324
This anthology, co-edited with Katrina P. Tuvera and Isabelita O. Reyes, collects some of the most memorable, multi-faceted literary portraits of the elite: as dynastic founders, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and patriots, but also as killers, opportunists, and purveyors of greed and corruption. These stories and poems can be read not only as works of art, but also as collective biography and as critical ethnography of the tribal customs of the wealthy, powerful, high-status, and educated cohort who have long been heroes and villains in Philippine history, society, culture, politics, and economy.
The revaluing of Chineseness in national, regional, and global terms is borne out by the resurgence of “Chinese” mestizoness in both its racial and cultural senses. The Chineseness of the majority of Philippine mestizos (people of mixed ancestry) who form an important sub-group of the Filipino elite had been occluded in the process of their “disappearance” into the emergent Filipino nation in the late nineteenth century. For most of the twentieth century, mestizo hybridity had been defined and privileged on the basis of Filipino claims to “white” ancestry and ability to mediate the culture and power of the metropoles in America and Spain/Europe. Mestizos are now actively reclaiming their “Chinese” ancestry, even as Chinese Filipinos parlay their culturally mestizo heritage and connections into all kinds of capital, whether cultural, social, symbolic, or economic. Moreover, princelings at the helm of mainland Chinese state companies are becoming increasingly visible and weighty players on the Philippine stage as they enter into politico-business alliances with the Filipino national elite.
The Chinese Question looks at the evolving meanings of “Chinese” and “Filipino” and explores the cultural implications of the rise of East Asia and mainland China. Focusing on cinematic and literary works (such as Jose Angliongto’s The Sultanate, Charlson Ong’s An Embarrassment of Riches, Du Ai’s Fengyu Taipingyang, Dragnet, Mano Po, and Crying Ladies) the book shows how questions of race, class, ideology, nationality, territory, sovereignty, and mobility shape the discourses of national integration, regional identification, and global cosmopolitanism, while also pointing to irresoluble contradictions at the heart of concepts of citizenship and national belonging in the throes of transformation.
This book shows how Filipino literature has intervened in the intellectual and popular debates on the historical origins, ascendancy, power, and legitimacy of the elites. Writers like Jose Rizal, Nick Joaquin, Ninotchka Rosca, Miguel Syjuco, and Ramon Guillermo are unsparing in their criticism of elite authorship of the Philippines’ past and present woes while seeking to recuperate the critical stance once represented by the “ilustrado.” The book identifies a number of emblematic cosmopolitan figures— the “middle sector” or “middle element” in Manila and other urban areas, Manila men and musicians, Overseas Filipino Workers, intellectuals, and Fil-foreigners—whose emergence as social forces points to the ongoing redefinition of the elites and the transformations of Philippine society, politics, and economy.
Table of Contents
Introduction: "Patria e intereses"
1 Who are the "Elites"?
2 Portraits of the Elites as Filipinos
3 The Misadventures of Ilustrado Nationalism
4 Ilustrados and OFWs
5 People's Power, Crony Capitalism, and the (Anti-)Developmental State
6 Transnational Elite Alliances
7 Overseas Filipino Intellectuals and Fil-Foreigners
Epilogue
Notes
Works Cited