• 6 AUGUST - *1907 - Gen. Macario Sakay, one of the Filipino military leaders who had continued fighting the imperialist United States invaders eight years into the Ph...
    11 years ago

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ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES: A CRITIQUE

Sunday, January 3, 2010

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES: A CRITIQUE

 Originally published 18 December 2009 at The Philippines Matrix Project

 



IJAPS Vol. 6, No. 1, 47–75, 2010 47
FROM GENEALOGY TO INVENTORY: THE SITUATION OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE AGE OF THE CRISIS OF GLOBAL FINANCE CAPITAL
E. San Juan, Jr.*
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University.
e-mail: philcsc@gmail.com
The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is “knowing thyself” as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory, therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.
–ANTONIO GRAMSCI, Prison Notebooks
ABSTRACT
The onset of global capitalism’s crisis has exposed the fragile theoretical underpinnings of Asian American Studies as an academic discipline. Spellbound by deconstructive, rhetorical assumptions, all symptomatic of commodity-fetishism and alienation, mainstream Asian American critics continue to validate neoliberal pluralism while claiming to value difference and singularity. While rejecting American Exceptionalism, they ignore historical specificities and endorse individualist norms, affects, genealogical plurality, and performative discourses uncritical of free-market reification. What is needed is a return to a mode of critical inventory that takes account of historical capitalism, imperialist geopolitics, and the notion of collective agency necessary to destroy racialised ideological practices and institutions that maintain the exploitative capitalist
* E. San Juan, Jr. is emeritus professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Ethnic Studies at various universities in the U.S. He was recently a fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, and Fulbright professor of American Studies at Leuven University, Belgium. Currently he directs the Philippines Cultural Studies Center at Storrs, Connecticut, USA. His recent books are US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines Palgrave), Toward Filipino Self-Determination (SUNY Press), From Globalization to National Liberation (University of the Philippines Press), and Critique and Social Transformation (The Edwin Mellen Press). He is completing a book on the Abu Sayyaf Phenomenon and the Global War of Terror.  IJAPS Vol. 6, No. 1, 47–75, 2010 E. San Juan Jr.
division of labor, social injustice, and inequality of peoples based on private appropriation of social wealth..... MORE

THE MAGUINDANAO MASSACRE OF NOVEMBER 2009

THE MAGUINDANAO MASSACRE OF NOVEMBER 2009

 Originally published 3 December 2009 at The Philippines Matrix Project


 
 

ARROYO REGIME IN THE PHILIPPINES MOUNTED THE STAGE FOR THE MAGUINDANAO SLAUGHTER
By E. San Juan, Jr.,
Philippines Cultural Studies Center

After the feasting, the bloodletting. Only a few months has passed since de facto president of the Philippines Gloria Arroyo was publicly criticized for wanton spending of thousands of dollars in her dinners in New York City and Washington DC when another political “scandal” explodes, this time a political mass slaughter of defenseless Filipino civilians.
At least 57 victims of a hideous massacre last Nov. 23 were dug from shallow graves. Reporter Carlos H. Conde (New York Times 27 Nov 2009) reported that among the slain were 22 women, 30 journalists, 2 lawyers, and dozens of supporters of Esmael Mangudadatu, a local politician who is challenging the quasi-feudal control of Maguindanao province by the Amapatuan clan. Early forensic analysis indicates that the women were molested or raped, their private parts mutilated, with vehicles and other accessory evidence buried in pits dug by government backhoes (Agence France-Press, “Mayor Charged with Horrific Massacre,” The Nation, 28 Nov 2009, 6A)..... MORE

INTERVENTIONS BY E. SAN JUAN, Jr.

INTERVENTIONS BY E. SAN JUAN, Jr.

Originally posted 17 October 2009 at The Philippines Matrix Project

 
TIMELY INTERVENTIONS IN THE CRISIS OF CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION

Untitled-4Mellen cover

Noted Filipino scholar E. SAN JUAN, JR. intervenes again in the urgent debates in racial conflicts and international relations with four scholarly works in the last two years.
In the midst of the flag-waving lunacy afflicting the U.S. after 9/11 and the current racist war on national liberation struggles, San Juan seems to be a solitary “voice in the wilderness.” His new collection of essays on cultural theory and comparative politics, IN THE WAKE OF TERROR: Class, Race, Nation, Ethnicity in the Postmodern World (Lexington Books, 2007), offers critiques of U.S. interventions and the destructive effects of globalized neoliberalism in culture and humanistic studies. It focuses on the dialectic of class, race and ethnicity in the context of global capitalism..... MORE

E. SAN JUAN’s RACISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES: A commentary

E. SAN JUAN’s RACISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES: A Commentary

 Originally published 17 September 2009 at The Philippines Matrix Project


REVIEW OF
Racism and Cultural Studies: Critiques of Multiculturalist Ideology and the Politics of Difference by E. San Juan, Jr.  (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002)

Duke Book

By  Dr. Jeffrey Cabusao
Dept of Cultural Studies, Bryant University, Rhode Island

… needless deaths, suffering, humiliation, and violation of human rights can be attributed to racism… Racists are worldwide, planting their seed of racial superiority and national chauvinism. The real danger is when racists wield their evil with economic and political power to enforce policies that destabilize others, neutralize others, curtail the self-development and self-determination of others. We must not let the roots of racism spread for it is contagious. We must all work in concert with each other to stop the continuous creation of this dreadful disease– this scourge that has cursed this world. Much of this happens right here in our own backyard… “Our backyard” is USA– quite a large territory, but this is where the concentration of work must be.... MORE

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