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White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (American Encounters Global Interactions) |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Hawaii History > Item 260
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White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (American Encounters Global Interactions)
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by Vicente L. Rafael and Vicente L. Rafael
Sales Rank: 761054
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List Price: $23.95
$21.55
At Amazon
on 10-16-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 304 pages
Published by: Duke University Press July 29, 2000
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 082232542X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0822325420
Book Dimensions:
9 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 1.1 pounds
Product Review
“Rafael’s book speaks to the efforts of Americans to assuage themselves for the thousands they killed crushing the Filipino spirit for freedom between 1899 and 1902 and to the confusion that arose among educated Filipinos as to whether they were American clones or somewhere in between. ”
--M. P. Onorato, Choice
“The essays collected in this volume offer a sustained inquiry into the meaning of being Filipino/a and the challenge presented to the very idea of history by the impossibility of fixing a Filipino/a identity. Vicente L. Rafael is an insightful and eloquent guide. The book has much to offer to contemporary discussions of the relationship between nationalism and colonialism in the making and unmaking of our conceptions of history.”
--Arif Dirlik, American Historical Review
“[T]his is a very stimulating and thoughtful book, a worthy addition to the new international history.”
--Kenton Clymer, The Journal of American History
“Ecce libro! Behold, an engaging, mind-boggling book that handles the Philippines with expertise; slicing, mincing, even scavenging, and then proffering for sampling and scrutiny trivial but heroic details on certain significant periods of the archipelago’s ‘vertigo’ history; so trivial, in fact, that earlier authorities on the area have usually disregarded or refused the same. . . . Rafael is a master chef. Through his innovative contrasts and parallels, with topics such as census and melodrama in the colonisation of the Philippines, ‘white female’ writers and their native domestics, ethnicity and historicity in colonial photographs and portraiture, rumour-mongering during the Japanese Occupation, youth, patronage politics and pornography during the Marcos dictatorship, Taglish and the mestizo identity, the balikbayan vs. the OCWs (overseas contract workers), and so many more, there is a sluicing of the juice and the meat of race, gender, nationalism, and other interesting but relentless discourses. He has garnished them with such a succulent parlance that there will certainly be a grateful aftertaste.”
--Lino L. Dizon, Southeast Asian Studies
“[I]nspired and thought-provoking . . . . This collection does perform a great service by putting Filipino experience within the radar of post-modern theorists. Filipinists, other area specialists and social scientists will also encounter much fascinating information and enchanting analysis.”
--Andrew Abalahin, Pacific Affairs
"[Rafael] provides a detailed and insightful ethnography of archives, gossip columns, paintings, photographs, and colonial records. . . . White Love is intriguing, insightful, and seductive . . . ."
--Nicole Constable, American Ethnologist
"Rafael’s work makes a major contribution . . . . [H]ighly successful in showing the usefulness and value of adopting an interdisciplinary approach in redefining and reconfiguring the historical terrain."
--The Journal of Asian Studies
"For nearly a decade, Vicente L. Rafael has been producing provocative and exciting scholarship on Filipino studies. It is thus a welcome event that eight of his key essays have been collected together in this volume. . . . Rafael's book is provocative, highly informative, and pleasurable reading."
--David Palumbo-Liu, Interventions
"Rafael's book requires careful reading by those interested in how the concept of the nation has been produced in the Philippines, the ways in which its constitute components have been organized, and through what channels it has been deployed. Much of the book offers original insights into these issues. Indeed, a reading of the book should prove profitable for all those interested in colonialism, nationalism, and postcolonialism, not just in the Philippines, but anywhere where such questions occur."
--Robert Lawless, Anthropology Review Database
"[T]his is a fine collection, full of the astute observations of an adept commentator on Philippine culture. Rafael sets forth an agenda of topics for historical consideration that will be discussed by scholars of the Philippines for some time to come. . . . Those with a broader interest in cultural studies will find much to admire and ponder here."
--John A. Larkin, Journal of Asian and African Studies
Product Description
In this wide-ranging cultural and political history of Filipinos and the Philippines, Vicente L. Rafael looks at the period from the onset of U.S. colonialism in 1898 to the emergence of a Filipino diaspora in the 1990s. Self-consciously adopting the essay form as a method with which to disrupt epic conceptions of Filipino history, Rafael treats in a condensed and concise manner clusters of historical detail and reflections that do not easily fit into a greater whole. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History is thus a view of nationalism as an unstable production, as Rafael reveals how, under what circumstances, and with what effects the concept of the nation has been produced and deployed in the Philippines.
With a focus on the contradictions and ironies that suffuse Filipino history, Rafael shows the multiple ways that colonialism has both inhabited and enabled the nationalist discourse of the present. His topics range from the colonial census of 1903-1905, in which a racialized imperial order imposed by the United States came into contact with an emergent revolutionary nationalism, to the pleasures and anxieties of nationalist identification as evinced in the rise of the Marcos regime. Other essays examine aspects of colonial domesticity through the writings of white women during the first decade of U.S. rule; the uses of photography in ethnology, war, and portraiture; the circulation of rumor during the Japanese occupation of Manila; the reproduction of a hierarchy of languages in popular culture; and the spectral presence of diasporic Filipino communities within the nation-state. A critique of both U.S. imperialism and Filipino nationalism, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History creates a sense of epistemological vertigo in the face of former attempts to comprehend and master Filipino identity.
This volume should become a valuable work for those interested in Southeast Asian studies, Asian-American studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies.
Reader Reviews
Prompted to write about the Philippines, my thoughts quickly turned to Mindanao, the southern most island in the Philippines, where preparations are underway for "Balikatan 2008." Balikatan is code for joint anti-terror exercises between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and United States troops. The object, of course, is to prepare the local forces to combat the insurgent Abu Sayyaf. As the worlds sole superpower the United States government sees its role - rightly or wrongly - to keep the world (and consequently the United States) safe from terrorism prompting concern of a new form of presence akin to the "Bases" legacy of Subic Naval and Clark Air Bases. Taking the war on terror to places like the Philippines reminds this writer of the turn of the 20th century - when then President McKinley took on this burden and decided on the most altruistic of civilizing missions (Go and Foster 11; Rafael, White Love 21; Rafael, Discrepant 10). It could be argued that the beginning of the end for the Filipinos (then not yet named) began in modern times with the arrival of Magellan in the early 16th Century. After 300 years, and subsequent to the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Filipinos were still denied their independence - this time by the United States. The United States government began their imperialistic project, killing hundreds of thousands and conquering the islands by 1901. Vicente Rafael explores the issue of conquest in "White Love" (Rafael, White Love 23) in a "governmentality" examination of a complete census of the Philippines (Rafael, White Love 19-51) . The census formed the underlying infrastructure that allowed United States businessmen to create an agricultural export economy - by taking advantage of the abundance of sugar in the Philippines and using the built in corrupt network of Mestizo elite (Rafael, Discrepant 5-8). As has happened to many other colonial sites around the world, the impact of the colonial experience resulted in greater economic dependency. Moreover, the United States colonial project, with the foundation set - as identified previously was to have an impact in Mindanao - when the United States "inherited" the "Moro Problem," the legacy of which we come around full circle to with "Balikatan 2008." What were the origins and resultant effects of the United States colonial project on the Philippines? To answer this and many other questions about this imperialistic project we will turn to four important texts - within a spectrum of direct and indirect relevance - to the issues of: colonialism, governmentality, expediency, and the "Moros." This essay/review will bring together Norman Owen's Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia - A New History, two of Vicente Rafael's edited works: Discrepant Histories - Translocal Essays on Filipino Cultures and White Love and Other Events in Filipino History, and finally Julian Go and Anne L. Foster's edited work The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives in an effort to better understand the current situation in Mindanao. Before we even get to the United States and its impact as it resonates today with the "Moro problem" we need to start where "modern history" begins for the Philippines - March 16, 1521 when the Philippines was "discovered" by Ferdinand Magellan. For this I read the "The Spanish Philippines" chapter in Norman Owen's The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia - A New History. I would argue that this collection is the most complete introductory text on Southeast Asian history. Owen's compilation is dissimilar from most because of its complete and evenhanded approach. This collection succeeds in articulating the essence of the region's numerous dimensions, layers, and complexity. This is a consistent and accessible book - a book on the histories of ten nation-states that have interrelated narratives and challenges us to think of Southeast Asia as a region. The writers are cognizant of the dynamics of Southeast Asia arguing that this book is, "a fresh look at modern Southeast Asian History", intentionally as a "shorter more accessible text for the twenty-first century" (Owen iv). In "The Spanish Philippines" the author identifies an era of modernity where Spain was looking into entering China via the Philippines and in the process concurrently setting the groundwork of a perceived inferiority of the Philippines and the Filipinos. It falls short, however, of exploring the more technical issue of the situation in the equally important other Philippines - the southern "Muslim Philippines." We will begin to engage in the issue of United States involvement post Spanish colonization, with this volume, where we see the coming to full development of a problem that may or may not developed or would have worked its way out. In White Love and Other Events in Filipino History, Vicente L. Rafael writes on a variety of topics (in a variety of time periods as well) starting from United States colonialism in 1898 all the way to the rise of the Filipino out-migration of the 1990s. Although the eclectic collection of essays may seem random, there is a thread that runs through the book: White Love and Other Events in Filipino History explores notions of nationalism and in most cases how nationalism is mobilized by the Filipinos themselves. Without trying to be purposefully ambiguous, Rafael explores discourses of nationalism and its many contradictory results. Rafael begins this collection of the essays with an analysis of the American colonial census of 1903-1905. This is the essay we are most interested in. Why? According to Rafael, a racialized imperial inventory was undertaken through an inorganic categorization and "governmentality" that was imposed by the United States. The key to understanding this book and its inclusion in this project is that despite the mixed intentions - some would argue "benevolent assimilation" while others would argue "imperialism" the end result is a misunderstanding with implications that resonate into the present. Later in this paper, in the analysis of Donna Amoroso's essay on the Moros in Go and Foster's book, we will explore policy that impacted the Muslim southern Philippines and how those policies - through ignorance or purposeful intent had a divisive effect. What is clearly established here is a tendency to impose where a situation is not well understood. We will see more of this tendency in the other books under consideration such as Rafael's other book on Discrepant Histories. In Discrepant Histories - Translocal Essays on Filipino Cultures we see a collection of essays on the Philippines of about the same time frame as White Love and Other Events in Filipino History. Benedict Anderson's essay on Cacique democracy starts of the collection which carries on to the Cold War and ends with the Marcos regime. The reason for the inclusion of this book and Anderson's essay is that it brings to presence a sense of urgency and expediency of and by the United States in its colonial project in the Philippines. Anderson explores the co-opting of a corrupt upper class (a legacy of Spanish colonial rule - which we were introduced to in Norman Owen's book) - a development that was facilitated by the United States in its haste to control in the Filipino population (Rafael, Discrepant 8). Owen introduces us to the Spanish Philippines - the foundation built upon by the United States and impressions and information provided by the Spanish form the baseline of perception and treatment of the Filipinos. Anderson in Rafael takes us from the end of Spanish rule to the turn of the century and United States handling of the Philippines in its colonial project. Amoroso in Go and Foster examines the roots of the "Moro" situation. What should be apparent is that the Amoroso's chapter should be seen as a confluence of the major issues outlined previously - the Spanish colonial project as a foundation, the tendency of the United to misunderstand and attempt to control - now we see policy in motion the results we see in current day Mindanao. The American Colonial State in the Philippines is a methodical attempt to study the construction and management of the American colonial state from a "global" perspective. Go, in the introduction, argue, "The point of analyzing the U.S. colonial state in the Philippines from a global perspective is neither to affirm nor to "test" the well-worn discourse of exceptionalism" (Go and Foster 3). The United States became a colonial power at the peak of global imperialism. However, the United States saw its project as exceptional - as we have seen previously with Rafael and Anderson - as altruistic and benevolent rather than tyrannical and exploitative (Go and Foster 11). Amoroso's chapter in The American Colonial State in the Philippines adds complexity to American imperialism is the article we are most interested in. In "Inheriting the "Moro Problem": Muslim Authority and Colonial Rule in British Malaya and the Philippines" the model of British "Indirect Rule" is challenged and in its place the American policy of "Direct Rule" is selected (Go and Foster 135). This policy resulted, it is argued by Amoroso, in the undermining of the authority of the Sultans and the empowerment of local Datus. Moreover, Leonard Wood, governor of the Moro province (1903-1906), in three short years effectively ignored Sharia law and replaced it with American laws (Go and Foster 141). By seeing the Muslims in the south as a "problem" and undermining the central authorities, "The long-term result was marginality, dissatisfaction, and ultimately, among many, rejection of the Philippine nation-state" (Go and Foster 143). It is into this venue, historical development, and trajectory coupled with the war on terror that the United States and the Armed Forces of the Philippines begin preparation for "Balikatan 2008." My only hope is that the players are aware of the historical complexity and act with sensitivity. Miguel Llora
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