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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Review of *After Postcolonialism*, January 16, 2002
This review is from: After Postcolonialism (Paperback)
Presently, the Philippines has the distinction of being one of the most impoverished countries in the region with Filipinos ranking among the most malnourished in the world (even though it is a leading producer of food and other important exports). To compensate for a sagging economy and unrelenting immiseration, over eight million (ten percent of the population) Filipinos find themselves scattered throughout the world as "overseas contract workers" (OCWs) employed in low-paying, labor intensive jobs. Although 1946 marks the "official" end of U.S. colonization, U.S. hegemonic rule continues to be the most salient feature of contemporary Philippine life. Of course, not everyone sees it this way. A substantial amount of scholarship exists, devoted to understanding the alleged "special relations" between the Philippines and the United States. However, the bulk of this work (produced primarily by U.S. academics), has ignored the role U.S. intervention has played in the development and evolution of Philippine society. Instead, these apologists for U.S. empire, blame the failures and problems currently plaguing the country on Filipino `culture' and their inability to fully absorb the lessons of their colonial master. After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontations by E. San Juan Jr. is a radical departure from the aforementioned apologists texts. In one of the most thorough, hard-hitting, perspicacious analyses on the subject, San Juan dismantles the myths surrounding U.S.-Philippine relations and lays bare the harsh realities U.S. imperialism has wrought on its former "showcase of democracy".
What differentiates After Postcolonialism from other commentaries is San Juan's emphasis on understanding Philippine history from a nationalist perspective. After being colonized for 400 years by Spain and another 50 years by the United States, Filipino society is best understood as a "historical-political construction. It is a product of mercantile capitalism that happened to be inserted into the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth century and later into the domain of imperialism, a phase of finance or monopoly capitalism" (2). Thus, while Filipinos share some similarities with other Asians they are distinguished by the fact that their "country of origin was the object of violent colonization and unmitigated subjugation by U.S. monopoly capital" (13).
The centerpiece of this work is Chapter 3 "Spectres of United States Imperialism". Here San Juan delivers one of the most thorough critiques of U.S. ideology and its attendant knowledge production industry. As I alluded to earlier, there has been an immense amount of scholarship produced on the subject of U.S. intervention in the Philippines. Stanley Karnow's In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines (1989) is one of the most celebrated and popular among the revisionist texts. Like others before him, Karnow argues that Filipinos "`submitted voluntarily to their own exploitation'" (72). In an attempt to account for the underdevelopment and corruption plaguing the Philippines, Karnow resorts to blaming the cultural values and "tribal texture" of Filipino life. Rejecting Karnow's flimsy thesis, San Juan exposes In Our Image for what it really is: a mainstream apologist text. Taking his critique one step further, San Juan indicts Karnow for being a "shrewd popularizer, a bricoleur of hackneyed notions and received doxa culled from the researches of mainstream scholars such as David Joel Steinberg, Peter Stanley, Theodore Friend, Glenn May, and other `gatekeepers' who guard the parameters of acceptable, safe thinking on the problematic of U.S.-Philippine encounters" (73). To be fair, San Juan explains that Karnow's analysis (one that purports to "objectively" describe the "Filipino") has its roots in a firmly entrenched tradition of U.S. colonial discourse dating back to 1914 with the publication of Dean C. Worcester's The Philippines Past and Present. For San Juan, this body of knowledge has been severely compromised by the "reality of seemingly ineradicable social injustice, unmitigated poverty of millions, rampant atrocities by the military, exploitation of women and children, and widespread violation of human rights by business and government" (73). Again, the importance of 1898 cannot be stressed enough when assessing the current realities faced by Filipinos.
Although I have discussed at length the subjugation of the Philippines by the United States, it would be irresponsible for me to ignore the resistance and revolutionary movements that colonialism has generated. Such movements constitute the durable tradition of anti-imperialism embedded in the popular culture of everyday life. San Juan devotes a chapter to examining the possibilities of revolutionary transformation in the country by focusing on the prospects and problems of the New People's Army (NPA). As the only Communist-led resilient insurgency in the world, the NPA has certainly suffered a number of setbacks throughout its history. These inadequacies have led to wide divisions on the Left, leading some to openly denounce Marxism-Leninism. According to San Juan, the critique of Marxism being issued from a few renegade Filipino "leftists" could be largely attributed to their current fascination with postmodernist thought. He writes that "Foucauldian deconstruction substitutes for historical specification and totalizing hypothesis, individualist cultural politics for mass political struggle (169). While I will not dwell on the vacuity of postmodernist thought and its constant critique of Marxism, I agree with San Juan when he convincingly argues that postmodernism is a "pretext for celebrating the virtues of market liberalism and such formal freedoms that have inflicted so much violence, torture, protracted misery, and painful death to millions of Filipinos and other people of color" (170).
Embracing Marxism does not translate into a crude economic reductionism (as so many suggest), but allows us to confront the massive social injustices brought about by the rule of capital. In our present era of global economic restructuring, a historical-materialist method of inquiry is absolutely necessary if we are to understand the profound iniquitous relations between countries in the North and those in the South. What we are witnessing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, under the guise of "globalization," is literally a phase of capitalist accumulation gone berserk. Everyday, millions of the world's poor are sacrificed by transnational corporations, their instruments for regulating trade (NAFTA, APEC, WTO, MAI), and international money lending institutions (International Monetary Fund and the World Bank). Despite this, numerous scholars have chosen to substitute a politics of revolution and transformation for a discursive analysis of free floating signifiers. Their obsession with the "post-this and that" obscures central relations of power necessary to understanding our current globalized order. After Postcolonialism reminds us that there is nothing "post" about colonialism. Countries like the Philippines have been transformed into neocolonial appendages supplying the First World with the bulk of cheap labor. Confronting this stark reality head-on and understanding that what the United States did to the Philippines in 1898 - what many consider the first Vietnam - has a lasting legacy that continues to shape and inform the lives of Filipinos as well as other people of color. The strength of After Postcolonialism lies in San Juan's passion and commitment to ending the neocolonial subjugation of Filipino people as well as others suffering under the dictates of U.S. hegemonic rule.
Anne E. Lacsamana, Ph.D., Troy, NY
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