Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading

n o i s s i m r e p t u o h t i w m r o f y n a n i d e . c w u a d l o r t p h e g r i e r b y p t o o c n e y l a b M a c . i d l e p v p r a e r s o e r . s S . t U h g r i e r d l n l u A d . e s t s t e i r m P r e y p t s i e s s r u e v r i i n a U f k t r p o e Y c w x e e N , . r 2 e 1 h 0 s 2 i l b © u p t h e g h i t r y m p o o r C f

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d e t t i m r e p s e s u r i a f t p e c x e , r e h s i l b u p e h t m o r f n o i s s i m r e p t u o h t i w m r o f y n a n i d e c u d o r p e r e b t o n y a M . d e v r e s e r s t h g i r l l A . s s e r P . y w t a i l s t r h e g v i i r n y U p k o r c o e Y l w b e a N c i . l 2 p 1 p 0 a 2 r o © . t S h . g U i r r y e p d o n C u

Beyond the Nation



 

General Editors: José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini imes Square Red, imes Square Blue Samuel R. Delany Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture o Social Relations Phillip Brian Harper In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies Mandy Merck ropics o Desire: Interventions om Queer Latino America José Quiroga Murdering Masculinities: Fantasies o Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel Greg Forter Our Monica, Ourselves: Te Clinton Affair and the National Interest Edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan Black Gay Man: Essays Robert Reid Pharr Foreword by Samuel R. Delany Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion Edited by María Carla Sánchez and Linda Schlossberg Te Explanation or Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity Paul Morrison Te Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Teater Edited by Alisa Solomon and Framji Minwalla Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Aferlie o Colonialism Edited by Arnaldo Cruz Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces Juana María Rodríguez Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits o Religious olerance Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization o American Culture Frances Négron-Munaner Manning the Race: Reorming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era Marlon Ross In a Queer ime and Place: ransgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives Judih Halbersam Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality in the U.S. Dwigh A. McBride God Hates Fags: Te Rhetorics o Religious Violence Michael Cobb Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual Rober Reid-Pharr Te Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory Lázaro Lima Arranging Grie: Sacred ime and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America Dana Luciano Cruising Utopia: Te Ten and Tere o Queer Futurity José Eseban Muñoz Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism Scot Herring Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the Afican American Literary Imagination Darieck Scot Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries Karen Tongson EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


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Beyond the Nation Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading

Martin Joseph Ponce

a NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


�� New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2012 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ponce, Martin Joseph. Beyond the nation : diasporic Filipino literature and queer reading / Martin Joseph Ponce. p. cm. � (Sexual cultures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8147-6805-1 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-8147-6806-8 (pbk. : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-8147-6807-5 (e-book) ISBN 978-0-8147-6866-2 (e-book) 1. Philippine literature (English)�History and criticism. 2. Philippine literature� History and criticism. 3. Homosexuality in literature. I. itle. PR9550.P66 2011 810.9 89921073�dc22 2011015710 �

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project of NY U Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, emple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. Te Initiative is supported by Te Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.



In loving memory of Minerva Nicolas Ponce (1943–2002)






Contents

Introduction

1

1

Te Romantic Didactics of Maximo Kalaw’s Nationalism

29

2

Te Queer Erotics of José Garcia Villa’s Modernism

58

3

Te Sexual Politics of Carlos Bulosan’s Radicalism

89

4

Te Cross-Cultural Musics of Jessica Hagedorn’s Postmodernism

120

5

Te Diasporic Poetics of Queer Martial Law Literature

153

6

Te ranspacific actics of Contemporary Filipino American Literature

184

Epilogue

221

Acknowledgments

233

Notes

237

Index

279

About the Author

289


ix





Introduction

point of the second millennium, the 1990s may be regarded as a period of unprecedented cultural and scholarly ferment by Filipinos in the United States. Ushered in by the publication of Jessica Hagedorn’s National Book Award–nominated novel Dogeaters (1990), the decade came to a close with numerous critical and collaborative publications and events commemorating the centennial celebrations of Philippine independence from Spain in 1898. Te years between saw a steady outpouring of literary production, and this “literary renaissance” 1 continues to thrive in the first decade of the twenty-first century, with a host of established and new Filipino writers not only seeing their work in print but also winning major awards. Tis cultural explosion is marked by a relentless thematic and generic diversity. Te range of issues taken up in the literature�transnational and international migration, generational conflict and continuity, gender and sexual nonconformity, assimilation and its inherent failures, labor under late capitalism and the contradictory pressures of upward mobility, racial misrecognition and differentiation, crosscolor affiliation and aversion, racial hybridity, geographical dispersal and isolation, and historical reconstructions of the Philippine Revolution (1896–1898), the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), the Japanese occupation (1942–1945), and Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law regime (1972–1986) in the Philippines�is matched by a broad array of literary forms�novels, short story collections, autobiographies, personal essays, poems, plays, and anthologies�used to evoke these themes. Even a cursory glance at this body of work makes evident that there is neither an ascendant set of issues with which contemporary Filipino literature has been engaged nor a particular form that writers have gravitated toward. And yet despite the tremendous growth of Filipino studies scholarship in the United States since the 1990s, this literary abundance has not been met with a corresponding critical recognition. 2 F R O M T H E V A N TA G E


1

2 d e t t i m r e p s e s u r i a f t p e c x e , r e h s i l b u p e h t m o r f n o i s s i m r e p t u o h t i w m r o f y n a n i d e c u d o r p e r e b t o n y a M . d e v r e s e r s t h g i r l l A . s s e r P . y w t a i l s t r h e g v i i r n y U p k o r c o e Y l w b e a N c i . l 2 p 1 p 0 a 2 r o © . t S h . g U i r r y e p d o n C u

Introduction

Beyond the Nation provides wha migh be ermed a queer diasporic

hisory o his lierary profusion by moving back in ime and across he Pacific. Te sudy races he roos of anglophone Filipino lieraure o U.S. colonialism in he Philippines and examines how Filipino lieraure in he Unied Saes is shaped by he overlapping forces of colonialism, imperialism, and migraion. Siuaed beween he Philippine poscolonial and he U.S. ehnic, wha I describe as diasporic Filipino lieraure exceeds he boundaries of eiher naional frame in boh is represenaional sraegies and is performaive ariculaions. Complicaing approaches o reading “minoriy” lieraure ha privilege, in his case, race and naion as he primary caegories of analysis, Beyond the Nation heorizes and enacs a model of queer diasporic reading ha racks he ways ha Filipino lieraure addresses muliple audiences a once and how hose mulivalen addresses are mediaed hrough gender, sexualiy, eroicism, and desire. Tis book seeks o elucidae how such complex ariculaions (expressions and linkages) cones, and someimes capiulae o, he normaive compulsions of “Benevolen Assimilaion” in he Philippines, Filipino (culural) naionalism, and assimilaion in he Unied Saes, and how hey proffer alernaive relaionaliies and socialiies ha surpass or elude he naion as he defaul form of imagining communiy. Diasporic Filipino lieraure does no lend iself o he consrucion of a “naional” lierary hisory whose consolidaion would “[guaranee] a sense of culural legiimacy,” as Linda Hucheon wries. 3 Since Filipino lieraure in he Unied Saes has remained a peripheral and marginalized lieraure in he U.S. academy and in he wider reading public, i may seem as hough “a familiar bedrock narraive of developmen”�a “eleological” lierary hisory ha emphasizes “he imporance of origins and he assumpion of coninuous, organic developmen” (5)�has “o be laid down first , before compeing, correcing, or even counerdiscursive narraives can be ariculaed” (13, my emphasis). Beyond the Nation suggess insead ha Filipino lieraure in he Unied Saes has long been “diasporic” and “queer”�a dispersed, coreless radiion whose relaion o convenional poliical and social hisories has invariably been oblique and ex-cenric o he later’s normalizing dicaes. 4 As such, his radiion’s diachronic and synchronic conours can be mapped only hrough an episodic, noneleological lierary hisory “ha does no ineviably beray he aleaory, accidenal, coningen, random dimensions of lierary creaiviy.”5 Such coningencies may indeed be surprising (if no enirely random), bu my readings neiher familiarize he foreign nor EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974

Introduction d e t t i m r e p s e s u r i a f t p e c x e , r e h s i l b u p e h t m o r f n o i s s i m r e p t u o h t i w m r o f y n a n i d e c u d o r p e r e b t o n y a M . d e v r e s e r s t h g i r l l A . s s e r P . y w t a i l s t r h e g v i i r n y U p k o r c o e Y l w b e a N c i . l 2 p 1 p 0 a 2 r o © . t S h . g U i r r y e p d o n C u

3

discipline the disruptive, pursuing instead interpretations that underscore rather than underplay the literature’s peculiarities in ways that render inadequate cultural nationalist models o reading and that respect the “wild heterogeneity” o this literary archive. 6 Spanning the twentieth century and moving into the twenty-first, the chapters examine how the intersecting sociopolitical issues o race, nation, gender, and sexuality are evoked through various ormal practices at specific historical junctures. Chapter 1 explores the relations among imperial assimilation, independence politics, and the heterosexual erotics o Philippine nationalism in Maximo M. Kalaw’s work. Chapter 2 analyzes the in vention o anglophone Filipino modernism as a “queer” literary practice in José Garcia Villa’s work. Chapter 3 ocuses on the gendering and sexualizing o Filipino radicalism and transnational anti-imperialism in Carlos Bulosan’s work. Chapter 4 examines how music as a gendered and sexualized social and artistic practice becomes a dense site or producing cross-cultural and diasporic affiliations in Jessica Hagedorn’s work. Chapter 5 looks at the queer critiques o martial law and U.S. popular culture as staged in novels by Bino Realuyo, R. Zamora Linmark, and Noël Alumit. Chapter 6 discusses the transnational and cross-racial responses to racial misrecognition and “invisibility” in the work o M. Evelina Galang, Brian Ascalon Roley, Patrick Rosal, and Barbara Jane Reyes. And the epilogue returns to the politics o queer reading by meditating on a recent novel by Gina Apostol. While emphasizing these diverse aesthetic and political practices, I locate the literature within shifing yet shared historical contexts o U.S. colonialism and imperialism, migration, and assimilation and highlight how the politics o gender and sexuality inflect their multivalent modes o address. As a poetic-theoretical entry point into this argument’s terrain, let me turn first to a poem.

Cutting a Figure

In 1949, José Garcia Villa published a poem in Volume Two (actually his ourth book o poetry, the second to appear in the United States) that gestures toward the kind o reading practice endeavored in this book: Beore , one , becomes , One , Te , labor , is , prodigious! Te , labor , o , un-oneing ,



Introduction

o , become , a , One! Te , precision , o , un-oneing , Te , procedure , o , dissembling , Is , the , process , o , expiation , For , the , sin , o , Nothing. Tis , Absurdity , is � Unification .7

As chapter 2 clarifies, poem “5” initially reads as one o Villa’s metaphysical allegories o the sel whereby the human (“one”) and the divine (“One”) are unified�but only afer one has been divided rom onesel, has become other to what one was. Te process o “dissembling” as “expiation, / For , the , sin , o , Nothing” is absurd since to dissemble is not to deceive but to pursue the path toward godhood, which, paradoxically, is always part o onesel. Villa’s idiosyncratic “theology” aside, the lyric’s ormal experimentalism and effrontery, abstraction, and philosophical play with logic and contradiction challenge what we might expect to find in “Filipino” literature. Tere are no obvious signifiers marking racial or geographic difference, no reerences to historical events or cultural traditions that might augment its “‘ethnic’ quotient.”8 As one example o Villa’s inamous “comma poems,” the poem’s rampant (but regular) insertion o commas may recall the punctuational play o, say, e. e. cummings, but Villa’s poetics is neither derivative o Anglo-American modernism nor “a politically radical act” perormed at the ormal level. 9 Deliberately bracketing authorial intentionality, I exploit here Villa’s tactic o abstraction and extrapolate the poem’s central neologism as a flexible figure or raming, historicizing, and analyzing diasporic Filipino literature. Te remainder o the introduction uses the concept-metaphor o “un-oneing” to chart the argument’s itinerary and contentions, moving rom considerations o raming, to the effects o U.S. colonialism on Filipino migration and racialization, to the limits o identity politics given the indeterminacy o the category “Filipino” itsel, to the politics o English, to a ormulation o queer diasporic reading that emerges out o these historical contexts and theoretical concerns.



5

Filipino Exteriority

Tough Filipino lieraure in he Unied Saes is ypically regarded as a subspecies of Asian American lieraure, an examinaion of he inaugural survey of his body of work reveals he problems wih his classificaion. Published in he landmark Asian American anhology Aiiieeeee! in 1974 and writen by hree wriers of he “Flips” generaion (Oscar Peñaranda, Serafin Syquia, and Sam agaac), “An Inroducion o Filipino American Lieraure” begins on an inauspicious noe: “We were asked o wrie a lierary background of Filipino-American works. . . . Here is our sand. We canno wrie any lierary background because here isn’ any. No hisory. No published lieraure. No nohing.” 10 If he Flips’ pronouncemens seem unlikely given he prior seveny years of Filipino migraion o he Unied Saes, he subsequen saemens creae only more ambiguiy: “No Filipino-American (‘Flip’-born and/or raised in America) has ever published anyhing abou he Filipino-American experience or any aspecs of i. Ta is abou wo generaions of an ehnic group wiped ou; simply lierary genocide. In hose ‘los generaions,’ here are good, maybe grea wriers. We hink ha Filipinos in America can no longer afford o ignore hese poenially grea wriers” (37–38). Were hese previous wriers barred from publicaion due o he biases of he lierary markeplace? Was heir “poenial” never nurured or acively suppressed so ha hey were denied he opporuniy o pursue heir lierary ambiions? Or has heir work simply been “ignored” and consigned o irrerievable oblivion? I is pracically impossible o answer hese quesions since here does no exis a comprehensive bibliography of Filipino lieraure in he Unied Saes.11 Wha becomes clear from he res of he essay is ha he declaraion of “no published lieraure” is more polemical han empirical. Raher han abandon he ask of wriing a “lierary background” o heir presen, he auhors go on o rehearse Philippine colonial hisory and anglophone Filipino lierary hisory, menioning such wriers as José Garcia Villa, Juan C. Laya, Carlos Bulosan, Sevan Javellana, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Bienvenido Sanos, Carlos Romulo, and Linda y-Casper. Tis hisorical ouline, however, serves o disinguish wha he Flips were looking for: lieraure published by U.S.-born and/or -raised Filipinos, no adul immigrans who, hey allege, “wroe abou he American experience hrough Philippine heads” (50). Tese demarcaions enable he auhors no only o differeniae hemselves from previous immigran EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


Introduction

wriers bu also o ally hemselves wih “Asian American” lieraure by denoing boh as “ehnic” in relaion o dominan U.S. culure. Disinc rom Philippine lieraure in English (“hose wriings o Filipinos in he Philippines abou he Philippines” [37]), rom Filipino immigran lieraure, and rom mainsream U.S. lieraure, “Filipino American” lieraure also urns ou o be disinc rom “Asian American” lieraure.12 In he anhology’s preace, he general ediors announce ha “Filipino America differs grealy rom Chinese and Japanese America in is hisory, he coninuiy o culure beween he Philippines and America, and he influence o wesern European and American culure on he Philippines. Te difference is definable only in is own erms, and hereore mus be discussed separaely.” 13 Te inroducion o he volume, subiled “Fify Years o Our Whole Voice,” is hus no “whole” bu spli ino wo pars: “An Inroducion o Chinese- and Japanese-American Lieraure” ollowed by “An Inroducion o Filipino-American Lieraure.” Wha he ediors gloss over, o course, is precisely wha subsequen scholars have sough o oreground. Te “influence o wesern European and American culure on he Philippines” is hardly accidenal bu a consequence o Spanish and U.S. colonizaion o he Philippines and he coninuing neocolonial relaionship beween he later wo counries. Wihou deracing rom he imporan Asian Americanis scholarship on Filipino American lieraure, his book “discusse[s] separaely” he laer, building o he premise ha “Filipinos and heir pracice o culural producion [should] no longer be subsumed under he rubric o ‘Asian-American,’” as E. San Juan Jr. has argued. 14 he “inerehnic” approach canno accoun or wha Oscar Campomanes calls “he irreducible speciiciy o he Filipino predicamen in he Unied Saes and, corollarily, o he lierary and culural expressions ha [hey have] generaed.” 15 U.S. colonialism and imperialism consiue crucial conexs or apprehending wha Kandice Chuh reers o as he “paradigmaic exerioriy o ‘Filipino America’ rom he dominan pracices o Asian American sudies.” 16 Furhermore, by consruing “ehnic” dierence as simply one o several axes marking Asian American “heerogeneiy,” as Lisa Lowe reers o i, one is led away rom perceiving he very basic poin ha he caegory “Filipino” (in his case) is isel heerogeneous. 17 Filipino ideniy is an inensely convolued projec whose genealogy is anyhing bu a sraighorward aair. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


7

Filipino In/Visibility

I generating a ramework that “begins with the notion not o immigration but o imperialism” has become the point o departure or comprehending Filipino social lie and cultural production in the United States,18 then it is necessary to consider the conduct and consequences o U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. Te conceptual-metaphoric language in Villa’s poem “5” helps here. Many historians have noted that one o the central debates between U.S. imperialists and anti-imperialists at the turn o the twentieth century revolved around whether the United States would ollow the lead o its European predecessors and embark on the path o colonialism, or remain true to its supposed revolutionary ideals and republican political orm. 19 Te prodigious labor o “un-oneing” that the United States undertook in becoming an overseas empire (presaging the “One” superpower?) involved not only the massive deployment o the war machine (armed orces, supplies, budget appropriations) but also a concerted “pacification” effort that included both genocidal killing and ecological ruination (reconcentration camps, death zones, scorched-earth tactics, burned villages, indiscriminate shootings, water-boarding torture tactics, howling wildernesses) as methods or dealing with the treachery and incivility o guerrilla warare, 20 as well as extraordinary exercises in ideological “dissembling,” pronounced most ateully in William McKinley’s declaration o Benevolent Assimilation (see chapter 1). Clearly, the United States has never bothered to “expiate” its criminal acts o aggression against Filipinos because it sees no “sin” in its benevolent sacrifice to shoulder the “white man’s burden” and remake the Filipino “savage” into a sel-governing subject�because it can countenance “Nothing” that would absurdly contradict its mythos o reedom, altruism, and uplif. As Stuart Creighton Miller argues, “the triumph o American innocence” was poised to take over as soon as the war had been declared over by Teodore Roosevelt’s presidential fiat on July 4, 1902, despite military operations against Muslims in Mindanao persisting well into the twentieth century. “Amnesia over the horrors o the war o conquest in the Philippines set in early, during the summer o 1902,” writes Miller, while the “war o conquest and its atrocities and courtsmartial” have been all but lost to “America’s collective memory.” 21 What the United States could not, and still cannot, repress or orget, were and are the effects that overseas imperialism would have within its EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


Introduction

“domesic” borders. In becoming an empire, he Unied Saes no only exposed he “procedure o dissembling” ha has persisenly conravened is naional myhography bu also made isel suscepible o anoher influx o brown hordes as racis ani-imperialiss eared, “un-oneing” ye again is preerred racial sock and culural lieways. U.S. colonialism led o he governmen-sponsored pensionado program ha sen Filipino sudens o sudy in U.S. universiies or he purposes o naion-building, as well as o mass Filipino migraion o Hawai’i, Alaska, and he mainland during he second and hird decades o he wenieh cenury, peaking a beween 120,000 and 150,000 individuals in 1930. Afer a lull during he period beween he resricive immigraion policy ha accompanied he ydings-McDuffie Ac o 1934 and he graning o independence in 1946, Filipino immigraion would pick up again (abou 65,000 people beween 1946 and 1965). Bu i was no unil he 1965 Immigraion and Nauralizaion Ac�which abolished naional-origin crieria and inroduced he amily reunificaion and occupaional preerences�ha Filipino immigraion increased exponenially. Te 2007 U.S. Census repors abou 4.3 million Filipinos in he counry. 22 In he mos basic erms, Filipino migraion o he Unied Saes was and is a direc consequence o U.S. colonialism and neocolonialism: “Filipinos wen o he Unied Saes because Americans wen firs o he Philippines.” 23 Bu i he war wih and colonizaion o he Philippines needed o be repressed or reroacively dissolved ino ha “splendid litle war” o 1898 agains Spain o preserve he ideology o U.S. excepionalism, hen Filipinos hemselves mus be disappeared along wih ha hisory. In his ouchsone essay “Filipinos in he Unied Saes and Teir Lieraure o Exile,” Campomanes races he “sense o nonbeing ha salks many Filipinos in he Unied Saes” o “he immediae and long-erm consequences o American colonialism”: “Te invisibiliy o he Philippines became a necessary hisoriographic phenomenon because he annexaion o he Philippines proved o be consiuionally and culurally problemaic or American poliical and civil sociey around he urn o he cenury and hereafer.” 24 Te urn o empire in recen Filipino sudies evidenly seeks o redress his insiuionalized “invisibiliy” and o disrup wha Campomanes calls “he unbroken coninuiy o his hisoric amnesia concerning he Philippines” o mainain America’s innocen sel-concepion. 25 Alhough here had been books published on he Philippine-American War and U.S. colonialism in he Philippines prior o he 1990s, he renewed ineres in U.S. imperialism over he pas wo EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


9

decades has redireced atenion on he war and early colonialism and shown jus how racially “visible” Filipinos were during ha momen. 26 Colonial amnesia was furher abeted by he represenaional absence of his hisorical drama in U.S. lieraure of repue. Nick Joaquin noes ha “he romance of he early American soldiers, eachers, and missionaries in he Philippines has been ignored by American lieraure” and ha he “‘Empire Days,’ a heme worhy of a Kipling or a Maugham, have become merely an ironic foonoe o hisory.”27 Miller speculaes ha his “lierary lacuna is an unconscious means of forgeting an unpleasan hisory.” 28 Te implicaions of his lacuna for poscolonial lierary sudies canno be oversaed. Wondering why here is a “dearh of criical atenion on he Philippine colonial experience as lierary heme,” Jaime An Lim offers an asonishing answer in his 1993 monograph Literature and Politics: “One likely explanaion . . . is he fac ha no significan Wesern wrier has appropriaed ha heme in an imporan work. No colonial novelis, no Spanish, American, or even Japanese wrier of inernaional saure has deal wih he issue of Philippine colonial experience.”29 Lim’s observaion implies ha criics of colonial lierary discourse have been solely ineresed in hose geopoliical areas firs represened by renowned Wesern or colonial wriers, and only subsequenly by “naive” or poscolonial wriers. Te usual procedure of approaching “poscolonial lieraure as a criique of Wesern radiion involving he rewriing of specific works (Te empest and Heart of Darkness , for insance)”30 hus proves problemaic in his conex since here exis no U.S. analogues o Shakespeare or Conrad. Wihou an equivalen o Te empest or Heart of Darkness , how are we o deermine wha colonial images, lierary sraegies, and poliical effecs Philippine lieraure is endeavoring o revise or remake if undersood as “poscolonial”? Wha is more, like heir counerpars in he Philippines, Filipinos in he Unied Saes have no been porrayed in U.S. lieraure of “saure” eiher. As Elaine H. Kim wries, “Tere had been Filipino characers in he wriings of Peer B. Kyne, Ruper Hughes, William Saroyan, and John Fane, alhough hey were never as groesquely omnipresen in American culure as Chinese and Japanese caricaures had been.” 31 o he exen ha ideniy poliics ypically operaes by locaing and conesing he maerial and ideological means hrough which a “minoriy” group is subordinaed and denigraed, 32 one migh posi ha “invisi biliy” names he negaiviy ha currenly afflics Filipinos in he Unied Saes. Alhough Filipinos were no (and have no been) depiced widely EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974


Introduction

in canonical U.S. literature, they were, o course, represented in other orms o colonial discourse. Rather than arrive at a definitive crystallization o racial negativity, however, tracking some o these figurations leads only to urther ambiguity. From a juridical standpoint, the status o the Philippines, Filipinos, and Filipinos in the United States during the U.S. colonial period was deeply vexed, shifing, and uncertain. Allan Punzalan Isaac has analyzed how legal decisions produced the indeterminacy o the Philippines and other overseas lands as “unincorporated territories” and, in so doing, created the ambiguous category o Filipinos as U.S. “nationals.” Doubly negated or racial and cultural reasons as “noncitizen nonaliens ,” Filipinos were allowed unrestricted entry “into” the United States prior to the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act or economic purposes through a process that Yen Le Espiritu terms “differential inclusion.”33 Dissenting Justice Fuller in the 1901 Downes v. Bidwell case described the colonized Filipino “national” as “a disembodied shade, in an intermediate state o ambiguous existence or an indefinite period.” 34 I the U.S. imperial project legalistically produced subjects positioned in a “twilight zone o indeterminacy,” 35 it simultaneously reem bodied its new colonial subjects by shading in their racial contours, in part by drawing on preexisting racial stereotypes o Arican Americans and American Indians to characterize Filipinos as “uncivilized savages,” “bestial rapists,” “effeminate” Orientals, or inantilized ineriors, as Kristin Hoganson notes. 36 Nerissa Balce similarly has examined how “earlier representations o black and native subjects . . . merged and coalesced” to produce “the figure o the Filipino savage,” and notes how ofen white soldiers reerred to Filipinos as “niggers”�a racial slur that heightened the dissonance on the part o Arican American soldiers between patriotism and racism and led to some deections. 37 Complicating what he calls the export view o imperial racialization, Paul Kramer has argued that U.S. colonial administrators urther differentiated the “Hispanicized” elite, with whom they could negotiate in colonial statecraf, rom the “non-Christian tribes” and “moros” (Muslims) who would be brought into the national old by orce i necessary. 38 Whether derived or invented, such productions o racial difference sought to cast Filipinos as lacking the rational masculinity necessary or sel-government and thus in need o colonial tutelage. While cross-racializations o Filipinos regularly occurred throughout the twentieth century (see chapter 6), it is important to recognize that constructions o Filipino nationalism were no less contentious. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/20/2015 9:02 AM via ATENEO DE NAGA UNIV AN: 432683 ; Ponce, Martin Joseph.; Beyond the Nation : Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading Account: s6347974

Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading

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