TIMELY INTERVENTIONS IN THE CRISIS OF CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION
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.
The other important work to be released by Palgrave Macmillan (2008) this September is U.S. IMPERIALISM AND REVOLUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES. Here San Juan reviews the record of U.S. colonialism and neocolonial domination of the Philippines, centering on a critique of the ideological mechanisms of cultural and political control in imperial discourse and practices. The book contains documents on the human-rights violations of the Arroyo regime, including the verdict of the Permanent People’s Tribunal Session 2 at The Hague, Netherlands, last March 2007.
Recently released by the Edwin Mellen Press this year is CRITIQUE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION: LESSONS FROM ANTONIO GRAMSCI, MIKHAIL BAKHTIN AND RAYMOND WILLIAMS. This work attempts to interpret and evaluyate the historical-materialist critiquye of modern society by three progressive thinkers: Gramsci, Bakhtin and Williams. Precipitated by the early crisis of global capitalism in the 20th century, the insights of Gramsci into hegemony and national-popular culture ushered the birth of Cultural Studies and a wide-ranging world-systems analysis. Bakhtin’s concept of the “sign as the arena of class struggle” has offered a radical break with the elitist mystifications of deconstructive postmodernism. Deployingh Gramsci’s theory of strategic intervention into the political economy of complex social formations and using Bakhtin’s dialogic imagination, Williams explored the contradictory “structures of feeling” in a world with multi-layered conflicts across class, gender, race, etc.; with diverse communities harboring their singular visions or democratic socialism. Gramsci, Bakhtin, and Williams’ exemplary critical reflectios continue to inspire concerned intellectuals everywhere. From a dialectical inquiry into controversies and arguments engaged by these three major thinkers, E. San Juan’s scholarly project seeks to articulate a transformative praxis useful for all activist cultural workers today confronting the demise of the barbaric neoliberal enpire of fianance-capital headed by the moribund U.S.nation-state.
San Juan’s book TOWARD FILIPINO SELF-DETERMINATION, to be released this August 2009 by the State University of New York Press, Albany, updates his previous works on the Filipino diaspora found in FROM EXILE TO DIASPORA (Westview Press) and AFTER POSTCOLONIALISM (Rowman and Littlefield), with substantial explorations into the situation and plight of Overseas Filipino Workers, now about 9 million scattered around the planet. Is the term/concept “transnational” appropriate to an emergent nation? Perry Anderson gave the most powerful criticism of the neoliberal use of “transnational” in his Editorial Note to NEW LEFT REVIEW, issue 14 (March-April 2002), which many scholars have failed to take heed. San Juan rejects the whole alibi and fraud behind “transnationalism” as well as “cosmopolitanism,” to which Filipinos and Filipino Americans continue to succumb. Apart from this, San Juan provides the only left/radical alternative to the current Filipino-American assimilationist, self-serving, and opportunist tendency in the U.S. academy, as well as those in the Philippines and elsewhere, who seek recognition and kudos from the Western/global North Establishment.
A Filipino resident in the U.S., San Juan is an internationally recognized cultural critic whose works have been translated into French, German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and other languages. San Juan’s two previous books, Racial Formations/Critical Transformations (Humanity Books), now a classic in ethnic studies, and After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-U.S. Confrontations (Rowman and Littlefield), won the Myers Human Rights Awards. He has also received a MELUS award and the Asian American Association Prize for distinguished contributions to the discipline of cultural studies.
San Juan was previously a Fulbright lecturer at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and visiting lecturer at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. San Juan’s previous works include The Philippine Temptation (Temple UP); Beyond Postcolonial Theory (Palgrave Macmillan), Racism and Cultural Studies (Duke UP); Working Through the Contradictions (Bucknell UP); and Himagsik (De La Salle UP). Available in the Philippines are:Allegories of Resistance; a re-issue of Toward a People’s Literature, and a new collection of poems, Sapagkat Iniibig Kita, all published by the University of the Philippines Press. Forthcoming are Balikbayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader (Ateneo U Press) and From Globalization Toward National Liberation (U.P. Press). San Juan taught at several universities, including the University of California, Brooklyn College of CUNY, University of Connecticut, and Washington State University. He was recently a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center at Bellagio, Italy; 2009 fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. –##
[ Released by PHILIPPINES CULTURAL STUDIES CENTER, 117 Davis Road, Storrs, CT 06268, USA
CURRICULUM VITAE (Selected)
Curriculum Vitae
EPIFANIO SAN JUAN
E-mail:
Education
1958 A.B. magna cum laude University of the Philippines
1965 Ph.D. Harvard UniversityAcademic Positions
1965-66 Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis
1966-67 Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines
1967-79 Associate Professor of English, The University of Connecticut, Storrs
1977-79 Professor of Comparative Literature, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
1987-88 Fulbright Professor of American Literature and Criticism, University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University
1979-1994 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, The University of Connecticut, Storrs
1994-1998 Professor of Ethnic Studies, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
1998-2001 Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative American Cultures,
Washington State University, Pullman
2002 Fellow of the Center for the Humanities, and Visiting Professor of English, Wesleyan
University
2003 Fulbright Professor of American Studies, Leuven University, Belgium
2004 National Science Council Fellow, National Tsing Hua University, Republic of China
2006 Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Study (Fall 2006)
2008 (Spring) Visiting Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of the
Philippines
2009 (Spring) Fellow, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University
Honors1960-63 Fulbright-Smith Mundt Fellowship
1961-63 Teaching Fellow, Harvard University
1964 Comparative Literature Prize, Harvard University
1965 Howard Mumford Jones Award for Best Work in English, Harvard University
1963-65 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship
1987-88 Fulbright Lectureship in the Philippines
1993 Fellow, The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh, Scotland1993 1993 National Book Award, Association for Asian American Studies
1993 Distinguished Book Award given by Gustavus Myers Human Rights Center
1994 Nominated for the Citizens’ Chair, University of Hawaii
1994 Katherine Newman Award, Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States
1995 Visiting Professor of English, University of Trento, Italy
1995 Scholar in Residence, Institute for the Study of Culture, Society, and Human
Values, Bowling Green State University
1999 Centennial Award for Achievement in Literature, Philippine Cultural Center,
Republic of the Philippines2000 Visiting Chair Professor, Graduate School, Tamkang University, Taiwan
2001 Keynote Speaker, College English Association (CEA) 2002 Annual Convention
2002 Invited Speaker, American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, June 2002
2003 Speaker, 12th International Symposium on English Teaching, English Teachers Association, Republic of China, Nov. 7-9, Taipeh, Taiwan; Keynote Speaker, Ninth Quadrennial International Conference on Comparative Literature, National Taiwan University, 19 June 2004
2004 Invited lecturer at 7 universities in Taiwan: Tsing Hua University, Chiaotung University,
Kaohsiung Normal University, Sun-Yat Sen University, National Kaohsiung University, National ChungHsing University, National Normal University, Taipeh
2007 Keynote Speaker, “Gramsci Now”: International Gramsci Conference, Michigan State
University, 9-11 November
BOOKS (Selected)James Joyce and the Craft of Fiction. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1972.
Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1972; reprinted by Oriole Editions, New York, 1975.
Introduction to Modern Pilipino Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1974.
Poetics: The Imitation of Action. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1978.
Toward a People’s Literature: Essays in the Dialectics of Praxis and Contradiction in Philippine Writing. Quezon City: U.P. Press, 1984. Winner of the Catholic Mass Media Award, 1985; and the National Book Award given by the Manila Critics Circle, 1985.
Racial Formation/Critical Transformations: Articulations of Power in Ethnic and Racial Studies in the U. S. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1992. Winner of the 1993 National Book Award from Association for Asian American Studies; 1993 Distinguished Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights.
Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression: Essays in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995.
The Philippine Temptation: Dialectics of Philippines-U.S. Literary Relations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.
From Exile to Diaspora: Versions of the Filipino Experience in the United States. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press/HarperCollins, 1998.
Beyond Postcolonial Theory. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontation. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Co., 2000.
Racism and Cultural Studies: Critiques of Multiculturalist Ideology and the Politics of Difference. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
Spinoza and the Terror of Racism. UK: Sheffield Hallam University Press, 2002. A revised version appeared as “Spinoza, Marx and the Terror of Racism,” Nature, Society, and Thought 16.2 (2003), 193-230.
Working through the Contradictions: From Cultural Theory to Critical Practice. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004.
Filipinos Everywhere. Quezon City: IBON, 2006,
In the Wake of Terror: Class, Race, Nation, Ethnicity in the PostModern World. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2007.
U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
BALIKBAYANG MAHAL: Passages from Exile. North Carolina: LuLu.com, 2007.
BALIKBAYANG SINTA: An E. San Juan Reader. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila Universiyy Press, 2008.
FROM GLOBALIZATION TO NATIONAL LIBERATION: Essays of Three Decades. Quezon
City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008.
Toward Filipino Self-Determination. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2009.
Critique and Social Transformination. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.
RECENT ARTICLES:
“The Multiculturalist Problematic in the Age of Globalized Capitalism,” Social Justice 27.1 (Spring 2000): 61-75.
“The Limits of Ethnicity and the Horizon of Historical Materialism” in Asian American Studies edited by Esther Ghymn (New York: Peter Lang, 2000): 9-34. A revised version has been translated into Chinese by Lisa Wu, National Tsing Hua University, under the title: “Ya yi mei guo ren zai mei guo kung jian li hsun zhao wei chih,” Chung-Wai Literary Monthly (Taiwan: 2000).
“The Limits of Contemporary Cultural Studies,”Connecticut Review xxii.2 (Fall 2000): 35-45. Reprinted in The Lyceum Review [Manila, Philippines] Millenium Series, No. 1 (2000): 33-38.
“Aime Cesaire’s Poetics of Fugitive Intervention,” Third Text 53 (Winter 2000-01), 3-18. German translation: “Aime Cesaire Poetik des Augstands,” Das Argument 252 (2003), 668-682. A revised version appeared as “Aime Cesaire and Surrealism,” Working Papers Series on Historical Systems, Peoples, and Cultures (Bowling Green State University, Ohio); and in a longer version as “Surrealism and Revolution,” a special issue of Working Papers in Cultural Studies (Pullman, WA: Washington State University, Department of Comparative American Cultures, 2000). French translation by Alice Boheme, in the WEB page on surrealism sponsored by Prof. Henri Behar of the Sorbonne
“Trajectories of the Filipino Diaspora,” Ethnic Studies Report xviii.2 (July 2000), 229-244. A revised version appeared as “The Filipino Diaspora,” Philippine Studies 49 (Second Quarter 2001), 255-264. A
shorter version appeared as “Filipinizing Diasporic Re/turns,” DisOrient 9 (2001), 45-55.
“Cultural Studies—A Reformist or Revolutionary Force for Social Change?” Tamkang Review 31.2 (Winter 2000): 1-29. A revised version appeared in the on-line journal Kritika Kultura 1.1 (February 2002) sponsored by the English Department, Ateneo University
“Toward Cultural Revolution: A Critique of Contemporary Cultural Studies,” Special issue of Working Papers in Cultural Studies (Washington State University, Pullman, WA: Department of Comparative American Cultures, 2001). Partial translation into French: “Politique des Cultural Studies contemporaines,” L’Homme et la Societe, 149 (2003), 105-124. See also, for another version, “From Birmingham to Angkor Watt: Demarcations of Cultural Studies,” the WEB page of Kritika Kultura
“Interrogating the Postcolonial Alibi: A Testimony from the Filipino Diaspora,” New Literatures Review 37 (Summer 2000): 85-112.
“From Chinatown to Gunga Din Highway,” Ethnic Studies Review 24.1-3 (2001): 1-28. A shorter version appeared as “From Fantasy to Strategy: Frank Chin’s Cultural Revolution,” Tamkang Review 31.3 (Spring 2001): 1-14. An earlier version: “From Chinatown to Gunga Din Highway,” Left Curve No. 24 (Spring 2000): 58-68.
“Culture and Freedom in People’s Liberation Struggles,” Dialogue and Initiative (Fall-Winter 2001): 21-24.
“Symbolic Violence and the Fetishism of the Sublime: a metacommentary on David Hwang’s M. Butterfly,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 23.1 (2002): 33-46.
“Post-Colonialism and the Question of Nation-State Violence,” Denver University Law Review 78.4 (2001): 887-905. A revised version is: “Nationalism, the Postcolonial State and Violence,” Left Curve 26 (2002): 36-44. Reprinted as “Postcolonialism and the Question of Nation-State Violence in the Age of Late Capitalism,” Lyceum Review [Manila, Philippines], Millennium Series, No. 2 (2001): 16-32.
“Cultural Studies Amongst the Sharks: The Struggle Over Hawaii,” Third Text 16.1 (2002): 71-78.
“Interrogating Transmigrancy, Remapping Diaspora: The Globalization of Laboring Filipinos/as,” Discourse 23.3 (Fall 2001): 52-74. A revised version appeared as “Postcolonial Discourse, Diasporic Critique: Filipina Migrant Narratives in the Shadow of Globalization,” Journal of Asian-Pacific Affairs 4.1 (2002): 19-48. Reprinted as “Interrogating Transnationalism: The Case of the Filipino Diaspora in the Age of Globalized Capitalism,” Diliman Review 51.1-2 (2003), 5-22.
“Postcolonialism and the Problematic of Uneven Development” in Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, ed. Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 221-239. “Postcolonialism y desarollo desigual,” Casa de las Americas 219 (April-June 2000), 26-34
“The Poverty of Postcolonialism,” Pretexts (Summer 2002): 57-74. . Italian version (see #172)
“Nation-State, Postcolonial Thought, and Global Violence,” Social Analysis 46.2 (Summer 2002), 11-32.
“Antonio Gramsci on Surrealism and the Avant-garde,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (Summer 2003), 31-45.
“Spinoza and the War of Racial Terrorism, Left Curve, No. 27, 62-72.
“Fundamentals of Cultural Studies: Extrapolations from Selected Texts of Raymond Williams,” Keywords: A Journal of Cultural Materialism 4 (2003), 78-93.
“The Imperialist War on Terrorism and the Responsibility of Cultural Studies,” Arena Journal 20 (2002-2003), 45-56. A revised version: “U.S. Imperial Terror, cultural studies, and the national liberation struggle in the Philippines,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4-3 (2003), 516-523. Reprined in Diliman Review 50.4 (2003), 39-46. A shorter version: “U.S. War on Terrorism and the Filipino Struggle for National Liberation,” Dialogue and Initiative (Fall 2003), 2-6. An expanded version appeared as: “Imperialist War Against Terrorism and Revolution in the Philippines,” Left Curve 28 (2004), 40-56.
“Challenging Contemporary American Studies,” The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 25.4 (October-December 2003), 303-333
“Marxism and the Race/Class Problematic: A Rearticulation,” Cultural Logic (2003)
“Aime Cesaire’s Insurrectionary Poetics,” in Surrealism, Politics and Culture,edited by Raymond Spiteri and Donald LaCoss (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 226-245.
“On the Filipino Diaspora and the Crisis in the Philippines,” St. John’s University Humanities Review 2.1 (Fall 2003), 81-99.
“ ‘Filipino’ Speech-Acts—Weapons for Self-Determination of the Filipino Nationality in the U.S.,” Danyag 7.1 (June 2002; published 2003): 29-46. Reprinted in Diliman Review 50.4 (2003), 3-12; also in . KritikaKultura 5 (Dec. 2004): 70-86
“Knowledge, Representation, Truth: Learning from Charles Sanders Peirce’s Semiotics,” St. John’s University Humanities Review 2.2 (May 2004), 15-37.
“The Field of English in the Cartography of Globalization,” Philippine Studies 52.1 (2004), 94-118.
“Postcolonial Dialogics: Between Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci,” Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 11,1-2 (2004), 56-74.
“From Race to Class Struggle: Re-problematizing Critical Race Theory,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 11.1 (Fall 2005), 75-98.
“Preparing for the Time of Reparation: Du Bois, G. Jackson, Abu Jamal,” Souls 7.2 (2005), 63-74.
“Toward a Decolonizing Indigenous Psychology in the Philippines: Introducing Sikolohiyang Pilipino,” Journal for Cultural Research 10.1 (Jan. 2006), 47-67.
“Edward Said’s Affiliations: Secular humanism and Marxism,” Atlantic Studies 3.1 (April
2006), 43-60.
“Ethnic Identity and Popular Sovereignty: Notes on the Moro Struggle in the Philippines,” Ethnicities 6.3 (Sept. 2006), 391-422.
“Carlos Bulosan, Filipino Writer-Activist,” New Centennial Review 8.1 (Winter 2008), 103-
134.
“Internationalizing the U.S. Ethnic Canon: Revisiting Carlos Bulosan,” Comparative
American Studies (June 2008): 123-143.
“Joyce/Ibsen: Dialectics of Aesthetic Modernism,” Orbis Litterarum 63.4 (2008): 267-284.
“Antonio Gramsci’s Theory of the ‘National-Popular” and Socialist Revolution in the Philippines,” In Gramsci Now, ed. Joseph Francese. New York: Routledge, 2009 (forthcoming).
