Few readers know how the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines inflicted torture and death with impunity on millions. Citizens became desaparesidos, to use the Latin-American term. In the Philippines, the victims were salvaged, kidnapped and killed. This semantic change epitomizes the experience of colonized/neocolonized subjects since the bloody pacification of the islands in the 18991913 Filipino-American War. The usual meaning of salvage, as rescue of selected relics from historys slaughterhouse, is restored here.
In this book E. San Juan, Jr. reviews the dialectical process in postmodern art and symbolic expressions of the Cold War and analyzes the contradictions of re-neoliberal globalization and the retooled salvaging in the Duterte-Marcos regime today.
Neocolonialism and decolonization mutually inform the discussion of Filipino indigenization with the emergence of sikolohiyang Filipinoan original construction.
E. San Juan, Jr., Ph.D. (1965), Harvard University, is Emeritus Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Connecticut. He was previously a fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, and Fulbright Professor of American Studies, KU Leuven University. He has taught at Washington State University, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York (CUNY), Bowling Green State University, and the University of the Philippines. His recent publications include The Subversive Reader (Vibal, 2023), Peirces Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective (Lexington, 2022), and Recognizing Apolinario Mabini (University of the Philippines Press, 2024).
