The permanence of texts

or the impermanence of texts.

I was reading a new book (2010) last night that mentions the first book that I wrote. In his two-page critique of my work, the author writes:
- Strobel's "decolonization" is premised on the putative Filipino American self's idealist transcendence of a colonial history's intertwined social materialities, including its contemporary neocolonial and postcolonial formation
- Strobel's warped decolonization pivots on a strident appropriation and alienation of an undifferentiated "Filipino indigenous"...that restores a foundational premise for "post-1965 Filipino American" identity formation.
- For Strobel and others in resonance with her framing, the abstracted "indigenous" is really a compilation of distant cultural artifacts and composes a project of cultural reification that postpones or erases the current life of actual indigenous peoples and movements in (and beyond) the Philippine nation-state...
- Strobel's conception of identity formation as a linear progression toward a self-realized Filipino American subject....is fundamentally an edification of Filipino American cosmopolitan subjectivity...
- Strobel's...prescriptive narrative of the self-actualized Filipino American as a good citizen-subject ...is a cooperative partner in the multiculturalist civil formation of the U.S. In this rhetorical structure, "decolonization" becomes a partner in the U.S. multiculturalist national project...


I actually appreciate this critique because, based on his own framework in this book, it makes sense. This is what scholars do, after all; in order to build up their own theorizing, they must deconstruct others and displace them in the name of the project they are building. And I agree with the project of this new book: that race, white supremacy, genocide must figure into the reading of the Filipino condition. Without such reading, the Filipino historical subject remains in a sort of "suspended apocalypse."

I quibble, though, with the permanence of texts because my work that is being cited freezes the narrative that I have been living and writing about into a time frame. Time, of course, is what fixes us as historical subjects. (In one of the essays in my second book, I write about my attempts to free myself of Time).

It is important to know one's self as a historical subject and our attempts to articulate and practice a Filipino American historical subjectivity is always contingent, impermanent, perhaps flawed, and always incomplete. The author's contribution to this project is worthwhile. I hope it becomes popularized and accessible to those who do not have easy access to academic theorizing.

I find it interesting that my work is cited as an example of a Fil Am "cosmopolitan subjectivity" and "idealist transcendence" and "appropriation of Filipino indigenous". I can understand how this reading happens and how it is framed as an accomplice to the US multicultural nationalist project.

However, I think those who know me and my work for the past decade a little bit more closely will see that such reading can't be farther from the reality of what I do.

And this is what I decry about the permanence of texts or textuality. As I become more interested in embodied knowing, in storytelling, in indigenous ways of being and doing, I also become conscious of wanting to be more than an overdetermined historical subject. I have devoted time and years to decentering the modern historical narrative in my life and now I want to see this sliver recede into the background of a larger reality.

But I may not have the time nor the desire to theorize about this right now. I just want to...dance.

re The Future of Ethnic Studies

The Future of Ethnic Studies

When Ethnic Studies is at risk, democracy is also at risk. In this essay, Gary Okihiro outlines the history of ethnic studies as a discipline and how it must continue to sharpen its capacity for articulation and analysis of social difference so that it avoids slipping into mere identity politics and multiculturalism.
***
Having watched the evolving discourse of ethnic studies for over a decade, what has become important to me is the need for an ever larger context in which to locate and position myself. More recently I have become unhappy or uncomfortable with the left-brained approach and have felt the growing desire to be more embodied (rather than being a disembodied intellectual) in my knowing and being. I have also grown tired of the current and trendy language of analysis (whether Foucauldian, Lacanian, Marxist, etc) which is mostly inaccessible to the folks outside of academe.

Ethnic Studies began as a community-based movement (hence the charge of "cultural nationalism"). By the time I was doing graduate work, postmodern discourse has taken hold. This was also the 80s when Reagan conservatism kicked in and the nation was declared "at risk" by conservatives like Allan Bloom and E D. Hirsch who called for a return to conservative multiculturalism. The "old guard" of Ethnic Studies scholars was replaced by young pomo savvy scholars who became more interested in the professionalization of Ethnic Studies (read: attempt to prove that ES is a legitimate, rigorous intellectual discipline). I know of several Fil Am academics who sacrificed their relationship with the Fil Am community in order to concentrate on the tenure-track process of publish or perish. Some peers tell me that they could no longer afford to spend time working with their communities because of the demands of tenure. It was a tough choice that had to be made.

There are still scholars who do community-based dissertation research and then get published by a university press and get rewarded with tenure. But these scholarly books are usually written in the dense and obtuse language of academese and they don't reach an audience beyond the scholar circles. However, those who labor to read through this language do get rewarded with new theoretical paradigms and fresh ideas with which to conceptualize their work on the ground.

I have always been on the fence, a marginal scholar (others have called me) and sometimes I have been generously called an "organic intellectual." Whatever the label, my heart and my desire has always been to stay connected to the pulse of my communities. My books never went the route of peer reviews and university presses.  Some of my peer reviewed journal publications were later included in important anthologies but still I am aware that there are other Fil Am scholars who do not touch my work. It is as if by ignoring it, they refuse to legitimize it as an academic discourse. (This is only a game, of course, and when played by somebody else's rules, no one wins).

There are a few scholars though (Peminist-identified scholars) who have found my work on decolonization to be valuable and they have since expanded and extended the discourse farther and deeper into the shared project of community-building through education. I thank them here now: Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Patricia Halagao Espiritu, Joanie May Cordova, Dan Begonia, and others who reference the work that I've done.
**
I feel uncomfortable writing about this but I feel that it's time that I overcome my timidity. After all, I feel the wind beneath my wings - the community that has encircled me. It is this community that challenges me to talk and write louder than before. Mila Coger recently challenged me: Leny, it is our time now, let's make the Babaylan known. You have to come and speak...


My latest reflections about indigenization is a deepening of the decolonization process. In this work, I forayed outside of academic disciplinary boundaries because the new language of embodiment that I wanted to speak and write in was found in the works of Martin Prechtel, Derrick Jensen, Thomas Berry, and Linda Hogan and others like them whose voices and ideas were not tamed by the demands of academic norms.
**
Okihiro's essay asks that ES scholars not lose their political edge and must continue to sharpen their knowledge of social formations to better safeguard democracy. The US is in the midst of imperial wars abroad and denial of civil liberties at home and ES scholars must be vigilant in their analysis and critique. So true.

The route I have taken, the doors or vistas that have opened to me via indigenous studies, tells me that it is by extending our historical perspective beyond 500 years of modernity that we come to a better understanding of globalization and its projects. To me, this means learning how to develop a mythic view of time and space, a cosmic view even - that allows for a perspective that is compelling in its urgency given that we now stand at the edge of the abyss of economic and environmental collapse or what others call a civilizational collapse.

To me, the boundary of Ethnic Studies as a discipline is porous and transparent. Its project may be primarily local and political (U.S.) and simultaneously global but what integrates and connects the two can be facilitated by developing a cosmic and mythic view. As long as I, as a scholar, maintain the tension between the local/political and the cosmic/mythic, what happens in the in-between is an adventure of the body-mind-spirit. This is what I aspire to: to learn how to dance this tension with grace, passion, equanimity, and the ability to wield a sharp sword when called for. For this, I need courage all the way to the bone marrow.

The cost of white ambivalence

...in the midst of the faltering national economy we should understand how our inattention over the years to the warning signs of coming crisis explain much about how and why things got to be this bad. And those warning signs were ignored in large measure because they seemed not to impact white Americans, especially middle class and above whites.