Reflections on Essentialist Decoloniality and the New Filipino Essentialism
One of the many tensions in José Rizal’s Hamlet-like thinking concerns the definition of Filipino. At his best moments, he saw it as a multi-ethnic political project—a view he partly developed during his years observing and participating in the activism at the Universidad Central de Madrid. At his worst, he located nationality within an ancient “Malay” history and identity. Today, amid the rise of “decolonial” thought, Filipinos are once again negotiating this tension. Nativist ideas—“Filipino psyche,” a primordial “Austronesian Filipino identity”—are gaining traction amid a valid desire to challenge colonial modes of thinking. In this talk, I chart the rise of this new essentialism and grapple with the role of “identity” in the practice of Philippine studies and Southeast Asian studies. I propose two concepts crucial to the development of Southeast Asian studies—comparison and region—as possible correctives to inward-looking nativism.
Lisandro E. Claudio is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the Chair of the Center for Southeast Asia Studies. Born in Manila, he was educated at the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of Melbourne. His book Liberalism and the Postcolony: Thinking the State in 20th-Century Philippines won the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize and the George Kahin Prize. His most recent book is The Profligate Colonial: How the US Exported Austerity to the Philippines.
