Empire and Globalization: On the Recent Study of the Philippines in the United States

Abstract

This short paper traces two of the more important developments in the study of the Philippines in the United States in the wake of critiques regarding American Orientalism in the late 1990s. The first is a rediscovery of the American empire at the heart of US national history, and by implication, of the buried significance of overseas colonies to metropolitan developments. Second is the emergence of robust cultural critiques of globalization from the perspective of those who have been globalized from below. The paper talks these developments with reference to Paul Kramer’s Blood of Government and Neferti Tadiar’s Things Fall Away, books that mark critically important advances not only in Philippine Studies in the US, but of American Studies in the age of imperial globalization.