The Condition of Filipino Americanism: Global Americana as a Relation of Death

Abstract

At the nexus of a prevailing Filipino-American discourse that celebrates the Filipino-American as a cooperative participant in the United States nation-building project sits an “unnamable violence” that masks the genocidal preconditions of “multiculturalist” white supremacy, to which this discourse unwittingly subscribes. The article explores the beginnings and development of this discourse, and the workings of American white supremacy in naturalizing relations of death between itself and its “others.” The article ends with a reflection on how “natural” disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo become means of legitimizing discourses that reinforce white invulnerability vis-à-vis disposability of non-white subjects.