Legitimizing empire
Subtitle: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican cultural critique
By: Faye Caronan
Series: The Asian American experience; Asian American experience
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9780252039256; 9780252080807
Subjects: Race relations; Imperialism; Imperialism in popular culture; Relations
Description: "When the United States acquired the Philippines and Puerto Rico, it reconciled its status as an empire with its anticolonial roots by claiming that it would altruistically establish democratic institutions in its new colonies. Ever since, Filipino and Puerto Rican artists have challenged promises of benevolent assimilation instead portraying U.S. imperialism as both self-interested and unexceptional among empires. Faye Caronan's examination interprets the pivotal engagement of novels, films, performance poetry, and other cultural productions as both symptoms of and resistance against American military, social, economic, and political incursions. Though the Philippines became an independent nation and Puerto Rico a U.S. commonwealth, both remain subordinate to the United States. Caronan's juxtaposition reveals two different yet simultaneous models of U.S. neocolonial power and contradicts the myth of America as a reluctant empire that only accepts colonies for the benefit of the colonized. Her analysis, meanwhile, demonstrates how popular culture allows for alternative narratives of U.S. imperialism, but also functions to contain those alternatives"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-180) and index.
Table of contents: title: Consuming (post)colonial culture : multicultural experiences in travelogues and novels; title: Revising the colonialism-as-romance metaphor : from conquest to neocolonialism; title: Bastards of U.S. imperialism : demanding recognition in the American family; title: Performing genealogies : poetic pedagogies of disidentification; title: Conclusion : imagining the end of empire.