White Love and Other Events in Filipino History

Vicente L. Rafael is Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines and Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule, both also published by Duke University Press.

• Illustrations xiAcknowledgments xiiiIntroduction: Episodic Histories 11. White Love: Census and Melodrama in the U.S. Colonization of the Philippines 192. Colonial Domesticity: Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899-1912 523. The Undead: Notes on Photography in the Philippines, 1898-1920s 764. Anticipating Nationhood: Identification, Collaboration, and Rumor in Filipino Responses to Japan 1035. Patronage, Pornography, and Youth: Ideology and Spectatorship during the Early Marcos Years 1226. Taglish, or the Phantom Power of the Lingua Franca 1627. Writing History after EDSA1908. “Your Grief is Our Gossip”: Overseas Filipinos and Other Spectral Presences 204Notes 229Bibliography 265Index 277

“An extremely rich, original, and insightful work. Famously gifted in style and nuance, Rafael ranks among the few contemporary scholars in Asian studies whose writings merit-and reward-careful rereading. This book not only illuminates twentieth-century Philippine history with great sophistication and subtlety but also treats colonialism, nationalism, and constructions of gender and race in ways that many non-Philippine specialists are certain to find interesting and fruitful.”-John T. Sidel, author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines “These critical essays on colonial and contemporary Philippines offer a formidable combination of powerful cultural critique and incisive political commentary. Rafael’s deep knowledge of the Philippines, his capacity to address a large range of issues, his astute use of cultural and political theory and his many brilliant insights and analyses will provide new directions to postcolonial debates on imperialism, nationalism and their relationship to ‘area studies.’ A truly remarkable book.”-Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago “Written as a sustained and devoted interruption of postcolonial certainties while seeming to arrive from the future, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History ushers in its own eventfulness. It is a momentous work.”-John Pemberton, author of On the Subject of “Java”