The city of Manila is uniquely significant to Philippine, Southeast Asian and world history. It played a key role in the rise of Western colonial mercantilism in Asia, the extinction of the Spanish Empire and the ascendancy of the USA to global imperial hegemony, amongst other events. This book examines British and American writing on the city, situating these representations within scholarship on empire, orientalism and US, Asian and European political history. Through analysis of novels, memoirs, travelogues and journalism written about Manila by Westerners since the early eighteenth century, Tom Sykes builds a picture of Western attitudes towards the city and the wider Philippines, and the mechanics by which these came to dominate the discourse.
This study uncovers to what extent Western literary tropes and representational models have informed understandings of the Philippines, in the West and elsewhere, and the types of counter-narrative which have emerged in the Philippines in response to them.
Autorentext
Tom Sykes is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His previous books include The Realm of the Punisher, and his essays have appeared in A Global History of Literature and the Environment, Supernatural Cities, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Social Identities and Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. His journalism has appeared in Private Eye, New Statesman, The Scotsman, The Telegraph, New Internationalist, Monocle, New African, Red Pepper, South East Asia Globe and numerous print and digital media around the world.
Inhalt
Introduction: Manilaism as an Orientalism
Chapter 1. 'A Seething Cauldron of Evil': Hispanophobia, Third World Blues and Manila-as-Hell
Chapter 2. 'Known to All Students of History': Adventure, Imperial Mythology and Orientalist Rhetoric in Manilaism of the US Conquest of the Philippines
Chapter 3. 'The Pious New Name of the Musket': Language, Gender, Race and Benevolent Assimilation
Chapter 4. In Our Image but Not Quite: Desire, Capital and Flawed Simulacra in Twentieth Century Manilaism
Chapter 5. Money-Getting, Job-Thieving and Militarisation: Manilaist Constructions of Chinese-Filipinos from Daniel Defoe to Jonathan Miller
Chapter 6. Call of Duterte: Cacique Despotism and Western (Neo)liberal Crisis
Chapter 7. Towards an Anti-Manilaism
Conclusion: Liberal Orientalism versus Genuine Humanism
Notes
Bibliography