Emergent Allies: Decolonizing Hawai‘i from a Filipin@ Perspective.

Abstract

This dissertation maps a critical terrain of anti-imperialist Filipin@s in Hawaiʻi from 1990-2015. I investigate those Filipin@ writers, community leaders and activists who take seriously the role of (neo)colonialism in the ongoing fight for self-determination in both Hawaiʻi and the Philippines. I pay particular attention to the influence of Hawaiian sovereignty movement(s) on these contributions, while also investigating the way texts resist anti-Indigenous racism, torture, war, (trans)misogyny, and global capitalism. My intervention marks a shift from a framework of “Filipino Americans” arriving on “American soil,” to a history from below that decenters the U.S. and prioritizes decolonial alliances. This era is marked by several historical milestones including the 100-year anniversary of the overthrow in 1993; the election of Hawaiʻi’s first Filipin@ American governor in 1994; the 100-year anniversary of the Philippine revolution in 1996; the 100-year anniversary of the multiple annexations in 1998 (including Philippines and Hawaiʻi); and the 100-year anniversary of the sakadas’ arrival to Hawaiʻi in 2006. This period also marks the wars on/of terror and the attendant rise in mass surveillance, racialized torture, and deportation. I approached my archive with attention to the historical circumstances within which they were produced, the historical echoes of Filipin@ anti-colonial history, and the decolonial futures these artists, writers, and community leaders envision. I conceive of my dissertation as a kind of gathering of speech acts, both literary and activist. My archive includes English print culture, oral history interviews, and autoethnography. Plays and poetry serve a primary role in terms of traditional literary texts; I also include one government report on torture, one documentary film, newspaper articles, fiction, and commemorative documents. As this is a decolonial project, I also foreground Indigenous perspectives through my analysis of several interviews I conducted with Hawaiian sovereignty activist/protectors who have traveled to the Philippines. In terms of autoethnography, I incorporate self-critique of my family’s relationship to U.S. empire in Hawaiʻi, the Philippines, and the Middle East. As colonial violence is deeply gendered, I also attend to how agendas of decolonization intersect with visions of gender and sexual liberation, reflecting on some of my own work as a theater artist and demilitarization activist.