Making biological citizens in postcolonial societies: science, gender, and national identity in South Korea and the Philippines

Abstract

This dissertation offers a postcolonial theory of biological citizenship for understanding national identity and body politics in the Philippines and South Korea. Using a Foucauldian genealogical approach, I investigate how western science and technology shape, influence, and define biological citizenships within the structures and processes of imperialism and nation making. Such an investigation reveals that these biological identities are coeval with the colonial encounter and are, therefore, sensitive to the political and economic histories of the colonizer and colonized. Through a contrapuntal reading of postcolonial Philippines and Korea, I conclude that women and their bodies are intricately interlinked within the circulation, flux, and flow of colonialism and nation making, thus becoming biological citizens par excellence. As the internal and external pressures on the nation change, such as decolonization, nationalization, and globalization, so do the "kinds" of female bodies the nation needs.