Abstract:

What is the meaning of nationalism in a world of globalizing interconnections? Does it make sense to see in national integration a “template,” as Thomas Hylland Eriksen puts it, for the processes of globalization? Do nationalist movements challenge colonial hegemony while seeking an accommodation within a global system of states and transnational agencies?

Possible answers to these questions may be gleaned from the writings and personal histories of the nineteenth-century Filipino expatriates called “ilustrados.” Definitions of the term ilustrado include the dispersed group of Filipino educated elite who denounced the dysfunctions and abuses of Spanish colonial rule, who agitated across borders in networks and associations originating outside the Philippines. These Filipino activist intellectuals produced a body of works that illustrate what Benedict Anderson has called a “long-distance” nationalism with reformist or revolutionary implications; what invites closer examination is the manner in which this cadre of nationalist thinkers, orators and authors issued a call for a new cosmopolitanism based on notions of new ethnic identities and global socioeconomic justice.

Beginning with a reflection on Juan Luna’s painting Spain Guiding the Philippines to the Light of 1887 and considering Nick Joaquin’s thesis on the formation of the Philippine culture as an Hispanic process, Professor Matibag will go on to survey seminal contributions to the discourse of Philippine nationalism in the works of Juan Luna, Pedro Paterno, José Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar and Apolinario Mabini. All makers of a modern Philippines, these ilustrados sought to advance the representation of a “colony” as a “nation,” at the same time demonstrating the way in which nationalism, by a broadening of political culture and espousal of universal values, participated in the processes of an early globalization.
 

Speaker:

Eugenio Matibag, professor of Spanish in Iowa State University’s Department of World Languages and Cultures, was born in Cavite and grew up in Southern California. He has published research on Latin American and Philippine literature in the journals Revista Hispánica Moderna, Humanities Diliman, Catauro, Postmodern Culture, The Journal of Caribbean Studies, Dispositio, Hispamérica, and in various anthologies and encyclopedias. His two books are Afro-Cuban Religious Experience (1996) and Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint (2003). He is currently at work on a study that examines the discourse of Philippine nationalism in the context of globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Moderator: Caroline HAU, CSEAS, Kyoto University