E. San Juan, Jr – författare

Opposing the orthodoxies of establishment postcolonialism, Beyond Postcolonial Theory posits acts of resistance and subversion by people of color as central to the unfolding dialogue with Western hegemony. The testimonies and signifying practices of Rigoberta Menchu, C.L.R. James, various "minority" writers in the United States, and intellectuals from Africa, Latin America, and Asia are counterposed against the dogmas of contingency, borderland nomadism, panethnicity, and the ideology of identity politics and transcultural postmodern pastiche. Reappropriating ideas from Gramsci, Bakhtin, Althusser, Freire, and others in the radical democratic tradition, San Juan deploys them to recover the memory of national liberation struggles (Fanon, Cabral, Che Guevara) on the face of the triumphal march of globalized capitalism.

In the Wake of Terror inquires into the historical conditions and possibilities of radical change in the post-9/11 world of globalized capitalism. E. San Juan, Jr. focuses on numerous problems, including those of racism, class antagonisms, and subalternity in the United States. Global violence is also examined in relation to the anti-imperialist struggle of diverse communities in the Philippines. Analytic and critical,In the Wake of Terror is wide-ranging in scope and provocative in challenging orthodox opinions on the nature of neoliberal transnational domination and postmodernist multiculturalism. Its interdisciplinary, cross-cultural engagement with urgent contemporary issues aims to "disturb the peace" and usher in an interrogation of predatory hegemonic assumptions. Written from a historical materialist perspective, this work of cultural criticism is of interest to the academic or lay person.

In Racism and Cultural Studies E. San Juan Jr. offers a historical-materialist critique of practices in multiculturalism and cultural studies. Rejecting contemporary theories of inclusion as affirmations of the capitalist status quo, San Juan envisions a future of politically equal and economically empowered citizens through the democratization of power and the socialization of property. Calling U.S. nationalism the new “opium of the masses,” he argues that U.S. nationalism is where racist ideas and practices are formed, refined, and reproduced as common sense and consensus.Individual chapters engage the themes of ethnicity versus racism, gender inequality, sexuality, and the politics of identity configured with the discourse of postcoloniality and postmodernism. Questions of institutional racism, social justice, democratization, and international power relations between the center and the periphery are explored and analyzed. San Juan fashions a critique of dominant disciplinary approaches in the humanities and social sciences and contends that “the racism question” functions as a catalyst and point of departure for cultural critiques based on a radical democratic vision. He also asks urgent questions regarding globalization and the future of socialist transformation of “third world” peoples and others who face oppression.As one of the most notable cultural theorists in the United States today, San Juan presents a provocative challenge to the academy and other disciplinary institutions. His intervention will surely compel the attention of all engaged in intellectual exchanges where race/ethnicity serves as an urgent focus of concern.

This innovative analysis of the Philippine historical crisis is accompanied by a critique of a U.S. racial formation in which Filipinos constitute the largest Asian group. Literary and artistic expressions by Filipinos manifest a new emerging identity defined by the multicultural debates crossing the Pacific, transforming the Philippines into a borderland of East and West. Caught betwixt the Asian continent and the hegemonic power of the United States, the Philippines occupies a contested space between past and present. Between the memory of colonial experience and an emergent nation-making dream, can a meaningful future be envisioned? This provocative book explores this problematic zone of difference through a critique of the Western production of knowledge in the context of local resistance. While Americanization of the Filipino continues, the encounter of globalizing and nationalizing forces has precipitated a profound political and social crisis whose outcome may be a paradigmatic lesson for many so-called third world countries. What happens in this Southeast Asian nation may foretell the fate of the ideals of democracy and social justice now beleaguered by the market and the unrelenting commodification of everyday life.

Carlos Bulosan—Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the United States: A Critical Appraisal is an in-depth, critical evaluation of Bulosan's major works in the context of the sociopolitical changes that configured his sensibility during the Depression, the united-front mobilization prior to World War II, and the Cold War witch-hunting of the fifties. Unprecedented for its thorough historical-materialist analysis of the symbolic dynamics of the texts, this book uses original research into the Sanora Babb papers that have never before been linked to Bulosan. Sophisticated dialectical analysis of the complex contradictions in Bulosan’s life is combined with a politico-ethical reading of U.S.-Philippines relations. San Juan takes the unorthodox view that Bulosan’s career was not an immigrant success story but instead a subversive project of an organic intellectual of a colonized nation-in-the-making. Today, Bulosan is hailed as a revolutionary Filipino writer, unparalleled in the racialized, conflicted history of the Philippines as a colony/dependency of the United States. This book follows San Juan’s pioneering 1972 study Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle.

Carlos Bulosan—Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the United States: A Critical Appraisal is an in-depth, critical evaluation of Bulosan's major works in the context of the sociopolitical changes that configured his sensibility during the Depression, the united-front mobilization prior to World War II, and the Cold War witch-hunting of the fifties. Unprecedented for its thorough historical-materialist analysis of the symbolic dynamics of the texts, this book uses original research into the Sanora Babb papers that have never before been linked to Bulosan. Sophisticated dialectical analysis of the complex contradictions in Bulosan’s life is combined with a politico-ethical reading of U.S.-Philippines relations. San Juan takes the unorthodox view that Bulosan’s career was not an immigrant success story but instead a subversive project of an organic intellectual of a colonized nation-in-the-making. Today, Bulosan is hailed as a revolutionary Filipino writer, unparalleled in the racialized, conflicted history of the Philippines as a colony/dependency of the United States. This book follows San Juan’s pioneering 1972 study Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle.

Praised by Bertrand Russell as “one of the most original minds” and “certainly the greatest American thinker ever,” Charles Sanders Peirce invented “pragmaticism.” Vulgarized by William James and others, Peirce’s revolutionary semiotic recognizes chance, fortuitous happenings, serendipity, in understanding lawful paradigm-shifts in history. Peirce’s thought envisions a process-oriented community of inquirers engaged in confronting urgent social problems by clarifying the groundwork of meanings, beliefs, purposes, ideologies. E. San Juan’s project seeks to excavate the radical resonance of Peirce’s desire for “concrete reasonableness,” an ideal realized in the philosopher’s endeavor to fuse scientific theory and collective praxis, nature and the universal human potential still chained in alienated labor. Peirce’s hypothesis of transforming the conduct of our lives remains not only to be analyzed and interpreted further but also tested in actual practice by future generations of inquirers and activists.

Offers a radical, "Third World" approach to current debates on canon revision, multiculturalism, Eurocentrism, and reforms in education and culture.In Part One, the author examines what is at stake in the complex relations between theory and practice in exchanges involving Paul de Man, Mikhail Bakhtin, Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, and others. In Part Two, San Juan focuses on the materialist aesthetics of Louis Althusser and Pierre Macherey, examining their resonance in a Hemingway novel and in the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid. In Part Three, the author conducts an appraisal of James Baldwin's worldview, the textualization of the Asian diaspora in the United States, and the interface between postmodern themes and "postcolonial" sensibilities.The ultimate project of the author is to envision the emergence of a new field called "world cultural studies" from a radical "Third World" perspective. The transition from Western "hegemony" to the transformative, oppositional inquiry of "Others" epitomizes the itinerary of San Juan's exploration of the discipline once called litterae humaniores but now reconceived as the praxis of critical transgressions.

Examines the project of Filipino self-determination in the context of capitalist globalization.Granted formal independence in 1946, the Philippines serves as a battleground between the neoliberal project of capitalist globalization and the enduring aspiration of Filipinos for national self-determination. More than ten million Filipino workers-over one-tenth of the country's total population-work as contract workers in all parts of the world. How did this "model" colony of the United States devolve into an impoverished, war-torn neocolonial hinterland, a provider of cheap labor and raw materials for the rest of the world? In Toward Filipino Self-Determination, E. San Juan Jr. explores the historical, cultural, and political formation of the Filipino diaspora. By focusing on the work of significant Filipino intellectuals and activists, including Carlos Bulosan and Philip Vera Cruz, as well as the issues of gender and language for workers in the United States, San Juan provides a historical-materialist reading of social practices, discourses, and institutions that explain the contradictions characterizing Filipino life in both the United States and in the Philippines.