Carlos Bulosan and a collective outline for Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies

Within this political climate, what can we gain in returning to Carlos Bulosan?

As an activist-scholar formation called the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective (CFFSC), we believe Carlos Bulosan is indispensable in equipping our contemporary defiance to the neoliberal onslaught against US ethnic studies that has contained the field’s emancipatory potential through a toothless rhetoric of individualism and multiculturalism.

As an activist-scholar formation called the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective (CFFSC) we take the position that Carlos Bulosan is indispensable for an emerging multidisciplinary field that is equipped in defying the neoliberal onslaught against ethnic studies in the United States and the unbridled racism most evident in the ongoing US "wars of terrorism" that haunt people of color throughout the world.

We take seriously Bulosan's insight that "[I]f the writer has any significance, [s]he should write about the world in which [s]he lives: interpret his [her] time and envision the future through his [her] knowledge of historical reality" (On Becoming Filipino 43).

While Bulosan for our times can be taken up in an assortment of ways, for the purpose of this article we draw upon Bulosan's writing and praxis to conceptualize an outline for CFFS that can offer grounded analysis and academic critique.

Read the article on Ateneo Journals Online (opens in a new window).