Decolonization continues to be an act of confrontation with a hegemonic system of thought; it is hence a process of considerable historical and cultural liberation. As such, decolonization becomes the contestation of all dominant forms and structures, whether they be linguistic, discursive, or ideological.
-Samia Nehrez
Antonio Gramsci defines hegemony as the consolidation of power through the coercion and consent of the governed (Omi and Winant 67.) There can be no perfect a description of the imperial and colonial relationship between the United States and the Philippines than that. While formal control of the archipelago was given back to the Philippine people on July 4 of 1946, a date selected to further ingrain US dominance post-colonialism, it takes little research to provide evidence that the US still wields a considerable amount of influence in both the politics and society of the Philippines to this date, or in other words the two countries maintain a globalized or neo-imperial/colonial relationship. In his work, Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said states: “imperialism did not end, did not suddenly become ‘past,’ once decolonization had set in motion the dismantling of the classical empires” (San Juan Jr. 65.) While state sponsored terrorism and repression have contained numerous movements for independence and equality in the Philippines; media, education, and other institutions and sites of power have psychologically impacted the Philippine people creating what is described by many as the “colonial mentality,” which could also be articulated as the consent of the colonized. It goes without saying the condition of the Pilipina/o diaspora, or even the very fact there is one, is a direct result of the legacy left behind by colonialism. Not only is this relationship both racialized and based upon class, but in considering Pilipinas, it is also gendered and sexualized; creating what Patricia Hill Collins describes as a Matrix of Domination (Hill Collins.) To further analyze this relationship I had interviewed my mother about her life. Through both her responses and reactions to some of the questions, I was able to receive insight into both the effects of the hegemonic relationship between the US and the Philippines in creating a matrix which situates Pilipinas at the bottom and how this and other forms of internal oppression become translated into future generations. Needless to say, the project became not only a critical examination of the life of my mother, but of how many of the events and beliefs that faceted my life went previously unquestioned.
My mother, Nenita Manansala Macapinlac, was born Nenita Miranda Manansala June 16, 1959 in Lubao, Pampanga in the Philippines. She was raised in the town of Santa Cruz which today, like much of the province, is very rural. While being part of the lower class, her mother only attaining a second grade level education, she was able to complete her associate’s degree at a local agricultural college. As part of the benevolent assimilation program placed by the United States at the start of the 20th century, public education was one of the main institutions immediately implemented. Through these institutions many of the peasantry became able to have access to education which was previously reserved for the elite during the Spanish colonial period. However, this education was highly westernized and created an image or, what Benedict Anderson coined, an “imagined community” of what the United States was (Anderson). On May 19, 1980, at the age of 21, she had married my father, Pablo Manalansan Macapinlac. Traditionally within Spain and her colonies, people take their mother’s maiden name as the middle name. While more considerate than other European nations, this is still a patriarchal practice as the surname of the male has dominance over the female’s surname. My mother’s marriage to my father is significant as it is the catalyst for her move from the Philippines to the United States, as he was newly enlisted into the US Navy.
Seven months pregnant with my kuya, my mother moved to Oakland, California on April 1982. This was due to the fact that my father was stationed at the Navy base in Alameda. When asked why she did not stay in the Philippines she replied with an implicit tone of common sense: “To join your dad because he was working here [in America] in the military.” For my parents, the goal had been to raise their family in the “States,” not only due to notions of the imagined community within the United States which they were raised upon, but simply because the living conditions in their former home were so poor. The very nature of the Philippines as a Third World country is explained by its history as a colony to two imperial powers. While my parent’s subsequent move away from the Philippines can be read as a form of colonial subjugation, in considering the situation of Overseas Contract Workers (OCWs) and the desire of global capitalism in destroying the nuclear family in order to have a worker purely dedicated to their specific job; her move in order to protect our family can also be read as a form of resistance. While it can be read as a form of resistance in terms of imperialism, at the same time this prescription of women as guardians of the family can also be seen as a form of submission to gender roles.
From Oakland, her family was moved to Norfolk, Virginia where my ate and I were born, and then another move to Honolulu, Hawai’i. From the time of her marriage in 1980 until 1987, my mother had dedicated her full time to the formation of her family. This corresponds to Anne McClintock’s analysis of the Cult of Domesticity which is the prescription of Westernized notions of the definition of true womanhood to women of the Third World (McClintock 34.) Without a doubt at the time, my mother had felt her place was in the private sphere of the home and that the duty of raising the family rested upon her back rather than her partner’s, or in other words a gendered division of labor. It was not until 1987 that she had decided to work at a sewing company, I can recall some of the clothing I wore as a youth as being sewn by my mother. Once again, this profession was a prescribed role for women. After our move to San Diego, another show of patriarchy as the family moves with the father, and after the birth of my younger sister; my mother would take another domestic role of babysitting other children in addition to my little sister. These other children would be from family friends who were also working class, which shows the nature of the extended Pilipina/o families. While the prescription of gender roles is fundamental to the patriarchal nature of American society, the standards of living coupled with the size of her family demanded that my mother enter the work force, which could also be described by McClintock as the reinvention of gender (McClintock 34.) In addition to working a full time job, she would also still be expected to perform such domestic tasks as preparing meals due to the fact that my father would often be away from the home at sea. While this would equate to the proverbial “second shift” performed by many working women, unlike the general stereotype her’s would be performed prior to her formal job as she worked the graveyard shifts. Other such domestic duties would be regulated to the children.
It was not until the mid 1990s that my mother would formally enter the work force. Before becoming employed in her current job she had a short stint working as a maid at the local Marriot Hotel. While not so much within California, it should be noted that the presence of Pilipinas working in hotels as maids is highly prevalent within Hawai’i, which also brings notions of gendered roles and similarities between OCWs, although my mother did not specify if that commonality had impacted her choosing that career. After around six months a family friend had referred her to where she currently works, which is Presidio Components. The use of networking is also described as a form of social capital, a more intangible capital as opposed to the more widely known forms of industrial and financial capital. When asked what she does, she had specified her job was as a “term operator, which covers the electrodes of semiconductor chips with silver and gold ink.” Essentially she stated it was an “electronics manufacturing company.” I had asked her whether the education she received was involved with her career, in which she responded that it did not. In viewing her surrounding co-workers, I had noticed that they were all primarily Pilipinas with very few Pilipinos. The majority of the workforce was composed of not only friends, but of family members as well, some which would be classified as second generation; my kuya being employed there for four years until recently. In terms of socioeconomic status, and social mobility I asked what her wages were and if there was any possibility for upward mobility in her company. She responded that she made around $10.30 an hour and that there was barely any mobility. She had also responded that she had been with the company for nearly nine years now. While much discussion of Pilipina-Americans is directed towards professionals and domestic workers, there is also a large mass that work in both textile and electronic manufacturing, which is described by Chandra Mohanty. Mohanty describes third-world women in the electronics industry as located “as mothers, wives, and supplementary workers” (Mohanty 15.) This is not only a racialized but gendered division of labor in which the “married woman” defines the job parameters. The management of the company my mother works for consists mainly of white males, with the only female being the wife of the owner, as the company is family owned. There are many factors which may contribute to the abundance of Pilipinas that work for the company: Pilipinas being a part of the model minority stereotype, the fact the company is family owned may also be a reason for them welcoming relatives and friends of workers, it can also be interpreted as a modern day “White Man’s Burden” to give needy Pilipinas work in order to help them and their families out. Ultimately, the reason why my mother does not seek to become further educated to move up the socioeconomic ladder is due to the fact that up until now three of her children were still in college, there are only two now, and that her working was critical in maintaining the financial stability of her family. This restriction is not only imposed by her gendered role as family guardian, but also by the socioeconomic level of her family.
In returning to the theory of hegemony, while power is gained by coercion it is not consolidated unless there is also consent; a feeling also shared by Machiavelli. In addition to formally controlling the government and people through physical means, colonial powers also colonized the minds of their subjects in order to consolidate control. The effects of colonization and hegemony equate to the re-engineering of illogical concepts into beliefs that are not merely ordinary, but common sense or even fundamental to our existence. As such, emigration from the home country is natural, children being raised by people other than their parents is natural, women taking jobs below their education level is natural, mothers leaving their families to work in another country for decades is natural. We as people are left to believe that our current conditions are the way that it has been, the way that it should be, and the way it will always be. In returning to Nehrez, in order to truly decolonize and enter a post-colonial era, we must contest these notions of normativity continuing to confront hegemonic systems of thought and the tangible institutions they form.
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991
McClintock, Anne. “The Lay of the Land-Genealogies of Imperialism,” Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995, pp.21-74
Mohanty, Chandra T. “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity,” Feminist Genealogies, Colonial legacies, Democratic Futures. New York: Routledge, 1997
Omi, Michael and Winant, H. Racial Formation in the United States, From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 1994
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990, pp. 221-238
San Juan, E. Jr.
After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontations.
Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000
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