Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines

Sony Coráñez Bolton

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Crip Colony

Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines

Sony Coráñez Bolton

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2023

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About this book

In Crip Colony, Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability.

Author / Editor information

Sony Coráñez Bolton is Assistant Professor of Spanish, American studies, and Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College.

Reviews

“Sony Corañez Bolton’s Crip Colony is a theoretically sophisticated contribution to the current surge in Filipinx American studies scholarship.”

-- Martin Joseph Ponce Society for U.S. Intellectual History

"In this stunning theoretical and archival work, Sony Coráñez Bolton dives into the interstices of global colonial strategies and postcolonial projects by re-examining culturally significant Philippine images and narratives using the lenses of race, disability, and queerness. It is a monumental feat that begins with something small: a childhood memory of his mother using three languages— Spanish, English, and Tagalog—that lets him map out his own positionality as a mestizo Filipinx American professor of Spanish."

-- Anna Felicia C. Sanchez Southeast Asian Studies

"Crip Colony accomplishes and articulates a critical remapping of the Philippines and other spaces. Advocating for Filipinx and Latinx bodies to refuse disabling imperial diagnoses, this book contributes to postcolonial, disability, and Filipinx studies and will influence related fields for years to come."

-- Drew Trinidad GLQ

"Suffice to say, Crip Colony will make a lasting contribution to Philippine, American, and what we could call global Latinx studies. Coráñez Bolton certainly sets the highest standard for the study of modern Spanish-language Philippine literature."
-- Paula C. Park Philippine Studies

"The contribution of Crip Colony that speaks the most to me is how it shows the ableist mandate of 'benevolent rehabilitation' that still underlies anticolonial calls for sovereignty, autonomy, and development. . . . A humbling, monumental, and exciting intellectual contribution that proposes new critical vocabularies and that opens the door widely for future scholarship and reflection."
-- Laura J. Torres-Rodríguez Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies

"The key intervention Crip Colony makes is in its deployment of theoretical insights from disability studies to excavate the ableist logics underpinning the Filipinx colony. . . . The use of disability studies in a Southeast Asian context— in the case of Crip Colony, colonial Philippines—is thus a welcome addition to the field."
-- Kuansong Victor Zhuang Journal of Asian Studies

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Crip Colonial Critique: reading mestizaje from the borderlands to the Philippines Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
One. Benevolent Rehabilitation and the Colonial Bodymind: Filipinx American studies as disability studies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	33
Two. Mad María Clara: the queer aesthetics of mestizaje and compulsory able-mindedness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	67
Three. Filipino Itineraries, Orientalizing Impairments: Chinese foot-binding and the crip coloniality of travel literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	99
Four. A Colonial Model of Disability: running amok in the mad colonial archive of the Philippines Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	131
Epilogue. A Song from Subic: racial disposability and the intimacy of cultural translation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	162
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	171
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	187
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	197

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

February 15, 2023

eBook ISBN:

9781478024187

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478024187

eBook ISBN: 9781478024187

Keywords for this book

2024 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize Winner; American Studies Association book award winners; ASA Book Awards

Audience(s) for this book

For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research

Crip Colony

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

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