Racial Formations/Critical Transformations

by Epifanio San Juan Jr.

Deploying the resources of critical theory, semiotics, and historical analysis, the author offers a global critique of multiculturalism, ethnicity-based social studies, orthodox Marxism, and postmodern approaches from the perspective of the struggles of people of color for representation and self-determination.

163 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1992

About the author

Epifanio San Juan, Jr. is a Filipino cultural critic and public intellectual. His works span a broad spectrum of fields and disciplines, from cultural studies, comparative literary scholarship, ethnic and racial studies, postcolonial theory, semiotics to philosophical inquiries in historical materialism.

San Juan applies a Gramscian approach and a critical Marxist optic on cultural events and texts in the Philippine historical process of national liberation. He is also notable for being the first Filipino male intellectual to have engaged with feminist discourse in his "Filipina Insurgency: Writing Against Patriarchy" (Giraffe Books, 1999). In 1999, San Juan received the Centennial Award for Achievement in Literature from the Cultural Center of the Philippines because of his contributions to Filipino and Filipino American Studies.

Reviews

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a complex rendition of applying Said's Culture and Imperialism approach to US imperial hegemony over the Philippines, Pacific Rim, and Latin American, including the Native peoples of the American Southwest.