Dissertation
UNSETTLING THE RHETORICS OF THE POLITICS OF FILIPINOS ON GUÅHAN
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2020
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/100060
Abstract
In 1995, I released a musical album and faced criticism for calling myself an island girl, because I am Filipino and not CHamoru, one of the Guåhan’s indigenous people. Through the years, I have become more conscious of how my ways of knowing and being are primarily a colonial experience, and what I am particularly interested in is how this colonial experience is realized and enacted on an island situated among other colonized. This dissertation is a rhetorical analysis of how Filipinos on Guåhan enunciate ourselves in matters of self, community, and politics, as colonial settlers. Using Walter Mignolo’s theoretical framework of enunciation to delink from Western epistemologies, I foreground the complex, intertwined histories of colonization in the Philippines and in Guåhan, the shared experience of colonial legacies on the island, and the social movements that demonstrate a shared commitment toward decolonization. This work draws on a range of research methods, including being a participant observer, rhetorically analyzing the texts and movements emerging from a community that I myself identify with, and, most importantly, studying ongoing dialogue between the Filipino community on Guåhan and the public. Filipinos on Guåhan together navigate belonging, culture, community, and politics discursively, and decolonial epistemologies unsettle these discourses. My purpose in studying the rhetorics of the politics of my community is two-fold: (1) to explore the possibilities of contributing productively and respectfully to a decolonial epistemology on Guåhan and (2) to frame decolonial activism in a critical collective subjectivity that delinks from the colonial matrix of power and re-members concepts of home, community, nation, and liberation with inafa’maolek—the foundation of CHamoru culture predicated on respect, generosity, and reciprocity.
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Details
- Title
- UNSETTLING THE RHETORICS OF THE POLITICS OF FILIPINOS ON GUÅHAN
- Creators
- Tabitha Caser Espina
- Contributors
- Victor Villanueva (Advisor)Ashley Boyd (Committee Member)Rory Ong (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 158
- Identifiers
- 99900581413501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation