Reading the West/Writing the East : Studies in Comparative Literature and Culture

With the emergence of revolutionary nationalism in the Philippines in the last two decades, the fate of liberal elite democracy introduced by the United States, its former colonial master, hangs in the balance. This extraordinary achievement in comparative cultural studies maps the genealogy of this crisis. It addresses the ethics and politics of ideas and languages migrating to and from metropolis to periphery. Mediated through a historical critique of United States-Philippines literary transactions, this groundbreaking work endeavors to articulate a Third World perspective on the impact of Eurocentric power on a unique indigenous tradition of resistance. It offers a critique of hegemonic ideology and its symbolic exchanges with the praxis of oppositional texts. What results is the emancipatory project of Philippine writing - a popular-democratic vision of national liberation.