In this highly original study, Michael Hawkins's Making Moros intervenes in two distinct scholarly literatures: the influential field of postcolonial critique defined by scholars like Ann Laura Stoler and Dipesh Chakrabarty, and the more specialized niche of Mindanao studies. In terms of postcolonial studies, Hawkins argues that the emphasis on the contingencies, tensions, and subaltern appropriations of colonial discourses can sometimes understate the ways in which “broad imperial cultures, discourses, and policies are conceived and developed at the core with remarkable consistency and persistence” (p. 14). In the second of these fields, Mindanao studies, Hawkins seeks to challenge the “strong teleological reading” of the region's history through the prism of ongoing conflicts between “Muslim separatist organizations and the Republic of the Philippines” by restricting his temporal focus to the fourteen-year period of U.S. military rule (p. 10).
To realize these interventions, Hawkins focuses on the intellectual and epistemological foundations of...
