What do the Marcos dictatorship, the Cold War, and Filipino American subjectivity have in common? In Postcolonial Configurations, Josen Masangkay Diaz argues that these historical phenomena are all rooted in a postcolonial liberal order that remains deeply racialized, extractive, and complicit with authoritarianism. How we remember and recount them, she suggests, implicates us in the ongoing making and unmaking of US geopolitical domination in the transpacific. Bridging these scales of analysis—the geopolitical and the subjective—is a heavy lift both theoretically and empirically. Yet, with precise language, incisive theory, and an impressive range of sources, Diaz succeeds in developing a novel approach to transpacific history.
Postcolonial Configurations begins with the memorialization of the bayani (heroes or martyrs) who lost their lives resisting the Marcos regime. Of particular concern are two Filipino American labor activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, whose 1982 assassination in Seattle involved a conspiracy among US labor...
