New episode of Imagine Otherwise is out!
In episode 148, I sit down with Josen Masangkay Diaz, an associate professor of ethnic studies and women’s and gender studies at the University of San Diego and a core member of Asian Solidarity Collective.
Josen’s new book Postcolonial Configurations: Dictatorship, the Racial Cold War, and Filipino America analyzes Filipino American social formations through a study of Philippine–US Cold War politics.
In our conversation, Josen and I explore the role of race, nation, and gender during the Cold War, particularly how they were renegotiated in the wake of decolonization and the postcolonial nation-building projects that followed.
We discuss Josen’s research into how postcolonial projects undertaken during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship as well as during various US presidencies transformed relations in the Transpacific. These projects bound together cultural diplomacy, immigration law, and humanitarianism with struggles over political and economic influence in the region.
We also delve into the politics of what it means to name and remember the intimate interactions between fascist authoritarianism and liberal democracy.
Memory is something we get into in detail, both the power relations inherent in what is remembered and how—on both national and transnational scales—but also how memory and memorialization are key sites for resistance as folks remake what Filipino America means today.
You can catch the episode on your favorite podcast player or the Ideas on Fire website here: Josen Masangkay Diaz on Postcolonial Configurations
