The Filipina's Breast

Abstract

The Filipina's Breast S avag er y, D o ci l i t y, a n D t h e er ot i c S o f t h e a m er i c a n em p i r e Nerissa S. BalceThe raiding of women has always been the dream and the obsession of the total victor. These raided bodies are the spoils of victory, the warrior's reward.-Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem

Dismissal, legibility and the normalising of colonial misrecognition

“…While Dotson's analysis pertains to a contemporary moment, her depiction of epistemic silencing can be seen in a range of examples under colonialism − indeed, we could argue that epistemic silencing is one of the main stories of colonialism: whether the British missionaries' shaming of native women for being barebreasted; or the banning of 'sati' as if it were a widespread practice among Indians in the eighteenth century, which it was decidedly not; or the regulation of women's sexuality under a range of colonised territories, whether from fears of prostitution, overpopulation, or other forms of the colonial regulation of sexuality. 14 The example of Muhammad's encounter with the Michigan judiciary is part of a long history of the epistemic silencing of Black women and women of colour with regard to cultural and religious practices. This form of epistemic silencing involves the refusal to consider seriously the grievances or discrimination claims of BIPOC women by judicial or cultural authorities.…”

His Name Was Don Francisco Muro: Reconstructing an Image of American Imperialism

“…Whenever the archives allow, historians need to remove the anonymity of the subjects in colonial photography that Balce says was instrumental in American imperialism. 20 Over the course of a career lasting more than thirty years, first as a scientist, later as a colonial administrator and businessman, Worcester traveled throughout the Philippines and made several thousand photographs, ranging from landscape views to photographs of buildings to ethnographic portraits intended to reveal and represent the country's ethno-racial and cultural diversity. His ethnographic portraits are both the most numerous and the most controversial images from his photographic career; his primary photographic focus was on non-Christian Filipinos-the Muslims of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago and various animist cultural groups found throughout the islands.…”