RECASTING EMPIRE FROM THE EDGES

Empires inevitably promote cultures announcing their moral legitimacy. We all know proclamations of Manifest Destiny, The White Man’s Burden, and Making the World Safe for Democracy. People subjected to imperial power regularly contest such claims—and force conversations and debates that recast empires and lives within them. The United States acted imperially in its expansion across North America in the nineteenth century; it remains imperial in its role at the center of globalization. And for from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, it took a formally imperial role in the Philippines.  

In Subversions of the American Century (Michigan 2015),Adam Lifshey engages Filipino literature written in Spanish as a voice contesting an emerging U.S. empire. In Escribiendo desde  las márgenes: Colonialismo y jesuitas en el siglo XVIII (Siglo XXI 2009) Ivonne del Valle has written on Jesuits and indigenous peoples contesting Spain’s early empire from its margins; she continues to explore cultures challenging and recasting empire in Mexico from times of Spanish rule to the nation’s incorporation into NAFTA.

They will discuss the implications of Lifshey’s new book and its wider implications for cultures of empire and contestation—opening the conversation to include our audience. 

Monday, April 11, 2016 at 5:00pm

Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Intercultural Center, ICC 662 , 37th and O St., N.W., Washington