The Filipino Primitive: Accumulation and Resistance in the American Museum

247 Pages·2017·5.16 MB·English

by  Sarita Echavez See

The Filipino Primitive

The Filipino Primitive
Accumulation and Resistance in the
American Museum
Sarita Echavez See
NEW Y ORK UNIVERS ITY P RESS
New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
www.nyupress.org
© 2017 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the
author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or
changed since the manuscript was prepared.
ISBN: 978-1-4798-4266-7 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-4798-2505-9 (paperback)
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Accumulating the Primitive 1
Part I. The Ar chive: Dispossession by A ccumulation
1. Progress through the Museum: Knowledge Nullius and the
University of Michigan Museum of Natural History 25
2. Foreign in a Domestic Space: Progressivist Imperialism and
the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum 55
Part II. The R epertoire of Dispossession
3. Lessons from the Illiterate: Carlos Bulosan and the
Staged Wages of Romance 99
4. The Booty and Beauty of Contemporary Filipino/American
Art: Stephanie Syjuco’s RAIDERS 141
Conclusion: Accumulation Now and Then 171
Notes 189
Bibliography 211
Index 225
About the Author 237
v

Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Stephanie Syjuco, Lonnie Carter, and Ma- Yi Theater
Company, especially Ralph Peña and Jorge Ortell, for their brilliant
work, and I thank them for their kind forbearance as I have tried to do
justice to their creations. For their generosity in spirit and time, I am
grateful to the staff at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural
History, especially John Klausmeyer and Amy Harris; and the staff at
the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum, especially Barb MacGowan and
Bobbie Ramsey. I thank the Dean’s Office of the College of Humani-
ties, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California Riverside
for a timely grant that helped to fund book production. Special thanks
to Joshua Sung, Jason Corañez Bolton, Dakota Lindsi Tu, and Alex
Ratanapratum for their research assistance; Mark Gjukich, Matt Zugale,
and Lynda Fitzgibbon for permission to reproduce their photography;
Bradley Cardozo and the other members of the Ethnography As Activ-
ism Subgroup on Repatriation at the University of Michigan for their
insistence on the merging of politics and research; and my colleagues in
Media and Cultural Studies at U.C. Riverside, who make the day job a
joyous challenge.
Eric Zinner helped me see that there was indeed a there there before I
could discern anything. Fred Moten, Bakirathi Mani, Lucy Burns, Karen
Tongson, Thea Tagle, Alexandra Dalferro, and Chairat Polmuk kindly
invited me to give talks at their respective campuses that helped me to de-
velop the book. Paula Chakravartty, Denise da Silva, and Lorenzo Vera-
cini provided excellent editorial feedback on earlier essay versions. Allan
Isaac and again Denise da Silva provided feedback both generous and
sharp at a later critical stage. Clare Counihan’s editorial acumen is won-
drous and frightening and helped the chapters take on shape in ways
that allowed me to despair less. I have the finest of writing companions,
those who continue to believe in the importance and even primacy of
talking about rather than merely reading one another’s work: Marie Lo,
vii
viii | Acknowledgments
Sadia Abbas, David Lloyd, Kimberly Alidio, Nadine Naber, Jodi Kim,
Karlyn Koh, and Christine So; the “Hangouts” Faye Chen, Anthony
Ocampo, and Jason Magobo Perez; the FSP gang Lorena Llosa, Nico-
las Zegre, Hall Bjornstad, and Joy Gayles; and the PTF gang of women
professors at U.C. Riverside. Alan Krohn talked me into doing the writ-
ing. And Hiram Pérez has helped me keep hope alive all these years
we’ve known each other by refusing to discuss the writing. For their love
and support throughout, I am profoundly grateful to my parents, Ani-
cia Echavez See and See Chak Mun, and my brother and sister- in- law,
Gerald and Amy See. David Lloyd does it all— reads the writing, talks
about the writing, doesn’t talk about the writing, walks away from the
writing— and it is my luck to be able to learn daily from him how to give,
so thoughtfully and unthinkingly.
Introduction
Accumulating the Primitive
They must be soldiers or militiamen. They are armed white men. They
must be readying themselves for frontier war or at the very least a
skirmish with dangerous savages. But they are not soldiers. They are
scientists. This is a portrait of a professor encircled by his students. In
the 1870s the amateur naturalist Joseph Beal Steere left his home in
Michigan and embarked on a circumglobal expedition that included
the Philippines and that resulted in a donation of sixty thousand
specimens— botanical, zoological, and anthropological— to his alma
mater, the University of Michigan. This massive donation prompted the
university to award Steere its first honorary doctorate and to build its
first natural history museum building. In 1887, the year of this portrait
Figure I.1. Photograph displayed in the Philippine exhibit at the University of
Michigan Museum of Natural History, Ann Arbor. Photograph by Mark Gjukich.
1