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Born Of Two Koreas, Of Human Blood: Monstrosity And The Discourse Of Humanity And Pacifism In The Film Bulgasari, Jungman Park

Kritika Kultura

As in the Western world, Korea has a variety of mythical monsters. Among them is Bulgasari, an iron-eating monster, which will be the main topic of this paper. The monster’s name “Bulgasari” has a paradoxical meaning in Korean, which is “cannot be killed but can be killed by fire.” The meaning of the name represents the wide gamut of ambivalent identity ranging from physical to metaphorical aspects of the monster. It also provides a uniquely Korean reception and interpretation of being monstrous as distinctive from the archetypal imagery and general understanding of monstrosity as “enduring evil,” as seen in most …

Unreading The Novel, Or Experiencing Ninotchka Rosca’S State Of War As Mythopoeia, Katherine D. Ojano

Kritika Kultura

The Filipino novel which arose in the 19th century is understood to have consolidated the nationalistic spirit that fueled the anti-colonial revolution against Spain. Contemporary writing drew from the radical lessons of the past as a tradition of resistance writing intensified and grew. Yet as Ninotchka Rosca’s State of War (1988) shows, the novel, despite or alongside its politics, also brings to the fore formal and substantial problems of excess and incoherence. This paper explores the instances of the mythical that bring about these points of incomprehensibility, even scattered, perhaps, absolute subversions of the genre and the nationalist cause in …

Migration, Imagination, And Transformation: Revisiting E. San Juan’S Carlos Bulosan And The Imagination Of The Class Struggle, Michael D. Pante, Leo Angelo Nery

Kritika Kultura

This paper argues that an examination of the historiographical trajectory of scholarly works on the Philippine peasantry, particularly peasants in Luzon provinces, and transnational migration can deepen our understanding of Carlos Bulosan’s life and works. Using E. San Juan, Jr.’s Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle as the analytic focus in pursuing the argument, we aim to contextualize Bulosan’s life story within the larger framework of the history of Philippine peasant movements and draw connections between his life in America and the contemporary experience of Filipino migrants. To reach these objectives, we need to understand San Juan’s …

German Art About War Today And A Century Ago: A Curator’S View, Martin Bayer

Kritika Kultura

The First World War was a true caesura for mankind, also including the world of art. In its beginning, most German artists supported it, similar to many other intellectuals. The realities of the first global war turned artists such as Ernst Barlach into pacifists. Especially in Germany, expressionism was often chosen to address the horrors of war. Today, only a few artists are still well-known, such as Otto Dix, while the majority and their powerful works need to be rediscovered. German pacifism is deeply rooted in the dreadful experiences of both World Wars, and not the least of bearing the …

Exorcising Communist Specters And Witch Philosophers: The Struggle For Academic Freedom Of 1961, Preciosa De Joya

Kritika Kultura

In re-discovering the scholars who pioneered in the practice and teaching of Philosophy in the Philippines, this paper unravels the story and character of UP Philosophy professor Ricardo Pascual in the context of the witch hunts of 1961. While indicted for his alleged communism, the real issues that led to Pascual’s trial were his professed agnosticism and his advocacy of secular liberalism, which was a response to the sectarian aggression threatening academic freedom in the 1930s, and again, in the 1950s. Pascual was, however, not the only one at that time to have fallen prey to this insidious tactic of …

Reading Carlos Bulosan/Documenting The Filipino Diaspora: An Editorial Introduction To Writer In Exile/Writer In Revolt: Critical Perspectives On Carlos Bulosan, Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao

Kritika Kultura

This editorial introduction to Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt: Critical Perspectives on Carlos Bulosan (2016) sheds light on the diasporic scope of Bulosan’s literary imagination and the literary scholarship on his diverse body of writing. Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt gathers for the first time nearly sixty years of literary criticism by scholars in the United States and the Philippines on Bulosan, a pioneering twentieth-century Filipino writer in the United States. The editorial introduction highlights the ways in which Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt documents the unfolding of Bulosan’s radical literary imagination which straddles the colonial and neocolonial periods of …

Transforming Theater For The Oppressed: Community Theater As Urban Poor Discourse In Sining Kadamay's Gapok, Michael D. Pante, Leo Angelo Nery

Kritika Kultura

In March 2017, the issue of urban poor housing was exposed on a national scale when thousands of members of the urban poor group Kadamay forcibly occupied nearly 6,000 abandoned housing units meant for members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police in Pandi, Bulacan. Kadamay members were accused of being mendicant anarchists by their critics, while their supporters lauded their determination in demanding, and winning, their rights to housing. While the issue polarized Philippine society, it is evident that the Occupy Pandi movement revitalized urban poor discourse, and brought back to the fore the …

Athens' Shadows, Victor Merriman

Kritika Kultura

This introductory essay attempts to communicate a sense of the articles and artist pages published in this Forum Kritika on Radical Cultural Responses to Crises in Urban Democracy, in the context of a symposium during which some of them were first argued. The contributors theorize relationships between art and protest, and the nature of performance, as well as critiquing interventionist performance projects, among dispatches from the front line of performance as public engagement. It also seeks to convey a sense of how culture—and especially performance—interacts, in Britain, with Project Austerity (2010-present). As culture and cultural workers, respond to neoliberalization, they …

Sultan Suleiman The Magnificent At The Gates Of Vienna, E. San Juan Jr.

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

But For The Apocalypse: Wilfrido Nolledo’S Dark Mirror Of Empire, Ryan Canlas

Kritika Kultura

This essay reads Wilfrido Nolledo’s novel, But for the Lovers (1970), across the rocky terrain in which the postcolonial Anglophone novel intersects with the question of postmodernity. Using Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History, and Forgetting and Fredric Jameson’s exhortation to the critic to “Always historicize!” as my primary theoretical frameworks, I argue against the seemingly common accusation that the “postmodern” Anglophone Filipino novel––of which But for the Lovers is a kind of prototypical example––is incapable of creating a perspective on the political and historical conditions of the Philippines as a postcolonial nation and that it is merely symptomatic of the much …

Introduction By Guest Editor, Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

Reincarnation Of The Pinay Subaltern In Foreign Cinema, Taeyun Yu

Kritika Kultura

This paper explores the paradoxical condition of postcolonial practice in South Korea1 that is, in many ways, complicit with dominant discourses such as nationalism, patriarchy, and global capitalism. In such a condition, what remains obscured is the voice of women that behooves us to hypothesize that the image of diasporic Filipino women in Korean cinema is predetermined by such complicity and is ideologically reincarnated as the subaltern. By conflating two postcolonial concepts, hybridity (Bhabha) and subalternity (Spivak), the study inspects the hypothesis through an analysis of two films that depict diasporic Pinay images: as entertainer in Yangil Choi’s All Under …

Phantom In Paradise: A Philippine Presence In Hollywood Cinema, Joel David

Kritika Kultura

The Philippines’ experience with its last foreign occupant, the US, resulted in an entire clutch of problematic “special relations” that, coupled with the country’s responses to the challenges of self-government, ultimately led to a global dispersal of the population, effectively turning the Philippines into the major Asian nation arguably most reliant on its citizens’ overseas remittances. This paper takes the position that diasporic Filipinos, for a variety of reasons starting with the effectiveness of maintaining unintrusive presences in alien cultures (including the acceptance of menial positions), have possibly developed and have enabled others to perceive them as silent and discreet …

Marking "Austerity": Critique, Purpose And Perfromance, Victor Merriman

Kritika Kultura

This essay attempts to mark the current phase of capitalist neoliberalism, in order to create a space for articulation, in both senses of the word: there is a need both to articulate, as in to connect together ideas, events and their consequences, and to articulate, as in to voice the dynamics, contradictions, and injustices to which they give rise. As Shock Doctrine (Klein 2007), draped in Austerity’s mantle, enters the Common European Home, articulation as voice is an attempt to shatter, not silence, but the white noise generated by the mantra, “There Is No Alternative” (TINA). “Marking ‘Austerity’” sets out …

Memories Of Resistance To Slavery In South-Eastern Tanzania, Nancy Rushohora

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper examines the historical representation and memory of slavery in Tanzania, arguing that the current curriculum predominantly employs a Marxist lens that emphasizes the economic dimensions of slavery while overlooking the complexity of resistance. The study’s objective is to present a more comprehensive understanding of Tanzanian slavery, focusing on forms of resistance at Mgao, a 12th–18th century Swahili site. Methodologically, this study draws on ethnographic accounts, documentary sources, and archaeological findings to uncover diverse acts of defiance, including seeking refuge, negotiating relocation, and engaging in violent confrontations. The results reveal that resistance was a widespread, multi-dimensional phenomenon in Tanzanian …

Codifying Domesticity: The Story Of The Recommended Minimum Requirements For Small Dwelling Construction Of 1923, The Housing Policy Of The Hoover Secretariat, And The Impact On American Residential Architecture, Noah Morris

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fire disasters and health-safety issues led to the widespread adoption of building codes. While the National Board of Fire Underwriters published the National Building Code in 1905, the code did not maintain regulatory consistency across the nation. This lack of consistency across the nation and socio-economic factors contributed to a nation-wide housing shortage of a million units by 1919. During World War I, the government addressed the housing crisis through the United States Housing Corporation and Emergency Fleet Corporation, building public housing based on the ideals of the Garden City Movement.[1] Following the …

Russian Use Of Smart Power To Achieve Northern Sea Route Objectives, Troy Bouffard

Interdisciplinary Studies

This dissertation examines Russia's use of smart power in pursuing its strategic objectives for the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in the Arctic. Through three interconnected articles, it analyzes how Russia combines soft and hard power approaches to assert control over the NSR and legitimize its claims. The first article challenges Russia's legal justification for NSR control by presenting new data on sea ice conditions and navigational risks. The second article explores how Russia's military posture in the Arctic has evolved in response to geopolitical shifts, particularly NATO expansion. The third article investigates Russia's strategic communication efforts to shape international perceptions …

Creating A Digital House Of Knowledge: Ensuring The Continuation And Integrity Of Indigenous Knowledge Transfers In The Digital Era, Jacquelyn C. Cordova

Indigenous Studies

Traditional Indigenous knowledge transfer systems have contributed to the sustainability of highly advanced Indigenous societies since time immemorial. These systems have been purposefully targeted since European arrival to the Americas in the late 1400s and early 1500s, consequently creating barriers for Indigenous Peoples as they strive to conduct their traditional knowledge transfer processes within their communities. These barriers, paired with the continual rise and use of global technologies, have created circumstances where many Native Elders and Knowledge Keepers experience difficulty reaching their youth and community members to ensure the successful transfer of Indigenous data and knowledge to current and future …

“The Dead Cold Light Of Tomorrow”: Historical Grief In Literature In The Aftermath Of Influenza, Caitlin Liana Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

During the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, commonly referred to as The Spanish Flu, somewhere between 20 and 100 million lives were lost globally, but this tragedy has faded from history in many Western cultures. World War I, while far less deadly, has been memorialized far more frequently and has been overshadowing the devastation of the pandemic since its inception. The grief that survivors experienced–for loved ones and for themselves–was not given an external outlet and as a result there are few contemporary historical sources to turn to when looking for evidence of that grief. In the absence of more traditional …

The Condition Of Filipino Americanism: Global Americana As A Relation Of Death, Dylan Rodríguez

Kritika Kultura

At the nexus of a prevailing Filipino-American discourse that celebrates the Filipino-American as a cooperative participant in the United States nation-building project sits an “unnamable violence” that masks the genocidal preconditions of “multiculturalist” white supremacy, to which this discourse unwittingly subscribes. The article explores the beginnings and development of this discourse, and the workings of American white supremacy in naturalizing relations of death between itself and its “others.” The article ends with a reflection on how “natural” disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo become means of legitimizing discourses that reinforce white invulnerability vis-à-vis disposability of non-white …

The Condition Of Filipino Americanism: Global Americana As A Relation Of Death, Dylan Rodríguez

Kritika Kultura

At the nexus of a prevailing Filipino-American discourse that celebrates the Filipino-American as a cooperative participant in the United States nation-building project sits an “unnamable violence” that masks the genocidal preconditions of “multiculturalist” white supremacy, to which this discourse unwittingly subscribes. The article explores the beginnings and development of this discourse, and the workings of American white supremacy in naturalizing relations of death between itself and its “others.” The article ends with a reflection on how “natural” disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo become means of legitimizing discourses that reinforce white invulnerability vis-à-vis disposability of non-white …

Levels Of Failure: How The United States’ Rendition, Detention, And Interrogation Program During The War On Terror Failed As Counterterrorism Policy, Maggie Carr

Washington Semester Program

No abstract provided.

Crossing Borders: Philippine Activist Theater And Martial Law, Bonifacio P. Ilagan

Kritika Kultura

Positing theater as political, this paper intends to locate activist theater in the context of the Philippine cultural setting and political milieu on the eve of the Martial Law declaration in 1972. It shall illustrate why this kind of theater, frowned upon by some sectors in the artistic community, had taken unto itself the task of redefining the stage and employing it in a political mass movement that ultimately blazed a trail in Philippine theater and also challenged the socioeconomic structures of society. This paper integrates the theory and practice of the activist theater in the Philippines in the late …

American Globality And The Us Prison Regime: State Violence And White Supremacy From Abu Ghraib To Stockton To Bagong Diwa, Dylan Rodriguez

Kritika Kultura

What do we make of the abiding significance of state-sanctioned human captivity and imprisonment on a massive, unprecedented scale as a primary American modality of civilization? Democracy? Modernity and (postmodern) Nation-building? The American prison intertwines as it animates two structural logics: 1) white supremacy as a historical modality of social (dis)organization, and 2) the circulation, militarization, and mobilization of allegedly local or domestic US social formations across global geographies, including and beyond the Philippines. This paper considers the formation of the United States prison industrial complex as an epochal global regime that is integral to the fabric of an incipient …

Signs, Meaning, Interpretation: C. S. Peirce's Critique Of Deconstruction And Post-Structuralism, E. San Juan Jr.

Kritika Kultura

From the perspective of Peircian semiotics, this paper presents a prolegomenon of “a science of pragmaticist aesthetics.” Following the fundamental epistemological categories of C. S. Pierce, San Juan reads Michael’s Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost as unraveling the anatomy of terror in Sri Lanka. Such a reading, for San Juan, “elicit signs of whether we, and others in the collaborative enterprise, embody,” quoting Pierce, “an intelligence capable of learning by experience.”

Sean O'Casey And Radical Theatre, Terry Phillips

Kritika Kultura

Sean O’Casey’s work after the Dublin trilogy has been neglected to a great extent by both theatre audiences and literary critics. This essay considers three plays which address specifically Irish issues, The Silver Tassie (1926), The Star Turns Red (1940) and Red Roses for Me (1943). Taken together, they may be understood as a radical response to successive counter-revolutionary indigenous governments: Cumann Na nGaedheal (1922-1932) and Fianna Fáil (1932-1948). The essay concludes that these plays ground the case for O’Casey as a radical Irish playwright—socially, politically and aesthetically.

Preparing Spiritually Resilient Warriors In The Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, Vic Morris

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Morris, Victor E. “Preparing Spiritually Resilient Warriors in the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command.” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2024. 285 pp.

The Canadian Armed Forces has outcomes and expectations for warriors to be spiritually resilient but does not have a training program that has been researched, tested, and validated to achieve this. This study investigates how chaplains can prepare spiritually resilient warriors in CANSOFCOM. A chaplain-led spiritual resilience course was created and delivered to CANSOFCOM members. The course was aligned with the holistic wellness strategy of OPF2, and designed as an inductive, experiential learning experience. An …

Inventing Vernacular Speech-Acts: Articulating Filipino Self-Determintation In The United States, E. San Juan Jr.

Kritika Kultura

How vital is an immigrant’s native language for group self-affirmation? While the Filipino American community in the US (now the largest group of citizens of Asian descent) has not so far demanded bilingual education in the way the Chinese Americans or Chicanos have, the influx of new immigrants more conversant in “Filipino” (the official term for the national language of the Philippines) than in English is producing changes in ethnic self-identification more serious than before. The demand for college courses in Filipino is only a symptom of the greater awareness of exclusion and marginalization within the larger polity supposedly characterized …

Baroque Modernity And The Colonial World: Aesthetics And Catastrophe In Nick Joaquin’S A Portrait Of The Artist As Filipino, John D. Blanco

Kritika Kultura

The point of departure for these reflections is the status of “Hispanism” as an aesthetic mode (and possibly an elitist position or ideology in Philippine society) in a largely ignored debate within Philippine nationalist circles after World War II. In this instance, Dr. Blanco is thinking of the polemic between nationalist historian and poet Teodoro Agoncillo and Filipino national artist Nick Joaquin following the inauguration of a Philippine national republic formally recognized by the League of Nations. In this paper, he wants to focus on one, perhaps the key, manifestation of this "Hispanism" – Joaquin’s recovery of the baroque mode …

The Re-Presentation And Mis-Re-Presentation Of The “Indigenous Woman” Throughout Mexico’S Colonial And Early Independence Periods (1521–1830), Alejandra Daosiri Rodriguez

Art & Art History ETDs

This research examines the visual and textual representations of Indigenous women in colonial New Spain and early independent Mexico (1521–1830), revealing how these images evolved alongside dynamic colonial political, social, and cultural shifts. Through an analysis of codices, portraits, and other material culture, this study demonstrates how colonial authorities, artists, and patrons manipulated these depictions to serve wider colonial agendas, from evangelization to social stratification. These representations often used Indigenous women as symbols, rather than as individual subjects, to reinforce hierarchical colonial structures, shape racial and gender identities, and support efforts to ‘civilize’ the native population. By focusing on pivotal …