Benedict Anderson in the Philippines. Photo courtesy of Ed Tadem.
The weekend of 12–13 December 2015 marked two milestones in the history of Southeast Asian Studies. First, scholars in and on Southeast Asia—or a country therein—gathered in the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, for the Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA) Conference. Organized by scholars and institutions based in the region, this was a historic first in the annals of Southeast Asian Studies. Second, a luminary of the field passed away in East Java, Indonesia on 13 December. News of Benedict Anderson’s death came early and as a shock on the second day of the conference, 13 December. And it spread just as the participants were delivering their presentations.
Juxtaposing these events is a tribute to a great scholar, who himself had a fondness for doing so. His death is a deep loss, but it is perhaps fitting all the same that Benedict Anderson left us when scholars were inaugurating new topics and novel approaches to the study of Southeast Asia. One might say that this conjunction symbolized a passing of the scholarly torch. Benedict Anderson did so much to help advance Southeast Asian Studies. And one could claim that his work and that of his generation brought the field to that historic point in Kyoto. Many of the papers read at the SEASIA Conference represent an emerging, if not wholly established, breed of Southeast Asianists; and their scholarship builds on, critiques, or departs from that of Anderson and his contemporaries.
Along with his eye for the odd and the “off-kilter” (Hau 2016), positing historical conjunctions and comparisons is a defining feature of Benedict Anderson’s work (Aguilar 2015; Rafael 2016; Abinales 2016). He once wrote that studying the Philippines gave a scholar a sense of “historical vertigo” (1998, 227). Viewed from Asia, the Philippines was the proud home of the first anticolonial revolution in the region. Seen from Latin America, however, it was the last of Madrid’s colonial possessions that freed itself from Spanish imperial yoke.
But the expression par excellence of his global thinking is arguably Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anticolonial Imagination (2005). In this book, he uncovers the various connections that existed between and among events and intellectuals in Cuba, Spain, Puerto Rico, and even as far as London. He shares, for instance, that five months after Rizal’s execution in Manila in December 1896, there was a call in Trafalgar Square in London to vindicate Rizal and the victims of the Spanish colonial regime. True enough, in August 1897, an Italian anarchist, Michele Angiolillo, assassinated Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. The assassination precipitated the fall of the Spanish government and the rise of Valeriano Weyler’s government in Cuba (1).
As far as the Philippines was concerned, Anderson’s work came at a time when Filipino scholars were refining and advancing their knowledge of Philippine history and society. His thinking on the subject became—and still is—part of a lively, ongoing critique of Philippine historiography. He inspired many Filipino scholars, including his students in Cornell University, whose scholarship on Philippine literature, history, and politics bears, in varying degrees, the marks of his influence. Today, Anderson’s global approach—exemplified by Under Three Flags—has arguably formed part of what might be called a “global turn” in Philippine studies.
Because of migration and globalization, among other reasons, scholars in and of the Philippines have paid closer attention to the Philippines’ relationship with other countries, regions, empires, or even the global trading system. Benedict Anderson will forever be remembered for teaching us that nations are “imagined communities.” And the global turn in Philippine historiography—of which Under Three Flags is a part —represents, among other things, a reimagining of the Filipino nation. Not just as an autonomous, self-contained unit, but also as an entity embedded in regional, transnational, and global contexts.
Photo: Benedict Anderson at the UP Asian Center, 11 March 2013. He is flanked by Asian Center faculty, staff, and professors from UP Diliman.
Benedict Anderson’s cosmopolitan thinking finds a parallel in his peripatetic life, one that was lived “beyond boundaries” (Anderson 2016). The phrase comes from the title of his recently published memoir in English, which one reviewer called “an argument for traversing geographical, historical, linguistic, and disciplinary borders” (Sherman 2016). Indeed, it is. Benedict Anderson was born in Kunming, China in August 1936; educated in the United States and England; immersed in field work in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines; and equally at home in Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, and Ithaca. In his memoir, he mentions that the "spirit of adventure" is "crucial to a really productive scholarly life." To explain this point, he cites a phrase in Bahasa, “lagi tjari angin, which means 'I am looking for a wind', as if you were a sailing-ship heading out of a harbour onto the vast open sea." His ashes were laid on the bottom of the Java sea, a fitting gesture because Ben loved Java. At the same time, this reference to "ashes" alludes, albeit inadvertently, to his dear “Lolo José” (José Rizal; ‘lolo’ is grandfather in many Philippines languages) who, in his farewell poem written days before his execution, wished of his ashes to form a carpet (alfombra) on which the Filipino nation would stand.
Given his own penchant for comparison, comparing Benedict Anderson is a way to honor his memory and methodology. To do so, one might say, is to give him a dose of his own intellectual medicine, which I think he would welcome, if not find amusing. At any rate, because he has roots in Ireland (he held an Irish passport), it is tempting to see his similarities with Irish modernist writers such as James Joyce, who likewise led an itinerant life. Joyce settled in and made frequent trips to Zurich, and taught English language lessons in Pola and Trieste, which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (2). Joyce also spent time in Paris, where his novels, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, were published in 1922 and 1939, respectively. And when the Nazis occupied France in 1940, he fled back to Switzerland (O’Brien 1999). Joyce died in Zurich on 13 January 1941, less than five years after Benedict Anderson was born.
The similarities between the two men transcend their cosmopolitan lives. Both were citizens of a (former) colony, and were artistic and intellectual mavericks. Joyce once remarked that “[i]t is my revolt against the English conventions, literary and otherwise, that is the main source of my talent” (quoted in Eagleton 1997). Even a cursory glance at Finnegan’s Wake exhibits Joyce’s creative transformation (or destruction if you like) of the English language.
In the same way, the brilliance of Imagined Communities stems from its unorthodox explanation of nationalism. It was a riposte to the Eurocentric accounts thereof, which traced its origins in Europe, not through, among other things, the “Creole Pioneers” in the colonies. Both men were also artists. Joyce of course is a novelist, while Anderson considered Under Three Flags as a novel. “I like this book a lot, really a novel, and think of it as a way of showing my love for Pinas” (3).
Despite differences, there is much in the Joyce-Anderson comparison that many Filipinos—who live, work, or study abroad while maintaining ties with their homeland—can identify with. It’s been said that leaving Ireland is a native Irish tradition (Eagleton 1999, 105), just as emigration is for Filipinos, whose government has brokered many of its citizens for overseas employment (Rodriguez 2010). And just as the city of Dublin haunted the writings of James Joyce, from Dubliners to Ulysses, so does the nation—in all its spectres and complexities—pervade the scholarship of Benedict Anderson and many Filipino academics.
It is not insignificant that the Filipinos and the Irish were colonial and imperial subjects. In the case of the former, it was the Spanish and the Americans. For the latter, it was Britain. Perhaps on account of this shared experience of exile, migration, and colonialism—among the many reasons for his influence on Philippine Studies—Benedict Anderson and the Philippines will continue to resonate with each other.
(This essay was written for and will appear in Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia 52:1 [2016]. It has been revised on 12 December 2017 to correct an earlier version, which had stated that Ben's ashes were "scattered across the Java sea.")
Janus Isaac NOLASCO
4 June 2016, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
BENEDICT ANDERSON was a member of the international advisory board of Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia. He visited the Philippines several times and delivered two lectures at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, one on 11 March 2013 and the other on 10 November 2014. The UP Asian Center held a memorial for him on 23 December 2015. In attendance and delivering their recollections, were his friends and former students, including Vincent Boudreau, Ramon Guillermo, Karina Bolasco, Joel Rocamora, Vicente Rafael, Eduardo Tadem, Lisandro Claudio, Tina Cuyugan, Paul Hutchcroft, and Angel Shaw. The remarks of Patricio Abinales, Caroline Hau, and Filomeno Aguilar, Jr. were read by Teresa Encarnacion Tadem, Karina Bolasco, and Lisandro Claudio, respectively. A recording of the memorial can be viewed at the YouTube channel of the UP Third World Studies Center, which helped organize the event: bit.ly/andersonmemorial.
Notes and References: View the notes and references.
Watch a memorial for Professor Anderson held on 22 December 2015 @ UP Asian Center.
The UP Asian Center offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. The Center offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Get an overview of these programs. The Asian Center also houses a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia. It has published several books and monographs, and hosts or organizes various lectures and conferences.