E. San Juan, Jr.

E. San Juan, Jr. is a Filipino cultural critic and public intellectual. His works span a broad spectrum of fields and disciplines, from cultural studies, comparative literary scholarship, ethnic and racial studies, postcolonial theory, semiotics to philosophical inquiries in historical materialism.

He applies a Gramscian approach and a critical Marxist optic on cultural events and texts in the Philippine historical process of national liberation. San Juan is also notable for being the firstFact|date=March 2008 Filipino male intellectual to have engaged with feminist discourse in his "Filipina Insurgency: Writing Against Patriarchy" (Giraffe Books, 1999).

Biography

San Juan was born in Manila, Philippines, on 29 December 1938. He received his B.A., "magna cum laude", from the University of the Philippines, and his A.M. and Ph. D. from Harvard University. He has taught in various universities in the United States, among them University of California (Davis); University of Connecticut, Storrs; Brooklyn College of the City University of New York; and Bowling Green State University. He served as chair of the Department of Comparative American Cultures, Washington State University, Pullman, from 1998 to 2001. He was visiting professor at the University of Trento, Italy, and at Tamkang University, Taiwan. He assumed directorship of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Connecticut on 2001.

From 2001 to the present, San Juan has lectured abroad as Fulbright professor of American Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, lecturer at the Hogeschool in Antwerp, Belgium; visiting professor of literature at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan; and resident fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy. He has won numerous awards, among them the MELUS Best Essay Award, Gustavus Myers Center Award, and Centennial Award for Literature, Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Works

San Juan contributed the entry for "Ethnicity" in volume 2 of Historisch-Kritisches Worterbuch des Marxismus edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Berlin and Hamburg: Argument, 1997). His essays, translated into German, French, Italian, Chinese, and other languages, have been published in Das Argument, Marxismo Oggi, Chung-Wai Literary Monthly (Taiwan), L'Homme et la Societe, Weg und Ziel, Contemporary Monthly(Taiwan), and other venues. His groundbreaking essay, "Surrealism and Revolution," was translated into French and published by Professor Henri Behar of the Sorbonne in the online Web His poems in Filipino have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Italian, German, and other languages.

He edited the first collection of Georg Lukacs' essays in English translation, "Marxism and Human Liberation" (New York, 1972), which contributed significantly to the renaissance of Marxist thought in North America during the height of the civil rights struggles and the anti-war movement.Among his most recent books are: "Beyond Postcolonial Theory" (Palgrave), "Racism and Cultural Studies" (Duke University Press), and "Working through the Contradictions" (Bucknell U Press). His recent books of poems and essays in Filipino are: "Alay sa Paglikha ng Bukang-Liwayway" (Ateneo U Press); "Himagsik" (De La Salle U Press); and "Sapagkat Iniibig Kita at iba pang tula"' (U of the Philippines Press).

Forthcoming works are a revised edition of "Rizal In Our Time"; two collections of essays, "Balikbayang Singa: An E. San Juan Reader" (Ateneo U Press), and "From Globalization to National Liberation" "(U of the Philippines Press); and a new collection of poems, "Salud Algabre at iba pang tula".

Translation and other

Two significant contributions of San Juan to Philippine culture and literature are his translation into English of selected poems by Amado Hernández; and the re-discovery of Carlos Bulosan's writings, evidenced in his numerous anthologies of Bulosan's works; and his critical essays on Hernandez in "The Radical Tradition in Philippine Literature,"" ""Toward A People's Literature,"" "" Writing and National Liberation,"" "" The Philippine Temptation,"" ""After Postcolonialilsm,"" ""Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression,"" and "Only by Struggle".

Bibliography (selective)

*Rice Grains: Selected Poems of Amado V. Hernandez (1966)
*The Art of Oscar Wilde (1967), reprinted 1978 by Greenwood Press
*The Radical Tradition in Philippine Literature (1970)
*James Joyce and the Craft of Fiction (1972)
*Marxism and Human Liberation: Selected Essays by Georg Lukacs (1972)
*Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle (1972), reprinted 1975 by Oriole Editions, New York.
*Preface to Pilipino Literature (1972)
*Introduction to Modern Pilipino Literature (1974)
*Poetics: The Imitation of Action (1978)
*Balagtas: Florante/Laura (1978)
*Bulosan: An Introduction with Selections (1983), reprinted several times.
*Toward a People's Literature: Essays in the Dialectics of Praxis and Contradiction in Philippine Writing (1984), :reprinted 2006 by the University of the Philippines Press. National Book Award; Catholic Mass Media Award.
*Crisis in the Philippines: The Making of a Revolution (1986)
*Subversions of Desire: Prolegomena to Nick Joaquin (1988)
*Transcending the Hero/Reinventing the Heroic: An Essay on Andre Gide's Theater (1988)
*Ruptures, Schisms, Interventions: Cultural Revolution in the Third World (1988)
*Only by Struggle: Reflections on Philippine Culture, Society and History in a Time of Civil War (1989), reprinted :and enlarged in 2002.
*From People to Nation: Essays in Cultural Politics (1990)
*Writing and National Liberation: Selected Essays 1970-1990 (1991)
*Racial Formations/Critical Transformations: Articulations of Power in Ethnic and Racial Studies in the United :States (1992). Association of Asian American Studies Book Award; Myers Center Award.
*Reading the West/Writing the East: Studies in Comparative Literature and Culture (1992)
*From the Masses, to the Masses: Third World Literature and Revolution (1994)
*The Smile of the Medusa and Other Fictions (1994)
*Allegories of Resistance (1994)
*On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings by Carlos Bulosan, edited by E. San Juan, Jr., with an introduction (1995)
*The Cry and the Dedication by Carlos Bulosan, edited by E. San Juan, Jr., with an introduction (1995)
*Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression: Essays in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (1995)
*The Philippine Temptation: Dialectics of Philippines-U.S. Literary Relations (1996)
*Mediations: From a Filipino Perspective (1996)
*History and Form: Selected Essays (1996)
*Rizal: A Re-Interpretation (1997)
*From Exile to Diaspora: Versions of the Filipino Experience in the United States (1998)
*Beyond Postcolonial Theory (1998)
*Filipina Insurgency: Writing Against Patriarchy in the Philippines (1999)
*Alay Sa Paglikha ng Bukang-Liwayway (2000), collected poems in Filipino (2000)
*After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontation (2000), Myers Distinguished Book :Award
*Racism and Cultural Studies (2002)
*Spinoza and the Terror of Racism (2002)
*Himagsik (2003), poems and essays in criticism in Filipino
*Tinik Sa Kaluluwa (2003), collected short stories in Filipino
*Working through the Contradictions: From Cultural Theory to Critical Practice (2004)
*Sapagkat Iniibig Kita at iba pang tula (2005), selected poems in Filipino]
* [http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/86153.html On the Presence of Filipinos in the United States, and other Essays (2007)]
*In the Wake of Terror: Race, Nation, Class in the Field of Global Capital (forthcoming 2007)
*Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (forthcoming 2007)
*Balikbayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader (forcoming 2007 from Ateneo University Press)
*From Globalization to National Liberation: Essays (forthcoming 2007 from University of the Philippines Press)

ee also

*Ninotchka Rosca
*Cecilia Manguerra Brainard