MEGAN C. THOMAS. Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 277p.

Abstract

Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism MEGAN C. THOMAS Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 277p.In Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism, Megan C. Thomas illustrates the myriad political meanings and possibilities of modern scholarly knowledge. During the 1880s and early 1890s, a critical mass of linguistic, folklore, ethnological, and studies on the Spanish Philippines materialized. Researched and written mostly by a small yet diverse group of young cosmopolitan scholars, who thought of the Philippines as their homeland, this corpus of work engaged with, and troubled the contours of different scholarly practices such as Orientalism, racial studies, and what would come to be known as anthropology. As Thomas points out, unlike other examples of Orientalist and anthropological studies, works on the Philippines appear exceptional because of the specific biographies of the authors. Contemporarily referred to as ilustrados and propagandists, these so-called native intellectuals utilized novel research methods and rearticulated official Spanish archives in order to not only revise histories of their homeland, but also to imagine new and alternative political futures.These imagined political futures did not necessarily lead to the nation. As Thomas cogently argues, although these works laid the groundwork for what could potentially be the nation, these works remained ambivalent, divergent, and open in regards to the question of sovereignty in the Philippines. Indeed, despite being politically and ideologically diverse, these native authors tapped into a world that recognized no political boundaries or authority, but only the authority of reason and evidence (p. 4). Moreover, scholarly works, by virtue of appearing as politically neutral, could sneak past the watchful eyes of Spanish censors. Thomas, therefore, highlights the fascination held by Filipinos for the radically open world of modern knowledge and science in which the nation would be, as Vicente Rafael argues, but one of many effects of a type of modern historical excess (2005, xvi). Thomas nevertheless innovatively sheds new light on scholarly works and practices that have heretofore remained overlooked for its ambiguous political contents. Indeed, other than Resil Mojares' comprehensive text, Brains of the Nation (2008), the scholarly works of ilustrados and propagandists have been largely relegated to footnotes in Philippine studies. Unlike Mojares, however, Thomas lingers longer on the unanticipated political possibilities and unforeseen consequences of native scholarly works.The authors covered in Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados should be familiar to those acquainted with Philippine historiography. Names such as T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes y Florentino, Mariano Ponce, Pedro Serrano Laktaw, Pedro Paterno, and Jose Rizal have been praised, in various and uneven ways, as heroes within nationalist and anti-colonial narratives. As a result, up to contemporary times, their writings and biographies have been repeatedly referenced and put to use in Philippine education, popular culture, and politics. It is easy to see this contemporary resonance when considering that these native authors, on the whole collectively identified as modern, cosmopolitan, Christian, and indigenous to the Philippines. For certain, although Thomas consistently reminds the reader of the diverse and varied relation each author had with the Philippines, the awareness of their particular biographical differences from Spanish and European scholars would greatly color how native scholars approached both traditional and newer sciences and disciplines.The notion of authority provides one of the richest topics in Thomas's book. By gaining authority over colonial knowledge, native scholars could not only trouble or challenge Spanish claims to knowledge, but also envision possible worlds in which natives held not only intellectual but also political authority. …