“We are here because you were there”: On curriculum, empire, and global migration

If knowledge production is indelibly central to curriculum inquiry, then a critical investigation into the conditions of racialized minority and diasporic subjects in general and of Filipina/os in particular can shed light on the intersection of curriculum, empire, and global migration, a topic which has received relatively little attention in curriculum studies. Racialized and diasporic subjects resist efforts to erase their marginalization, and declare their undeniable presence, contributions, and interventions in metropolitan and colonial body politic by claiming that “we are here because you were there.” Employing my ongoing research as examples, I will foreground US imperialism and the historical construction of colonized others as well as Canadian neoliberal globalization and the contemporary migration of labouring bodies. I will also showcase the intellectual and pedagogical efforts by Filipina/o American and Filipina/o Canadian studies scholars in resisting curriculum epistemicide. As an insurrection of subjugated knowledges, what is needed is a paradigmatic shift that challenges received ideas and interpretations and that struggles for radical impossibilities.