Lexington Books
Pages: 230
Trim: 6½ x 9
978-1-4985-8266-7 • Hardback • December 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-8267-4 • eBook • December 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Erin L. Murphy is an independent scholar with a doctorate in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Introduction: Awakening to Empire
Part I: A World of Empires and the White Man’s Burden
Chapter One: Anti-Imperialisms and Ethical Witnessing
Chapter Two: Sacred Democracy and the Presidential Election of 1900
Part II: From Tracking Public Opinion to Tracking the Law
Chapter Three: The Senate Investigation on Affairs in the Philippines
Chapter Four: Monitoring Benevolent Assimilation Policies
Conclusion: Ethical Witnessing and the Dream of Inalienable Rights
Erin Murphy has delivered a historical tour de force that challenges the erasure of Black women, Black men, Filipino/as, and White women from the anti-imperialist movement. Far from being simply a narrative about the past, however, the book is vital reading for anyone who wishes to understand and resist imperialist aggression in the present. Murphy convincingly demonstrates that what we deny about our past not only empowers political divisions in the present, but also limits our imaginative capacities as to how ordinary people bearing 'ethical witness' can drive transformative social change.
— Zine Magubane, Boston College
In this insightful, heartbreaking, yet hopeful work, Erin Murphy uses the United States' imperial history in the Philippines to ask how everyday citizens can resist and stand witness to atrocities committed in their name. This book is a monument to careful historical research done in the service of urgent present-day questions.
— Nicholas Wilson, Stony Brook University