Shifting Pattern and Sophistication of the American Colonial Domination in the Philippines: From Colonialism to Technological Domination

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the shifting pattern and sophistication of the American colonial domination in the Philippines and the way in which this kind of domination has transformed the Philippines into a seemingly conformist society. However, in doing so, it does not claim that the Philippines was better off in the past and that the United States has caused its decline, though it can be observed that an invasion of a society at the “margins” by a power from the “center” can result in, for example, cultural displacement. What this article argues instead is that a meaningful engagement with any relevant issues in postcolonial Philippine society requires an indepth understanding of how this society has undergone structural changes in the past.
This article is divided into two major parts. The first part demonstrates how the United States as the leading colonial power
in the 20th century transformed its technique of controlling the Philippines, that is, from classical colonial to neocolonial forms.
This involves a discussion of the four major types of domination inherent in capitalist colonialism, namely: militaristic, economic,
political, and cultural domination. The article shows that these four types of domination have contributed to the stagnation of
the Philippine economy and the destruction of the body politic, as well as the intensification of violence and social injustice in modern day Philippines. The second part shows that of all the four types of domination imposed by the United States in the
Philippines, technological domination, as a specific feature of cultural domination and which is understood in this study as the
deliberate imposition of the American way of life among the Filipinos, plays the most commanding role as it seeps down their
consciousness, resulting in what we can observe in the history of domination and resistance in the Philippines as the erosion of Filipino critical consciousness. In other words, technological domination has rendered most Filipinos today impervious to calls for social and political actions. Two major issues that contributed to the emergence of this phenomenon will be explained here, namely: a) the introduction of American-oriented “consumer culture” through the manipulation of the work attitude and consumption habit of the Filipinos; and b) the disappearance of critical media and the sexual objectification of Filipino women in the commercial media.