Colonial Governmentality in Puerto Rico and the Philippines: Sovereign Force, Governmental Rationality, and Disciplinary Institutions Under US Rule

Abstract

This chapter will address the deployments of colonial governmentality during the first decade of US dominion in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Governmentality is understood as dispositive, that is, an ensemble of the apparatuses of governmental rationality, sovereignty, and discipline. This chapter will examine the shifting configurations of some of the specific apparatuses of necro- and biopolitics, coercive security forces, disciplinary institutions, and other tutelary practices within the overall dispositive of governmentality, including the political structures of governance. This chapter will address the issue of the place and scale of these deployments: institutions, public spaces, bureaucratic structures, and military hierarchies. Throughout, a comparative perspective will shed light upon how colonial governmentality was deployed historically in ways that were adapted to different strategies, local conditions, and patterns of collaboration and resistance, especially among school teachers.

Citation

Thompson, L. (2017), "Colonial Governmentality in Puerto Rico and the Philippines: Sovereign Force, Governmental Rationality, and Disciplinary Institutions Under US Rule", Rethinking the Colonial State (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 33), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 21-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920170000033002