On Wednesday 9 May 2018, Charlie Veric of Ateneo de Manila University led a seminar at JIAS on ‘The Journal, the Institute and the Press: A Postcolonial History of Ideas’. This formed part of the ongoing 2018 JIAS Writing Fellows Seminar Series.

Background

‘How did a journal, institute, and press atop a hill in Loyola Heights change the course of the Filipino history of ideas in the middle of the 20th century? Consider the following. Seven years after the formal independence of the Philippines from the United States in 1946, the Ateneo de Manila University founded Philippine Studies in 1953, inaugurating what would become the longest-running journal dedicated to the study of Filipino history, culture, and society.

‘Seven years later, the campus saw the creation of the Institute of Philippine Culture in 1960, a center that would nurture the leaders of social science research in the Philippines. Then the academic press opened its doors in 1972 to publish and promote Filipino literature and scholarship.

‘Indeed, the establishment of the Ateneo journal, institute, and press within the first two decades of the Philippine state from the 1950s to the 1960s is remarkable in that it marks the beginning of decolonizing knowledge that would indelibly define modern Filipino culture as we understand it today.

‘My presentation looks into the making of such a postcolonial intellectual tradition by examining the as yet unwritten histories of the journal, the institute, and the press. The hope is to delineate and enrich the cultural archives of decolonization as a modern Filipino tradition in the 20th century.’