AMERICAN STUDIES
A Nation on the Line
Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines
jan m . padios
Fugitive Life
The Queer Politics of the Prison State stephen dillon
During the 1970s in the United States, hundreds of feminist, queer, In 2011 the Philippines surpassed India to become what the New
and anti-racist activists were imprisoned or became fugitives as
York Times referred to as “the world’s capital of call centers.” By the
they fought the changing contours of U.S. imperialism, global capi‑
end of 2015 the Philippine call center industry employed over one
talism, and a repressive racial state. In Fugitive Life Stephen Dillon
million people and generated twenty-two billion dollars in revenue.
examines these activists’ communiqués, films, memoirs, prison
In A Nation on the Line Jan M. Padios examines this massive industry
writing, and poetry to highlight the centrality of gender and sexuality
in the context of globalization, race, gender, transnationalism, and
to a mode of racialized power called the neoliberal-carceral state.
postcolonialism, outlining how it has become a significant site of
Drawing on writings by Angela Davis, the George Jackson Brigade,
efforts to redefine Filipino identity and culture, the Philippine nation-
Assata Shakur, Weather Underground, and others, Dillon shows how
state, and the value of Filipino labor. She also chronicles the many
these activists were among the first to theorize and make visible
contradictory effects of call center work on Filipino identity, family,
the links between conservative “law and order” rhetoric, free market
consumer culture, and sexual politics. As Padios demonstrates, the
ideology, incarceration, sexism, and the continued legacies of slav‑
critical question of call centers does not merely expose the logic
ery. Dillon theorizes these prisoners and fugitives as queer figures
of transnational capitalism and the legacies of colonialism; it also
who occupied a unique position from which to highlight how neolib‑
problematizes the process of nation-building and peoplehood in the
eralism depended upon racialized mass incarceration. In so doing,
early twenty-first century.
he articulates a vision of fugitive freedom in which the work of these
Jan M. Padios is Assistant Professor of American
activists becomes foundational to undoing the reign of the neolib‑
Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
eral-carceral state. Stephen Dillon is Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Queer Studies in the School of Critical Social Inquiry at Hampshire College.
“Expansively imagined and theoretically rigorous, A Nation on the Line makes an important contribution to the study of globalization, transnationalism, and late neoliberal capitalism. It is sure to reset the research agenda in the
“In this beautifully written work, Stephen Dillon brings together a variety
anthropology of labor, Philippine studies, American studies, and beyond.”
of threads from the literatures on prisons, feminisms, and queer studies
— MARTIN F. MANAL ANSAN IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men
to make novel arguments about fugitivity, neoliberalism, and carcerality.
in the Diaspora
His engagement with poetry, accounts of underground activists, and the other highly charismatic materials he works with will be gripping for students as they read through this compelling entry point into the book’s topics. Fugitive Life is a wonderful contribution.”— DEAN SPADE , author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law
A S I A N | A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S /A N T H R O P O L O G Y
B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H E O R Y/A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S
March 248 pages, 5 illustrations
June 288 pages
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7059‑8, $24.95/£20.99
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7082‑6, $25.95/£20.99
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7047‑5, $94.95/£79.00
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7067‑3, $99.95/£83.00
Available as an e‑book
Available as an e‑book
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