Excremental Colonialism

Anderson Warwick

Human wastes was considered as the most abundant and dangerous carriers of
bacterias that primarily cause kindred diseases (e.g. dysentery, cholera, typhoid
fever, etc. )

A sense of Porosity of the colonial membrane (Philippines) lent force to those

health officers who sought to constraint delinquent microbial traffic especially as
it poses danger to lawful, innocent Americans.

The Americans Felt the need to teach Filipinos regarding the dangers of
promiscuous defecation and that proper ones should be practiced

Waste practices became a potent means of organizing a heretofore diffusely

threatening alien population. That is, the colonial state came to be delineated on
racialized bodies (Filipinos or white) and behaviors (promiscuous and retentive);
it was intimately reduced to orifices (open or closed) and dejecta (visible or
invisible). Filipinos, which indicated their position in a lower bodily and
civilization stratum, falls off on all of the former as Americans seized social and
political control.

Through somatic control and bodily training, the colonial state attempted to shape
the bodies and conduct of Filipinos and Americans
Filipinos - Regarded and discriminated as unclean. They were expected
to confess their uncleanliness and barbarity and thus make themselves available for
hygienic salvation if they wanted recognition from public health departments
Americans- Obliged to perform a transcendence of their lower bodily
stratum , to act as though they inhabited a more formal expressive body. Thus ,
constant self-discipline is required on their part.

Colonial Embodiment, from Abject to Sublime

 The problem seemed one of innate Filipino fecklessness and lack of civilization.
They appear to me, like so many children who need a strong hand to lead
them in the path they are to follow, Phelan

The first crusade against filth was done by Phelan and in a short time, the roads
were clean, the marshes drained , the houses purified , and the inhabitants
impressed with the necessity of adopting new rules of hygiene, yet the morality
rate climbed

1915- Cholera outbreak in the Philippines , with the bodily wastes of Filipino
seemed to be the typical carrier of these parasites and bacteria

Vulnerable foreigners would be wise to treat all Filipinos as potentially infected

and dangerous and to limit contact with the natives and their contents until the
race was cleaned up

If the anus was a synecdoche for the medicalized Filipino body, the mouth just
as surely symbolized the American presence.

An American sublime that demanded such relentless self-discipline made the labor
of Filipino suppression as much a labor of American repression.

The Laboratory and the Market

1901- The Philippine Commission had established a Bureau of Government

Laboratory

1904- Properly equipped biological laboratory

Laboratory - an example of a hygienic place as opposed to the market. Laboratory

design was predicated on a transcendence of the tropical environment. Thus,
becomes the exemplary locus of colonial modernity
 The Americans hope that with much time and effort the chaos and promiscuity of
the Islands might be subdued, and the colonial space might then replicate the
controlled conditions of the Laboratory

The Open Market, antithesis of the Laboratory which needed scientific

reformation . Le Roy stated that the markets were a foci of infection

1920s - Katherine Mayo visited the "Isles of Fear" and was pleased to note the
strict control of potential "disease carriers" in hotels or restaurants.

1920s - The markets became nearly as clean and orderly as a laboratory

according to Frank G. Carpenter

New sanitary markets were constructed in manila

The Toilet in the Tropic

The Philippine health service began issuing semiweekly bulletin, dealing with
some topical health questions

Sanitary commissions visited selected towns, surveying health conditions in the

community, giving practical demonstrations of how to prepare balanced diets
from the local food supply, and instructing the local inhabitants in personal
hygiene, home cleanliness, and the care of the sick.

Permanent exhibits of model sanitary environment was built

Photographs, "moving pictures," parade floats, and (in 1921) a "health-mobile"

sent out to fairs and fiestas illustrated modern methods of hygiene.
Publicity regarding hygiene in Cartoons to help educate infantilized Filipinos

In public schools, teachers compiles a Health Index for every Child

 Health Experts urged that the construction of a toilet, either in his own home or in
that of a neighbor, be a project of every seventh-grade boy

Toilets soon were cropping out everywhere , be it septic tanks and flush closets,
pail closets or open pits

From Fiesta To Clean-Up Week

Fiesta
"The air is laden and saturated with gladness. All the audience were
dressed in their best clothes, and, a scent of powder, flowers, incense, and perfume
permeates the town" , 1890s fiestas according to Rizal
However, to Mrs. Dauncy and some Americans, it is a time of
promiscuous, animalistic contact
The communal fiesta comes to appear an earthy, open site for the
subversion of American modernity
To the Bureau of Health, the uncontrolled fiesta meant principally a
concentration of "an extraordinary amount of food-stuffs, most of which are
improperly prepared and handled, and exposed to contamination

1907- The government decided to establish an Institutional Carnival in Manila

as an alternative to insidious uncontrolled fiestas

It initially proved difficult to interest Filipinos in the annual Carnival

The Carnival Became a Subject of criticism to some newspapers. La VAnguardia:

rather than the celebration of the memory of the pompous festivals of paganism
adopted frantically by all people, appears to be and is an outpopuring of
positivism and speculation dominated by a search of profit.

Clean Up Week
Another alternative to traditional fiesta , usually took place the week
before Christmas
Time for cleaning the private and public premises across the nation
 It was initially difficult to persuade Filipinos to cooperate at first but
then was solved by making it a sort of competition to charitable and
social institutions in each towns.
-
1930s - The Institutional Carnival and Clean-up Week, along with the laboratory,
the concrete market and the toilet system had come to represent sites of civilized
public and private life in the Philippines, special places of Nation Building

The Colonial Laboratory as Ritual Fame

As Americans attempted to erase and abstract their corporeality, Filipinos became

the chief, and most generous, sources of contaminating matter. Uncivilized, even
bestial, Filipinos were seen as "promiscuous defecators," transgressing colonial safe
havens, imperiling the innocent Americans who had managed to transcend their lower
bodily stratum.

Sources: Anderson, Warwick. 2007.Excremental Colonialism in Colonial Pathologies: American

Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines, AdMU Press. Pp. 105-129