ABSTRACT
In the discipline of cultural studies, the discovery of the body may signal a shift away from the despotism of the sign that has so far prevailed in the discourses of the academy and the "social corps" of the propertied classes. The Filipinologist H. Brett Melendy problematizes Filipino ethnogenesis on account of the natives' "cultural backgrounds and value systems" that pivot around the family and indigenous kinship structure. What Hall envisages is a new conceptualization of ethnicity that acknowledges the places of history, language, and culture in the construction of subjectivity and agency. In the racially stratified or ethnically segmented labor market of the United States, as well as in the rest of the world, Filipinos occupy the lower strata, primarily in service occupations such as food, health and cleaning. There is a specific reason why the Filipino contingent in the United States needs to confront its own singular destiny as a "transported", displaced, and disintegrated people.
