American Indian Culture and Research Journal

THE VIEW FROM THE EDGE: A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time? If thou rememb’rest aught ere thou camest here How thou camest here thou mayst. --Prospero in The Tempest (I.ii. 59-64) Conjuring up William Shakespeare to assist in my project of challenging the academic cognoscenti is indeed an ironic gesture coming from a colonized individual. Yet in the context of my upbringing as a Pilipina operating in the circles of academia, this selective borrowing is all too appropriate. As Jessica Hagedorn observes, ”The Philippines spent four hundred years in a convent and fifty years in Hollywood. . . . I was taught that Filipinos are inherently lazy, shiftless and undependable. Our only talent, it seems, is for mimicry". In this introduction to ”dual” perception in the work of liminal artists, an act of appropriation, of mimicry, seems to be in order. It is a nod to my education-a reflex of good scholastic behavior in an attempt to substantiate the assertions cultivated by my colonizers’ gift of learning.