Marielle Marcaida (she/her)

I am Marielle Yambao Marcaida, a Ph.D. Feminist Studies student at the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies of the University of Washington. My dissertation titled “Salvaging Maria: Urban Poor Mothers’ Resistance against the Philippine Drug War,” reflects intention and regional specificity. The term “salvage” presents historical and context-specific meanings in the Philippines. Instead of “to save,” it means “to kill”. In context of the Philippine drug war, I interrogate the underlying political and ethical dimensions of savior discourses surrounding the International Criminal Court’s intervention and the various representations, including my own, of the “human rights” claims of mothers fighting for justice. In writing about the stories of the Marias of the drug war, the mothers and widows who lost their kin from state violence, are we saving or salvaging them? This dissertation underscores the tensions, paradoxes, and dilemmas rooted in the subaltern position of mothers and the problems of representation it warrants. 

My ongoing dissertation has immensely benefited from the funding support by University of Washington’s Bridges Center Graduate Labor Research Grant, Chester Fritz International Research and Study Fellowship, Peter Mack and Jamie Mayerfeld Endowed Fund for Human Rights, and Duke University’s Southeast Asia Research Group Pre-dissertation Fellowship.