tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-324881862024-03-12T20:15:21.113-07:00The E. SAN JUAN, Jr. ArchiveOthers have given their lives, without doubt or heed...Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom's plight, 'Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country's need. -- JOSE RIZAL, "My Last Farewell" //
Sapagkat ang mundo'y bayan ng hinagpis
Mamamaya'y sukat tibayan ang dibdib... -- FRANCISCO BALAGTAS, "Florante at Laura" //Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger411125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-83069710582477952282024-02-19T13:16:00.000-08:002024-02-19T13:16:14.468-08:00LESSONS FROM GRAMSCI
12 AntonioGramsci’stheoryofthe “national-popular” and socialist revolution in the Philippines
Epifanio San Juan Jr
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Though in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bour- geoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. ... The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have no [sic] got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself as the nation, it is so far itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
(Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party)
Gramsci has been pronounced “dead” so many times that one suspects the announcement to be unwittingly premature and question-begging (Day 2005). Of all the Western Marxists, Gramsci is exceptional in being the subject of an immensely burgeoning archive of scholarly studies and the object of furious worldwide political debates (Rosengarten 1994). Except for the somewhat opportunist inflection of “subaltern” by Derrideans/Foucaultians and the trendy fashion of reinterpreting “hegemony” as pluralist consensus, Gramsci’s thought seems useless for postmodernists, including establishment postcolonialists. Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School successfully popularized Gramsci as an innovative cultural theorist and founded the academic discipline of mainstream Cultural Studies. It was Gramsci’s resurrection in advanced capitalist forma- tions, the birth of what David Harris (1992) calls “gramscianism.” This followed the Eurocommunist view of Gramsci’s “revolution against Capital” – to quote his famous article of 1917 – in which the Italian road to socialism (classless society, socialization of crucial productive means) would be won not through revolutionary violence but through cultural reform – through education and moral/ethical persuasion. Communist parties will thus gain hegemony, that is, domination by consent, peacefully or legally.
Communism will win without replacing the prevailing “common sense.” Pre- sented as ideals to be aspired for, and naturalized as “common sense,” the belief system of bourgeois society does not require armies or police; only a finely tuned art, schools and mass media, ideological apparatuses that would do the job (Finnochiaro 1995). From this prophylactic stance of postcolonial scholastics,
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Gramsci is seen as a precocious neoliberal avant la lettre, committed to “rational persuasion,” political realism, methodological fallibilism, liberal democracy, and pluralism. Something is surely wrong with this picture.
Clearly, history – or, better yet, neoliberal metaphysics exacted a vengeance on Gramsci’s historicist “good sense.” While reborn as a theoretician of the superstructures, civil society, rule by consent, and non-economistic “open Marxism,” Gramsci became irrelevant to socialist revolutions as they were occurring in the “Third World.” He had nothing to say to peoples struggling against finance–capitalist imperialism, old-style colonialism that ruled by brute force, or neocolonial rule masquerading as latter-day “civilizing mission,” humanitarian intervention. For postcolonial studies, in particular, the obsession with Eurocentrism (the fallacious subsumption of capitalism into an abstract Western modernity) in the case of Edward Said, as Neil Lazarus (2002; see also San Juan Jr 2007a) has shown, led soon to the speechless subalterns of Gayatri Spivak and the sly mimics of Homi Bhabha. Meanwhile, the logocentric discourse of poststructuralism wrought its dire effects on the critique of the nation/nationalism launched by Bhabha and the Australian “high priests” of the discipline after the collapse of “actually existing socialism.” With nations and nation-states abolished or rendered defunct by the “New World Order” and later by triumphalist globalization, we are on the way to the heady disjunctures of Arjun Appadurai and the nomadic multitudes of Hardt and Negri’s Empire. Until September 11, 2001 exploded over this academic scenario and overtook our missionary enlighteners who had attended Gramsci’s redundant burials.
We owe it to Benita Parry’s appraisal of the historical-political contexts surrounding the disciplinary formation of postcolonial studies that we can now begin to appreciate Gramsci’s relevance to “Third World” social transformations. Parry’s argument on the centrality of Marxist principles (internationalism, perman- ent revolution) in liberation theory actualized in anticolonial revolutions, is salutary. The erasure of socialism and an anticapitalist modernity in postcolonial discourse coincides with the refusal of a national-democratic stage in anticolonial revolutions led by a historic bloc of anticapitalist forces. What kind of nation-state do postcolo- nialists have in mind? Certainly not the Italian nation of 1861 that witnessed the colonization/annexation of the South through the subjugation of the insurgent peasant masses, and produced the “Southern Question” that Gramsci considered decisive in carrying out a socialist revolution in the twentieth century (Verdicchio 1997). Postcolonialists erase the ugly fact of neocolonized nation-states (the Philippines, Haiti, Colombia, etc.) resistant to their fantasy of a world-system of hybrid social formations equal in power and wealth, all inhabited by transnational consumer-citizens.
Postcolonial obfuscations
The asymmetry of uneven and combined development distinguishes the structure of nation-states born in the shadow of finance–capitalist imperialism. Archaic, feudal, and modern sectors coexist in these societies. The Althusserian idiom of Bhabha
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is revealing when he problematizes the “ambivalent temporalities of the nation space.” For Bhabha, nationalism is fascism tout court. Ultimately, the culprit is “that progressive metaphor of modern social cohesion – the many as one –” and so, Marxist theories of culture and community defined as holistic, expressive social totalities should be repudiated. Unity, solidarity, the multitude envisaged by Gramsci as “national-popular” collective will (Jessop 1982) are all anathema, contaminated by bourgeois universalism and other archaic irrationalities.
For her part, Spivak rejects anticolonial revolutions as hopelessly controlled and manipulated by a native bourgeoisie. The colonized subaltern is made not only speechless but immune to experience. Parry’s comment applies a Gramscian optic to this fantasized self-erasure:
It dismisses the experiential transformation of the “subalterns” through their participation, and disregards situations where an organic relationship was forged between masses and leaders sharing the same class interests and revolutionary goals – there is after all no essential and invariable correlation between objective class position and ideological belief or political stance.
(2002: 144)
In short, history as a dialectic of subject–object is denied by postcolonialists for whom pacified subalterns are speechless or tricky ventriloquists (for Gramsci’s concept of subaltern, see Green 2002).
With the formalization of canonical postcolonial studies as an academic discipline, a reconciliatory attitude seems to have emerged. Stuart Hall’s inflection of this fetishism of ambivalence or difference is only symptomatic: anti-imperialist opposition, for Hall, must be conceived in terms of “transculturation” or cultural translation “destined to trouble the here/there cultural binaries for ever” (1996: 247). This postcolonialist bias against binarism, telos and hierarchy, as we have seen, returns us to the question of agency and the role of the subaltern in a revolutionary disruption of the colonial predicament. But, as Parry notes, this impulse to find a middle ground between domination and oppression, to describe colonialism as “generically ambivalent,” the site of dialogue and cultural assimila- tion, is both historically mendacious and “morally vacant” (2002: 144). This applies to the tendentious genealogy of nation/nationalism offered by Ashcroft et al. (1998; see my critique in San Juan 2001). In effect, the nation (and its attendant set of beliefs called “nationalism”) is a foul ideological invention, a dangerous myth of exclusivism, homogeneity, and naturalness. It refuses internal heterogeneities and differences. It informs the violence of the nation-state (such as the Stalinist Soviet Union, as well as European imperialism as “an extension of the ideology of a ‘national’ formation”) against those who are different, thus making the cause of national liberation for oppressed colonies suspect if not hopelessly tainted.
Postcolonialists cannot face the truth of sustained colonial legacies and their insidious resonance in everyday lives. As to the notion of the “subaltern,” Ashcroft et al. (1998) cannot but invoke Gramsci’s terminology but not the polit- ical project that motivates it. They elide the whole issue of hegemony (consent
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armored by coercion) and replace Gramsci’s framework with the entirely dis- parate paradigm of the Indian historians’ Subaltern Studies Group (with which Spivak is affiliated). This group’s primary preoccupation is the criticism of elites and elite culture in India whose anti-British nationalism worsened the oppression of the landless peasantry. Consequently, they criticize Marxist class analysis which to them ignores the “politics of the people,” and by implication Gramsci’s notion of the popular as a transcendence of economic–corporatist position, and a national-popular culture as a crystallization of the diverse interests/sectors consti- tuting the nation (SCW: 203–212). Their concern with power and authority, with governability (a variant of Foucault’s governmentality), displaces the question of sovereignty vis-à-vis the occupying colonial power. While Gramsci envisioned the “national-popular” as a process of lay intellectuals expanding and elaborating a secular “humanism” attuned to the grassroots, for the Subaltern Studies Group, an implacable fissure exists between the nation represented by the native elite and the people, specifically the peasantry. Gramsci is accused of essentialism, though it is unclear how the Indian historians can be credible when they themselves pos- tulate a rigid distinction between the elite and the subaltern, subject-positions which are constituted by converging and diverging lines of differences. Again, difference becomes fetishized or reified when Spivak claims to establish a fixed incommensurability between elite and subaltern, even canceling the at least relational category of dominant/subordinate groups in structural-functionalist sociology. Since the categories of nation and class are rejected, subalternity becomes mystified or trivialized as all or any kind of subordination removed from any revolutionary socialist telos.
The habitual imposition of a monolithic grid of difference in postcolonial methodology sets it apart from a historical-materialist analysis such as that subtending Gramsci’s “Notes on Italian History” (1934–1935) in the Prison Notebooks. It accords with a nihilistic and even cynical skepticism toward any emancipatory project of overthrowing capitalist social relations of production. For those desiring to change the impoverished and exploited condition of what is now called the global “South,” it is better to forego Establishment postcolonial studies and go straight to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (see the lucid exposition of Bellamy and Schechter in Gramsci and the Italian State). The twin issues of the peasantry and national sovereignty constitute the blind spot that defines the limit of postcolonial critique.
In quest of Gramsci
“A new way of being Gramscian” – to quote Pasolini’s (1982) slogan – is to apply Gramsci’s dialectical–materialist (not homological) approach to the task of popular democratic mobilization against finance capital in specific national settings. I am not interested in deriving axiomatic truths or formulas from Gramsci’s texts. Nor am I interested in ascertaining which text represents the “real” Gramsci among the multiple Gramscis now available (Holub 1992), including the “rightist” Gramsci quoted by neoconservatives. My task here is
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circumscribed: to see how we can deploy or adapt certain modes of analysis initiated first in Gramsci’s historical studies. I would locate Gramsci’s useful- ness today in the application of precisely the speculative tools he devised earlier in his vocation as a radical activist. One key concept is the “national-popular” and its resonance with the conceptual archive of alliances, anti-corporativism, blocs, ensembles, etc. Following the nuanced approach of Nicola Short (2007) and Stephen Gill (2003c) to the historical-materially structured nature of inter- national production in the context of antagonistic core-periphery relations, I would argue that Gramsci’s dialectical analysis of class-realignments, especially the stratified divisions of epochal and conjunctural sequences, would prove most useful in elucidating what is involved in the theory of combined and uneven development first formulated by Lenin and Trotsky and explored by activists in the Marxist tradition. Gramsci is, as Boothman (1995: liii) aptly puts it, “the theorist of the historical bloc” engaged in a concrete analysis of relations/ articulations of social forces in a given country at specific conjunctures or periods for the purpose of calibrating at which exact point human agency can produce the most decisive transformative effects.
The “Southern Question” epitomized for Gramsci the problem of uneven, disarticulated, non-synchronous development carried out by the bourgeois liberal state. Before Gramsci became a socialist, around 1913, he was a Sardinian nationalist, alienated as he was by the industrial North’s subjugation of the predominantly rural South. Even when Gramsci became an active socialist intent on constructing a proletarian-led state within the fabric of civil society, he never stopped insisting on the need to concentrate on the specificity of the Italian situ- ation, its “particular, national characteristics,” compelling the party to assume “a specific function, a particular responsibility in Italian life” (LP: 4). The premise here is the forced unification of Italy by the northern bourgeoisie’s subjugation of the southern peasantry and the unresolved issue of landed property. What this implies is an active program to counter the transformist politics of the liberal state which maintained the fragmented social reality of Italy characterized by diver- gent regional traditions, polarized classes and economic disparities. The material inequalities were reflected, and in turn sustained by, the ideological/cultural incompatibilities between a popular culture of the quasi-feudal, rural areas and the elite culture of the caste of cosmopolitan intellectuals. To mobilize the masses, a whole program of education and organization of the entire populace was needed, a pedagogical mobilization led by a political party of the proletariat and its organic intellectuals. New values and ideals were needed to generate a critical consciousness – “unitary” and “coherent” thinking, as he put it – of the social situation, together with the ethico-moral imperative for organized collective action.
Gramsci had in mind a national-democratic liberation project based on the protagonism or participatory mobilization of the people that would constitute the emergent nation. What was needed is a mass movement to emancipate the prole- tariat, together with the peasantry, and the establishment of a communist society, the precondition for the full liberation of the individual. This fundamental
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Marxist belief Gramsci enunciated in his articles of 1914 and 1916, “An Active and Functional Neutrality,” and “Socialism and Culture.” It was specifically in the 1917 article “The Revolution against Capital” that Gramsci expressed for the first time his distinctive Marxist conviction that without organized political will and social consciousness of the people, even the most favorable objective con- ditions of crisis will not lead to revolutionary change. Economic statistics do not mechanically determine politics; it was necessary for people “to understand ... and to assess them, and to control them with their will, until this collective will becomes the driving force of the economy, the force which shapes reality itself ” (LP: 40). In colonial and peripheral societies, historically sedimented divisions of class, race, religion, nationality, and so on present more formidable obstacles to mass mobilization. The appeal of national self-determination in such colonial formations as India in the 1920s and 1930s led Gramsci to conceptualize the “national-popular” movement as a powerful agent of revolutionary change (Bocock 1986). The centrality of organic intellectuals and the pedagogical strat- egy of mobilizing the masses is immediately relevant to peripheral societies (such as the Philippines) where bureaucratic and authoritarian institutions support and are reproduced by patronage, clientelist politics, reinforced by police–military coercion and para-military gangsterism and warlordism, all beholden to the dictates of US finance capital.
We owe it to Forgacs’ review of its historical context that Gramsci’s concept of the “national-popular” has been foregrounded into a site of controversy and revaluation. While textually faithful in his reconstruction of its genealogy, Forgacs’ renovation is qualified by the British/European political and ideological milieu of the 1980s – the rise of neoconservatism in the UK, North America and the industrialized nation-states. Like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (against the background of the Althusser/Poulantzas/Foucault orbit of dissonance), Forgacs’ chief concern lies in using Gramsci’s idea to transcend economistic Marxism and assert that there is no necessary correlation or link between class and ideology. Forgacs is correct in appraising Gramsci’s concept as integral, fusing the political and cultural, but at the expense of the economic – a term misconstrued as a separate, independent sphere usually isolated to the “base” in the misleading couplet “base–superstructure.”
Removing “national- popular” from the underlying historically specific relations of production in any given society, Forgacs concludes that the notion “recognizes the specificity of national conditions and traditions” in which multi-sectoral and cross-cultural struggles are strategically linked together to promote common interests (1993: 219; compare Hall 1981).
In effect, Forgacs has re-inscribed Gramsci’s idea in the process of “passive revolution,” or transformism, at the same time as he marginalizes the role of the state. By detaching the “national-popular” from its Gramscian framework of socialist transformation, its link with the abolition of private property and class inequality, in short, an expansive proletarian hegemony, Forgacs confuses himself and others in wondering how a class alliance can contain a collective will, and how such an alliance can become reorganized by bourgeois hegemony.
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This is due to the mistake of using the term “alliance” for a populist, sponta- neous trend that has no will, no purposive direction. Once a collective will is defined as non-class (in the functionalist sense) since it has transcended narrow corporatist class interests, then it is impossible to fashion a collective will lacking goals that are defined as simultaneously national and popular. Nation and people (both the discourses and institutional practices associated with these terms) are class-stratified and acquire coherence by articulation into a hegemo- nized nation-people. Hegemony is not only ethico-political but also economic, given “its basis in the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive core of economic activity” (Boothman 1995: li). Why this is so from Gramsci’s perspective, can be explained by his own singular understanding of “collective will.”
Beyond idealist hermeneutics
Two earlier texts may illuminate the political condition of possibility for the theory of the “national-popular” will. The first is the 1916 article “Socialism and Culture.” Here Gramsci defines culture as a creation of humans as products of history, not natural evolution. Culture is:
The organization, the disciplining of one’s inner self; the mastery of one’s personality; the attainment of a higher awareness, through which we can come to understand our value and place within history, our proper function in life, our rights and duties.
(Gramsci [1916])
This inventory and ordering of the layers/aspects of one’s self becomes the staging-ground of class consciousness. Change occurs gradually, through “intelli- gent reflection” of a few, then of a whole class. Revolutionary change comes about through critical reflection and enlargement of one’s awareness via solidarity or collective mobilization of the people constituted as nationwide directing agency (Jones 2006).
The formation of a socialist collective will thus results from “a critique of capitalist civilization.” Gramsci emphasizes the growth of a collective will through critique, through the discovery of the self (ultimately social) as an inventory of traces inscribed by history. Gramsci focuses on the objective or goal pursued through discipline and order:
Discovery of the self as it measures itself against others, as it differentiates itself from others and, having once created an objective for itself, comes to judge facts and events not only for what they signify in themselves, but also according to whether or not they bring that objective nearer. To know oneself means to be master of oneself, ... to emerge from chaos and become an agent of order. ... And one cannot achieve this without knowing others, ... the succession of efforts they have made to be what
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they are, to create the civilization they have created, and which we are
seeking to replace with our own.
(Buci-Glucksmann 1980: 348–349)
The labor of acquiring self-knowledge is key to grasping the nation/people as a site of constituting oneself as an agent of change. The dialectical interface of nation/people found in self-understanding – a form of cognitive appropriation of the world – leads to the integral state, thus abolishing the liberal distinction between civil society and state: “State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion” (SPN: 263; Williams 1980). Learning has an ultimate emancipatory drive (LP: 11–12). It epitomizes the “catharsis” bridging economics and politics (ideology). Space limitations prevent my elaborating on this “catharsis,” the cognitive praxis enacted by the national-popular subject; as a corrective to the sanitized interpretation of Gramsci (e.g. Germino 1990; see Gedo 1993; Haug 2000; Thomas 2007).
The second text for elucidation is the 1917 article, “The Revolution against Capital.” Here Gramsci spells out the versatile diagnostic power of historical materialism, “the real, undying Marxist thought” purged of positivist, naturalist incrustations. This Marxism upholds, as the most important factor in history “not crude, economic facts but rather men themselves, and the societies they create, as they learn to live with one another and understand one another; as, out of these contacts (civilization), they forge a social, collective will.” This collective will understands and controls facts, becoming “the driving force of the economy, the force which shapes reality itself, so that objective reality becomes a living, breathing force, like a current of molten lava, which can be channeled wherever and however the will directs” (LP: 40). Knowledge, will, and practice/action all coalesce in the collective transformation of social life in a determinate historical milieu.
Beyond being a united front tactic, the project of a national-popular ensemble is the project of a mass-based proletarian party constructing hegemony – moral- intellectual leadership – as it confronts “the problems of national life.” Gramsci’s collective will arising from historically determined “popular forces” is premised on “the great mass of peasant farmers” bursting “into political life” (SPN: 132). This event will materialize through a Jacobinist strategy: when the working class overcomes its “narrow economic–corporative” outlook and incorporates the interests of the peasantry and urban artisans into its own program and praxis. In the “Notes on the Southern Problem,” Gramsci predi- cates the capacity of the proletariat to govern as a class on its success in shed- ding “every residue of corporatism, every syndicalist prejudice or incrustation” (1995: 27). While this may be described as an educative, universalizing and expansive alliance, the strategy does not abandon class – does not break the connection between ideology and class, as Forgacs et al. (1985) insist. Rather, the class ideology used to dominate the peasantry and other intermediate strata is thoroughly analyzed (as witness Gramsci’s meticulous anatomy of traditional, petty-bourgeois intellectuals, their ethos and worldviews). Gramsci thus asserts
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that aside from getting rid of inherited prejudices and sectarian egoism, they have to take one more step forward: they have to think like workers who are members of a class that aims to lead peasants and middle classes into a collect- ive project of releasing human potential for the benefit of all; “members of a class which can win and build socialism only if it is helped and followed by the large majority of these social strata” (LP: 28) – the majority – whose subsump- tion by bourgeois leadership serves as the chief obstacle to socialist reconstruc- tion. This process of a generating directed consensus through organic intellectuals who will synthesize the cultural traditions of the whole people is a process not only of education but of organization for class war. Proletarian agency is thus universalizing and sublating at the same time. This entails the imperative of further elucidating the purpose of a national-popular alliance and the goal of constructing a national-popular will.
Again, Gramsci directs our attention to the shifting balance (equilibrium/ disequilibrium) of political forces. Given the situation of the South as “a social disintegration,” and the peasants’ inability “to give a centralized expression to their aspirations and needs,” Gramsci notes, the landlords and their intellectu- als (Croce, for example) dominate the political and ideological field. Likewise, the proletariat as a class “lacks in organizing elements,” just as it lacks its own stratum of intellectuals with a left tendency “oriented toward the revolutionary proletariat.” With the mediation of intellectuals as organizers, the proletarian party will facilitate the alliance between peasant masses and the workers prepared to “destroy the Southern agrarian bloc.” The party needs to organize the masses of poor peasants “into autonomous and independent formations” free from the stranglehold of the “intellectual bloc that is the flexible but very resistant armature of the agrarian bloc” (1995: 47). Thus the people, not the bourgeoisie nor the Church and its cosmopolitan intelligentsia, will proceed to constitute the nation by releasing the productive forces needed for a more humane civilizational project, a new social order.
While the educational–pedagogical task seems a prerequisite, Gramsci does not envision an ideological-moral reform as an end in itself, a continuous “war of position” regardless of changed circumstances. Nor does it have anything to do with the numerical weaknesses of the proletariat nor of the fascist monopoly of military reserves and logistics. Rather, the problem Gramsci faced then was historically dictated by the deleterious moral-intellectual leadership of the fascist bloc enabled by the continuing political and economic subordination of the peasantry and the failure of the workers and their party in mobilizing them. For Gramsci, one of the ways (specific to Italy but not to all social formations) in building a counter-hegemonic bloc is the cultivation of organic intellectuals that can help shape a genuinely democratic national unity (the Italian nation as a legal, formal entity had no real cultural unity rooted in the people’s lives) on the basis of a unified struggle with the popular forces (peasantry, middle elements).
Before applying Gramsci’s theory of the national-popular strategy to the Philip- pines as a model neocolonial formation, I want to summarize its fundamental elements:
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1 A national life and field of action is needed for the proletariat to settle first with its bourgeoisie, as Marx and Engels stipulated in the Manifesto, and a synthesizing historical program based on commonalty of experiences will be used to unify, activate and lead the majority of the population.
2 For socialist revolutionaries to defeat the capitalist bloc and its feudal or semi- feudal supports, the party of the proletariat needs to move beyond sectarian- ism, that is, beyond corporatist/syndicalist tendencies and win the consent of the peasantry and middle elements by including their interests/demands in a common program/platform of action through concessions/compromises without abandoning their humanist, secular principles and the goal of a classless society.
3 To build such an alliance or historic bloc of subaltern masses under the leadership of the party of the working class, organic intellectuals are needed for organizing the nation-people, and to supervise the inculcation of discip- line in thinking and action; these tasks aim to generate a collective will informed by a knowledge of the totality of social relations that is its condition of effectivity.
4 The field of political mobilization involves civil society and the state institu- tions, without any predetermined approach (as always, an orchestration of frontal assault in a war of maneuver needs to be synchronized with political- legal actions in a war of position); the tactics of mass actions will depend on the concrete situation and the alignment and balance of political forces in any specific conjuncture. Consent is always armatured with the legitimacy of coercion.
5 The national-popular has a socialist orientation based on internationalist solidarity, geared to utilizing the scientific and progressive achievements of all of humanity to improve the material and spiritual well-being of all communities and national formations.
Historical triangulation
I will now summarize briefly the political history of the Philippines and sketch the most crucial problems of neocolonial development in the epoch of globalized capitalism and the US-led “war on terror” gripping the whole planet. This exercise is intended simply to illustrate the usefulness of Gramsci’s thesis on the imperative of a “national-popular” will applied to a colonial/neocolonial formation. While Italy and the Philippines belong to sharply disparate temporal and spatial regions and scales, with incommensurable singularities, one can discern rough similarities. The principal difference, of course, is that the Philippines was colonized by theocratic feudal Spain for 300 years and by the industrialized capitalist United States for nearly a century. US colonial rule preserved the feudal infrastructure, heightened ethnic divisions (principally between Christian and Muslim), and deepened class inequality by supporting a comprador-merchant class and an army of bureaucratic intelligentsia. After forcibly subjugating the revolutionary forces of the first Philip- pine Republic, it used a transformist “passive revolution” to win the subaltern
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intelligentsia and thus incorporate the peasantry into a colonial order and eventually a neocolonial setup. It suppressed the birth of a Filipino national-popular will.
The parameters of revolutionary socialist change in the Philippines are clearly drawn by the legacy of its colonial history, first by Spain and then by the United States. This resulted in the continuing fragmentation of the country in terms of class, language, and religion with deadly consequences (instanced by the undefeatable Moro separatist struggle). Spain used the Philippines primarily as a trading post for the galleon trade with China, using natural and human resources it found, until primitive mercantilism took over in the nineteenth century. The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philip- pines as a result of tribal conflicts which the Spanish civil authority resolved mainly by force and partly by concessions to the local chieftains. Unable to occupy the Muslim territories with its limited resources and personnel, the Spanish colonial administration used this conflict to heighten insecurity and legitimize their authority. They relied mainly on the friars of the religious orders to extract tribute from the Christianized inhabitants who were reduced to serfhood or abject slavery.
In time the encomienda system generated a stratum of Spanish landlords who, together with the Catholic Church, maintained a tributary system in which only a few selected natives functioned as petty administrators and bureaucrats. So Spanish hegemony was tenuous, obtained mainly through the disciplinary regime of religious practices and institutions. When the children of Chinese and Filipino creoles or mestizos succeeded in acquiring formal education in schools adminis- tered by the religious orders, and also in Europe, they absorbed liberal ideas that formed the basis for the nationalist movement which began in the 1870s and ripened in the 1898 revolution. But this consciousness of Filipino nationality was confined mainly to the artisans and professions led by the ilustrado gentry class. It was not shared by the peasantry who were mobilized in terms of kinship or traditional loyalty to their village elders; or in terms of affiliation with millenary, chiliastic sects. In time, because of the organizing efforts of the Propagandists (reformist intellectuals, ilustrados, from the classes of rich farmers, artisans and petty traders) with their ideals of enlightenment rationalism and autonomy, and the recruitment of the petty landlords–merchants, a hegemonic social bloc of anticolonialists emerged: the Malolos Republic led by General Emilio Aguinaldo. This signaled the emergence of a Filipino national-popular intelligence and communal-oriented sensibility.
A sense of Filipino nationhood founded by the cosmopolitanized petty bour- geoisie with allies in the merchant and small landlord class was aborted when the United States suppressed the young Republic in the 1899–1903 Filipino–American War. The formal republican institutions built on the ruins of Spanish theocracy collapsed when the ilustrado leadership surrendered to the US colonial authority. While the Spaniards used violence armored by Christian evangelization, the United States occupied the islands with brutal force armored by diplomatic propaganda, the promise of “Benevolent Assimilation” and eventual independence. Using scorched earth tactics, torture and mass imprisonment, the US killed 1.4 million
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Filipinos, 10 percent of the population. Unable to defeat the Moros (Filipino Muslims) despite a series of massacres, the US deployed a combination of diplo- matic chicanery, subterfuge and “bribery” to pacify them. Up to the present, US Special Forces are still battling the Moros (Muslims living in the Philippines) in the form of the “Abu Sayyaf” terrorist bandit group, a proxy for the massive and more formidable Moro insurgency forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and disaffected sections of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) (San Juan 2007a) who refused to cooperate with the current US-subservient administration.
One can summarize the 50 years of direct US colonial rule as an illustration of hegemony won initially through military power and stabilized through the twin methods of bureaucratic coercion and cooptation. When the Philippines was granted formal-nominal independence in 1946, the US had set in place an Americanized privileged minority, an oligarchy of landlords, bureaucrat-capitalists, and compradors that would fulfill US economic needs and global foreign policy. Consensus on elite democracy and the formal trappings of representative govern- ment was obtained through decades of violence, cooptation, moral persuasion, and a whole range of pedagogical–disciplinary methods, with the active collaboration of the religious institutions (both Catholic and Protestant). Hence the Philippines today is a nation of impoverished peasants and workers, with less than 1 percent of 90 million people comprising the middle class and landlord-comprador elite (Lichauco 2005). It is basically agricultural and dependent on foreign investments (lately, on remittance of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW)), devoid of the full exercise of its sovereignty (the US has veto power over its military and foreign policy). Its political system is characterized by the presence of formalistic liberal- democratic institutions administered by a tiny group of oligarchic families, reinforced by the Church, and a vast military–police apparatus chiefly dependent on US aid (economic, military, political) rationalized by the US-led “war on terror” (on US support of “low-intensity conflict” see Agee 2003). There is as yet no national-popular will exercising genuine independence, only a subalternized elite whose ascendancy and survival depend on direct or mediated (via World Bank–IMF–WTO) US military and political patronage.
The Southern Question in the Philippines
Gramsci of course did not directly engage with the process of Western colonization of a “Third World” country. However, even though there are considerable differences, one can consider the Philippines as analogous to the Italian “southern region” vis-à-vis the US industrial metropolis. The current metaphorical use of “North” (industrialized nations; center) and “South” (underdeveloped regions; periphery) in international relations is clearly indebted to Gramsci’s geographical–economic polarity. To be sure, Gramsci’s categorization of the North–South binary is less economic than sociopolitical and cultural, in contrast to the orthodox Marxist definition of a nation histori- cally predicated on the existence of a market and a commodity exchange system.
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Contrary to orthodox Marxism (Rosenthal and Yudin 1967: 304), which considered the capitalist national market as the basis for nationhood, the sense of a Filipino nation was born in armed struggle against Spanish theocratic rule and later against US military aggression. No full-blown commodity market existed in a feudal-theocratic mercantilist order. However, the emergent national identity was cancelled outright when Filipinos were excluded in the 1898 Treaty of Paris (Spain, militarily defeated, was forced to cede the islands to the US for 20 million dollars). Laws were immediately promulgated to criminalize anticolonial dissent: the 1901 Sedition Law and 1902 Brigandage Act punished anyone advocating separation from the US. The 1903 Reconcentration Act relocated entire rural communities into towns to deny refuge to rebels; the Flag Law, which prohibited displays of the revolutionary flag of the Filipino Republic, was enacted in 1907, the same year when the last revolutionary Filipino general, Macario Sakay, was hanged in public. Nationalist discourse and symbols were proscribed, thus destroying the material practices sustaining the collective spirit of resistance and will to independence. This period of pacification (1898–1935) involved a variable if shrewd application of force and consent, violence and persuasion, guided over- all by a transformist, “passive revolution” strategy administered by the local oligarchy and its bureaucrats tutored by American overseers.
US colonialism thus applied “transformism” by supplementing coercive tactics with a long-range strategy of ethnocentric, opportunistic extraction of consent from the new subjects (Pomeroy 1970). After Filipino guerilla resistance waned in the first decade of the twentieth century, the US established the Philippine Assembly as an auxiliary law-making body under the US-dominated Philippine Commission appointed by the US President to manage the colony. It was one way of implement- ing the slogan of “Benevolent Assimilation” of the natives proclaimed by President William McKinley in the midst of the violent pacification of the islands under the aegis of the white-supremacist slogan of “Manifest Destiny.” This Assembly served to co-opt the native elite (elected by at most 3 percent of the population) and defuse the popular agitation for “immediate independence,” a submerged, repressed tendency in the majority of colonial subjects.
A neocolony was born from the destruction of the insurgent nation and the systematic deepening of divisions among the people (Schirmer 1987). The principal instruments for winning consent were the school system of universal public education and the enforcement of English as the official medium of instruction, government communication, and mass media. Among progressive intellectuals, Renato Constantino (1978; see also Martin 2001) was the first to stress the crucial role of the pedagogical apparatus and the modes of the production and transmission of knowledge, specifically through the English language, in enforcing the allegiance/conformity of the majority of citizens whose national imaginary has thus been captured and detained. Americaniza- tion of the Filipino through education and cultural domination may be viewed as a kind of “passive revolution” aimed chiefly to defuse nationalist impulses in the peasantry and working class, and re-channel the energies of the middle strata of intellectuals–professionals to serve the interests of US policy in Asia
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especially in a time when Japan was rising as an imperial power and revolu- tionary ferment in China and other countries was dangerously looming in the horizon. Future independence was promised to pacify the nationalist intellec- tuals while recruitment to the Hawaii plantations gave temporary relief to unmitigated misery in the countryside.
In the process of revolutionizing the political and cultural institutions “from above,” the US colonial regime also cultivated its own intelligentsia. Politics imitated the prevailing patronage system binding landlord and tenant. Filipino ilustrados serving the defeated Republic – the educated gentry – were enticed to join the colonial administration as teachers, policemen, clerks, and technical help in the bureaucracy; as judges and municipal legislators. One example of a traditional intellectual who participated in this negotiated compromise was Trinidad Pardo de Tavera. In 1901, Tavera wrote to General Arthur MacArthur, the chief administrator of the military occupation:
After peace is established, all our efforts will be directed to Americanizing ourselves, to cause a knowledge of the English language to be extended and generalized in the Philippines, in order that through its agency the American spirit may take possession of us, and that we may so adopt its principles, its political customs, and its peculiar civilization that our redemption may be complete and radical.
(Quoted in Constantino 1978: 67)
This stratum of neocolonized intellectuals cemented the tie between the oligarchic elite and the colonial rulers, performing a necessary role in disinte- grating the popular memory of past revolutionary struggle and alienating this elite from the everyday lives of the masses.
When the Philippine Commonwealth was established in 1935, the Filipino intellectuals who came from the peasantry and working class gathered around the US-sponsored President Manuel Quezon and his program of “social justice.” This populist rhetoric re-channeled nationalist impulses toward legal ameliorative schemes won as concessions from Washington. The social bloc of landlords–bureaucrats–compradors funded cultural programs with a sentimental patronizing attitude toward the native or aboriginal populace. While writers in the vernacular gravitated toward more activist left-leaning circles on the fringes of the Communist Party of the Philippines (formed in August 1930), the writers using English remained “cosmopolitan,” as can be gleaned from this reflection of a progressive-minded critic, Salvador P. Lopez (written during the Japanese occupation circa 1942–1944):
For culture is fluid, volatile, impossible to confine in an air-tight compart- ment; and nothing is truer than that real culture is universal, the exclusive property of no particular nation but of all nations that have intelligence to harness it to their own uses.
(1945: 61)
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Cosmopolitanism Filipino-style lurked astutely behind this left-wing nationalist figure who eloquently voiced proletarian sentiments in the 1930s and 1940s against European fascism and Japanese militarism.
Uneven and combined development
Unlike Italy, then, the Philippines were distinguished as an undeveloped rural- agricultural economy without any heavy industry, under US ideological-moral control and political “tutelage.” Utilitarian and pragmatic norms permeated the social habitus of the middle strata. This hegemony flourished due to the acquiescence of the oligarchic bloc of landlords, comprador merchants, and bureaucratic intelligentsia, complemented by overt and covert tactics of violence and bribery unleashed on the unruly sections of landless peasants, workers, and artisans. Challenged by numerous peasant insurrections and workers’ strikes, US hegemony continues as a compromise setup enforced by juridical-police means of untenable legitimacy.
Filipino cacique/elite democracy is built on the parasitic dependency of the local clients on US military, economic and political assistance. The Philippines is a polity formally identified as “national” (since the Philippines is recognized by the United Nations as a “nation-state”) without genuine sovereignty, but only “popular” on the basis of periodic elections. This is concealed by John Gershman who, in a historical survey of the country, describes the Marcos dicta- torship as a hybrid of personalistic caudillo rule, aided by technocrats and regional alliances of governors, without any mention of US dependency of the whole structure validated by bilateral treaties and secret stipulations (1993: 162).
From 1899 up to 1946, the US utilized the Philippines as a source of cheap raw materials and labor (the colony began earlier to supply the Hawaii plantations with contract workers), as well as a military-naval outpost. The semi-feudal system of land tenure, especially in the sugar plantations, maintained landlord/rentier power that shared governance with the comprador merchants in the cities. Clientelism and patronage regulated class friction. More impoverished than before, the peasant masses staged regular revolts culminating in the numerous peasant uprisings in the 1920s, the Sakdal uprising of the 1930s and the Communist-led Hukbahalap rebel- lion of the 1940s. The Moros for the most part followed their tribal chieftains who were allowed limited local power by the central government. After World War II, the neocolonial government re-located landless peasants, former Huk partisans, to the southern island of Mindanao, temporarily relieving population pressure and unemployment in the North. The question of land and the demands of the peas- antry eluded the leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines because, in a one-sided manner, they gave priority to the issue of formal independence, thus subordinating them to elite politicians like Quezon and abandoning the peasantry to the military, church and landlord private armies. Based on the small urban industries (printing, cigar-making, etc.), Crisanto Evangelista and other trade unionists set up the party with 6,000 members, a few from the peasant sector. Impatient, they tried to skip the necessary stage of winning hegemony in civil
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society, opting mainly for confrontational tactics within a narrow geopolitical arena. Within less than one year, however, the leaders were in jail and the party criminalized and substantially dismantled.
James Allen, a leading Communist Party USA functionary, visited the Philippines in 1936–1938 and helped amalgamate the urban-based Communist Party with the peasant-based Socialist Party led by Pedro Abad Santos. In his memoirs, Allen criticizes the limitations of the Filipino Marxists, influenced by anarchist and syndicalist notions absorbed from Spanish progressive intellectu- als rather than from “liberal and radical ideas emanating from the United States” (1993: 27) – for example, the Popular Front perspective. Allen describes the peasant leaders Juan Feleo, Mateo del Castillo, and Pedro Abad Santos who, in contrast to the Communist Party leaders, emphasized the need for unifying the peasant and proletarian movements. Even though they were not familiar with the debates among Western Marxists, at least they paid attention to the “Southern [peasant] Question.” With the merger in 1938 of the communists and socialists into one Communist Party, the theme of national independence was eclipsed by a “democratic front policy” to oppose the victory of fascism in Europe and Japan. The mediation of Allen and other patronizing mentors displaced the “national-popular” agenda with an internationalist one, thus legitimizing the continuing authority of the US-patronized cacique, Quezon, who had terrorized the party and persecuted its officials, and only grudgingly tolerated their 1938 convention. Proletarian and socialist principles were displaced by the virtues of entrepreneurial individualism and US-style pluralism, ironically conveyed by a trusted “tutor”/adviser from the US Communist Party.
From a Gramscian point of view, a shift of party policy from the national to the international (in Gramsci’s specific case, this was brought about by the need to confront the rise of Italian fascism in the 1920s) sacrifices the interests of the party’s mass base. It subordinates the party to the oligarchy whose defense of elite/cacique democracy would conceal their subservience to US authority. The outcome in the Philippines was disastrous. When the US forces returned in 1945, the axiomatics of US imperialism, which disappeared in the struggle against Japanese occupation, had to be re-learned after the arrest and killing of anti-Japanese Huk (Filipino commu- nist-led) guerillas. A similar situation occurred 30 or so years later when former leftists made a fetish of “civil society” as an entity separate from the state, following US Cold War strategy against the Soviet state. Filipino postmarxists (now flunkeys of the Establishment or ideologues of globalization) glamorized a hypothetical “democratic space” and electoral democracy without any substantive land reform or even token social-democratic improvements during Corazon Aquino’s presi- dency. Meanwhile, Aquino and her successors welcomed US advisers to supervise terrorist and fascist measures against the left, up to inviting US Special Forces to help wipe out Moro dissidents. This policy of systematic terror against leftists, nationalists, and indigenous advocates continues under de facto president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, with over 1,000 extra-judicial killings (also designated by human rights monitors as “summary executions”) and enforced disappearances since 2001.
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Again, Gramsci’s lesson here is clear: replacing the need for an anti-imperialist “national-popular” bloc fighting for genuine national sovereignty, and the democratization of social property to abolish class privileges, means abandoning the entire socialist project. It is a formula for defeat.
During the Marcos dictatorship (1972–1986), the revolutionary project of building socialism through a worker–peasant alliance took the form of a united front – the National Democratic Front (NDF) agenda initiated by a party estab- lished under “Marxism–Leninism–Mao Tsetung Thought.” Established in April 1973, the NDF sought to fight Marcos’s authoritarian-martial rule through the transitory alliance of the proletariat, peasantry, urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie in a national-democratic revolution – a people’s war geared to forming a democratic coalition government (on the postwar elite, see Agoncillo and Guerrero 1970: 670–671). According to the 1985 draft program, the NDF
Provides a framework and channel for the unity and coordination of all groups and individuals adhering to, and advancing, the general line of fight- ing for national liberation and genuine democracy. It wages armed struggle – specifically a people’s war – as the principal form of struggle at this stage of the Philippine revolution; but it also recognizes the importance of other forms of struggle, and in fact combines and coordinates the armed struggle with all types of clandestine and open, non-legal and legal struggles.
(National Democratic Front Secretariat 1985: 5)
In later elaborations of this program, one finds the “armed struggle” accentuated as the primary form of struggle nationwide, taking pride of place over all the other forms. The first item in the 12-point general program reads: “Unite the Filipino people to overthrow the tyrannical rule of US imperialism and the local reactionaries.”
Clearly, the NDF may have sidetracked, at certain conjunctures, the primacy of the armed struggle in favor of peace negotiations with the government begin- ning with the Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 (NDFP 2006). Combined with armed political mobilization, I see these negotiations as an astute move of the NDFP to build public consensus on the most crucial issues of land reform, social justice, and sovereignty. This is an opportunity denied to it except in the liberated zones where the New People’s Army (NPA) exercises precarious ascendancy. However, the NPA cannot win consent in the domain of civil society (including the economic sphere) unless its program is translated into community-wide practicable agendas. But the drive for winning consent (through a wise strategic balancing of frontal assault and positional warfare) seems premised on a mechanical reading of the prevailing social production relations (not just the economic base, in the conventional sense). For example, there is a recurrent stress on the developing crisis as engendering the imminent collapse of the regime. Conversely, there is a belief that a spontaneous outburst of mass action may precipitate revolutionary victory, ahead of any nationwide acceptance of the legitimacy of the NPA as the liberating people’s army.
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Whereas Gramsci proposed that what is decisive is moral-intellectual leadership of the historic bloc of social forces subtending the people’s army, a leadership which does not passively anticipate crisis breakthroughs but in fact prepares the ground for such direct confrontations. In addition, the forces of the ruling bloc need to be sufficiently demoralized, disaggregated, and decapitated of its intellectual-moral leadership before proletarian hegemony can be assured.
Toward clarifying the problem of transition
The problem of the national-democratic transition to socialism in the Philippines has been surrounded with the endless and often futile debate on the mode of production, in particular, whether feudalism or capitalist social relations obtain. Numerous volumes have appeared contradicting Sison and De Lima’s (1998) thesis of the Philippines as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal formation. For example, Ben Reid (2000) argues that the Philippines is now overdetermined by rent capitalism which is more vulnerable to urban insurrections, therefore a peasant-based insurgency is no longer valid or tenable as a revolutionary strat- egy. This kind of empiricist-positivist thinking is what Gramsci warns us to reject when he states: “it is not the economic structure which directly determines the political action, but it is the interpretation of it and of the so-called laws which rule its development” (quoted in Bobbio 1979: 33). And for Gramsci, such laws in Marxism are tendential laws that are historical, not methodological, because they always beget unpredictable countervailing forces. “Economic contradiction becomes a political contradiction” and economic law passes into political strategy (Bensaid 2002, 283).
Statistics proving uneven and combined development in neocolonial formations like the Philippines can be interpreted to serve either progressive or reactionary purposes; they cannot by themselves propose a revolutionary strategy. A leader- ship formation is needed. Gramsci writes that the mythical “Modern Prince” (van- guard political party) is a creator or initiator, basing itself “on effective reality” which is not something static or immobile, but rather “a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift of equilibrium.” Hence, normative ethical judgment and realistic critical analysis fuse in political action: “What ‘ought to be’ is there- fore concrete; indeed it is the only realistic and historicist interpretation of reality, it alone is history in the making and philosophy in the making, it alone is politics” (SPN: 171). The ascendancy of the national-popular will as the sign of accom- plished hegemony does not hinge on the resolution of the feudal-or-capitalist debate but on the meticulous analysis of the balance of political forces, that is, on theorizing the alignment and conflict of social blocs on the terrain of a specific historical formation.
The Philippines is indeed a complex test case for any revolutionary socialist politics removed from its European provenance. In such a highly differentiated political economy with divisions and fragmentation on every level, what is imperative is precisely an inventory of social-political forces. For there to be a revolutionary change there has to be a national-popular movement in which
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masses will be “led to think coherently and in a unitary manner an existing reality” (Fontana 1993: 45). This critical and coherent practice of understanding is expansive, moving beyond sectarian, corporatist or parochial views. Gramsci’s strategy of striving for a national-popular bloc is premised on the notion of catharsis, the dialectic of the war of position and the war of maneuver, neither one nor the other but always contingent on the highly mutable balance of political forces:
The term “catharsis” can be employed to indicate the passage from the purely economic (or egoistic-passional) to the ethico-political moment, that is the superior elaboration of the structure into superstructure in the minds of men. This also means the passage from “objective” to “subjective” and from “necessity” to “freedom.”
(SPN: 366)
In short, proletarian class ideology becomes universalized; it becomes the nation-people’s “common sense,” pervading everyday life. All these have been prefigured in the emphasis Gramsci laid on the need for self-inventory, order gained from self-discipline, knowledge of social relations, and collective will in the essays I have cited earlier.
Failure to heed this dialectical analysis of the ever-shifting equilibrium of political forces, which is essentially a symptom of positivistic or dogmatic think- ing, has led to catastrophes in the past. Most notable is the prediction by the leadership of the Huks in the 1950s that the neocolonial regime would collapse because of the sharpened crisis of international capitalism (Dalisay 1999: 116). This error stems from ignoring the form of the state being challenged and the existing balance of political forces, allowing the supposed transnationalization of production and finance to dictate the terms of the national-democratic struggle. It is the current malady afflicting anti-globalization “leftists” who consider the battle against the IMF/World Bank/WTO as more important than fighting the ruthless fascist acts of the US–Arroyo regime. The other lesson in ignoring the problematic of achieving hegemony via a national-popular bloc may be found in the CPP/NDF’s boycott of the “snap elections” of February 1986, a mistake due (to quote the official explanation) to the mechanical analysis in terms of class standpoint and subjective intentions, without taking into account “the objective positioning of each of the political forces in motion and in interaction with others” (Schirmer and Shalom 1987: 384). But that self-criticism does not mention at all where and how the protagonism of the masses will intervene in the conjuncture.
With the demise of the Soviet system and the proliferation of Western-funded NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) in the civil society of “Third World” countries, Gramsci was discovered as a quotable sage. In the Philippines, the “new social movements” opted for US-promoted electoral democracy instead of socialism or national independence. In this milieu, Gramsci’s notion of engaging the state from bases within civil society was refunctioned to resolve the crisis of
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left-oriented political forces. It was purged of its historically realist theorems (see Jaluague 1993). The Filipino “civil-society” advocates were dutifully silent about US imperial plunder of the Philippines and the utter subservience of its rapacious local agents to the Washington Consensus. Thus Gramsci is instru- mentalized to deflect attention away from the lack of national sovereignty, the fragmentation and anomic decay of society, and the unprecedented impoverish- ment of the masses – a majority of Filipinos subsist on $2 a day – and the endemic unemployment, which explains why eight out of ten households are stricken with hunger (Lichauco 2005; Oliveros 2008), and why between nine and ten million Filipinos are exploited migrant workers in over 200 countries around the world. This use of Gramsci was surely an exercise in tendentious extrapolation at the tail of the Cold War when neoliberal themes/slogans purveyed via privately funded NGOs led by managerial technocrats flourished. Gramsci’s hegemony was equated with radical democracy, all struggle being reduced to the ideological realm (Wood 1986). In fact, the call for hegemony (construed as electoral supremacy) eclipsed and erased the call for revolution, for people’s war. This is of course a prelude to the trendy, chic sectors of the anti-globalization movement embodied in the World Social Forum and its eclectic, opportunist accommodationism.
Imperial terror contra revolution
Immediately after September 11, 2001, the Philippines was declared the “second battlefront” after Afghanistan in the “war on terror” (Tuazon 2002). In October, Secretary of State Colin Powell classified the CPP and the New People’s Army as “terrorist” organizations, clearly revealing the normative unilateral criterion of “terrorist” as any group or individual that opposes US imperial policies and its effects. President Bush dispatched thousands of US Special Forces and Marines to pursue members of the Moro guerilla contingent called “Abu Sayyaf,” actually a kidnap-for-ransom gang, alleged to be Al Qaeda followers. The informed public in the Philippines already knows that this group was set up by government military/police, local politicians and businessmen to split up the Moro revolutionary camp and also channel ransom money into their private bank-accounts (Vitug and Gloria 2000; International Peace Mission 2002). Notwithstanding this truth, the Bush regime utilized the brutal 1899–1903 colo- nial pacification of the islands to justify sending US troops to the Philippines as an example of the US spreading democracy and freedom to benighted lands at horrendous costs for both Americans and Filipinos (Katz 2004; Kolko 1976).
There is no doubt that US policies of hegemony succeeded in making the Philippines one of the first genuine neocolonies on the planet. Concluding his history of Philippines in the twentieth century, Renato Constantino states that after the 1946 grant of formal independence, “the culture, the institutions, the sciences and the arts that evolved only served to confirm in the minds of orthodox Filipinos the need for some form of dependence on the United States” (1975: 393–394). Lichauco contends that “the contradiction between colonialism and
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nationalism remains the principal contradiction of Philippine society” (2004; see also CENPEG 2005; Bauzon 1991).
Consequently, parasitic on US support, the Filipino ruling bloc has never really won hegemony over the nation-people. Like the previous administrations from day one of the Republic up to the present, the Filipino elite has never enjoyed the full and total consent of the governed, as witness the uninterrupted peasant rebellions in the first 50 years of the last century, as well as the periodic eruptions of Moro antigovernment resistance. Even after the end of Marcos’s “constitutional dictatorship,” the military and police apparatus of the neocolonial state continues to be fully deployed both against the communist guerillas and the Moro insurgents – the Moros in fact receiving worldwide recognition of its legitimacy by the Organization of Islamic Conference. Class war persists in both its positional and confrontational dimensions, across ethnic, sexual, and regional heterogeneities (Eadie 2005).
Despite their unflagging struggle against fascist violence in defense of people’s rights and welfare, the NDF, CPP and NPA are branded as terrorists by all those who succeeded Marcos. At present, the Arroyo regime has been accused of unprecedented and massive extra-judicial killings and abductions of over 1,000 citizens, priests, lawyers, journalists, human-rights advocates, labor union leaders, women, and activists from “civil society.” Amnesty International, the UN Special Rapporteurs, World Council of Churches, Human Rights Watch, and others have all agreed that Arroyo’s government, in particular the US- funded and supervised Armed Forces of the Philippines and the National Police, are all guilty or complicit with those crimes. In March 2007 at The Hague, Netherlands, the Permanent People’s Tribunal held a trial of the US–Arroyo regime and found it guilty of “crimes against humanity,” a judgment conveyed to the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the International Court of Justice (San Juan 2007b). It would be logical to conclude then that following Gramsci, the war of maneuver, frontal assault, may be considered appropriate (as it was in Russia in 1917), especially if the state (military-police power) was everything and civil society “primordial and gelatinous” (SPN: 238). But is that the case in the Philippines today where, behind the army and bureaucracy, the trenches and fortifications of civil society – church, media, schools, etc. – have already been taken over by the national-popular bloc, the alliance of workers and peasants? If so, then the revolution has won. If not, we need to go back to the mass grass-roots organizations and reassess our frameworks, paradigms, conceptual tools, and experiences.
We may sharpen our inquiry further. While the situation may be crisis-ridden and Arroyo deprived of majority support in “civil society,” has the working class party achieved hegemony in that realm? Apart from the current logistical weak- ness and decreased size of the NPA (the Moro insurgents, though massive and well-equipped, appear to be plagued with leadership problems), the CPP and other left-leaning or socialist-oriented groups have not yet fully attained “national-popular” stature. That is, their leaders and intellectuals have not yet achieved that “organic cohesion in which feeling–passion becomes understanding
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and thence knowledge,” precisely that moment when they can be said to be representative insofar as a “shared life” exists “which alone is a social force ... the ‘historical bloc’” (SPN: 418). We do not yet have proletarian-oriented “common sense” operating in everyday social life. In other words, the historical bloc of national-popular forces has not been realized as yet, despite the utterly corrupt, mendacious and criminal actions of the illegitimate president. The neo- colonial state survives by virtue of superior military-police organization (though rent by factional in-fighting, as attested to by several mutinies in the last decade, which persist up to now), the inadequacy of its challengers, and sheer psycho- cultural inertia. Above all, the neocolonial state is able to function with a semblance of normality (though quotidian life is replete with emergency episodes and punctual ruptures) because of unremitting US support. Aside from US military-political aid, the elite is able to survive because of the $12–14 billion annual remittance of OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers), enough to pay the growing foreign debt and fund the irredeemably corrupt bureaucracy and military-police apparatus.
Globalizing the nation?
Viewed from the neo-Gramscian perspective of international political economists (Gill 2003c; Bieler and Morton 2003), we need to take account of the current world order, the appearance of trends such as “the new constitutionalism” and “discipli- nary neoliberalism.” Future research should take into account the “recomposition of state-civil society relations” that generate new structures of exploitation, forms of class-consciousness, modes of resistance and class struggle (Bieler and Morton 2003). World-systems analysis has to be supplemented by a historical-materialist critique of mutable forms of political subjectivities generated by new innovative forms of commodification and marketization of both private and public spheres, as well as the corresponding changes in the planet’s bio-eco system (Gill 2003c).
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony operating through the historic bloc of the national/popular conceptualizes the idea of socialist revolution as a transformation in the relation of political forces. Protracted people’s war, if it is not just a carry- over slogan from the Chinese experience, needs to be judged as a tactic, not a long-range strategy of political struggle where the land problem coexists within the question of neocolonial dependency. “People’s war” also needs to concede if not incorporate the more urgent demand for Moro self-determination within its parameters. Within the dual perspective that Gramsci applies to the revolutionary process, the military moment of a relation of forces – the moment of maneuver or frontal assault – must be located within the unity of the whole formation and the complex relation of the elements within it. Gramsci warns us that it is foolish to be fixated by a military model since politics must have priority over its military aspect: “only politics creates the possibility for maneuver and movement” (SPN: 232; Sassoon 1980).
Notwithstanding the primacy of class struggle in historical materialism, the people-nation (mainly in the “Third World”/global South) remains the pivotal
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Gramsci’s theory of the “national-popular” 185
agency for a strategy against finance–capital imperialism. The people (prefigured by the revolutionary worker–peasant alliance) and the emergent nation endowed with critical universality (Lowy 1998) remains the dual thematic and narrative vectors of any socialist praxis in neocolonized formations. In the case of the Philippines, as long as the peasantry, rural middle stratum, and indigenous communities remain the base of landlord–comprador power, and therefore of bourgeois (US and local capitalist–bureaucrats) control, the insurgency in the countryside will always be an irrepressible part of the “civil society + political- ideological domain” (the integral state) which is the paramount terrain of the national-democratic struggle (Q2 §6: 763–764). Again, we need to be reminded that civil society includes the economic sphere lest everything be reduced to the cultural or ideological realm. The immiserated countryside and its urban exten- sions continue to serve as the reservoir for the thousands of migrant contract workers who now remit billions of their earnings, enough to pay the country’s huge foreign debt to the World Bank and financial consortiums. And as long as the Philippines is a deformed or inchoate “nation-state,” without real sovereignty, the nationalist project – global decolonization as “the most significant correlate of US hegemony” (Arrighi 1993) remains pivotal and decisive in socialist trans- formation. Without the Filipino nation-people, there is no agency to carry out the socialist revolution in a neocolonial location. Without the national-popular, there can be no historical specificity to analyze, no particularity to authenticate the universal drive of global socialist transformation of the global capitalist system. By grasping the full implications of Gramsci’s “national-popular” as applied to the historicized formation of a neocolony like the Philippines, by exploring its heuristic and explanatory value for socialist goals, we may be able to find to explore the most fruitful way of being Gramscian in this new millennium of imperial terror and impending planetary ecological disasters.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-39099063376700899832023-12-18T14:41:00.000-08:002023-12-18T14:44:12.475-08:00ART UNDER CAPITALISM<b
>Commodity Fetishism and the Crisis of Contemporary Art E. San Juan, Jr.
University of Connecticut</b
>
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Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the
richness of subjective human sensibility...either cultivated or brought into
being...The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the
world down to the present. — KARL MARX The smell of impending death rose from
these avantgardes. The future was no longer theirs, though nobody knew whose it
was. — ERIC HOBSBAWM It is no longer news anymore, at this late date, to declare
that art, in our marketized planet, is deemed a precious commodity. Considered
as property, artworks are bought and sold, circulated, forged, stolen,
recovered, auctioned everyday. Profits are made for artists, merchants,
smugglers, consumers, and anyone involved in trading/ merchandising. It’s banal
or trivial to observe this fact. So intense was this commercialization from the
mid-1950’s that Ian Burn complained how it spelled “corruption and the
prostitution of the artist” (1999, 397). A few recent examples can be cited as
prolegomena to our discourse. In Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in November
2013, avant-garde art confirmed its absorption by the market with the $104.5
million sale of Andy Warhol’s 1963 “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).” In
2007, his “Green Car Crash” sold for $1.7 million, a proof that the aura of the
name dictates market value, with the subject or content of the artwork adding
enough differentia specifica to mark its historical period or milieu. In the
past, Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucien Freud” was sold for $142.4
million while Gerhard Richter’s abstract, MABINI REVIEW | VOL. XI (2022): pages
1-20 © 2022 San Juan, E. Jr. | ISSN 2012-2144 [I] “A.B. Courbet” was sold for
$26.4 million and Cy Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea” (1959 drawings) was sold for
$21.6 million (New York Times 2013). Recently, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982
painting, Warrior,” a work which is said to symbolize the struggles of Black men
in a white- dominated world, was sold in a Christie auction for $41.9 million,
which does not rival a Basquiat painting sold for $110.5 million in 2017. The
earlier commodification of cubist art (Picasso, in particular) has been
diagnosed by John Berger (1965; see also Raphael 1980). Together with Warhol and
Picasso, Basquiat continues to be a key player in the blue- chip art market even
in this crisis of globalized neoliberalism. Commodification seems to have
climaxed in a species of trading rituals involving postmodern art, including
both “conceptual” and “post-conceptual” species. Exchange-value (embodied in
money as cause) has displaced use-value (now conceived as effect). At the
outset, the term “conceptual” art offers a conundrum since it is not clear what
concept is referred to, or whether the term designates the artist’s intention
not necessarily fulfilled or carried out (Smith 1974; Godfrey, 1998). Indeed,
Sol LeWitt states that “the artwork may never leave the artist’s mind”
(1999,107), though how we can verify or ascertain this remains a mystery. In any
case, a metalepsis seems to have occurred. Art generates the concept (telos;
universal significance) instead of the concept (vision or intuition) engendering
the performative, linguistic/ discursive, visual practices that followed
expressionism and cubism: constructivism, abstract expressionism, kinetic art,
fluxion happenings, pop art, minimalist art, op art, conceptual art, etc. A
historic, epoch-making event occurred at the threshold of postmodernity. In
1973, the “dematerialization of the art object” from 1966-1972, was documented
by the critic, Lucy Lippard. It was inaugurated by Marcel Duchamp’s
“readymades.” With this gesture, Peter Osborne asserts, “art changed its focus
from the form of language to what was being said,” changing the nature of art by
focusing not on morphology, structure, or medium, but on function—from
“appearance’ to conception. Osborne further notes that “all art (after Duchamp)
is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually” (2002, 13). The
idea/intention/concept preempts its hypothetical realization and its physical
embodiment or actualization. [2] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) The epochal
transformation initiated by Duchamp abolished the categorical distinction
between creative artifice and found objects/ incidents in nature and everyday
life. Minimalism further destroyed traditional barriers and conventions.
Performance art reconceptualized the art-object as an act or event constituted
through and disappearing into time, sustaining itself at the level of its
motivating agenda. No longer can art be confined to its visual or spatial
experience and pleasure attached to the medium or vehicle. Following the
break-up of formalist modernism, minimalism followed after with Sol Lewitt’s
1967 manifesto, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Osborne summarizes the lineages
of negation characterizing conceptual art and its aftermath: 1. The negation of
material objectivity as the site of the identity of the artwork by the
temporality of ‘intermedia’ acts and events. 2. The negation of medium by a
generic conception of ‘objecthood,’ made up of ideal systems of relations. 3.
The negation of the intrinsic significance of visual form by a semiotic, or more
narrowly, linguistically based onceptual content. 4. The negation of established
modes of autonomy of the artwork by various forms of cultural activism and
social critique (2002, 18). It is the last negation that generates art-oriented
activities intervening into everyday life in order to transform sociopolitical
structures. In this process, alternative or subaltern ideological positions are
explored, analyzing, and defining the relations of power at play in all cultural
institutions, in particular the appropriative mechanisms of the museum and the
market. Social and political critique ensues from the practice of diverse forms
of conceptualist experiments, procedures, and historically defined forms.
Consequences of Dematerialization As early as 1970, Mel Bochner, one of the
practitioners of “conceptual art,” questioned the epithet’s ambiguity and lack
of precision. In any case, the rubric “conceptual art” has been used to cover
the works created by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson, Joseph Kosuth,
Lawrence Weiner, Bruce Naumann and others during its MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI
(2022) [3] apogee and crisis in the years 1966-72 (Godfrey 1998). While Kosuth
proposed that conceptual art defines itself by questioning the nature of art,
Lewitt posited its essence to be found in “the idea or concept” which becomes “a
machine that makes the art” (1967), the concept itself subsuming the planning
and decisions that enable the execution of the art-work. LeWitt’s pronouncements
have become so scriptural that a popular Dictionary of Theories ascribes
conceptual art as a “cerebral approach” championed by Lewitt in 1967 as a
reaction against post-war formalistic art. Since the concept or idea becomes
paramount in the artistic process, “the planning and concept are decided
beforehand, but the end result is intuitive and without recognizable purpose”
(Bothamley 1993, 108-09). Why and how do we explain this shift of aesthetic
concern from the material embodiment of art-ideas to the ideas/notions
themselves? One answer is provided by Marx’s theory of commodity-fetishism and
its further elaboration in Marxist-Leninist thought (for expositions of the
Marxist approach, see Arvon 1973; Laing 1978; Johnson 1984). Reification and
Alienation In the initial chapters of Capital Volume 1, Marx delineated the two
aspects of that mysterious entity, the commodity. Its use-value refers to the
utility of the product, its realization in the act of consumption. Its twin
aspect, the exchange-value, is only manifest in the process of exchange in the
market where the deposited quantity of labor-time expended in producing the
product—the form of value—is recognized. Its “metaphysical subtleties and
theological niceties” inheres in the fact that “the social character of men’s
labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of
that labour” so that the social relations among producers appear then as
relations among the products/commodities. In short, “definite social relations
between men...assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between
things” (Marx 1978, 320-321). That insight serves as the matrix of social
alienation in a profit-centered political economy (for further elaboration, see
Meszaros 1970; Ollman 1971). What lesson is conveyed by Marx’s insight? In
producing any useful thing that is exchanged, the objective value of that thing
is ideal, [4] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) a suprasensible notion translated
into price, whereby private labor appears as part of social total-labor.
However, the commodity’s abstract ideal property (exchange value) appears as if
it were an objective, socio-natural property of the object itself, embedded in
the product. Thus, social relations between people assume a phantasmagorical
form of relations between things, “social hieroglyphs” (Osborne 2005, 15).
Something purely social, exchange value, conceals itself in the product,
generating social illusions found in religion, ideologies, and various
mystifying practices: the rationale of the hegemonic neoliberal order now in
crisis but still devastating the world today. How do we escape from this
fetishized world based on historically varied exploitation of labor-power? Marx
responds: “The religious reflections of the actual world can vanish only when
the practical relations of everyday life between people, and between humanity
and nature, present themselves in a transparent and rational form. The social
life-process, which is based on the material process of production, does not
strip off its mystical veil until it becomes production by freely associated men
and women, and stands under their conscious and planned control” (Marx 1976,
173). Art as a form of religious thinking draws its power from the
exchange-value it commands, as illustrated earlier. In order to suppress this
potential, conceptualists strive to eliminate the concrete embodiment (various
media or performance) of the artists’ intention, including the situations or
places where they customarily occur (museums, galleries, etc.). Those
sites/situations are transvalued, negated, sublimated. “Almost anything goes” as
art today from the art-criticism point of view, Cynthia Freeland remarks. She
writes: “Even shocking art like Serrano’s Piss Christ can now count as art, an
object with the right sort of idea or interpretation behind it...It communicates
thoughts or feelings through a physical medium” (2001, 39). Conceptualists claim
that a physical medium is not obligatory. Paradoxically, despite this
theoretical claim, their activity does not create transparent, rational
arrangements since the whole transaction of learning, judging, and appreciating
the art-idea still transpires in a capitalist, profit-dominated society.
Ironically, the motivation-idea becomes a value to be communicated or exchanged.
While art-as-commodity may be intentionally transcended, the artist remains
anchored and circumscribed in a world of alienated institutions and practices
governed by the profit-motive, by capital MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [5]
accumulation. The conceptualist remains a victim of this illusion, his desire
for knowledge free from object-attachment was left unsatisfied due to the
inescapable reality of his reified, commodified milieu (Wood 1996). This
epitomizes the irony of commodified de-materialized art. Aesthetic Discipline
Allow us to offer a brief historical parenthesis at this juncture. Before
venturing further into nomenclature and further inquiry, it might be
illuminating to review the traditional field of aesthetics and, with it, the
theory of art. Art and aesthetics need to be differentiated, the former dealing
with the object produced or created and the latter with the experience and
knowledge of the art-object. Ultimately, however, with the postmodern
interrogation of the concept of art (in both the ontological and
phenomenological senses), the two aspects coalesce in the conceptualist
revision. Whether such a result is helpful in clarifying both remains to be
resolved. Meanwhile, a historical investigation into the status of the
art-object as a distinctive category might be instructive and heuristic.
Foregoing a complete history of the origin of aesthetics from classical
antiquity up to the Renaissance, we may begin with German philosophical
idealism. Aesthetics (from the Greek aisthesis, “perception, sensation”),
aesthetics was first theorized by Alexander G. Baumgarten in 1750 as “the
science of sensory knowledge or cognition” whose aim is beauty, not truth. It
was later elaborated by Kant as “the science of the rules of sensibility in
general,”chiefly concerned with the a priori principles of sensible experience.
In Thomistic aesthetics, the intuitive knowledge of the sensible is grounded in
intellectual judgment as a knowledge of the universal. The artistic criteria of
integritas, consonantia, and claritas are abstract ideas mediating the
comprehension of the sensibles (Eco 1988). In his Critique of Judgment (1790),
Kant posited aesthetics as involved with the subjective feeling of pleasure and
pain, hence aesthetic judgments pertain to the subject, not the object
represented. What is beautiful is tied with disinterested pleasure, a judgment
of taste based on immediate intuition without a concept. Kant argues that
“Beauty is the formal aspect of purposiveness, insofar as it is perceived in the
objectified without the representation of purpose...[T]hat which is [6] MABINI
REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) generally pleasing, without a concept, is beautiful”
(quoted by Guttman 1963, 18). In effect, conceptualists reject this aesthetic
speculation about beauty as meaningless. Formal purposiveness without purpose--
this axiom established the privileged autonomy of art which prevailed up to
Clement Greenberg’s pontifications on abstract expressionism. Two additions to
Kant may be cited here. First, Schelling proposed the romantic theme of beauty
as “the Infinite infinitely presented,” while Hegel is said to have summed up
the classic traditional thinking in his view that Beauty equals Idea, beauty as
the sensuous manifestation of the Idea. However, the beautiful is nothing unless
it is externalized or mediated in the work of art in which the beholder and the
artist’s mind encounter each other. The idea then is the content of the art-work
in its dynamic historical evolution. In the nineteenth century, the
psychological approach dominated the investigations of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
Herbart and Fechner, the latter inaugurating the empirical-experimental approach
to aesthetics. This was followed by Theodor Lipps’s notion of empathy, with
esthetic enjoyment conceived as “objectivized self-enjoyment,” an inner
imitation of artistic creation. With Benedetto Croce, this idealist line of
speculation culminates in art as intuitive activity, an expression of
inwardness, eluding the screen of formal mediation. Hegelian Articulation To the
rationalist-idealist line of speculation, Hegel introduced a historicizing
orientation. He emphasized the philosophical function of art as a vehicle of
reason in quest of universals realized in history. While Hegel believed art to
furnish “the sensuous semblance of the idea,” for Croce, universals and history
disappear. Croce reduced art to lyrical intuition, separated from the phenomenal
contingent world, subsisting in pure intuition whose modes of expression
germinate in the artist’s mind. The actualization of this intuition is
secondary; expression and communication do not affect the value of the
unreflected intuition. Unconcerned with the play of imagination or the
immediacies of feeling, Croce absolutized intuition as a complex blend of idea,
image, and expression whose singularity, however, resists philosophical
generalization (Richter 1994, 145). Croce’s expression theory complements the
formalist stress on essential form in Clive Bell, Roger Fry, I.A. Richards, and
their American counterparts in the MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [7] New
Criticism. Whether the naturalism of John Dewey’s theory of art as intense
experience can be reconciled with Croce, is still a debatable proposition.
Aesthetics as an inquiry into normative concepts and values regarding beauty may
have given way to the modern interest in a descriptive and factual approach to
the phenomena of art (production and reception) and aesthetic experience. Beauty
is now construed as an effect of form, of discursive signifying practice. One
can mention Charles Morris’ idea of art as iconic symbol of value, as well as
Susanne Langer’s conception of art as the symbol or expressive form whereby
emotions are rendered apprehensible in their formal embodiments or styles. Both
thinkers are anathema to conceptualism. More congenial to postmodernist
aesthetics would be the semiotic approach of Charles Sanders Peirce. He proposed
an innovative approach in which a constellation of signs (icon, index, symbol)
in the art-work becomes the bearer of meaning and significance. These signs
generate a dynamic network of interpretants that encompass form and its organic
links with lived experience, exploring virtually all the mimetic and expressive
possibilities of art that we have so far summarized here (for elaboration, see
San Juan 2022). Historicizing Form Together with beauty and the sublime, the
ideal of autonomy and artistic genius dissolved with the age of mechanical
reproduction. Walter Benjamin dealt a fatal blow to the norm of authenticity
intrinsic to the romantic idea of imagination. In capitalist society, the Here
and Now of the original is constantly being destroyed by the commodification of
labor and practically all domains of human life. Besides the formal properties
that authenticate the art-work, the contents of art (idealistic
content-aesthetics) have suffered the impact of contingency, chance or accident,
entropy, the inexorable incursions of the unpredictable. Art is not timeless but
changeable, subject to the process of becoming. Hegel’s “bad conscience” implies
that art is never for itself but requires, in fact demands, the exegesis and
interpretation of others outside the artist. Art’s truth-content cannot be fully
exhausted by any single hermeneutic organon. Since interpretations are open and
endless, all art is subject to historicity and the mutability of standards and
criteria of judgment (Morawski 1974). [8] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) Alas,
have we finally entered the forbidden zone of undecidability, relativism,
antifoundationalist skepticism, and cynical reason? So if anything goes, what is
the point of argument, dialogue, inquiry? Bitcoins, derivatives, simulacra,
expungible fantasies previously called “the sublime” now dominate exchanges,
making precarious or unfeasible any agreement or consensus on purposes, motives,
intentions, goals. Only the process of everyday living compels us to proceed as
though we are all on the same page, using a lexicon and code understood by all
participants in the interminable conversation. In this new catastrophic period
of triumphalist globalism, the issue of materialist aesthetics appears not only
anachronistic but also a perverse joke. Except those fashioned for immediate
use- value (for therapy, etc.), all art in capitalism has become a commodity
(exchange-value), as attested to by the auctions enumerated earlier. And since
Marxist revolutionaries have allegedly become obsolete if not rare today,
aesthetics has become the preserve of museum curators, academic experts/shamans,
and pseudo-theologians attached to art galleries and auction houses. Except for
Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, John Berger, Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez, and the
late Polish philosopher Stefan Morawski, no serious Marxist thinker has devoted
a wholesale engagement with the theory of art, with aesthetic criticism and
inquiry in our late-capitalist stage. This is a conjecture, obviously open to
future correction. Indeed, in a 1983 international conference on “Marxism and
the Interpretation of Culture,” Michelle Barrett bewailed the lack of adequate
discussion of aesthetic pleasure and value among various tendencies in the left.
Given the vogue of poststructuralist textualism and postmodernist nominalism,
aesthetics was overshadowed by or subsumed in discourses on ideology,
representation, and the deconstruction of the subject. Nature and objective
reality have been cancelled out to give room to the floating signifier,
differance, liminality, and contingency. Henceforth, the “free play” of the
liberated signifier would call the shots. Subjectivity, or subject-positions,
become reduced to simulacra, aporia, or undecidables wholly vulnerable to
infinite semiosis,that is, interminable sequence of interpretations without any
conclusion. MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [9] Ironically, this putative chaos
did not discourage Barrett from giving self-confident judgments. She
nonchalantly dismissed vulgar concerns about art’s “truth” and social relevance
because the meanings of art-works are not immanent but constructed “in the
consumption of the work” (1988, 702). Readers/spectators actively co-create the
meaning and significance of the art-work. Contrary to the orthodox ideas about
typical characters and organic form, Barrett holds that ideological content and
political implications are not given in the art-work but are effects or
constructions by readers/audiences, an assertion justified within the framework
of a reader-response/reception aesthetics. This position is clearly symptomatic
of the move of Barrett’s cohort toward a more open-ended, adventurist,
experimentalist stance, rejecting not only reflectionist theory (Lukacs;
Goldman) but also interventionist approaches (Gramsci; Sartre). But what exactly
do we mean by a Marxist approach to aesthetics as a mode of distributing the
sensible (Ranciere 2004)? Interrogating the Messenger In the wake of the
post-structuralist transvaluation of texts as the ceaseless play of differance,
of the unchoreographable dance of signifiers, which one may interpret as a
historically specific reaction in the Western milieu to dogmatist leftism in its
various manifestations- -economistic, sectarian, mechanical, empiricist, etc.--I
would like to reaffirm once more the occluded yet irrepressible matrix of art in
the Marxist concept of praxis and political struggle based on Marx’s insight
into commodity-fetishism. Enunciated by Marx in the “Theses on Feuerbach” and
The Eighteenth Brumaire in particular, this inscription of the aesthetic in
transformative action I would call the “Leninist moment,” the hegemonic or
ethico-political crux in Marxist critical theory. Let us explore its relevance
to understanding the politics of conceptualist writing as propounded by its main
theoreticians (Alberro and Stimson 1999; Dworkin and Goldsmith 2011). The
original intent of conceptual artists was democratic, subversive and
revolutionary. Not only were art and its institutions converted by them into a
field of negotiation in order to link it with the everyday politics of bourgeois
society; they rebelled against the fetishizaion of art and its systems of
production and distribution. But as Benjamin Buchloh (2006) observed, Pop art,
and other postconceptualists [10] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) achieved a
“liberal reconciliation” and compromise of high art and mass culture. A
test-case can be offered here in the controversial performance of canonical
“uncreative” writer Kenneth Goldsmith. The Goldsmith Incident On March 13, 2015,
in the program Interrupt3 sponsored by Brown University, Goldsmith performed a
30-minutes reading of the official St. Louis County autopsy report on “The Body
of Michael Brown.” Brown is the 18-year old black man fatally shot by a white
police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. The first report stated
that Goldsmith introduced his poem as “something to do with quantified self,”
but an artist Faith Holland remarked that Goldsmith had re-arranged the original
text, focusing on the description of the Cranial Cavity in the line “The weight
of the unfixed brain is 1350 gm,” with the poem ending in the line “The
remaining male genitalia system is unremarkable” (Steinhaven 2015). The hands of
the “uncreative” poet displayed itself quite obtrusively. He was no innocent
bystander or naive witness. Immediately came an avalanche of negative responses,
such as: “Goldsmith appropriates Michael Brown’s murdered body, reframed as his
poetry, and retweets the angry reactions. A troll with tenure,” with even more
violent condemnation mounted a few days later. Death threats ensued, prompting
Goldsmith to apologize for the pain he had caused, asking Brown University to
withold the video of his performance. C.A.Conrad summed up the outrage in
quoting the poet Anne Waldman’s comment: “What was Kenny Goldsmith thinking?
That it’s okay to self-appoint and perform the autopsy report of murdered black
teenager Michael Brown and mess with the text, and so ‘own’ it and get paid for
his services? No empathy no sorrow for the boy, the body, the family, ignorant
of the ramifications, deaf ear to the explosive demonstrations and marches?
Reeks of exploitation, of the ‘racial imaginary.’ Black Dada Nihilismus is
lurking on the lineaments of the appropriated shadow of so much suffering”
(Conrad 2015). Anatomy of an Inquest We have been ushered into the domain of
ethico-political judgment. What seems on trial here are the central techniques
of the allegorical gsture of appropriating a pre-existing object or text, and
MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [11] the procedure of montage. Is the artist
free to do whatever he wants, at any time and place? True to his previous
practice of copying and reproducing raw materials—eyewitness reports from
radio/television broadcasts, as shown in his 2013 book, Seven American Deaths
and Disasters, Goldsmith tried to prove that inflammatory material, handled in a
certain way, can “provoke outrage in the service of a social cause.” His
Facebook entry reveals the “idea” or motivating principle behind the import of
information: I took a publicly available document from an American tragedy that
was witnessed first-hand (in this case by the doctor performing the autopsy) and
simply read it. Like Seven American Deaths and Disasters, I did not
editorialize; I simply read it without commentary or additional
editorializing... The document I read from is powerful. My reading of it was
powerful. How could it be otherwise? Such is my long-standing practice of
conceptual writing: like Seven American Deaths, the document speaks for itself
in ways that an interpretation cannot. It is a horrific American document, but
then again, it was a horrific American death... I indeed stated at the beginning
of my reading that this was a poem called The Body of Michael Brown; I never
stated,”I am going to read the autopsy report of Michael Brown’... That said, I
didn’t add or alter a single word or sentiment that did not preexist in the
original text, for to do so would be to go against my nearly three decades’
practice of conceptual writing, one that states that a writer need not write any
new texts but rather reframe those that already exist in the world to greater
effect than any subjective interpretion could lend. Perhaps people feel
uncomfortable with my uncreative writing, but for me, this is the writing that
is able to tell the truth in the strongest and clearest way possible.... Ecce
homo. Behold the man....(quoted in Flood 2015) Evidently, in quest of the truth
via reframing, the poet’s ethics became muddled in defending his habit. His
mendacity exceeds the boldness of his disingenuous apologia. Contradicting his
testimony that he did not editorialize, Goldsmith added that he “altered the
text for poetic effect; he translated medical terms into plain English and [12]
MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) narrativized the words “in ways that made the
text less didactic and more literary.” The qualification sounds pathetic.
Goldsmith claimed that he acted normally for an artist: “People behave very
badly in the art world, but it’s what pushes boundaries and makes discussion”
(Wilkinson 2015). A group called Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo called
Goldsmith’s conceptual poetry “building blocks of white supremacy.” The repartee
that persisted for quite some time provides lessons in how postmodern
aesthetics, despite its claims to go beyond conventional ethics and morality,
cannot elude public criticism if they are staged in public, paid by the
sponsors, with the sanction of institutional legitimacy. Poetry has become a
commodity too even in the groves of non-profit academia. Despite the
conceptualist’s emphasis on context, sites, situations, Goldsmith failed to
recognize the sociopolitical parameter of his performance and the institutional
constraints of the information being moved. Concepts are historically grounded
and mobilized/ immobilized. Instead of animating the fragments of copied texts,
or satirizing them as quantifying modes, Goldsmith in “The Body of Michael
Brown” evoked the “rigid immanence of the Baroque” devoid of any anticipatory,
utopian sense of historical time,” fixed by an attitude of melancholic, awed
contemplation—a deliberate theatrical gesture. His montage technique of
fragmenting and juxtaposing depleted signifiers mimicked the fabrication of sold
commodities. Thus, instead of rescuing the possible elements of communicative
value in the report (for example, the excessive shooting inflicted on the
victim’s body), Goldsmith allegorized his act of “uncreative” composition by
accentuating the ethnic/racial resonance of the anatomical catalogue. Walter
Benjamin presciently described the collage/montage aesthetics underlying
conceptualist works: “The devaluation of objects in allegory is surpassed in the
world of objects itself by the commodity. The emblem returns as commodities”
(Buchloh 2006, 29). Goldsmith repeated and reinforced the instrumentalist
devaluation enacted by the State, repudiating the classic avantgarde
practitioner’s anti-conformist, anarchist stance. Revenge of the Immaterial
Marx’s concept of commodity-fetishism exposes the irony in the post-Duchampian,
conceptualist program of dematerialization. Goldsmith’s “uncreative” alteration
of the “ready-made” did not issue MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [13] into
“immaterial” creativity; on the contrary, it materialized a racialized
foregrounding of semantic features otherwise buried in scientific, empirical
discourse instrumentalized by the State. As Boris Groys noted, the conceptual
artist’s submission to the art institution (usually under academic patronage)
and its commodifying hegemony is symptomatic of the failure of avant-garde
movements in their avowed aims. What happens is the triumph of alienated
abstract labor over non- alienated creative work so that, as Groys notes: “It is
is this alienated labor of transporting objects combined with the labor invested
in the construction and maintenance of art spaces that ultimately produces
artistic value under the conditions of post-Duchampian art. Other concrete,
historically specific examples, such as the artistic labor of Vito Acconci, Yoko
Ono, Bruce Nauman, Lawrence Weiner, and others, may be scrutinized in Peter
Osborne’s graphic documentation, Conceptual Art (2002). The crisis of
conceptualism originates from the stoic acceptance of a unity of opposites:
marketed art produced by the culture industry enabling the sophisticated elite
culture of the oligarchy. In 1979, Adrian Cristobal, a bureaucrat-spokesman for
the Marcos authoritarian regime argued that mass culture serves profit-making
big business, while the State sponsors its opposite, humanist culture. Amid
widespread human- rights violations committed by State agencies, Cristobal pays
homage to the dictator and his wife: “One sees and one appreciates the role of
the First Lady in her sponsorship of such ventures as the Cultural Center of the
Philippines, the Folk Arts Theater, the Metropolitan Theater and all other
similar ventures. For these are, in the main, institutions which are designed to
deliver that redeeming humanist culture to the people. A point of view no doubt
shared by the President himself who is, in his own right, a competent writer and
more than this, himself a contribution to the development of a truly national
culture” (1979). Today, the conjugal dictatorship’s “humanism” has been exposed
as euphemistic alibi for barbarism, with the brutalization of thousands of
victims by the Marcos “martial law” regime (1972-1986; see McCoy 2001).
Provisional Epilogue In the new millennium, the Philippine neocolony
deteriorated further with the neoliberal rampage of the U.S. crusade against
global “terrorism.” The “humanist” culture so highly extolled here coincides
[14] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) with the religious imagination, the realm
of illusions, which is the antithetical reflex of the world of commodities in
“the heartless world” invoked in Marx’s double-edged praise and rejection of the
people’s opium: “Religion is, in fact, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of
man who has either not yet gained himself or has lost himself again....It is the
fantastic realization of the human being because the human being has attained no
true reality....The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression of and a
protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It
is the opium of the people....The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is a demand for their true happiness. The call to
abandon illusions about their conditions is the call to abandon a condition
which requires illusions...(1970, 131). Here, Marx grasps the superstructure
(religion) not as phenomenon but as an integral element of an all-pervasive
social practice. Religion, like art, subsists on the fixation with illusions. In
conceptualizing the contradictory relation between intellectual objectification
and social reality, Marx laid the groundwork for the active, dynamic and
creative intervention of transformative agents such as artists and intellectuals
fully cognizant of the power of fetishized objects, beliefs, practices, and
institutions. In a recent inventory of “the ideology of the aesthetic,” Terry
Eagleton distinguishes Marx’s singular theory of art from Romantic humanism,
“with its expression/repression model of human existence” (1990, 219). Marx’s
vision of an “all-round human self-actualization” is premised on the
establishment of socialist relations of production, with a communist ethic where
mutual or reciprocal self-realization of persons is cultivated. Eagleton argues
that Marx resolves the Kantian dilemma of the noumenal/phenomenal split—the
problem that aesthetics/art endeavors to dissolve—by locating “the unity of
‘fact’ and ‘value in the practical, critical activity of men and women—in a form
of understanding which is brought to birth in the first place by emancipatory
interests, which is bred and deepened in active struggle, and which is an
indispensable part of the realization of value” (1990, 226). Thus, the moment of
“revolutionary practice” posited in Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”(1978) is
essential to fully appreciating the dialectical-materialist theorizing of
art/aesthetics as a mode of the MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [15]
realization of human powers, capacities, virtues for the sake of universal
happiness and well-being (see Lifshitz 1973; Solomon 1973; Williams 1977;
Johnson 1984; Eagleton and Milne 1996). We have noted earlier that conceptual
art-practice vitiates its radical impetus due to its nominalist tendency, “an
essential scepticism about the existence of an objective reality, or the
possibility of arriving at an agreed understanding of it by rational means,” as
Eric Hobsbawm diagnosed the postmodernist malady. But an antithetical tendency
exists within it of engendering a “socialist art practice” if it returns to its
original inspiration in Russian art following the October Revolution (Burgin
2002, 256-58). One evidence of a hopeful revitalization of the anti-commodity
impulse in postmodern art may be found in Yoko Ono’s recent intervention, a
billboard in New York’s Times Square inviting people to read its message:
“Imagine Peace.” It appeared on a screen at Broadway and 45th Srreet. The
message was spelled out in black letters on white, lasting three minutes; it
appeared every night in March 2022 in public areas in London, Los Angeles,
Milan, Melbourne and Seoul (Smee 2022). Before being overshadowed by Beatle John
Lennon, Yoko Ono was acknowledged as one of the most sophisticated and bold
artists of post- World War II, inventing the Event performance (such as “Cut
Piece”) as part of the Fluxus art-movement in the fifties and sixties (Higgins
2002; Menand 2022). Her timely peace activism somewhat vindicates the flaws and
inadequacies of conceptualists and other anti-Establishment projects
over-determined by their disparate historical situations. One conclusion emerges
from this brief survey of the nodal stages in the vicissitudes of our brief
reflection on the politics of aesthetics, with special reference to conceptual
art. A fallibilistic proposition can be offered here: without the focus on the
moment of praxis--the artist’s or critic’s intervention in the concrete arena of
political struggle for hegemony, any reflection on the nature of art and its
function will compulsively repeat the metaphysical idealism (Kant, Hegel, &
Croce) it seeks to overcome. It is in the arena of political and ideological
conflict that consciousness is grasped in its overdetermined trajectory as a
complex of material practices functioning in conserving or disintegrating a
determinate conjuncture, a lived situation. The problematic dialectic of
conceptualist art that was previously discussed is an example of such a
conjuncture. Without positing this moment of rupture or opening for
intervention, we shall reproduce the predicament [16] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI
(2022) of the bourgeois intellectual that progressive thinkers such as Brecht,
Lukacs (San Juan, 1972), Gramsci, Caudwell, Berger, and others (Arvon 1973;
Laing 1978), acutely diagnosed: the division of mental and manual labor; the
antinomy between subject and object, society and individual, nature and history,
which revolutionary practice hopes to gradually and eventually resolve, despite
the mistakes that were made by avant-garde artists who lack the totalizing
vision and dynamic praxis of intellectuals working in the socialist tradition.
REFERENCES Alberro, Alexander and Blake Stimson. 1999. Conceptual Art: A
Critical Anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Arvon, Henri. 1973. Marxist
Esthetics. Ithaca: Cornell. Barrett, Michele. 1988. “The Place of Aesthetics in
Marxist Criticism.” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Lawrence
Grossberg and Cary Nelson. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Berger,
John. 1980. The Success and Failure of Picasso. New York: Pantheon Books.
Bothamley, Jennifer. 1993. Dictionary of Theories. London: Gale Research
International Ltd. Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. 2006. “Allegorical Procedures:
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Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann. Vienna: Generali Foundation. Burn, Ian.
1999. “The Sixties: Crisis and Aftermath (or the Memoirs of an Ex-conceptual
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Caudwell, Christopher. 1937. Illusion and Reality. New York: International.
Conrad, C.A. 2015. “Kenneth Goldsmith Says He is an Outlaw.” Poetry Foundation.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/06/kenneth-
goldsmith-says-he-is-an-outlaw MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022) [17] Cristobal,
Adrian. 1979. “Mass culture also means big business.” The Sunday Times Journal
(Nov. 25): 12. Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Cambridge,
MA: Basil Blackwell. ________ and Drew Milne, eds. Marxist Literary Theory.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Eco, Umberto. 1988. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Flood, Alison. 2015. “US Poet Defends
Reading of Michael Brown autopsy report as a poem.” The Guardian (March 17)L
7-8. Freeland, Cynthia. 2001. Art Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Godfrey, Tony. 1988. Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon. Gramsci, Antonio. 1957.
The Modern Prince and Other Writings. New York: International. Groys, Boris.
2010. “Marx After Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies.” e-flux journal # 19
(October). Guttmann, James, ed. 1963. Philosophy A to Z. New York: Grosset &
Dunlap. Higgins, Hannah. 2002. Fluxus Experience. Berkeley: University of
California Press. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1994. Age of Extremes. London: Abacus.
Jameson, Fredric. 1971. Marxism and Form. Princeton: Princeton University.
Johnson, Pauline. 1984. Marxist Aesthetics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Laing, David. 1978. The Marxist Theory of Art. New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Lenin, V. I. 1967. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress. [18] MABINI REVIEW |
Volume XI (2022) LeWitt, Sol. 1999. “Sentences on Conceptual Art.” In Conceptual
Art: A Critical Anthology. Eds. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press. Lifshitz, Mikhail. 1973. The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx.
London: Pluto Press. Lukacs, Georg. 1970. Writer and Critic. London: Merlin.
Macherey, Pierre. 1978. A Theory of Literary Production. London: Routledge.
Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital, Volume 1. Tr. Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin.
________. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert Tucker. New York: Norton.
McCoy, Alfred. 2001. “Dark Legacy: Human Rights Under the Marcos Regime.” In
Memory: Truth-telling and the Pursuit of Justice. A Conference on the Legacy of
the Marcos Dictatorship. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University. Menand,
Louis. 2022. “The Grapefruit Artist.” The New Yorker (June 20): 24-29. Morawski,
Stefan. 1974. Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT. Mulhern, Francis. 1974. “The Marxist Aesthetics of Christopher Caudwell.”
New Left Review, No. 85 (May 1974): 37-58. New York Times. 2013. “Grisly Warhol
Painting Fetches $104.5 Million, Auction High for Artist.” (November 14).
www.newyorktimes.com. Osborne, Peter, ed. 2002. Conceptual Art. New York:
Phaidon Press. ________. 2005. How to Read Marx. New York: W.W. Norton. Raphael,
Max. 1980. Proudhon Marx Picasso. New Jersey: Humanities Press. MABINI REVIEW |
Volume XI (2022) [19] Richter, David H. 1994. “Croce, Benedetto.” In The Johns
Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press. 174-176. San Juan, E., ed. 1973. Marxism and Human
Liberation Essays by Georg Lukacs. New York: Delta. ________. 2022. Peirce’s
Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective. New York: Lexington Books. Smee, Sebastian.
2022. “That’s been Yoko Ono’s message all along.” The Washington Post (March
26): C1. Smith, Roberta. 1994. “Conceptual Art.” In Concepts of Modern Art. Ed.
Nikos Stangos. New York: Thames and Hudson. Solomon, Maynard, ed. Marxism and
Art. New York: Alfred Knopf. Steinhauer, Jillian. 2015. “Kenneth Goldsmith
Remixes Michael Brown Autopsy Report as Poetry.” Hyperallergic.
<https
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Wilkinson, Alec. 2015. “Kenneth Goldsmith’s Controversial Conceptual Poetry.”
The New Yorker (October 5). Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature.
New York: Oxford University Press. Wood, Paul. 1996. “Commodity.” In Critical
Terms for Art History. Ed. Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. [20] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022)
</https>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-57821076545710776902023-11-30T08:36:00.000-08:002023-11-30T08:36:20.058-08:00KRTIKA tungkol sa BULAKLAK SA CITY JAIL, nobela ni Lulhati Bautistahttps://unitasust.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/UNITAS-96-2-San-Juan-Pagsalubong-sa-Mesiyas_compressed.pdf
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-40818338390335709932023-07-27T19:44:00.006-07:002023-07-27T19:44:47.319-07:00SURI NG NOBELANG "SIXTY IN THE CITY" NI LUALHATI BAUTISTAMALAY 35(2) Hunyo 2023, pp. 1–13
<b>Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan: Diyalektika ng Kalayaan at Nesesidad sa Sixty in the City ni Lualhati Bautista /
Death, Love, and Rebellion of Women’s Emancipatory Spirit: Dialectics of Freedom and Necessity in Sixty in the City by Lualhati Bautista
E. San Juan, Jr. University of Connecticut philcsc@gmail.com
</b>
Sinuri ang pangunahing tema ng nobela at kabuluhan nito sa sitwasy
ong pampolitikang ekonomiya ng kasarian. Sa pagkakaibigan ng tatlong ina, isinadula ang ugnayang sumasalungat sa piyudal-kapitalistang ideolohiya ng reipikasyon: ang magkalakip na diyalektika ng pag-ibig, seksuwalidad, at kamatayan. Pinagsanib ang teorya ni Georges Bataille hinggil sa erotisismo at historiko-materyalismong analisis ng hidwaan ng mga uring panlipunan sa neokolonya. Sa metodong iyon, naisadula ang karanasan ng mapagpalayang diwa ng kababaihan laban sa patriyarkang dominasyon. Kongklusyon ng saliksik ng mga pangyayaring dinalumat hinggil sa tatlong babaeng nagnasang makamit ang pagkilala sa sarili at pagkakilanlan sa kanila ay mailalagom dito: dapat sipatin muna ang trayektorya ng puwersang panlipunan, ang nesesidad pangkasaysayan, na nagtatakda sa ating pagkatao. Pahiwatig ito ng banghay ng nobela: upang mailigtas ang mapanlikhang lakas ng kababaihan mula sa karupukan ng katawan, mapagsamantalang dahas ng maskulinistang kaayusan, at dominasyon ng kalakal/pribadong pag-aari/imperyalistang kapital, kailangang pasiglahin ang komunidad, ang kamalayang kritikal at mapanghimagsik, upang makalaya sa pagka-alipin sa kinagisnang subordinasyon. Ang suliranin ng kasarian ay nakabuod sa kolonisadong gawi/ paniniwala na mababago lamang sa paraan ng rebolusyonaryong praktika at kolektibong sikap ng buong sambayanan.
Mga Susing Salita: kamatayan, kasarian, neokolonya, patriyarka, seksuwalidad
This essay focuses on the main theme of the novel and its significance in clarifying the political economy of gender relations. In the comradeship of three mothers, the narrative dramatizes the intimacies subverting the feudal/capitalist ideology of reification: the complex dialectic of love, sexuality, and death. It combines Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism with the historical-materialist analysis of class struggle in the neocolony. Using this method, we discern how the narrative allegorizes
Copyright © 2023 by De La Salle University
2 Malay Tomo 35 Blg. 2
the experiences of the emancipatory spirit of women against patriarchal oppression. This inquiry appraises the events surrounding these three protagonists desiring a recognition of their true selves and the recognition of their individual worth. We can sum it up thus: we need to comprehend the trajectory of social forces, the historical necessity behind them, in order to grasp the determinants of our character, our personality as defined by society and history. This idea is suggested by the novel’s structure: in order to redeem the creative force of women from the fragility of the body, the exploitative power of a masculinist order, and the domination of private property and imperialist capital subtending it, we need to revitalize the community, our critical and revolutionary consciousness, in order to free ourselves from oppressive legacies. The problem of gender inequality is tied up with colonized mentality and beliefs that can only be superseded and transformed through revolutionary practice and the collective endeavor of the whole nation-people.
Keywords: death, neocolony, patriarchy, sex, sexuality
Ang usapin ng kasarian ay masalimuot, totoong matinik at nakaliligaw. Bakit? Isang dahilan: kasangkot ang halos lahat ng isyu sa pampolitikang ekonomiya, sa bansag ng progresibong pananaw (Sison & de Lima; Zaretsky). Tinuturol nito ay di lamang hanapbuhay o pagbili ng produktong materyal sa pamilihan, kundi pati buong estrukturang historikal na nakasandig doon: isip, damdamin, paniniwala, memorya, hinagap, adhikain na nakasilid sa katawan at utak. Sa madaling salita, sangkot ang haypotesis ng soberanya ng suhetibidad (partikular, ng kababaihan) at nesesidad ng gawaing pataw ng lipunang pinamamahalaan ng patriyarkang kapangyarihan.
Masugid na dinaliri ni Lualhati Bautista sa Hinugot sa Tadyang at sa In Sisterhood—Lea at Lualhati ang hinanakit ng inaabusong kababaihan. Tumatahak siya sa landas na hinawan sa Kanluran ng mga aktibistang
Sheila Rowbotham, Juliet Mitchell, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gayle Rubin, at iba pang feministang sosyalista. Iginiit ni Ann Ferguson na nakakabit ang dominasyon ng kabababaihan sa “modes of sex/affective production,” sa “sex/gender system” (356). Natalakay din ito ng mga katutubong dalubhasa (Eviota, Aguilar, Torres- Yu). Sa pangkalahatan, ideolohiya at bisa nito ang paksaing aatupagin dito. Pagkakasanib at integrasyon ng sangkap ng lipunan (kapuwa produksiyong materyal at reproduksiyon ng buhay) ang nakataya rito. Kalangkap ang kahulugan ng buhay, ang katuturan ng ating kilos at salita, sa reipikasyon at alyenasyong bunga ng kapitalistang orden at pagkagapos natin sa nesesidad ng akumulasyon na sapilitang sumusugpo sa maramdaming kasarilinan. Sa matalinghagang idyoma, magkalakip ang karisma at corpus, ang espiritu at makamundong laman ng katawan.
Ang buhay ay hindi nagsisimula pagtuntong ng sisenta. Nagsisimula ito sa bawat ngiti ng umaga.
—Guia Rosales, karakter sa nobela
Desire is what transforms Being...into an “object” revealed to a “subject” different from the object and “opposed” to it...It is in and by his Desire that humans are formed and revealed—to himself and to others—as an I that is essentially different from, and radically opposed to, the non-I...In contrast to the knowledge that keeps man in a passive quietude, Desire dis-quiets him and moves him to action.
—Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel
Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan E. San Juan, Jr. 3
Lente ng Historiko-Materyalismong Pangitain
Sa pagsisiyasat sa koneksiyon ng ideolohiya at ekonomiya, ang papel na ginagampanan ng katawan at seksuwalidad, hilig ng kalooban o damdamin, ay napakaimportante. Idiniin ni Marx ang halaga ng “sensuous practice” kaakibat ng metabolikong interaksiyon ng tao at kalikasan. Buhay at reproduksiyon nito ang batayan ng etikang materyalistiko (Dussel 55–68). Susog ni Marx: “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being—and because he feels when he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential force of man energetically bent on its object... Death seems to be a harsh victory of the species over the definite individual and to contradict their unity. But the particular individual is only a particular species being, and as such mortal” (Economic 182, 138).
Babae’t lalaki ay magkamukha ngunit magkaiba. Kapuwa nakapaloob sa kategorya ng espesye-homo sapiens, sa komunidad ng sinaunang panahon, sabi ni Marx: “In the relationship with woman, as the prey and handmaid of communal lust, is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this relationship has its unambiguous, decisive, open and revealed expression in the relationship of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct, natural species-relationship is conceived...This relationship reveals in a sensuous form...the extent to which the human essence has become nature for man or nature has become the human essence...The relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being...This relationship demonstrates the extent to which man’s needs have become human needs, hence the extent to which the other, as a human being, has become a need for him, the extent to which in his most individual existence he is at the same time a communal being” (Early Writings 347). Samakatwid, walang kasiyaan/identidad ang bawat nilikha kung walang Ibang kikilala, na imperatibong pangangailangan, katugma ng pagnanais o pagnanasa (desire).
Isang hiblang mahuhugot dito sa ideyalistikong pagbubulay-bulay ng 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts ni Marx ay ito: ang bawat isa ay saklaw ng pangangailangan upang maging ganap na tao. Mula pa sa yugto ng barbarismo hanggang sa modernong siyudad ng kapitalismong global, ang kababaihan ay nagsilbing instrumento sa reproduksiyon ng lakas- paggawa kaalinsabay ng sakripisyo ng masimbuyong
damdamin. Napailalim sa rehimentasyon ang buong katawan na ginawang komoditi—sa surrogate motherhood, prostitusyon, sistemang kerida, beauty contest, at (ayon sa awtor) “pambayad sa utang” (Bautista, Hinugot; konsultahin din sina Minson; Foucault).
Pagmuniin natin ito. Magkaiba ba o magkapareho ang lalaki’t babae sa kapitalistang lipunan? Nakabuod sa linya ng argumentong ito ang prinsipyo ng katarungan at pagkakapantay-pantay. Ang subordinasyon ng kababaihan sa patriyarkang orden ay tandisang politikal—ibig sabihin, kuwestiyon ng poder, awtoridad, at kinabukasan ng komunidad. Kalakip dito ang likas na katangian ng tao: kalusugan ng katawan, lunas sa sakit at pagtanda, pangungulila, kabiguan, pagnanais ng aliw at pagkilala, pagmamahal. Sa usapin ng seksuwalidad at lugod ng kababaihan, na hindi maiging natalakay nina Marx at Engels, gagamitin dito ang teorya ng relihiyon ni Georges Bataille tungkol sa hugpungan ng katawan, seksuwalidad, sakit at kamatayan sa loob ng kaayusang sumusukat ng halaga sa akumulasyon ng yaman (salapi) at di-binayarang oras ng paggawa (profit; tubo ng mamumuhunan).
Materyalismong historikal din ang oryentasyon ni Bataille, lamang ang sentro ng kaniyang diskurso ay iyong “passionate being” o maramdaming nilikhang nasambit na ni Marx ngunit hindi nalinang—sa kalaunan, ideolohiya-kritika nina Rowbotham, Ehrenreich, Frigga Haug, Teresa Ebert atbp., ang nagtangkang punan ang kakulangan.
Ulitin natin ang proposisyong gumagabay sa ating diskurso. Ang buhay ay metabolikong proseso ng kalikasan at tao sa lipunan. Sa paghahanap ng kasagutan sa samotsaring aspekto ng kabuhayan, hindi maiiwasan na harapin ang maigting na kontradiksiyon ng lahat ng bagay sa danas ng tao sa isang tiyak na yugtong pangkasaysayan. Hindi lamang trabaho at materyales na pangangailangan ang kalahok, kundi ang sigla ng katawan, simbuyo ng pagnanais, sandali ng lugod, galak, inggit, kabiguan, pighati, pangamba, balisang pag-iisa, poot, pagpapakasakit, parusang pagkahubad, hiya, kamatayan. Naranasan ito ng tatlong babaeng inabutan ng mapinsalang dahas ng saloobing nagbunyag ng kanilang tunay na hinahanap: kasarinlan, dignidad, pagkilala, ligayang tiwalag sa maternidad at magahasang dikta ng ama/pater familia/patriyarkang asawa.
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Hinagis sa Arena ng Pakikipagsapalaran
Nakapuwesto ang mapanuring panulat ni Bautista sa sitwasyong pangkasarian, sa kabutihan at kaganapan ng kababaihan. Isang anomalya na pinagtakpan ng doktrinang ang babae ay “ilaw ng tahanan,” manedyer ng kasambahay, presidente ng bansa (tulad nina Cory Aquino at Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo). Si Bautista ay namumukod sa kaniyang masidhing pagbuhos ng talino sa pagtistis sa problema ng inhustisya at pag-alipusta sa kababaihan at ibang biktima ng imperyalismo. Mula pa sa Buwan, Buwan, Hulugan Mo Ako ng Sundang hanggang sa In Sisterhood, Hinugot sa Tadyang at Sonata, sinanay niya ang artistikong sensibilidad sa pagsisiwalat ng tunay na nangyayari sa likod ng madaya’t tagibang na kapaligiran. Napatunayan na ito sa kaniyang pagsisiyasat sa mga maselang problema ng bansa sa mga nobelang Gapo, Dekada ’70, Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa, at Desaparesidos. Matalisik na kritisismo ng ordeng umiiral ang inilahad niya sa Bulaklak sa City Jail.
Ang masusing imbestigasyon ng mga puwersang umuugit sa kontradiksiyon ng mga uring panlipunan ay sadyang nagpatanyag kay Bautista bilang konsiyensiya ng lahi. Matapang niyang sinuri, dinalumat at tinimbang ang mga tauhan at pangyayaring sumasalamin sa realidad ng buhay sa neokolonyang bayan. Patibay rito ang husga ni Rosario Torres-Yu na ang nobelang Gapo “ay nagsilbing kurot sa gunitang pinamamanhid ng propaganda ng umiiral na kaayusan,” lalo na sa dominasyon at pang-aapi sa kabaihan (109).
Walang pasubaling pinakamahalaga ang posisyon ng babae sa Pilipinas, lalo na sa reproduksiyon ng salinlahi at pag-aalaga ng produktibong lakas ng buong sambayanan. Mahigit 50 porsiyento ang parte ng kababaihan sa bilang ng mga OFW (Overseas Filipino workers) na siyang bukal ng suporta (remitans) sa ekonomiya. Bagsak ang bansa kung wala ito. Gayunman, sa tingin ng ilan, limitado si Bautista sa pagtuon ng pansin sa mga babaeng pinili niya dahil karamihan ay mula sa medya-klase o panggitnang saray. Tampok din ang ilang babaeng binusabos sa Gapo, Desaparesidos, at Bulaklak sa City Jail.
Ipagitna sa ating malay ang kongklusyon ni Frederick Engels sa kaniyang “Origin of Family, Private Property and the State”: “The overthrow of mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex” (496). Naipailalim ang kababaihan sa pagyurak ng kanilang kolektibong karapatan. Sa pangkalahatan,
ang problema ng kasarian (relasyong di-patas ng babae’t lalaki) ay hindi maihihiwalay sa ugnayang panlipunan na nakasentro sa pamilyang ginigipit, higit pa sa pakikitungo ng hinlog sa espasyo ng tirahan. Hindi ito aralin ng anatomiya kundi isyu ng pagtrato sa pagkakaiba, kaibhan (ng edad o gulang), ng pagkilala o respeto sa personalidad ng bawat nilalang. Kalahok din ang mga tanong hinggil sa karapatang pantao, politikang seksuwal (sa pag-aasawa’t pagpapalaki ng mga anak), pagtanda at kalusugan, karamdamang pangsikolohiya, at implikasyon nito sa salinlahing susunod.
Hindi na dapat ipaalala sa lahat ang aksiyomang ipinunla ni Simone de Beauvoir matagal na: Ang babae ay hindi ipinanganak kundi ginawa ng lipunan at kasaysayan. Huwag magkamaling maliitin siya sa kaniyang anatomiya, ikabit lamang sa kaniyang “vagina,” suso o anumang bahaging pisikal. Konstruksiyong panlipunan-historikal ang diwa at budhi. Talagang panlalait at paglapastangan iyon, tulad ng asal ng misogynistang ex-pangulong Duterte. Ang tanong ni Freud—“Ano ba talaga ang gusto ng mga babae?”—“Was will das Weib?” (671)—ay sintomas ng barbarikong malisya ng ama ng sikoanalisis (binatikos ni Figes, Ebert). Sa pagbawi, itanong: ano naman ang reklamo ng lalaking asawa?
Mabigat na pagpapalabo ang iginawad ng dogmatikong sikolohiyang limitado ng ideolohiyang maka-burgis. Bakit ibinukod at ipinailalim ang mga babae sa normatibong panukat ng sobinistang pananaw? Sintomas ito ng malubhang sakit ng lipunan sa alyenasyon ng kapuwa-tao dahil sa pagsamba sa komoditi/kalakal at salapi, ang reduksiyon ng karaniwang buhay bilang ugnayan ng mga bagay na sinasamba’t sinusuob—mga idolo’t hiwagang gumagapos sa utak at dibdib ng bawat nilalang (e.g., isipin ang pagkahumaling sa mga bilihin/regalo at mga pag-aari ng mga tauhan sa nobela). Binansagan ito na “terorismo ng pangkaraniwang danas” sa siyudad (Lefebvre). Pati katawan—ang itsura nito ay target ng tindahan—at mga pangangailangan nito, malibuging pagnanais, silakbo ng damdamin, pangarap at panaginip ay lumubog sa kumunoy ng konsumerismo at merkado. Balik-suriin ang pagkabalisa nina Guia, Roda, Menang tungkol sa kosmetiks, kagamitan sa bahay, at mga bagay-bagay na senyas ng uri, istatus, atbp., kaugnay ng mga ari-ariang ipamimigay ni Guia sa sinumang nangangailangan (buklatin ang Kabanata 13, 142–155).
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Lagom at Balangkas
Ang nobelang Sixty in the City (sa susunod, Sixty, na pasaring sa magayumang telenobelang Sex and the City sa U.S.) ay plataporma ng engkuwentro ng kalikasan, seksuwalidad at kapalaran ng kababaihan. Pinili kong sipatin ang estruktura ng narasyon upang subukin ang haypotesis na ang usaping pangkasarian— “the woman question,” taguring maskulinista—ay nakasalang sa hiwaga ng alyenasyon sa politikang ekonomiya ng lipunang nasadlak sa paghahari ng pangkating komprador-kapitalista at hegemonya ng heteronormatibidad sa kultura (Foley 67–70; Ebert, Figes). Bagama’t nitong 2015 lamang naipalimbag sa libro ang Sixty, noong 2008 pa nailathala na sa Liwayway ang mga kabanata. Gunitain natin ang ilang pangyayaring naganap sa unang dekada ng bagong milenyo, lalo na ang Setyembre 11 atake sa New York; ang korupsiyon ni Gloria Arroyo na humantong sa madugong masaker sa Mindanao, ang pagbalewala ng kasunduan ng gobyerno at Moro Islamic Liberation Front; at pagwalang-sala kay Imelda Marcos, at iba pang katiwalian. Pagnilayan natin kung itong huli at mga maniobra ni Arroyo ay mahuhulong pahiwatig ng mapanlikhang asersiyon ng kababaihan, na kahit sa larang ng guni-guni at pagkukunwari ay sadyang makapangyarihan.
Sa malas, ang asal, kilos at pasiya ng tatlong babaeng protagonista, kabilang sa uring proletaryo at petiburgis, ay halimbawa ng pakikibaka laban sa sistemang di-makatarungan at mapagsamantala. Dumaan ito sa paraan ng paggamit ng talino, katutubong galing, at kakayahang hango sa kanilang pagka-ina at trabahong pagka-kasambahay (domestic housework). Estilong poliponiko ang pagtahi’t pagsasalabid ng mga estratehiya’t taktika ng mga babaeng ibig kumawala sa pagkabihag sa asawa’t pamilya. Ito ay sagisag na sa diyalektikang pag-inog ng naratibo, ang negasyon ng patriyarkang mapanikil ay nangyari sa pagkakabuklod ng tatlong ina. Nag-ugat sa kanilang matimtimang komunikasyon at mapagkalingang damayan, ang kanilang pagtutulungan ay nagbunsod ng landas tungo sa liberasyon ng buong lipunan.
Mungkahi ng isang makata (W.B. Yeats) na sa panaginip at imahinasyon nagsisimula ang pananagutan, ang responsabilidad natin sa buhay. Totoo kaya ito sa pagyari ng aktuwalidad ng nobela mula sa gunita, pag-aasam, at pangarap/pag-asa ng tatlong ina, at sa mahiwagang aksiyon ni Guia, makatang nailuwal ng kamatayan?
Bago tayo sumabak sa paghimay sa ilang makahulugang tagpo sa nobela, imapa natin ang tema ng nobela at kilatisin ang motibasyon ng mga karakter. Umiinog ang banghay sa mga nangyari sa tatlong babaeng magkakaibigan at kanilang kamag- anak: sina Guia (Guillerma Rosales), Roda (Roderica de los Santos) at Menang (Filomena Ballesteros). Sa pagkamatay ng asawang Crisanto, binalak ni Guia na ipagbili ang bahay nila, lumipat sa isang lihim na tirahan, at isakatuparan ang matagal nang naantalang mithi: ang magsulat at “kagustuhang maikalat at maipabasa ang niyayaring mga tula. Para matupad ang isang buong buhay na pangarap, maipakilala ang sariling pangalan at maging tunay na anak ng sining at lipunan” (320).
Nakakawing ang hangarin ni Guia sa simbuyong sinusugpo, sa tinitimping pagnanais: planong makipagtalik muli sa dating kalaguyo. Nangarap siyang maibabalik ang masayang suyuan nila ni Amante, dating driver. Di naglao’y nagulat si Guia, nabigo—may sariling buhay na ang lalaki. Gayunman, hanggang mamatay, nakuha ni Guia na magtago’t tumakas sa pagsasamantala sa kaniyang lakas/galing ng mga anak. Samantala, umastang ordinaryong tao, biyuda, mapagbiro at magiliw, nakapagpapatawa, sa pakikipagpagdaupangpalad kina Roda at Menang.
Layon ni Guia na ipagtanggol ang sarili sa tangkang sakupin, manduhan at kontrolin siya ng mga anak at apo (125). Buhat pa noong sumulat siya ng kuwento tungkol kay Bono Lardizabal, na dahilang pinilit ng ama na ipakasal kay Carmencito, rebelde na si Guia. Naikumpisal niya ang “affair” niya kay Amante na ikinagulat nina Roda at Menang, “Mas masarap” kung hindi mo asawa.” Nahikayat si Roda na suriin ang kaniyang buhay. Natuliro siya na hindi nahiya si Guia kundi nagkaroon pa ng dangal: “Gabi-gabi niyang pinag-isipan kung paano nangyari na ikarangal pa ng babae ang dapat niyang ikahiya” (51). Binaligtad ni Guia ang panuntunan, binuwag ang tabu hanggang maharang ng katalagahan, ng aktuwalidad.
Kompara kay Guia, si Roda ay naging biktima ng sistemang kerida at nagpasyang humiwalay sa asawang Jovito. Dahil sa kita ng asawa, medya- klaseng estilo ang buhay niya ngunit naghahangad ng respeto’t pagsuyo mula sa iba. Komedya ang resulta ng kaniyang pagkakaibigan kay Cornelio, at sa huli’y mapagbirong nakisama muli kay Jovito sa bisa ng kanilang tuwa sa gunita ng nakalipas. Rekonsilyasyon kaya ito o pasakit na kompensasyon? At sa paglisan
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nina Guia at Menang, pati ang simbolikong imahen ni Cornelio, naakit si Rodang bumalik sa piling ng asawa’t mga anak. Nakabilanggo pa rin siya, tila walang ibang oportunidad, bagama’t umaangil, umaayaw, dumadamba sa panggigipit ng tradisyon. Senyal ba ito ng awtor na reporma na lamang, hindi ganap na transpormasyon o pagbalikwas ng orden, ang nakasalang sa karamihan? Tiyak na sintomas iyon ng alyenasyon sa masungit at pangit na kapaligiran.
Patnubay ng Tadhana
Paano naman ang talagang sawimpalad? Si Menang, galing sa pulubing angkan sa Samar, ang nalugmok sa mababang saray: walang mabuting hanapbuhay kundi mga panandaliang gawain (masahe, palakad ng papel, atbp.) na hindi sapat sa pagtustos sa paralitikong asawang Toby at mga anak. Iskuwater lamang sila, nanganganib na mapatalsik ng gobyerno o pribadong kapital. Kapalaran ni Menang na maging biktima ng eksploytasyon ng kapital at dominasyon ng pamilya. Subalit sa halip na magmukmok o magalit, matuwain si Menang at handang maglingkod kina Guia at Roda. Buong tiwala siya sa kagandahang-loob at dunong ng dalawa. Gayunman, siya ang nahumaling sa pakikiapid, “walang bukambibig kundi makikiapid” (98), sa pagsunod sa kagustuhang makatikim ng ibang kalaguyo, sa kabanatang kusang naibunyag ni Jovito kay Roda ang keridang Camille Dumalaga.
Nagdulot ng pagkakataon kay Roda ang pagkatuklas ni Camille na mapaglirip na puwede niyang hiwalayan na ang asawa: “Tatanggapin ba niya si Jovito? O ito na ang pagkakataon para baguhin niya ang buhay niya, kulayan ang kaniyang mundo, timplahan kung baga sa ulam, gawing simula ng natitirang panahon ng kaniyang buhay?” (99). Hindi nakuhang tuparin iyon ni Roda. At sa halip si Guia ang tumupad sa paraan ng sakripisyo, paggugol, sa pamimigay ng ari-arian at paggastos sa paglikha ng sining at kawanggawa para sa naghihikahos. Sa punto-de-bista ng burgesya, pagwawaldas iyon, subalit kay Guia iyon ay pagtubos at pagbiyaya sa mga biktima ng sistema—isang banal o sakramentong aksiyon.
Danas ni Menang ang eksploytasyon sa gawain— di patas ang bayad sa kaniyang pagsisilbi—at dominasyon bilang babae. Ngunit mapagkumbaba at mapagsakripisyo para makaraos lamang araw-araw. Walang pakunwari, natural, si Menang ay sagisag ng walang-hupang enerhiya ng kalikasan—kahit anong kalamidad o pinsala, puwede siyang bumangon,
bumawi’t iligtas ang lahat. Tipong karakter sa komedya. Iyon ang ipinakita sa Kabanata 34: ang pagdiriwang ng mga matanda, ang pagyayakapan nina Roda at Cornelio bago maglakbay ang lalaki patungong Amerika, sa payo ng kaniyang mga anak. Magkakabit ang hapdi ng kabiguan at tuwa sa muling pagdaloy ng dating kinagawian, patunay na (ayon kay Bataille): “Eroticism always entails a breakdown of established patterns...of the regulated social order basic to our discontinuous mode of existence as defined and separate individuals” (Death 12–13). Tinutukoy sa huling parirala ang atomistikong paglutang ng monadikong suhetibidad na abala sa konsumerismo’t pagpapalitan ng kalakal sa mapagkunwaring siyudad.
Balewala ang ari-arian kay Guia. Ginugol ang salaping nakuha sa pagbenta sa bahay bilang tugon sa pagnanais. Ituring natin ito na isang metodo ng sakripisyo, paglustay o pagwawaldas, kahawig ng potlatch (Barnouw 112–14). Ang salaping iniwan ni Guia kay Menang ay siyang ginamit upang makabalik sila ni Toby sa probinsiya at makapagtatag ng panibagong buhay. Inihandog din ni Guia ang isang parte ng naiwang salapi sa bakasyon ng matatandang pinaglilingkurang libre ni Menang, at sa pagtulong sa mga kabataang manunulat sa Cordillera. Kawanggawang serbisyo sa matatanda na parang despedida rin kina Menang at Toby sa kanilang paglalakbay pabalik sa mapayapang tinubuang nayon sa Samar, isang imahen ng utopyang kalakip sa haraya ng suyuan at pag-ibig. Ipinamigay rin ng yumaong Guia ang utopya ng kaniyang imahinasyon: ang librong Hardin ng Isang Libong Tula. Paggasta’t pagwaldas ang sagot ng kaluluwa ng makata sa akumulasyon ng pribadong pag-aari at walang-awang tukso ng mamahaling kalakal, luhong umaakit sa madlang laging uhaw at nagnanasa.
Hiwaga at Himala ng Panahon
Lumilitaw na ang problema ni Menang, ang pinakasawing biktimang babae, ay malulutas ng patay. Nakuhang maging mikrokosmong salamin ang buhay ni Menang: sapilitang isinaayos ng sirkunstansiyang minana sa makalalaking tradisyon, tulad ng nangyari kina Guia, Roda at kababaihang ginawang “pambayad sa utang” at ipinagpapalit na kasangkapan sa patriyarkong hegemonya.
Sa Kabanata 13, isiniwalat ni Menang ang sekreto ng kaniyang nakalipas. Kumpisal ni Menang kay Guia: “Bago kami nagkapangasawahan, dinahas ako ng isang
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lalaki. Itinaboy kami ng tatang ko...Ayaw ko sanang sumama kay Toby dahil pakiramdam ko nadungisan na ang pagkatao ko” (152–53). Isinaloob ni Guia ang sawing kapalaran ng kaibigan na siyang pumukaw sa kaniyang nakalipas: hindi siya ipinagtanggol ng kaniyang ama noong disisiyete anyos siya at naging biktima ng malisya: “Wala rin namang detalyadong pangyayari sa loob ng motel—puwedeng sabihin na sila lang naman, ’yung maruruming isip lang naman, ang naglagay ng eksena sa pagitan ng pagpasok at paglabas sa motel ng dalawang tauhan” (154). Maaalala na pumasok si Guia sa Mithi’s Apartelle, naging pugad ng ispekulasyon kung may kasama siyang lalaki doon o mag-isa, na pampagkatutong palaisipang iniluhog sa atin ng awtor ng talambuhay.
Maipatlang: Sino ang kasama ni Guia sa Mithi’s Apartelle bago siya pumanaw? Bakit kayo nag- uusyoso? At sino ang tiktik na makikialam?
Samantala, pagkatapos mabatid ang istorya ni Menang, naungkat ang kaniyang sitwasyon. Dinadalaw si Guia ng paghihimagsik, hindi niya kagustuhan ang maging asawa si Crisanto, “na naging mabuting asawa,” bagama’t pinagbawalan siyang magsulat. Subalit patay na si Crisanto, malaya nang gawan niya ng tula si Menang na napinsala rin sa pagkapanginoon ng patriyarkang dahas. Naiwaksi ang arketipong kilabot ng kababaihan: gahasang di inaakala, marahas na dagok sa hinubo’t hinubdang pagkatao.
Sa wakas, nagkaroon din ng rekonsilyasyon sina Roda at Vito sa pagdalaw nila sa nakalipas: memorya ng magkatulong na pag-aalaga sa mga anak. Kaipala’y lumitaw na patas, hindi tagilid, ang distribusyon ng trabaho sa loob ng tahanan. Dagdag pa: hindi inapi si Roda—walang kailangang iwasto o lunasan sa danas nilang dalawa. Nalutas ang problema ng dalawang kaibigang Roda at Menang. Patas na ang dalawang panig—binansagang “equality feminism”—ngunit hintay, hindi ba pagbubulag-bulagan ito at pagsasantabi sa isyu ng pagkakaiba, ang argumentong asimetrikal na dinalumat nina Lise Vogel at Frigga Haug?
Sa ibang okasyon na natin talakayin ang paksa ng kaibahan at kapantayan. Sa pagsusuma, si Guia ay nilikhang di lamang nangangailangan kundi nagnanais, naghahangad—isang protagonistang umaapaw sa kuwadro ng representasyong realistiko, isang penomenang hindi mabigkas, naiwan sa pagpapangalan at pagsudlong ng kaniyang seksuwalidad sa organong uterus/vagina, ayon sa ideolohiya ng merkado at pribadong industriya (Coward). Kababalaghan o
kalabisang trivia lamang? Sa balik-tanaw, si Guia (buhay at patay) ang tumupad ng tungkulin ng sagradong alay o sakripisyo ng makasalanang siyudad.
Krokis ng Kontradiksiyon
Humiram tayo ng konsepto ng relihiyon kay Georges Bataille. Magkasanib ang kamatayan at erotisismo, tabu/batas at paglabag dito sa danas na maituturing na pananampalataya. Nakalakip sa banghay ang tema ng pagsalikop ng kamatayan at sensuwalidad na nakapokus sa ilang insidente. Nagwakas ang daloy ng mga pangyayari sa pagbaligtad sa takbo ng pangyayari (peripeteia), pagkilala sa tunay na motibasyon ng mga tauhan (anagnorisis) at luksang- parangal (pathos; pakikiramay, pighati at tuwa). Tinalunton ang klasikong hagdan ng trahedya, na may kabit na komedya sa pista ng matatanda bago lumunsad sa panibagong buhay sina Menang, Toby, Amante, Cornelio, Roda, at Jovito. Ang pista ang tatak ng paglabag sa batas (sinalungat ni Guia ang tradisyonal na pagsunod niya sa patriyarkang orden; at sindak sa kamatayan). Maituturing din ito na pagdiriwang sa tagumpay ng sigla ng babae na, sa kamatayan, ay nagdulot ng panibagong buhay sa lahat—kakatwang himala ng mapagpalayang galing ng kababaihan.
Sa diskurso ni Bataille, magkasiping ang kamatayan at buhay na nakatampok sa udyok na seksuwal, rahuyong erotika. Ang tabu (hinggil sa sex/kamatayan) ay nilikha bilang kalasag sa bagsik ng dahas na hinaharap ng karaniwang tao araw-araw. Upang manatili ang trabahong produktibo, kailangang magpataw ng batas/tabu sa marahas na puwersa ng mga damdaming galit, takot, inggit, panibugho, libog o makalupang pagnanais. Hinggil sa koneksiyon ng kamatayan at panganganak, panukala ni Bataille: “The death of the one being is correlated with the birth of the other, heralding it and making it possible. Life is always a product of the decomposition of life. Life first pays its tribute to death which disappears, then to corruption following on death and bringing back into the cycle of change the matter necessary for the ceaseless arrival of new beings into the world” (Death 49).
Ang pagburol sa patay ay minanang ugali buhat pa noong yugto ng kabihasnang Neanderthal, na nagsilbing proteksiyon laban sa dahas ng tadhana’t kapaligiran. Sindak ay kinulapulan ng paggalang sa puwersang nagbanta. Dalawang tagpo ng pagpanaw ang nagbigkis sa kaabalahan ng mga tauhan sa nobela. Ang tabu sa pagkamatay ni Crisanto ay unang saklong
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sa bukana ng salaysay na dinugtungan ng pagkamatay ni Guia, ang saklong sa huli na nagbunga ng (1) pagsilang ni Guia bilang nagsasariling tao, makata, paraluman; (2) pagsisimula ng bagong masaganang buhay nina Menang at Toby at pagbabalik sa tinubuang nayon; at 3) paghuhunos ng relasyon nina Roda at Jovito. Himok ng katawan, udyok ng damdamin, sulsol ng organong seksuwal—mga panganib na hinarap ng awtor/naratibo, lumabag nga sa patriyarkang orden (pakikiapid ni Guia kay Amante, suway ni Camille, hikayat ng pangarap kay Roda) ang dahas na nilambungan ng tabu’t prohibisyong sumasaway at pumipigil.
Naibalik ang relihiyon o pagkakabit-kabit ng ordinaryong buhay. Nakasandig iyon sa sakripisyo, pangunahin ang buhay ni Guia na inialay sa matagal nang nabimbing personalidad. Inihandog din kina Menang at Toby at matatandang binalewala. Sa tingin ni Bataille: “Eroticism is a solitary activity.... defined by secrecy” (249). Ilapat ang konseptong ito sa pagtago ni Guia sa Apartelle, ang sekretong pag- uulayaw nila ni Amante noong buhay pa ang asawa, at pagkamatay rin sa taguan. Ano’t anuman, mabisa ang sakripisyo ni Guia, ang metamorposis niya bilang masunuring asawa (pinagbawalan siyang magsulat) at mabait na ina. Naisakatuparan ang hangarin ng bangkay: matagumpay na pagtupad sa habilin ni Guia at pagtanggap nina Wendy at mga anak na mali sila, paghingi ng tawad, at pagpaparangal sa manlilikha ng Hardin ng Isang Libong Tula.
Sa puntong ito, sapantaha kong inalihan ng panggigipuspos ang militanteng peminista. Sigabong aliw ang nasaksihan sa Kabanata 26–27: ang pagsasama ng tatlong babae ay nagdulot ng “sobrang laya ng pakiramdam ko” (280). Maluwalhating lugod din ang natamo ni Guia nang matanggap ang regalo ng anak at apo. Biyaya ng pagsasama-sama ang naranasan ng mag-asawang Menang at Toby (283–86). Maisisingit dito na kontra-sentimentalismong pagpipinid ng kuwento ang mahihinuha sa opinyon ng awtor tungkol sa sistemang kerida (Bautista, In Sisterhood 15–17).
Nakawiwili ang matinding galak ng mga babae, kapusukang siya ring umuugit sa kanilang kagustuhang makipag-ulayaw sa lalaking tabu (Amante, Cornelio). At sa panig ni Roda, ang pangingimbulo kay Camille ay naging obsesyon ng guniguning bihag ng budhi. Ngunit ang pinakamakatuturang bahagi ng naratibo ay nakapaloob sa pagkilala’t pagkakilanlan. Nagbunga ang kasabikan sa pagbubunyag ng tunay na adhika ni Guia, panaginip nina Menang, at pangarap ni Roda.
Naisiwalat ang lihim ng kababaihan—antagonistikong tuligsa sa panginoong ama at batas ng patriyarkang pamilya. Sa paglabag sa tabu, nailigtas ito. Ang ritwal ng luksang parangal sa burol ni Guia (kung saan kinilala ng mga anak ang kasarinlan ng Ina), pista ng matatanda na sumunod sa regulasyon, at palatuksuhan nina Roda at Jovito—ang mapagbirong katuwaan ng mag-asawa—ang tatak ng kaganapan ng mga tauhan at kahinugan ng pinakasasabikang lihim ni Guia.
Nangangahulugan ba na ang pagtatasa sa kasarian ay sirkulasyon lamang ng aktong paglabag at muling pagsunod sa batas? Paano ang hangaring peminista na ibuwal ang di-makatarungang ayos ng kasariang umiiral? Kung ang ugnayang panlipunan, ang “relihiyon” ni Bataille, ay nakahati sa yugto ng erotisismo (pagsalungat) at sakripisyo (pagsuko), walang napalitan o nabago kundi ang ating kaalaman. Nadulutan ng bagong kabatiran ang mambabasa hinggil sa sistemang kerida, ang sekretong buhay nina Guia at Roda, ang gahasa’t pagdurusa ni Menang, atbp. Pero naibulaos ba ang mithiing palayain ang kababaihan mula sa pagsasamantala at dominasyon ng kalalakihan?
Pagsaliksik sa Birtud ng Manlilikha
Ang alegorya ng pagkakaibigan ng mga babae ay pinagbuklod na tema ng katawan (hindi lamang nasasaktan), ang puwersa’t karupukan nito, sa gitna ng dibisyon ng gawain at kapangyarihan. Ikinulong ang babae sa domestikong larang ng pag-aruga sa anak at pag-alaga sa tahanan. Tinuligsa ni Eviota ang “family- household system” sa atin na “primary site of men’s control of women’s sexuality” (153). Nakasadlak ang babae sa paglilingkod bilang ina, asawa, pangangasiwa sa pangangailangan ng kasambahay, at pagdulot ng serbisyong seksuwal sa monogamyang kasunduan. Naisip nina Guia at Roda na singilin ang mga anak sa kanilang pag-aruga’t pag-aalaga—ang debate ng “wages for housework” ay naurirat muli, kakabit sa argumento ng “social reproduction feminism” (Martinez; Whitehead). Pinagkaitan ng sahod, pinaratangan ng mga lalaki na hangal at mahina ang babae, limitado, mababang uri. Kaugnay nito ang paghihimagsik laban sa patriyarkang paghahari, at pagdulog ng sakripisyong magdudulot ng ligalig sa status-quo patungong transpormasyon, pagtutuwid, pagpapakilala.
Silipin natin ang ilang senyas ng pag-alsa’t pagbangon ng babae sa paghawi ng tabing ng
Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan E. San Juan, Jr. 9
predikamentong isinadula sa nobela.
Umpisa ang pagkamatay ng lalaki, si Crisanto. Ang
ikinintal na larawan, si Guia na hawak ang metal urn na paglalagyan ng abo ng asawa, kakabit sa utos ng anak at ngitngit ng ina: “Na para bang porke namatay ang tatay nito, wala na siyang karapatang antukin” (1). Naititik agad ang dalawang leitmotif: oposisyon sa anak, pagunita ng limitasyon ng katawan sa kapupuyat, na nagtulak sa kaniyang tumakas sa anupamang katungkulang iniluhog ng pamilya, at linggatong sa paghihintay: “Kaya ginawa niya ang hindi pa niya ginawa sa buong buhay niya. Kahit nahihiya, nag- aalanganin, kinakabahan na baka paghinalaan siyang may katagpo, nag-check in siya sa isang apartelle” (2). Sumuway si Guia sa kinaugalian, inihanda ang katawan sa inaasam na pagdating ni Amante, ang driver na kalaguyo niya, sa harap ng bangkay ng asawa at pagsunod sa ritwal ng paburol.
Bakit ang utusan ang gumagambala sa nabalong babae? Hindi naman kerida ni Amante si Guia—ang babae ang dominante, batay sa uri at istatus. Mahihinuha na ang gunita ng magandang nakalipas ay signos ng pagtubos sa pasakit at pagkatabi: “Masarap lang makita si Amante...Hindi niya talaga makontrol ang sarili sa paghihintay. Wala siyang magagawa. Kasalanan man kay Carmencito, wala siyang magagawa” (4). Naghalo ang hiya (shame) at kasalanan (guilt), ang labas at loob; sa ibang rehistro ng wika, nagtiyap ang makalipunang tibok ng budhi at ang makasariling hibo ng damdamin. Kapagkuwa’y sumalisi ang galit sa mga anak at poot kina Wendy at Jerome, na hindi niya mapapatawad. Nilabag ang magulang, hindi sinunod si Guia. Ang tagpo sa punerarya ay sintomas ng tunggalian sa loob ng pamilya, emblematiko ng atomistikong ikot ng konsumeristang lipunan (tunghayan sa pahina 4–5). Makahulugan ang balitaktakan nina Guia at Wendy tungkol sa regla ng anak. Parunggit ng ina: “Putris namang regla ’yan, hindi ka pa ba menopause. Kuwarenta’y sais ka na, a! Ako nga, kuwarenta pa lang, menopause na!” (6). Nakamamanghang puna iyon sa di-masasagkaang daloy ng panahon.
Mapapansin ang pokus sa katawan at katangiang hindi matatalikuran: ang biyolohikang penomena ng paggulang o pagtanda. Sa sumbat ni Wendy—“Patay na si Papa, gusto n’yo pang iwan!” tugon ni Guia: “Bakit, sino ba ang gustong umalis?” (7) Naulinigan natin ang lihim na motibasyon ng babae na naipahiwatig sa sumbong ni Crisanto na “nagbago na siya, nag-iba na ang ugali” at “pahiging na may kinalaman dito ang
dating driver nila” (8), si Amante Mirasol. Naging karismatikong karakter ang abang driver, na sa saloobin ni Guia ay tutubos sa kaniya: “Araw-araw, gabi-gabi, hinihintay niya ang hinayupak na ito, tapos kung kailan siya wala, saka dumating?”
Naiguhit na ang naging masidhing pagnanais ng babae: ang paglabag sa tabu/batas ng patriyarkang pamilya, ang pagsunod sa libog o simbuyo ng saloobin, pagwawaldas, at pagnanasang makipagniig kay Amante. Ang dating kalaguyo ay simbolo ng pagkalas mula sa ekonomiyang utilitaryanistiko ng pamilihan, at pagpalit dito ng paglustay at paggastos ng labis sa dati. Natulak si Guia sa pagbulalas ng mga bagay na sagwil sa ninanais hanggang ang soberanya ng diwa/ budhi ay makamit sa lubos na galak, di matingkalang lugod, maluwalhating ligaya—tila banal na biyayang sumupling sa pagsalungat sa mundo ng pag-aari-arian. Naipabahagi sa atin, mga mambabasa, ang tunay na saloobin ni Guia na trato niya sa asawa ay parang kapatid lamang, hindi kasuyo. Dinggin ang marahas niyang deklarasyon ng pagbabalikwas sa umiiral na miserableng status quo:
“Pasensiya na, Cito; na umpisa pa man ng pagsasama natin, dinadalaw na ako ng pagsisisi. Sana’y naglayas na lang ako kaysa nagpakasal sa ’yo. Sana kahit nu’ng mag-asawa na tayo, kinaya ng powers ko na makipaghiwalay sa ’yo kahit walang dahilan.
Sana, naiintindihan mo ako, Cito? Wala namang masama sa iyo liban sa hindi mo talaga nabuo ang buhay ko. Hindi ko natikman ’yong sinasabi nilang love is blind, ’yong naglulumukso ang dugo mo para sa isang tao, ’yong magpapakamatay ka pag iniwan ka.
Hinahanap-hanap ko ’yong gano’n” (13– 14).
Lugod, saya, kagalakang ganap, luwalhati—dugong lumulukso ang hangad ni Guia, na hinabol niya kay Amante (Kabanata 16) subalit huli—ikakasal na si Amante. Lumindol at binagsakan ng realidad ang babaeng nangangarap. Nakabilanggo ang buhay niya sa nakalipas, ang panahon niya ng sekretong pag-uulayaw: “’Yong halos itago niya ang mukha niya pagpasok nila sa motel, mabilisang pagpasok, nagmamadali, hindi lang dahil baka may makakita at makakilala sa kotse ni Carmencito kundi dahil nasa mukha nila ang pagitan
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ng kanilang edad” (182). Pagkatapos nilang magkausap muli, napag-isa’t nagtanim si Guia ng mga halamang kinagigiliwan, at “nang hugasan niya ang mga kamay, hindi na maalis pa ang lupa sa ilalim ng kanyang mga kuko” (190). Senyas ba ito ng konsiyensiya niya o hiwatig ng pangingimbulo?
Diyalektika ng Libog
Ang makalupang pagnanais ay napunta sa kawalan, kapagkuwa’y sumagitsit ang libog na humaplit sa katawan: “...Ipinagkadiin-diin ang mukha sa unan hanggang sa mahalata niya na hindi na yata siya humihinga” (191). Di umano’y nahalinhan ang Eros ng Thanatos, na nagtungo nga sa pangambang mabalik ang kinapupuotang status quo bago namatay ang asawa, “ang sitwasyong nais niyang talikuran...ang pinakapuso ng lahat ng gusto niyang sabihin: sariling buhay, sariling pasiya, kalayaan...Iyon na siguro ang ideal, ’yung maging kaibigan niya ang mga anak pero may galangan, may distansiya, hindi sumasakop o dumadagan kundi gumagalang at nagpapalaya. Mahirap umasa do’n pero hindi siya nawawalan ng pag-asa” (288).
Kilabot ni Guia na dumagsa muli ang mga apo ni Wendy at gawin siyang yaya. Kaya ipinaubaya kay Roda ang pagkomunikasyon sa kanila, at tuloy nawalang bigla sa eksena. Hindi na natin makikitang buhay ang bayani ng salaysay hanggang sa sandaling mahilingan si Roda na kilalanin ang bangkay ni Guillerma Rosales na natagpuan sa Mithi’s Apartelle. Pinaghinalaang nakipag-liaison siya sa isang lalaki, ngunit sino? Isang palaisipang ibinato sa atin ng awtor, o ng multo ng yumaong sinta ng mahiwagang kasuyo?
Samantala, himatong ng panaginip ni Roda na nagpapaalam na ang kaniyang kaibigan: “Dahil pag namatay daw ang tao, kailangan niyang mahanap at mabuksan ang pinto ng liwanag para makakawala ang kaluluwa niya sa katawang-lupa. Ang pinto ng liwanag ang simbolo ng paglaya” (291). Ang pintong nabanggit sa wakas ay “pinto ng convenience store” kung saan nagkasama muli sina Roda at Jovito pagtawid sa makulimlim na daan.
Maaaring itiklop ang aral ni Guia sa hangarin niyang magkaroon ng maunawaing diyalogo at kasunduan ang kamag-anak. Mahuhulong ito ang kinahinatnan ng salaysay, ang pagbabalik ng mundo ng trabaho. Ang masidhing layon ng nobela ay masasalat sa obserbasyon ni Bataille hinggil sa birtud
ng pagkamatay ni Guia, ang mabiyayang kalooban ng babae: “It cannot prevent life’s disappearance in death from revealing the invisible brilliance of life that is not a thing. The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life’s intimacy does not reveal its dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out...That intimate life, which had lost the ability to fully reach me, which I regarded primarily as a thing, is fully restored to my sensibility through its absence. Death reveals life in its plenitude and dissolves the real order” (Theory 47). Iyon ang mabiyayang handog ni Guia sa lahat, sa buong lipunan.
Tanggap na ang masalimuot na saloobin ng babae ay nabunyag sa kamatayan, gayunman ilang tanong ang nakababagabag. Bakit takot ang lipunan sa pagpapahintulot sa paglaganap ng galak, pagtangkilik sa erotikong silakbo ng pag-ibig? Bakit suklam tayo sa laro ng sensuwalidad? Kung erotikong dahas ang lumulunas sa sugat ng pagkakahiwalay ng bawat tao, bakit sumasagwil ang kodigong legal at prehuwisyo ng patriyarkang gawi? Bakit tratong pag-aari ang katawan ng babae na ikinulong sa katungkulan nitong maglingkod sa reproduksiyon ng buong sangkatauhan? Paano ang papel na ginaganap ng katawan na hindi ligtas sa mga kapahamakan o kapinsalaan ng kalikasan? Di na natin pag-aksayahan ang ibang aksidente o pagbabaka-sakaling sumpong ng kapalaran, tulad ng nasaksihan kina Camille at Jovito, Roda at Cornelio, Guia at Amante.
Determinasyon sa Huling Pagtarok
Marahil, sa pakiwari ko, natugon ang mga tanong sa eksenang kapana-panabik: ang identipikasyon ng bangkay ni Guia sa Kabanata 29.
Isaalang-alang natin ang singularidad ng espasyong naikintal dito sa nobela, lahat sa loob ng lungsod ng MetroManila. Patungkol nga sa Amerikanong serye, Sex in the City, pinadaan ng awtor ang tatlong bihasang babae sa medya-klaseng tahanan, restoran, kondominyum, iskuwater, park o liwasang bayan, tagong apartelle, simbahan, bakasyunan, lansangan, punerarya, at ngayon sa morgue. Sina Roda at Jovito ang hinirang na magpatotoo kung sino, o kanino ang bangkay:
...at di pa man sila pumapasok, nakita na niya ang bangkay na nakahiga sa mesa [ng Punerarya Mabuhay]. Nakapatong ang ulo niyon sa bangkito, sa paraan na nakabitin
Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan E. San Juan, Jr. 11
ang leeg at nakalaylay ang buhok...itsura ng babaing pinalulutang ng madyikero sa mga palabas.
Napahindig si Roda. Pero hindi dahil mistulang babaing pinalulutang ng madyikero ang bangkay kundi dahil wala itong damit, wala man lang kahit kumot. Mabilis na natakpan niya ang mga mata ni Jovito, “H’wag kang tumingin!”
Inalis ni Jovito ang kamay niya. “Ano ka ba! Para naman akong hindi sanay makakita ng katawan ng babae!”
Nakamulagat pa rin siya sa bangkay ni Guia. Ito na ang sandali para humagulgol, pero ang nararamdaman niya, ang paglalatang ng dibdib niya. Hinubaran nila si Guia, hubo’t hubad. Hindi na nila iginalang ang katawan ng kanyang kaibigan!”...
“Bakit nakahubad?” sita niya sa lalaki ng punerarya.
“M’am, eembalsamuhin na ho.”
“....Porke patay na, ginaganyan na? Porke hindi na makakibo, hindi na maipagtanggol ang kanyang sarili? Ano ba naman iyan, Vito!...” (297–98)
Sa sumbat ni Vito na hindi na importante iyon, pakli ni Roda: “Importante iyon, Vito...Lalaki ka kaya hindi mo alam kung gaano kaimportante sa babae ang dignidad niya!” (298). Maipahatid natin dito ang himutok: umaalingawngaw ang protesta ni Roda sa buong kapuluan, kung ilanlibong babae ang hinubaran at pinarusahan sa mga safehouse ng militar at pulisya, mula panahon ng diktadurang Marcos hanggang sa rehimeng Duterte/Bongbong. Mga nilapastangang katawan ng mga babaeng aktibista, hinubaran at binastos at inabuso paulit-ulit. Oo na, umaarte tayong tulad ni Rizal sa nobela niya, na pinatitigil ang takbo ng kuwento upang itaghoy ang hirap ng isang tauhan (gaya ni Kabesang Tales o Elias) sa pagdurusa ng buong komunidad.
Patawad sa patlang, balik tayo sa komentaryo. Ituloy natin ang sindak ni Roda sa bagsik at lupit ng kamatayan, tila mabangis na puwersang sumakop nang walang babala. Ang kilabot ni Roda ay indeks sa paglalapit ng kamatayan at pagkahalay sa katawan, na nakagising sa simbuyong nakaduduwal, nakalulula, na pumupukaw sa ligalig na inilarawan dito—pagmasdan ang iginuhit na katandaan ni Guia, ang hinanakit ni Roda sa inakalang titig ng madla sa inembalsamong bangkay:
Matanda na nga si Guia, laylay na ang suso. Tignan mo, ang laki ng tiyan, parang buntis. Ang dami pa namang stretch mark. Biro mo, eto ngayon si Guia, nakahubo’t hubad, at hindi lang sa harap niya kundi sa harap din ni Jovito, pati sa harap ng lalaking ito na ni hindi nito kakilala. Si Guia, na minsang napasukan niya nang nakahubad, napatili sabay takip ng palad sa dibdib, Naka-bra’t panty pa ito noon!
Tapos, eto at hubo’t hubad. Hinubaran ng kung sino lang. Nakita na nang hubo’t hubad ng kung sinu-sino lang. Napaiyak siya. Kahit naman patay na ang tao, hindi dapat nilalapastangan ang pagkatao niya. Kahit patay na, dapat minamahalaga pa rin ang kanyang kahihiyan.
Hindi siya sure kung nag-iiyak siya dahil patay na si Guia o dahil hindi na nila minahalaga ang kahihiyan nito. Itinakip niya ang kamay sa bibig. (299–300)
Pansinin na kay Roda, buhay pa rin ang katawan, na maaring mahiya. Paniwala niya na “Buong buhay ng babae, itinatago niya ang katawan niya. Hindi nga siya naghuhubad kahit sa harap ng asawa niya” (300). Taglay ng saloobin ang ambivalence ng tao sa patay, magkahalong sindak at mapitagang pagkatakot, na puwedeng maghunos sa pagsambulat ng damdamin— ito ang tuwang “orgiastic” na nakasilid din sa mga tagpo ng saya ng magkaibigan noong nagliliwaliw sa iba’t ibang lugar sa siyudad noong Pasko, at sa lugar ni Menang sa gitna ng nakabibinging putukan noong Bagong Taon (Kabanata 26–27).
Alam natin na magkasalungat ang buhay at kamatayan. Ngunit magkatambal din at magkatalik. Sa masidhing tuwa nalulusaw ang malay, sa aksiyong seksuwal at sa huling kombulsiyon ng katawang naghihingalo, unti-unting pumapanaw. Sa sandali ng agaw-buhay lumalapag ang anghel ng katubusan. Mailalapat dito ang kuro-kuro ni Bataille: “The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives. Stripping naked is the decisive action. Nakedness offers a contrast to self-possesion, to discontinuous existence...It is a state of communication revealing a quest for possible continuance of being beyond the confines of the self. Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret channels that give us a feeling of obscenity. Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated
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with self-possession...Stripping naked is seen as a simulacrum of the act of killing...linking the act of love with sacrifice” (Death 11–12).
Tagubilin ng Budhi
Erotikang pagkamatay—isang parikala ba ito? Taglay rin ang ambigwidad sa opinyon ng awtor tungkol sa kerida system na sinuri niya sa Hinugot sa Tadyang at sa In Sisterhood. Payo niya sa lahat na tutulan ang batas ng ordeng makalalaki: “Bawal magkaroon ng seksuwalidad ang babae!” (138). Hinahamon niyang buwagin na lahat ang tabu at batas na nagbabawal. Kaya kung tutuusin, hindi purong malungkot na trahedya o nakakikiliting komedya ang dating at reaksiyon sa nobela. Sa pagtaya ko, ang Sixty ay siyang pinakamangahas na akda ni Bautista na tumitistis sa suliranin ng ugnayan sa pamilya, ng pakikitungo ng mga magkalapit, ng pakikipagkapuwa ng bata at matanda. Problema ito sa lahat ng nakatira sa siyudad ng neokolonyang bansa na pinaghaharian ng anomie at reipikasyon sanhi sa pagdikta ng rasong instrumental at mistipikasyon ng komoditi- petisismo (Habermas; Ebert; Lefebvre). Itinatakwil ng mapangahas na intriga ni Guia ang hegemonya ng akumulasyon at pagsuob sa pribadong ari-arian.
Makakamit ang adhikang mapalaya ang pagkatao at maisapraktika ang soberanya ng bawat nilalang kung tututulan at disiplinahin ang trabahong akumulasyon, pagpapayaman, paghamig ng tubo (surplus value) na ninakaw sa anak-pawis. Makakamit ang katubusan sa erotikang pagkalas/pagtakas mula sa pagkaalipin sa ari-arian, ang di umano’y pagwawaldas (sa malikhaing sensibilidad ng makata na tutulong sa maralitang kabataan sa Cordillerang gustong sumulat) at pag- abuloy sa ikagagalak ng mga matandang kinalimutan na ng mapag-imbot na lipunan. Sa ultimong hatol, ang paggugol ng labis na halaga (surplus value) upang iligtas ang mga sawimpalad sa miserableng kalagayan ay tagumpay ng imahinasyon at dunong ng kababaihan.
Matapat, matapang, at matalino ang diwang nagpapagalaw sa mga karakter at pangyayari sa nobela. Magusot ang mga temang sinasaliksik at mapanuri ang retorika’t pananagisag na gumabay sa maantig at nakapupukaw na paraan. Testimonyo ito na ang manunulat ay “kunsiyensiya ng kanyang bayan” (Bautista, In Sisterhood 178).
Pinili kong sipatin ang maintrigang nobelang ito upang subukin ang haypotesis na ang usaping pangkasarian—tinaguriang “the woman question”
sa Kanluran—ay nakasalang sa hiwaga ng komoditi- petisismo o alyenasyon sa politikang ekonomiya ng lipunang nasadlak sa paghahari ng pangkating piyudal-komprador-burokrata kapitalista. Ang aksiyon o ginampanang papel ng tatlong babaeng protagonista, sampu ng dalagang anak sa Sonata, ay halimbawa ng pakikihamok laban sa sistemang di-makatarungan at mapagsamantala. Naisagawa ito sa paraan ng paggamit ng talino, katutubong galing, at kakayahang hango sa kanilang pagka-ina at pagkaalipin. Iyon ay sagisag na sa diyalektikang pag-inog ng banghay ng nobela, ang pagsugpo ng kababaihan sa negasyon ng patriyarkang mapanikil ay nagbunsod ng pakikibaka tungo sa liberasyon ng buong sangkatauhan. Ang Sixty in the City, sa tingin ko, ay mapanghamong panawagan sa lahat na magpunyaging matamo at maisapraktika ang “sariling buhay, sariling pasiya, kalayaan” (288) na hinangad ng tatlong babaeng bayani sa nobela. Sandata itong magagamit para sa kolektibong proyekto ng sambayanang lumalaban, anumang kasarian ang gustong pakilusin, tungo sa pagkakamit ng awtentikong soberanya, katarungang panlipunan, at demokrasyang pambansa.
SANGGUNIAN
Aguilar, Delia. Toward a Nationalist Feminism. Quezon City: Giraffe Press, 1998. Print.
---.“Questionable Claims.” In Women and Globalization, eds. Delia Aguilar and Anne Lacsamana. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. Print.
Alfaro, Ma. Rita Arce. “Human Rights Behind Bards: The Manila City Jail Experience.” Focus 39 (March 2005). Print.
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---.“Lualhati Bautista: Tinig ng Pangalawang Henerasyon.” Sarilaysay ni Rosario Torres-Yu. Manila: Anvil, 2000. Print.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-7571297317015948262023-07-24T21:32:00.001-07:002023-07-24T21:32:06.834-07:00Komentaryo ukol są nowela ni Lualhati Bautista: SIXTY IN THE CITYMALAY 35(2) Hunyo 2023, pp. 1–13
<b
>Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan:
Diyalektika ng Kalayaan at Nesesidad sa Sixty in the City ni Lualhati Bautista
/ Death, Love, and Rebellion of Women’s Emancipatory Spirit: Dialectics of
Freedom and Necessity in Sixty in the City by Lualhati Bautista
</b>
E. San Juan, Jr. University of Connecticut philcsc@gmail.com</b>
Sinuri ang pangunahing tema ng nobela at kabuluhan nito sa sitwasyong pampolitikang ekonomiya ng kasarian. Sa pagkakaibigan ng tatlong ina, isinadula ang ugnayang sumasalungat sa piyudal-kapitalistang ideolohiya ng reipikasyon: ang magkalakip na diyalektika ng pag-ibig, seksuwalidad, at kamatayan. Pinagsanib ang teorya ni Georges Bataille hinggil sa erotisismo at historiko-materyalismong analisis ng hidwaan ng mga uring panlipunan sa neokolonya. Sa metodong iyon, naisadula ang karanasan ng mapagpalayang diwa ng kababaihan laban sa patriyarkang dominasyon. Kongklusyon ng saliksik ng mga pangyayaring dinalumat hinggil sa tatlong babaeng nagnasang makamit ang pagkilala sa sarili at pagkakilanlan sa kanila ay mailalagom dito: dapat sipatin muna ang trayektorya ng puwersang panlipunan, ang nesesidad pangkasaysayan, na nagtatakda sa ating pagkatao. Pahiwatig ito ng banghay ng nobela: upang mailigtas ang mapanlikhang lakas ng kababaihan mula sa karupukan ng katawan, mapagsamantalang dahas ng maskulinistang kaayusan, at dominasyon ng kalakal/pribadong pag-aari/imperyalistang kapital, kailangang pasiglahin ang komunidad, ang kamalayang kritikal at mapanghimagsik, upang makalaya sa pagka-alipin sa kinagisnang subordinasyon. Ang suliranin ng kasarian ay nakabuod sa kolonisadong gawi/ paniniwala na mababago lamang sa paraan ng rebolusyonaryong praktika at kolektibong sikap ng buong sambayanan.
Mga Susing Salita: kamatayan, kasarian, neokolonya, patriyarka, seksuwalidad
This essay focuses on the main theme of the novel and its significance in clarifying the political economy of gender relations. In the comradeship of three mothers, the narrative dramatizes the intimacies subverting the feudal/capitalist ideology of reification: the complex dialectic of love, sexuality, and death. It combines Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism with the historical-materialist analysis of class struggle in the neocolony. Using this method, we discern how the narrative allegorizes
Copyright © 2023 by De La Salle University
2 Malay Tomo 35 Blg. 2
the experiences of the emancipatory spirit of women against patriarchal oppression. This inquiry appraises the events surrounding these three protagonists desiring a recognition of their true selves and the recognition of their individual worth. We can sum it up thus: we need to comprehend the trajectory of social forces, the historical necessity behind them, in order to grasp the determinants of our character, our personality as defined by society and history. This idea is suggested by the novel’s structure: in order to redeem the creative force of women from the fragility of the body, the exploitative power of a masculinist order, and the domination of private property and imperialist capital subtending it, we need to revitalize the community, our critical and revolutionary consciousness, in order to free ourselves from oppressive legacies. The problem of gender inequality is tied up with colonized mentality and beliefs that can only be superseded and transformed through revolutionary practice and the collective endeavor of the whole nation-people.
Keywords: death, neocolony, patriarchy, sex, sexuality
Ang usapin ng kasarian ay masalimuot, totoong matinik at nakaliligaw. Bakit? Isang dahilan: kasangkot ang halos lahat ng isyu sa pampolitikang ekonomiya, sa bansag ng progresibong pananaw (Sison & de Lima; Zaretsky). Tinuturol nito ay di lamang hanapbuhay o pagbili ng produktong materyal sa pamilihan, kundi pati buong estrukturang historikal na nakasandig doon: isip, damdamin, paniniwala, memorya, hinagap, adhikain na nakasilid sa katawan at utak. Sa madaling salita, sangkot ang haypotesis ng soberanya ng suhetibidad (partikular, ng kababaihan) at nesesidad ng gawaing pataw ng lipunang pinamamahalaan ng patriyarkang kapangyarihan.
Masugid na dinaliri ni Lualhati Bautista sa Hinugot sa Tadyang at sa In Sisterhood—Lea at Lualhati ang hinanakit ng inaabusong kababaihan. Tumatahak siya sa landas na hinawan sa Kanluran ng mga aktibistang
Sheila Rowbotham, Juliet Mitchell, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gayle Rubin, at iba pang feministang sosyalista. Iginiit ni Ann Ferguson na nakakabit ang dominasyon ng kabababaihan sa “modes of sex/affective production,” sa “sex/gender system” (356). Natalakay din ito ng mga katutubong dalubhasa (Eviota, Aguilar, Torres- Yu). Sa pangkalahatan, ideolohiya at bisa nito ang paksaing aatupagin dito. Pagkakasanib at integrasyon ng sangkap ng lipunan (kapuwa produksiyong materyal at reproduksiyon ng buhay) ang nakataya rito. Kalangkap ang kahulugan ng buhay, ang katuturan ng ating kilos at salita, sa reipikasyon at alyenasyong bunga ng kapitalistang orden at pagkagapos natin sa nesesidad ng akumulasyon na sapilitang sumusugpo sa maramdaming kasarilinan. Sa matalinghagang idyoma, magkalakip ang karisma at corpus, ang espiritu at makamundong laman ng katawan.
Ang buhay ay hindi nagsisimula pagtuntong ng sisenta. Nagsisimula ito sa bawat ngiti ng umaga.
—Guia Rosales, karakter sa nobela
Desire is what transforms Being...into an “object” revealed to a “subject” different from the object and “opposed” to it...It is in and by his Desire that humans are formed and revealed—to himself and to others—as an I that is essentially different from, and radically opposed to, the non-I...In contrast to the knowledge that keeps man in a passive quietude, Desire dis-quiets him and moves him to action.
—Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel
Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan E. San Juan, Jr. 3
Lente ng Historiko-Materyalismong Pangitain
Sa pagsisiyasat sa koneksiyon ng ideolohiya at ekonomiya, ang papel na ginagampanan ng katawan at seksuwalidad, hilig ng kalooban o damdamin, ay napakaimportante. Idiniin ni Marx ang halaga ng “sensuous practice” kaakibat ng metabolikong interaksiyon ng tao at kalikasan. Buhay at reproduksiyon nito ang batayan ng etikang materyalistiko (Dussel 55–68). Susog ni Marx: “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being—and because he feels when he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential force of man energetically bent on its object... Death seems to be a harsh victory of the species over the definite individual and to contradict their unity. But the particular individual is only a particular species being, and as such mortal” (Economic 182, 138).
Babae’t lalaki ay magkamukha ngunit magkaiba. Kapuwa nakapaloob sa kategorya ng espesye-homo sapiens, sa komunidad ng sinaunang panahon, sabi ni Marx: “In the relationship with woman, as the prey and handmaid of communal lust, is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this relationship has its unambiguous, decisive, open and revealed expression in the relationship of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct, natural species-relationship is conceived...This relationship reveals in a sensuous form...the extent to which the human essence has become nature for man or nature has become the human essence...The relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being...This relationship demonstrates the extent to which man’s needs have become human needs, hence the extent to which the other, as a human being, has become a need for him, the extent to which in his most individual existence he is at the same time a communal being” (Early Writings 347). Samakatwid, walang kasiyaan/identidad ang bawat nilikha kung walang Ibang kikilala, na imperatibong pangangailangan, katugma ng pagnanais o pagnanasa (desire).
Isang hiblang mahuhugot dito sa ideyalistikong pagbubulay-bulay ng 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts ni Marx ay ito: ang bawat isa ay saklaw ng pangangailangan upang maging ganap na tao. Mula pa sa yugto ng barbarismo hanggang sa modernong siyudad ng kapitalismong global, ang kababaihan ay nagsilbing instrumento sa reproduksiyon ng lakas- paggawa kaalinsabay ng sakripisyo ng masimbuyong
damdamin. Napailalim sa rehimentasyon ang buong katawan na ginawang komoditi—sa surrogate motherhood, prostitusyon, sistemang kerida, beauty contest, at (ayon sa awtor) “pambayad sa utang” (Bautista, Hinugot; konsultahin din sina Minson; Foucault).
Pagmuniin natin ito. Magkaiba ba o magkapareho ang lalaki’t babae sa kapitalistang lipunan? Nakabuod sa linya ng argumentong ito ang prinsipyo ng katarungan at pagkakapantay-pantay. Ang subordinasyon ng kababaihan sa patriyarkang orden ay tandisang politikal—ibig sabihin, kuwestiyon ng poder, awtoridad, at kinabukasan ng komunidad. Kalakip dito ang likas na katangian ng tao: kalusugan ng katawan, lunas sa sakit at pagtanda, pangungulila, kabiguan, pagnanais ng aliw at pagkilala, pagmamahal. Sa usapin ng seksuwalidad at lugod ng kababaihan, na hindi maiging natalakay nina Marx at Engels, gagamitin dito ang teorya ng relihiyon ni Georges Bataille tungkol sa hugpungan ng katawan, seksuwalidad, sakit at kamatayan sa loob ng kaayusang sumusukat ng halaga sa akumulasyon ng yaman (salapi) at di-binayarang oras ng paggawa (profit; tubo ng mamumuhunan).
Materyalismong historikal din ang oryentasyon ni Bataille, lamang ang sentro ng kaniyang diskurso ay iyong “passionate being” o maramdaming nilikhang nasambit na ni Marx ngunit hindi nalinang—sa kalaunan, ideolohiya-kritika nina Rowbotham, Ehrenreich, Frigga Haug, Teresa Ebert atbp., ang nagtangkang punan ang kakulangan.
Ulitin natin ang proposisyong gumagabay sa ating diskurso. Ang buhay ay metabolikong proseso ng kalikasan at tao sa lipunan. Sa paghahanap ng kasagutan sa samotsaring aspekto ng kabuhayan, hindi maiiwasan na harapin ang maigting na kontradiksiyon ng lahat ng bagay sa danas ng tao sa isang tiyak na yugtong pangkasaysayan. Hindi lamang trabaho at materyales na pangangailangan ang kalahok, kundi ang sigla ng katawan, simbuyo ng pagnanais, sandali ng lugod, galak, inggit, kabiguan, pighati, pangamba, balisang pag-iisa, poot, pagpapakasakit, parusang pagkahubad, hiya, kamatayan. Naranasan ito ng tatlong babaeng inabutan ng mapinsalang dahas ng saloobing nagbunyag ng kanilang tunay na hinahanap: kasarinlan, dignidad, pagkilala, ligayang tiwalag sa maternidad at magahasang dikta ng ama/pater familia/patriyarkang asawa.
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Hinagis sa Arena ng Pakikipagsapalaran
Nakapuwesto ang mapanuring panulat ni Bautista sa sitwasyong pangkasarian, sa kabutihan at kaganapan ng kababaihan. Isang anomalya na pinagtakpan ng doktrinang ang babae ay “ilaw ng tahanan,” manedyer ng kasambahay, presidente ng bansa (tulad nina Cory Aquino at Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo). Si Bautista ay namumukod sa kaniyang masidhing pagbuhos ng talino sa pagtistis sa problema ng inhustisya at pag-alipusta sa kababaihan at ibang biktima ng imperyalismo. Mula pa sa Buwan, Buwan, Hulugan Mo Ako ng Sundang hanggang sa In Sisterhood, Hinugot sa Tadyang at Sonata, sinanay niya ang artistikong sensibilidad sa pagsisiwalat ng tunay na nangyayari sa likod ng madaya’t tagibang na kapaligiran. Napatunayan na ito sa kaniyang pagsisiyasat sa mga maselang problema ng bansa sa mga nobelang Gapo, Dekada ’70, Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa, at Desaparesidos. Matalisik na kritisismo ng ordeng umiiral ang inilahad niya sa Bulaklak sa City Jail.
Ang masusing imbestigasyon ng mga puwersang umuugit sa kontradiksiyon ng mga uring panlipunan ay sadyang nagpatanyag kay Bautista bilang konsiyensiya ng lahi. Matapang niyang sinuri, dinalumat at tinimbang ang mga tauhan at pangyayaring sumasalamin sa realidad ng buhay sa neokolonyang bayan. Patibay rito ang husga ni Rosario Torres-Yu na ang nobelang Gapo “ay nagsilbing kurot sa gunitang pinamamanhid ng propaganda ng umiiral na kaayusan,” lalo na sa dominasyon at pang-aapi sa kabaihan (109).
Walang pasubaling pinakamahalaga ang posisyon ng babae sa Pilipinas, lalo na sa reproduksiyon ng salinlahi at pag-aalaga ng produktibong lakas ng buong sambayanan. Mahigit 50 porsiyento ang parte ng kababaihan sa bilang ng mga OFW (Overseas Filipino workers) na siyang bukal ng suporta (remitans) sa ekonomiya. Bagsak ang bansa kung wala ito. Gayunman, sa tingin ng ilan, limitado si Bautista sa pagtuon ng pansin sa mga babaeng pinili niya dahil karamihan ay mula sa medya-klase o panggitnang saray. Tampok din ang ilang babaeng binusabos sa Gapo, Desaparesidos, at Bulaklak sa City Jail.
Ipagitna sa ating malay ang kongklusyon ni Frederick Engels sa kaniyang “Origin of Family, Private Property and the State”: “The overthrow of mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex” (496). Naipailalim ang kababaihan sa pagyurak ng kanilang kolektibong karapatan. Sa pangkalahatan,
ang problema ng kasarian (relasyong di-patas ng babae’t lalaki) ay hindi maihihiwalay sa ugnayang panlipunan na nakasentro sa pamilyang ginigipit, higit pa sa pakikitungo ng hinlog sa espasyo ng tirahan. Hindi ito aralin ng anatomiya kundi isyu ng pagtrato sa pagkakaiba, kaibhan (ng edad o gulang), ng pagkilala o respeto sa personalidad ng bawat nilalang. Kalahok din ang mga tanong hinggil sa karapatang pantao, politikang seksuwal (sa pag-aasawa’t pagpapalaki ng mga anak), pagtanda at kalusugan, karamdamang pangsikolohiya, at implikasyon nito sa salinlahing susunod.
Hindi na dapat ipaalala sa lahat ang aksiyomang ipinunla ni Simone de Beauvoir matagal na: Ang babae ay hindi ipinanganak kundi ginawa ng lipunan at kasaysayan. Huwag magkamaling maliitin siya sa kaniyang anatomiya, ikabit lamang sa kaniyang “vagina,” suso o anumang bahaging pisikal. Konstruksiyong panlipunan-historikal ang diwa at budhi. Talagang panlalait at paglapastangan iyon, tulad ng asal ng misogynistang ex-pangulong Duterte. Ang tanong ni Freud—“Ano ba talaga ang gusto ng mga babae?”—“Was will das Weib?” (671)—ay sintomas ng barbarikong malisya ng ama ng sikoanalisis (binatikos ni Figes, Ebert). Sa pagbawi, itanong: ano naman ang reklamo ng lalaking asawa?
Mabigat na pagpapalabo ang iginawad ng dogmatikong sikolohiyang limitado ng ideolohiyang maka-burgis. Bakit ibinukod at ipinailalim ang mga babae sa normatibong panukat ng sobinistang pananaw? Sintomas ito ng malubhang sakit ng lipunan sa alyenasyon ng kapuwa-tao dahil sa pagsamba sa komoditi/kalakal at salapi, ang reduksiyon ng karaniwang buhay bilang ugnayan ng mga bagay na sinasamba’t sinusuob—mga idolo’t hiwagang gumagapos sa utak at dibdib ng bawat nilalang (e.g., isipin ang pagkahumaling sa mga bilihin/regalo at mga pag-aari ng mga tauhan sa nobela). Binansagan ito na “terorismo ng pangkaraniwang danas” sa siyudad (Lefebvre). Pati katawan—ang itsura nito ay target ng tindahan—at mga pangangailangan nito, malibuging pagnanais, silakbo ng damdamin, pangarap at panaginip ay lumubog sa kumunoy ng konsumerismo at merkado. Balik-suriin ang pagkabalisa nina Guia, Roda, Menang tungkol sa kosmetiks, kagamitan sa bahay, at mga bagay-bagay na senyas ng uri, istatus, atbp., kaugnay ng mga ari-ariang ipamimigay ni Guia sa sinumang nangangailangan (buklatin ang Kabanata 13, 142–155).
Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan E. San Juan, Jr. 5
Lagom at Balangkas
Ang nobelang Sixty in the City (sa susunod, Sixty, na pasaring sa magayumang telenobelang Sex and the City sa U.S.) ay plataporma ng engkuwentro ng kalikasan, seksuwalidad at kapalaran ng kababaihan. Pinili kong sipatin ang estruktura ng narasyon upang subukin ang haypotesis na ang usaping pangkasarian— “the woman question,” taguring maskulinista—ay nakasalang sa hiwaga ng alyenasyon sa politikang ekonomiya ng lipunang nasadlak sa paghahari ng pangkating komprador-kapitalista at hegemonya ng heteronormatibidad sa kultura (Foley 67–70; Ebert, Figes). Bagama’t nitong 2015 lamang naipalimbag sa libro ang Sixty, noong 2008 pa nailathala na sa Liwayway ang mga kabanata. Gunitain natin ang ilang pangyayaring naganap sa unang dekada ng bagong milenyo, lalo na ang Setyembre 11 atake sa New York; ang korupsiyon ni Gloria Arroyo na humantong sa madugong masaker sa Mindanao, ang pagbalewala ng kasunduan ng gobyerno at Moro Islamic Liberation Front; at pagwalang-sala kay Imelda Marcos, at iba pang katiwalian. Pagnilayan natin kung itong huli at mga maniobra ni Arroyo ay mahuhulong pahiwatig ng mapanlikhang asersiyon ng kababaihan, na kahit sa larang ng guni-guni at pagkukunwari ay sadyang makapangyarihan.
Sa malas, ang asal, kilos at pasiya ng tatlong babaeng protagonista, kabilang sa uring proletaryo at petiburgis, ay halimbawa ng pakikibaka laban sa sistemang di-makatarungan at mapagsamantala. Dumaan ito sa paraan ng paggamit ng talino, katutubong galing, at kakayahang hango sa kanilang pagka-ina at trabahong pagka-kasambahay (domestic housework). Estilong poliponiko ang pagtahi’t pagsasalabid ng mga estratehiya’t taktika ng mga babaeng ibig kumawala sa pagkabihag sa asawa’t pamilya. Ito ay sagisag na sa diyalektikang pag-inog ng naratibo, ang negasyon ng patriyarkang mapanikil ay nangyari sa pagkakabuklod ng tatlong ina. Nag-ugat sa kanilang matimtimang komunikasyon at mapagkalingang damayan, ang kanilang pagtutulungan ay nagbunsod ng landas tungo sa liberasyon ng buong lipunan.
Mungkahi ng isang makata (W.B. Yeats) na sa panaginip at imahinasyon nagsisimula ang pananagutan, ang responsabilidad natin sa buhay. Totoo kaya ito sa pagyari ng aktuwalidad ng nobela mula sa gunita, pag-aasam, at pangarap/pag-asa ng tatlong ina, at sa mahiwagang aksiyon ni Guia, makatang nailuwal ng kamatayan?
Bago tayo sumabak sa paghimay sa ilang makahulugang tagpo sa nobela, imapa natin ang tema ng nobela at kilatisin ang motibasyon ng mga karakter. Umiinog ang banghay sa mga nangyari sa tatlong babaeng magkakaibigan at kanilang kamag- anak: sina Guia (Guillerma Rosales), Roda (Roderica de los Santos) at Menang (Filomena Ballesteros). Sa pagkamatay ng asawang Crisanto, binalak ni Guia na ipagbili ang bahay nila, lumipat sa isang lihim na tirahan, at isakatuparan ang matagal nang naantalang mithi: ang magsulat at “kagustuhang maikalat at maipabasa ang niyayaring mga tula. Para matupad ang isang buong buhay na pangarap, maipakilala ang sariling pangalan at maging tunay na anak ng sining at lipunan” (320).
Nakakawing ang hangarin ni Guia sa simbuyong sinusugpo, sa tinitimping pagnanais: planong makipagtalik muli sa dating kalaguyo. Nangarap siyang maibabalik ang masayang suyuan nila ni Amante, dating driver. Di naglao’y nagulat si Guia, nabigo—may sariling buhay na ang lalaki. Gayunman, hanggang mamatay, nakuha ni Guia na magtago’t tumakas sa pagsasamantala sa kaniyang lakas/galing ng mga anak. Samantala, umastang ordinaryong tao, biyuda, mapagbiro at magiliw, nakapagpapatawa, sa pakikipagpagdaupangpalad kina Roda at Menang.
Layon ni Guia na ipagtanggol ang sarili sa tangkang sakupin, manduhan at kontrolin siya ng mga anak at apo (125). Buhat pa noong sumulat siya ng kuwento tungkol kay Bono Lardizabal, na dahilang pinilit ng ama na ipakasal kay Carmencito, rebelde na si Guia. Naikumpisal niya ang “affair” niya kay Amante na ikinagulat nina Roda at Menang, “Mas masarap” kung hindi mo asawa.” Nahikayat si Roda na suriin ang kaniyang buhay. Natuliro siya na hindi nahiya si Guia kundi nagkaroon pa ng dangal: “Gabi-gabi niyang pinag-isipan kung paano nangyari na ikarangal pa ng babae ang dapat niyang ikahiya” (51). Binaligtad ni Guia ang panuntunan, binuwag ang tabu hanggang maharang ng katalagahan, ng aktuwalidad.
Kompara kay Guia, si Roda ay naging biktima ng sistemang kerida at nagpasyang humiwalay sa asawang Jovito. Dahil sa kita ng asawa, medya- klaseng estilo ang buhay niya ngunit naghahangad ng respeto’t pagsuyo mula sa iba. Komedya ang resulta ng kaniyang pagkakaibigan kay Cornelio, at sa huli’y mapagbirong nakisama muli kay Jovito sa bisa ng kanilang tuwa sa gunita ng nakalipas. Rekonsilyasyon kaya ito o pasakit na kompensasyon? At sa paglisan
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nina Guia at Menang, pati ang simbolikong imahen ni Cornelio, naakit si Rodang bumalik sa piling ng asawa’t mga anak. Nakabilanggo pa rin siya, tila walang ibang oportunidad, bagama’t umaangil, umaayaw, dumadamba sa panggigipit ng tradisyon. Senyal ba ito ng awtor na reporma na lamang, hindi ganap na transpormasyon o pagbalikwas ng orden, ang nakasalang sa karamihan? Tiyak na sintomas iyon ng alyenasyon sa masungit at pangit na kapaligiran.
Patnubay ng Tadhana
Paano naman ang talagang sawimpalad? Si Menang, galing sa pulubing angkan sa Samar, ang nalugmok sa mababang saray: walang mabuting hanapbuhay kundi mga panandaliang gawain (masahe, palakad ng papel, atbp.) na hindi sapat sa pagtustos sa paralitikong asawang Toby at mga anak. Iskuwater lamang sila, nanganganib na mapatalsik ng gobyerno o pribadong kapital. Kapalaran ni Menang na maging biktima ng eksploytasyon ng kapital at dominasyon ng pamilya. Subalit sa halip na magmukmok o magalit, matuwain si Menang at handang maglingkod kina Guia at Roda. Buong tiwala siya sa kagandahang-loob at dunong ng dalawa. Gayunman, siya ang nahumaling sa pakikiapid, “walang bukambibig kundi makikiapid” (98), sa pagsunod sa kagustuhang makatikim ng ibang kalaguyo, sa kabanatang kusang naibunyag ni Jovito kay Roda ang keridang Camille Dumalaga.
Nagdulot ng pagkakataon kay Roda ang pagkatuklas ni Camille na mapaglirip na puwede niyang hiwalayan na ang asawa: “Tatanggapin ba niya si Jovito? O ito na ang pagkakataon para baguhin niya ang buhay niya, kulayan ang kaniyang mundo, timplahan kung baga sa ulam, gawing simula ng natitirang panahon ng kaniyang buhay?” (99). Hindi nakuhang tuparin iyon ni Roda. At sa halip si Guia ang tumupad sa paraan ng sakripisyo, paggugol, sa pamimigay ng ari-arian at paggastos sa paglikha ng sining at kawanggawa para sa naghihikahos. Sa punto-de-bista ng burgesya, pagwawaldas iyon, subalit kay Guia iyon ay pagtubos at pagbiyaya sa mga biktima ng sistema—isang banal o sakramentong aksiyon.
Danas ni Menang ang eksploytasyon sa gawain— di patas ang bayad sa kaniyang pagsisilbi—at dominasyon bilang babae. Ngunit mapagkumbaba at mapagsakripisyo para makaraos lamang araw-araw. Walang pakunwari, natural, si Menang ay sagisag ng walang-hupang enerhiya ng kalikasan—kahit anong kalamidad o pinsala, puwede siyang bumangon,
bumawi’t iligtas ang lahat. Tipong karakter sa komedya. Iyon ang ipinakita sa Kabanata 34: ang pagdiriwang ng mga matanda, ang pagyayakapan nina Roda at Cornelio bago maglakbay ang lalaki patungong Amerika, sa payo ng kaniyang mga anak. Magkakabit ang hapdi ng kabiguan at tuwa sa muling pagdaloy ng dating kinagawian, patunay na (ayon kay Bataille): “Eroticism always entails a breakdown of established patterns...of the regulated social order basic to our discontinuous mode of existence as defined and separate individuals” (Death 12–13). Tinutukoy sa huling parirala ang atomistikong paglutang ng monadikong suhetibidad na abala sa konsumerismo’t pagpapalitan ng kalakal sa mapagkunwaring siyudad.
Balewala ang ari-arian kay Guia. Ginugol ang salaping nakuha sa pagbenta sa bahay bilang tugon sa pagnanais. Ituring natin ito na isang metodo ng sakripisyo, paglustay o pagwawaldas, kahawig ng potlatch (Barnouw 112–14). Ang salaping iniwan ni Guia kay Menang ay siyang ginamit upang makabalik sila ni Toby sa probinsiya at makapagtatag ng panibagong buhay. Inihandog din ni Guia ang isang parte ng naiwang salapi sa bakasyon ng matatandang pinaglilingkurang libre ni Menang, at sa pagtulong sa mga kabataang manunulat sa Cordillera. Kawanggawang serbisyo sa matatanda na parang despedida rin kina Menang at Toby sa kanilang paglalakbay pabalik sa mapayapang tinubuang nayon sa Samar, isang imahen ng utopyang kalakip sa haraya ng suyuan at pag-ibig. Ipinamigay rin ng yumaong Guia ang utopya ng kaniyang imahinasyon: ang librong Hardin ng Isang Libong Tula. Paggasta’t pagwaldas ang sagot ng kaluluwa ng makata sa akumulasyon ng pribadong pag-aari at walang-awang tukso ng mamahaling kalakal, luhong umaakit sa madlang laging uhaw at nagnanasa.
Hiwaga at Himala ng Panahon
Lumilitaw na ang problema ni Menang, ang pinakasawing biktimang babae, ay malulutas ng patay. Nakuhang maging mikrokosmong salamin ang buhay ni Menang: sapilitang isinaayos ng sirkunstansiyang minana sa makalalaking tradisyon, tulad ng nangyari kina Guia, Roda at kababaihang ginawang “pambayad sa utang” at ipinagpapalit na kasangkapan sa patriyarkong hegemonya.
Sa Kabanata 13, isiniwalat ni Menang ang sekreto ng kaniyang nakalipas. Kumpisal ni Menang kay Guia: “Bago kami nagkapangasawahan, dinahas ako ng isang
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lalaki. Itinaboy kami ng tatang ko...Ayaw ko sanang sumama kay Toby dahil pakiramdam ko nadungisan na ang pagkatao ko” (152–53). Isinaloob ni Guia ang sawing kapalaran ng kaibigan na siyang pumukaw sa kaniyang nakalipas: hindi siya ipinagtanggol ng kaniyang ama noong disisiyete anyos siya at naging biktima ng malisya: “Wala rin namang detalyadong pangyayari sa loob ng motel—puwedeng sabihin na sila lang naman, ’yung maruruming isip lang naman, ang naglagay ng eksena sa pagitan ng pagpasok at paglabas sa motel ng dalawang tauhan” (154). Maaalala na pumasok si Guia sa Mithi’s Apartelle, naging pugad ng ispekulasyon kung may kasama siyang lalaki doon o mag-isa, na pampagkatutong palaisipang iniluhog sa atin ng awtor ng talambuhay.
Maipatlang: Sino ang kasama ni Guia sa Mithi’s Apartelle bago siya pumanaw? Bakit kayo nag- uusyoso? At sino ang tiktik na makikialam?
Samantala, pagkatapos mabatid ang istorya ni Menang, naungkat ang kaniyang sitwasyon. Dinadalaw si Guia ng paghihimagsik, hindi niya kagustuhan ang maging asawa si Crisanto, “na naging mabuting asawa,” bagama’t pinagbawalan siyang magsulat. Subalit patay na si Crisanto, malaya nang gawan niya ng tula si Menang na napinsala rin sa pagkapanginoon ng patriyarkang dahas. Naiwaksi ang arketipong kilabot ng kababaihan: gahasang di inaakala, marahas na dagok sa hinubo’t hinubdang pagkatao.
Sa wakas, nagkaroon din ng rekonsilyasyon sina Roda at Vito sa pagdalaw nila sa nakalipas: memorya ng magkatulong na pag-aalaga sa mga anak. Kaipala’y lumitaw na patas, hindi tagilid, ang distribusyon ng trabaho sa loob ng tahanan. Dagdag pa: hindi inapi si Roda—walang kailangang iwasto o lunasan sa danas nilang dalawa. Nalutas ang problema ng dalawang kaibigang Roda at Menang. Patas na ang dalawang panig—binansagang “equality feminism”—ngunit hintay, hindi ba pagbubulag-bulagan ito at pagsasantabi sa isyu ng pagkakaiba, ang argumentong asimetrikal na dinalumat nina Lise Vogel at Frigga Haug?
Sa ibang okasyon na natin talakayin ang paksa ng kaibahan at kapantayan. Sa pagsusuma, si Guia ay nilikhang di lamang nangangailangan kundi nagnanais, naghahangad—isang protagonistang umaapaw sa kuwadro ng representasyong realistiko, isang penomenang hindi mabigkas, naiwan sa pagpapangalan at pagsudlong ng kaniyang seksuwalidad sa organong uterus/vagina, ayon sa ideolohiya ng merkado at pribadong industriya (Coward). Kababalaghan o
kalabisang trivia lamang? Sa balik-tanaw, si Guia (buhay at patay) ang tumupad ng tungkulin ng sagradong alay o sakripisyo ng makasalanang siyudad.
Krokis ng Kontradiksiyon
Humiram tayo ng konsepto ng relihiyon kay Georges Bataille. Magkasanib ang kamatayan at erotisismo, tabu/batas at paglabag dito sa danas na maituturing na pananampalataya. Nakalakip sa banghay ang tema ng pagsalikop ng kamatayan at sensuwalidad na nakapokus sa ilang insidente. Nagwakas ang daloy ng mga pangyayari sa pagbaligtad sa takbo ng pangyayari (peripeteia), pagkilala sa tunay na motibasyon ng mga tauhan (anagnorisis) at luksang- parangal (pathos; pakikiramay, pighati at tuwa). Tinalunton ang klasikong hagdan ng trahedya, na may kabit na komedya sa pista ng matatanda bago lumunsad sa panibagong buhay sina Menang, Toby, Amante, Cornelio, Roda, at Jovito. Ang pista ang tatak ng paglabag sa batas (sinalungat ni Guia ang tradisyonal na pagsunod niya sa patriyarkang orden; at sindak sa kamatayan). Maituturing din ito na pagdiriwang sa tagumpay ng sigla ng babae na, sa kamatayan, ay nagdulot ng panibagong buhay sa lahat—kakatwang himala ng mapagpalayang galing ng kababaihan.
Sa diskurso ni Bataille, magkasiping ang kamatayan at buhay na nakatampok sa udyok na seksuwal, rahuyong erotika. Ang tabu (hinggil sa sex/kamatayan) ay nilikha bilang kalasag sa bagsik ng dahas na hinaharap ng karaniwang tao araw-araw. Upang manatili ang trabahong produktibo, kailangang magpataw ng batas/tabu sa marahas na puwersa ng mga damdaming galit, takot, inggit, panibugho, libog o makalupang pagnanais. Hinggil sa koneksiyon ng kamatayan at panganganak, panukala ni Bataille: “The death of the one being is correlated with the birth of the other, heralding it and making it possible. Life is always a product of the decomposition of life. Life first pays its tribute to death which disappears, then to corruption following on death and bringing back into the cycle of change the matter necessary for the ceaseless arrival of new beings into the world” (Death 49).
Ang pagburol sa patay ay minanang ugali buhat pa noong yugto ng kabihasnang Neanderthal, na nagsilbing proteksiyon laban sa dahas ng tadhana’t kapaligiran. Sindak ay kinulapulan ng paggalang sa puwersang nagbanta. Dalawang tagpo ng pagpanaw ang nagbigkis sa kaabalahan ng mga tauhan sa nobela. Ang tabu sa pagkamatay ni Crisanto ay unang saklong
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sa bukana ng salaysay na dinugtungan ng pagkamatay ni Guia, ang saklong sa huli na nagbunga ng (1) pagsilang ni Guia bilang nagsasariling tao, makata, paraluman; (2) pagsisimula ng bagong masaganang buhay nina Menang at Toby at pagbabalik sa tinubuang nayon; at 3) paghuhunos ng relasyon nina Roda at Jovito. Himok ng katawan, udyok ng damdamin, sulsol ng organong seksuwal—mga panganib na hinarap ng awtor/naratibo, lumabag nga sa patriyarkang orden (pakikiapid ni Guia kay Amante, suway ni Camille, hikayat ng pangarap kay Roda) ang dahas na nilambungan ng tabu’t prohibisyong sumasaway at pumipigil.
Naibalik ang relihiyon o pagkakabit-kabit ng ordinaryong buhay. Nakasandig iyon sa sakripisyo, pangunahin ang buhay ni Guia na inialay sa matagal nang nabimbing personalidad. Inihandog din kina Menang at Toby at matatandang binalewala. Sa tingin ni Bataille: “Eroticism is a solitary activity.... defined by secrecy” (249). Ilapat ang konseptong ito sa pagtago ni Guia sa Apartelle, ang sekretong pag- uulayaw nila ni Amante noong buhay pa ang asawa, at pagkamatay rin sa taguan. Ano’t anuman, mabisa ang sakripisyo ni Guia, ang metamorposis niya bilang masunuring asawa (pinagbawalan siyang magsulat) at mabait na ina. Naisakatuparan ang hangarin ng bangkay: matagumpay na pagtupad sa habilin ni Guia at pagtanggap nina Wendy at mga anak na mali sila, paghingi ng tawad, at pagpaparangal sa manlilikha ng Hardin ng Isang Libong Tula.
Sa puntong ito, sapantaha kong inalihan ng panggigipuspos ang militanteng peminista. Sigabong aliw ang nasaksihan sa Kabanata 26–27: ang pagsasama ng tatlong babae ay nagdulot ng “sobrang laya ng pakiramdam ko” (280). Maluwalhating lugod din ang natamo ni Guia nang matanggap ang regalo ng anak at apo. Biyaya ng pagsasama-sama ang naranasan ng mag-asawang Menang at Toby (283–86). Maisisingit dito na kontra-sentimentalismong pagpipinid ng kuwento ang mahihinuha sa opinyon ng awtor tungkol sa sistemang kerida (Bautista, In Sisterhood 15–17).
Nakawiwili ang matinding galak ng mga babae, kapusukang siya ring umuugit sa kanilang kagustuhang makipag-ulayaw sa lalaking tabu (Amante, Cornelio). At sa panig ni Roda, ang pangingimbulo kay Camille ay naging obsesyon ng guniguning bihag ng budhi. Ngunit ang pinakamakatuturang bahagi ng naratibo ay nakapaloob sa pagkilala’t pagkakilanlan. Nagbunga ang kasabikan sa pagbubunyag ng tunay na adhika ni Guia, panaginip nina Menang, at pangarap ni Roda.
Naisiwalat ang lihim ng kababaihan—antagonistikong tuligsa sa panginoong ama at batas ng patriyarkang pamilya. Sa paglabag sa tabu, nailigtas ito. Ang ritwal ng luksang parangal sa burol ni Guia (kung saan kinilala ng mga anak ang kasarinlan ng Ina), pista ng matatanda na sumunod sa regulasyon, at palatuksuhan nina Roda at Jovito—ang mapagbirong katuwaan ng mag-asawa—ang tatak ng kaganapan ng mga tauhan at kahinugan ng pinakasasabikang lihim ni Guia.
Nangangahulugan ba na ang pagtatasa sa kasarian ay sirkulasyon lamang ng aktong paglabag at muling pagsunod sa batas? Paano ang hangaring peminista na ibuwal ang di-makatarungang ayos ng kasariang umiiral? Kung ang ugnayang panlipunan, ang “relihiyon” ni Bataille, ay nakahati sa yugto ng erotisismo (pagsalungat) at sakripisyo (pagsuko), walang napalitan o nabago kundi ang ating kaalaman. Nadulutan ng bagong kabatiran ang mambabasa hinggil sa sistemang kerida, ang sekretong buhay nina Guia at Roda, ang gahasa’t pagdurusa ni Menang, atbp. Pero naibulaos ba ang mithiing palayain ang kababaihan mula sa pagsasamantala at dominasyon ng kalalakihan?
Pagsaliksik sa Birtud ng Manlilikha
Ang alegorya ng pagkakaibigan ng mga babae ay pinagbuklod na tema ng katawan (hindi lamang nasasaktan), ang puwersa’t karupukan nito, sa gitna ng dibisyon ng gawain at kapangyarihan. Ikinulong ang babae sa domestikong larang ng pag-aruga sa anak at pag-alaga sa tahanan. Tinuligsa ni Eviota ang “family- household system” sa atin na “primary site of men’s control of women’s sexuality” (153). Nakasadlak ang babae sa paglilingkod bilang ina, asawa, pangangasiwa sa pangangailangan ng kasambahay, at pagdulot ng serbisyong seksuwal sa monogamyang kasunduan. Naisip nina Guia at Roda na singilin ang mga anak sa kanilang pag-aruga’t pag-aalaga—ang debate ng “wages for housework” ay naurirat muli, kakabit sa argumento ng “social reproduction feminism” (Martinez; Whitehead). Pinagkaitan ng sahod, pinaratangan ng mga lalaki na hangal at mahina ang babae, limitado, mababang uri. Kaugnay nito ang paghihimagsik laban sa patriyarkang paghahari, at pagdulog ng sakripisyong magdudulot ng ligalig sa status-quo patungong transpormasyon, pagtutuwid, pagpapakilala.
Silipin natin ang ilang senyas ng pag-alsa’t pagbangon ng babae sa paghawi ng tabing ng
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predikamentong isinadula sa nobela.
Umpisa ang pagkamatay ng lalaki, si Crisanto. Ang
ikinintal na larawan, si Guia na hawak ang metal urn na paglalagyan ng abo ng asawa, kakabit sa utos ng anak at ngitngit ng ina: “Na para bang porke namatay ang tatay nito, wala na siyang karapatang antukin” (1). Naititik agad ang dalawang leitmotif: oposisyon sa anak, pagunita ng limitasyon ng katawan sa kapupuyat, na nagtulak sa kaniyang tumakas sa anupamang katungkulang iniluhog ng pamilya, at linggatong sa paghihintay: “Kaya ginawa niya ang hindi pa niya ginawa sa buong buhay niya. Kahit nahihiya, nag- aalanganin, kinakabahan na baka paghinalaan siyang may katagpo, nag-check in siya sa isang apartelle” (2). Sumuway si Guia sa kinaugalian, inihanda ang katawan sa inaasam na pagdating ni Amante, ang driver na kalaguyo niya, sa harap ng bangkay ng asawa at pagsunod sa ritwal ng paburol.
Bakit ang utusan ang gumagambala sa nabalong babae? Hindi naman kerida ni Amante si Guia—ang babae ang dominante, batay sa uri at istatus. Mahihinuha na ang gunita ng magandang nakalipas ay signos ng pagtubos sa pasakit at pagkatabi: “Masarap lang makita si Amante...Hindi niya talaga makontrol ang sarili sa paghihintay. Wala siyang magagawa. Kasalanan man kay Carmencito, wala siyang magagawa” (4). Naghalo ang hiya (shame) at kasalanan (guilt), ang labas at loob; sa ibang rehistro ng wika, nagtiyap ang makalipunang tibok ng budhi at ang makasariling hibo ng damdamin. Kapagkuwa’y sumalisi ang galit sa mga anak at poot kina Wendy at Jerome, na hindi niya mapapatawad. Nilabag ang magulang, hindi sinunod si Guia. Ang tagpo sa punerarya ay sintomas ng tunggalian sa loob ng pamilya, emblematiko ng atomistikong ikot ng konsumeristang lipunan (tunghayan sa pahina 4–5). Makahulugan ang balitaktakan nina Guia at Wendy tungkol sa regla ng anak. Parunggit ng ina: “Putris namang regla ’yan, hindi ka pa ba menopause. Kuwarenta’y sais ka na, a! Ako nga, kuwarenta pa lang, menopause na!” (6). Nakamamanghang puna iyon sa di-masasagkaang daloy ng panahon.
Mapapansin ang pokus sa katawan at katangiang hindi matatalikuran: ang biyolohikang penomena ng paggulang o pagtanda. Sa sumbat ni Wendy—“Patay na si Papa, gusto n’yo pang iwan!” tugon ni Guia: “Bakit, sino ba ang gustong umalis?” (7) Naulinigan natin ang lihim na motibasyon ng babae na naipahiwatig sa sumbong ni Crisanto na “nagbago na siya, nag-iba na ang ugali” at “pahiging na may kinalaman dito ang
dating driver nila” (8), si Amante Mirasol. Naging karismatikong karakter ang abang driver, na sa saloobin ni Guia ay tutubos sa kaniya: “Araw-araw, gabi-gabi, hinihintay niya ang hinayupak na ito, tapos kung kailan siya wala, saka dumating?”
Naiguhit na ang naging masidhing pagnanais ng babae: ang paglabag sa tabu/batas ng patriyarkang pamilya, ang pagsunod sa libog o simbuyo ng saloobin, pagwawaldas, at pagnanasang makipagniig kay Amante. Ang dating kalaguyo ay simbolo ng pagkalas mula sa ekonomiyang utilitaryanistiko ng pamilihan, at pagpalit dito ng paglustay at paggastos ng labis sa dati. Natulak si Guia sa pagbulalas ng mga bagay na sagwil sa ninanais hanggang ang soberanya ng diwa/ budhi ay makamit sa lubos na galak, di matingkalang lugod, maluwalhating ligaya—tila banal na biyayang sumupling sa pagsalungat sa mundo ng pag-aari-arian. Naipabahagi sa atin, mga mambabasa, ang tunay na saloobin ni Guia na trato niya sa asawa ay parang kapatid lamang, hindi kasuyo. Dinggin ang marahas niyang deklarasyon ng pagbabalikwas sa umiiral na miserableng status quo:
“Pasensiya na, Cito; na umpisa pa man ng pagsasama natin, dinadalaw na ako ng pagsisisi. Sana’y naglayas na lang ako kaysa nagpakasal sa ’yo. Sana kahit nu’ng mag-asawa na tayo, kinaya ng powers ko na makipaghiwalay sa ’yo kahit walang dahilan.
Sana, naiintindihan mo ako, Cito? Wala namang masama sa iyo liban sa hindi mo talaga nabuo ang buhay ko. Hindi ko natikman ’yong sinasabi nilang love is blind, ’yong naglulumukso ang dugo mo para sa isang tao, ’yong magpapakamatay ka pag iniwan ka.
Hinahanap-hanap ko ’yong gano’n” (13– 14).
Lugod, saya, kagalakang ganap, luwalhati—dugong lumulukso ang hangad ni Guia, na hinabol niya kay Amante (Kabanata 16) subalit huli—ikakasal na si Amante. Lumindol at binagsakan ng realidad ang babaeng nangangarap. Nakabilanggo ang buhay niya sa nakalipas, ang panahon niya ng sekretong pag-uulayaw: “’Yong halos itago niya ang mukha niya pagpasok nila sa motel, mabilisang pagpasok, nagmamadali, hindi lang dahil baka may makakita at makakilala sa kotse ni Carmencito kundi dahil nasa mukha nila ang pagitan
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ng kanilang edad” (182). Pagkatapos nilang magkausap muli, napag-isa’t nagtanim si Guia ng mga halamang kinagigiliwan, at “nang hugasan niya ang mga kamay, hindi na maalis pa ang lupa sa ilalim ng kanyang mga kuko” (190). Senyas ba ito ng konsiyensiya niya o hiwatig ng pangingimbulo?
Diyalektika ng Libog
Ang makalupang pagnanais ay napunta sa kawalan, kapagkuwa’y sumagitsit ang libog na humaplit sa katawan: “...Ipinagkadiin-diin ang mukha sa unan hanggang sa mahalata niya na hindi na yata siya humihinga” (191). Di umano’y nahalinhan ang Eros ng Thanatos, na nagtungo nga sa pangambang mabalik ang kinapupuotang status quo bago namatay ang asawa, “ang sitwasyong nais niyang talikuran...ang pinakapuso ng lahat ng gusto niyang sabihin: sariling buhay, sariling pasiya, kalayaan...Iyon na siguro ang ideal, ’yung maging kaibigan niya ang mga anak pero may galangan, may distansiya, hindi sumasakop o dumadagan kundi gumagalang at nagpapalaya. Mahirap umasa do’n pero hindi siya nawawalan ng pag-asa” (288).
Kilabot ni Guia na dumagsa muli ang mga apo ni Wendy at gawin siyang yaya. Kaya ipinaubaya kay Roda ang pagkomunikasyon sa kanila, at tuloy nawalang bigla sa eksena. Hindi na natin makikitang buhay ang bayani ng salaysay hanggang sa sandaling mahilingan si Roda na kilalanin ang bangkay ni Guillerma Rosales na natagpuan sa Mithi’s Apartelle. Pinaghinalaang nakipag-liaison siya sa isang lalaki, ngunit sino? Isang palaisipang ibinato sa atin ng awtor, o ng multo ng yumaong sinta ng mahiwagang kasuyo?
Samantala, himatong ng panaginip ni Roda na nagpapaalam na ang kaniyang kaibigan: “Dahil pag namatay daw ang tao, kailangan niyang mahanap at mabuksan ang pinto ng liwanag para makakawala ang kaluluwa niya sa katawang-lupa. Ang pinto ng liwanag ang simbolo ng paglaya” (291). Ang pintong nabanggit sa wakas ay “pinto ng convenience store” kung saan nagkasama muli sina Roda at Jovito pagtawid sa makulimlim na daan.
Maaaring itiklop ang aral ni Guia sa hangarin niyang magkaroon ng maunawaing diyalogo at kasunduan ang kamag-anak. Mahuhulong ito ang kinahinatnan ng salaysay, ang pagbabalik ng mundo ng trabaho. Ang masidhing layon ng nobela ay masasalat sa obserbasyon ni Bataille hinggil sa birtud
ng pagkamatay ni Guia, ang mabiyayang kalooban ng babae: “It cannot prevent life’s disappearance in death from revealing the invisible brilliance of life that is not a thing. The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life’s intimacy does not reveal its dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out...That intimate life, which had lost the ability to fully reach me, which I regarded primarily as a thing, is fully restored to my sensibility through its absence. Death reveals life in its plenitude and dissolves the real order” (Theory 47). Iyon ang mabiyayang handog ni Guia sa lahat, sa buong lipunan.
Tanggap na ang masalimuot na saloobin ng babae ay nabunyag sa kamatayan, gayunman ilang tanong ang nakababagabag. Bakit takot ang lipunan sa pagpapahintulot sa paglaganap ng galak, pagtangkilik sa erotikong silakbo ng pag-ibig? Bakit suklam tayo sa laro ng sensuwalidad? Kung erotikong dahas ang lumulunas sa sugat ng pagkakahiwalay ng bawat tao, bakit sumasagwil ang kodigong legal at prehuwisyo ng patriyarkang gawi? Bakit tratong pag-aari ang katawan ng babae na ikinulong sa katungkulan nitong maglingkod sa reproduksiyon ng buong sangkatauhan? Paano ang papel na ginaganap ng katawan na hindi ligtas sa mga kapahamakan o kapinsalaan ng kalikasan? Di na natin pag-aksayahan ang ibang aksidente o pagbabaka-sakaling sumpong ng kapalaran, tulad ng nasaksihan kina Camille at Jovito, Roda at Cornelio, Guia at Amante.
Determinasyon sa Huling Pagtarok
Marahil, sa pakiwari ko, natugon ang mga tanong sa eksenang kapana-panabik: ang identipikasyon ng bangkay ni Guia sa Kabanata 29.
Isaalang-alang natin ang singularidad ng espasyong naikintal dito sa nobela, lahat sa loob ng lungsod ng MetroManila. Patungkol nga sa Amerikanong serye, Sex in the City, pinadaan ng awtor ang tatlong bihasang babae sa medya-klaseng tahanan, restoran, kondominyum, iskuwater, park o liwasang bayan, tagong apartelle, simbahan, bakasyunan, lansangan, punerarya, at ngayon sa morgue. Sina Roda at Jovito ang hinirang na magpatotoo kung sino, o kanino ang bangkay:
...at di pa man sila pumapasok, nakita na niya ang bangkay na nakahiga sa mesa [ng Punerarya Mabuhay]. Nakapatong ang ulo niyon sa bangkito, sa paraan na nakabitin
Kamatayan, Pag-ibig, at Himagsik ng Mapagpalayang Diwa ng Kababaihan E. San Juan, Jr. 11
ang leeg at nakalaylay ang buhok...itsura ng babaing pinalulutang ng madyikero sa mga palabas.
Napahindig si Roda. Pero hindi dahil mistulang babaing pinalulutang ng madyikero ang bangkay kundi dahil wala itong damit, wala man lang kahit kumot. Mabilis na natakpan niya ang mga mata ni Jovito, “H’wag kang tumingin!”
Inalis ni Jovito ang kamay niya. “Ano ka ba! Para naman akong hindi sanay makakita ng katawan ng babae!”
Nakamulagat pa rin siya sa bangkay ni Guia. Ito na ang sandali para humagulgol, pero ang nararamdaman niya, ang paglalatang ng dibdib niya. Hinubaran nila si Guia, hubo’t hubad. Hindi na nila iginalang ang katawan ng kanyang kaibigan!”...
“Bakit nakahubad?” sita niya sa lalaki ng punerarya.
“M’am, eembalsamuhin na ho.”
“....Porke patay na, ginaganyan na? Porke hindi na makakibo, hindi na maipagtanggol ang kanyang sarili? Ano ba naman iyan, Vito!...” (297–98)
Sa sumbat ni Vito na hindi na importante iyon, pakli ni Roda: “Importante iyon, Vito...Lalaki ka kaya hindi mo alam kung gaano kaimportante sa babae ang dignidad niya!” (298). Maipahatid natin dito ang himutok: umaalingawngaw ang protesta ni Roda sa buong kapuluan, kung ilanlibong babae ang hinubaran at pinarusahan sa mga safehouse ng militar at pulisya, mula panahon ng diktadurang Marcos hanggang sa rehimeng Duterte/Bongbong. Mga nilapastangang katawan ng mga babaeng aktibista, hinubaran at binastos at inabuso paulit-ulit. Oo na, umaarte tayong tulad ni Rizal sa nobela niya, na pinatitigil ang takbo ng kuwento upang itaghoy ang hirap ng isang tauhan (gaya ni Kabesang Tales o Elias) sa pagdurusa ng buong komunidad.
Patawad sa patlang, balik tayo sa komentaryo. Ituloy natin ang sindak ni Roda sa bagsik at lupit ng kamatayan, tila mabangis na puwersang sumakop nang walang babala. Ang kilabot ni Roda ay indeks sa paglalapit ng kamatayan at pagkahalay sa katawan, na nakagising sa simbuyong nakaduduwal, nakalulula, na pumupukaw sa ligalig na inilarawan dito—pagmasdan ang iginuhit na katandaan ni Guia, ang hinanakit ni Roda sa inakalang titig ng madla sa inembalsamong bangkay:
Matanda na nga si Guia, laylay na ang suso. Tignan mo, ang laki ng tiyan, parang buntis. Ang dami pa namang stretch mark. Biro mo, eto ngayon si Guia, nakahubo’t hubad, at hindi lang sa harap niya kundi sa harap din ni Jovito, pati sa harap ng lalaking ito na ni hindi nito kakilala. Si Guia, na minsang napasukan niya nang nakahubad, napatili sabay takip ng palad sa dibdib, Naka-bra’t panty pa ito noon!
Tapos, eto at hubo’t hubad. Hinubaran ng kung sino lang. Nakita na nang hubo’t hubad ng kung sinu-sino lang. Napaiyak siya. Kahit naman patay na ang tao, hindi dapat nilalapastangan ang pagkatao niya. Kahit patay na, dapat minamahalaga pa rin ang kanyang kahihiyan.
Hindi siya sure kung nag-iiyak siya dahil patay na si Guia o dahil hindi na nila minahalaga ang kahihiyan nito. Itinakip niya ang kamay sa bibig. (299–300)
Pansinin na kay Roda, buhay pa rin ang katawan, na maaring mahiya. Paniwala niya na “Buong buhay ng babae, itinatago niya ang katawan niya. Hindi nga siya naghuhubad kahit sa harap ng asawa niya” (300). Taglay ng saloobin ang ambivalence ng tao sa patay, magkahalong sindak at mapitagang pagkatakot, na puwedeng maghunos sa pagsambulat ng damdamin— ito ang tuwang “orgiastic” na nakasilid din sa mga tagpo ng saya ng magkaibigan noong nagliliwaliw sa iba’t ibang lugar sa siyudad noong Pasko, at sa lugar ni Menang sa gitna ng nakabibinging putukan noong Bagong Taon (Kabanata 26–27).
Alam natin na magkasalungat ang buhay at kamatayan. Ngunit magkatambal din at magkatalik. Sa masidhing tuwa nalulusaw ang malay, sa aksiyong seksuwal at sa huling kombulsiyon ng katawang naghihingalo, unti-unting pumapanaw. Sa sandali ng agaw-buhay lumalapag ang anghel ng katubusan. Mailalapat dito ang kuro-kuro ni Bataille: “The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives. Stripping naked is the decisive action. Nakedness offers a contrast to self-possesion, to discontinuous existence...It is a state of communication revealing a quest for possible continuance of being beyond the confines of the self. Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret channels that give us a feeling of obscenity. Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated
12 Malay
Tomo 35 Blg. 2
with self-possession...Stripping naked is seen as a simulacrum of the act of killing...linking the act of love with sacrifice” (Death 11–12).
Tagubilin ng Budhi
Erotikang pagkamatay—isang parikala ba ito? Taglay rin ang ambigwidad sa opinyon ng awtor tungkol sa kerida system na sinuri niya sa Hinugot sa Tadyang at sa In Sisterhood. Payo niya sa lahat na tutulan ang batas ng ordeng makalalaki: “Bawal magkaroon ng seksuwalidad ang babae!” (138). Hinahamon niyang buwagin na lahat ang tabu at batas na nagbabawal. Kaya kung tutuusin, hindi purong malungkot na trahedya o nakakikiliting komedya ang dating at reaksiyon sa nobela. Sa pagtaya ko, ang Sixty ay siyang pinakamangahas na akda ni Bautista na tumitistis sa suliranin ng ugnayan sa pamilya, ng pakikitungo ng mga magkalapit, ng pakikipagkapuwa ng bata at matanda. Problema ito sa lahat ng nakatira sa siyudad ng neokolonyang bansa na pinaghaharian ng anomie at reipikasyon sanhi sa pagdikta ng rasong instrumental at mistipikasyon ng komoditi- petisismo (Habermas; Ebert; Lefebvre). Itinatakwil ng mapangahas na intriga ni Guia ang hegemonya ng akumulasyon at pagsuob sa pribadong ari-arian.
Makakamit ang adhikang mapalaya ang pagkatao at maisapraktika ang soberanya ng bawat nilalang kung tututulan at disiplinahin ang trabahong akumulasyon, pagpapayaman, paghamig ng tubo (surplus value) na ninakaw sa anak-pawis. Makakamit ang katubusan sa erotikang pagkalas/pagtakas mula sa pagkaalipin sa ari-arian, ang di umano’y pagwawaldas (sa malikhaing sensibilidad ng makata na tutulong sa maralitang kabataan sa Cordillerang gustong sumulat) at pag- abuloy sa ikagagalak ng mga matandang kinalimutan na ng mapag-imbot na lipunan. Sa ultimong hatol, ang paggugol ng labis na halaga (surplus value) upang iligtas ang mga sawimpalad sa miserableng kalagayan ay tagumpay ng imahinasyon at dunong ng kababaihan.
Matapat, matapang, at matalino ang diwang nagpapagalaw sa mga karakter at pangyayari sa nobela. Magusot ang mga temang sinasaliksik at mapanuri ang retorika’t pananagisag na gumabay sa maantig at nakapupukaw na paraan. Testimonyo ito na ang manunulat ay “kunsiyensiya ng kanyang bayan” (Bautista, In Sisterhood 178).
Pinili kong sipatin ang maintrigang nobelang ito upang subukin ang haypotesis na ang usaping pangkasarian—tinaguriang “the woman question”
sa Kanluran—ay nakasalang sa hiwaga ng komoditi- petisismo o alyenasyon sa politikang ekonomiya ng lipunang nasadlak sa paghahari ng pangkating piyudal-komprador-burokrata kapitalista. Ang aksiyon o ginampanang papel ng tatlong babaeng protagonista, sampu ng dalagang anak sa Sonata, ay halimbawa ng pakikihamok laban sa sistemang di-makatarungan at mapagsamantala. Naisagawa ito sa paraan ng paggamit ng talino, katutubong galing, at kakayahang hango sa kanilang pagka-ina at pagkaalipin. Iyon ay sagisag na sa diyalektikang pag-inog ng banghay ng nobela, ang pagsugpo ng kababaihan sa negasyon ng patriyarkang mapanikil ay nagbunsod ng pakikibaka tungo sa liberasyon ng buong sangkatauhan. Ang Sixty in the City, sa tingin ko, ay mapanghamong panawagan sa lahat na magpunyaging matamo at maisapraktika ang “sariling buhay, sariling pasiya, kalayaan” (288) na hinangad ng tatlong babaeng bayani sa nobela. Sandata itong magagamit para sa kolektibong proyekto ng sambayanang lumalaban, anumang kasarian ang gustong pakilusin, tungo sa pagkakamit ng awtentikong soberanya, katarungang panlipunan, at demokrasyang pambansa.
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</www></https:></http:>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-39332557858385131382023-06-05T07:20:00.008-07:002023-06-05T07:21:57.046-07:00COMMODITY FETISHISM AND ART<b><b></b>Commodity Fetishism and the Crisis of Contemporary Art
E. San Juan, Jr. University of Connecticut</b>
Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility...either cultivated or brought into being...The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present.
— KARL MARX
The smell of impending death rose from these avantgardes. The future was no longer theirs, though nobody knew whose it was.
— ERIC HOBSBAWM
It is no longer news anymore, at this late date, to declare that art, in our marketized planet, is deemed a precious commodity. Considered as property, artworks are bought and sold, circulated, forged, stolen, recovered, auctioned everyday. Profits are made for artists, merchants, smugglers, consumers, and anyone involved in trading/ merchandising. It’s banal or trivial to observe this fact. So intense was this commercialization from the mid-1950’s that Ian Burn complained how it spelled “corruption and the prostitution of the artist” (1999, 397). A few recent examples can be cited as prolegomena to our discourse.
In Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in November 2013, avant-garde art confirmed its absorption by the market with the $104.5 million sale of Andy Warhol’s 1963 “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).” In 2007, his “Green Car Crash” sold for $1.7 million, a proof that the aura of the name dictates market value, with the subject or content of the artwork adding enough differentia specifica to mark its historical period or milieu. In the past, Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucien Freud” was sold for $142.4 million while Gerhard Richter’s abstract,
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“A.B. Courbet” was sold for $26.4 million and Cy Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea” (1959 drawings) was sold for $21.6 million (New York Times 2013). Recently, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting, Warrior,” a work which is said to symbolize the struggles of Black men in a white- dominated world, was sold in a Christie auction for $41.9 million, which does not rival a Basquiat painting sold for $110.5 million in 2017. The earlier commodification of cubist art (Picasso, in particular) has been diagnosed by John Berger (1965; see also Raphael 1980). Together with Warhol and Picasso, Basquiat continues to be a key player in the blue- chip art market even in this crisis of globalized neoliberalism.
Commodification seems to have climaxed in a species of trading rituals involving postmodern art, including both “conceptual” and “post-conceptual” species. Exchange-value (embodied in money as cause) has displaced use-value (now conceived as effect). At the outset, the term “conceptual” art offers a conundrum since it is not clear what concept is referred to, or whether the term designates the artist’s intention not necessarily fulfilled or carried out (Smith 1974; Godfrey, 1998). Indeed, Sol LeWitt states that “the artwork may never leave the artist’s mind” (1999,107), though how we can verify or ascertain this remains a mystery. In any case, a metalepsis seems to have occurred. Art generates the concept (telos; universal significance) instead of the concept (vision or intuition) engendering the performative, linguistic/ discursive, visual practices that followed expressionism and cubism: constructivism, abstract expressionism, kinetic art, fluxion happenings, pop art, minimalist art, op art, conceptual art, etc.
A historic, epoch-making event occurred at the threshold of postmodernity. In 1973, the “dematerialization of the art object” from 1966-1972, was documented by the critic, Lucy Lippard. It was inaugurated by Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades.” With this gesture, Peter Osborne asserts, “art changed its focus from the form of language to what was being said,” changing the nature of art by focusing not on morphology, structure, or medium, but on function—from “appearance’ to conception. Osborne further notes that “all art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually” (2002, 13). The idea/intention/concept preempts its hypothetical realization and its physical embodiment or actualization.
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The epochal transformation initiated by Duchamp abolished the categorical distinction between creative artifice and found objects/ incidents in nature and everyday life. Minimalism further destroyed traditional barriers and conventions. Performance art reconceptualized the art-object as an act or event constituted through and disappearing into time, sustaining itself at the level of its motivating agenda. No longer can art be confined to its visual or spatial experience and pleasure attached to the medium or vehicle. Following the break-up of formalist modernism, minimalism followed after with Sol Lewitt’s 1967 manifesto, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Osborne summarizes the lineages of negation characterizing conceptual art and its aftermath:
1. The negation of material objectivity as the site of the identity of the artwork by the temporality of ‘intermedia’ acts and events.
2. The negation of medium by a generic conception of ‘objecthood,’ made up of ideal systems of relations.
3. The negation of the intrinsic significance of visual form by a semiotic, or more narrowly, linguistically based onceptual content.
4. The negation of established modes of autonomy of the artwork by various forms of cultural activism and social critique (2002, 18).
It is the last negation that generates art-oriented activities intervening into everyday life in order to transform sociopolitical structures. In this process, alternative or subaltern ideological positions are explored, analyzing, and defining the relations of power at play in all cultural institutions, in particular the appropriative mechanisms of the museum and the market. Social and political critique ensues from the practice of diverse forms of conceptualist experiments, procedures, and historically defined forms.
Consequences of Dematerialization
As early as 1970, Mel Bochner, one of the practitioners of “conceptual art,” questioned the epithet’s ambiguity and lack of precision. In any case, the rubric “conceptual art” has been used to cover the works created by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Bruce Naumann and others during its
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apogee and crisis in the years 1966-72 (Godfrey 1998). While Kosuth proposed that conceptual art defines itself by questioning the nature of art, Lewitt posited its essence to be found in “the idea or concept” which becomes “a machine that makes the art” (1967), the concept itself subsuming the planning and decisions that enable the execution of the art-work.
LeWitt’s pronouncements have become so scriptural that a popular Dictionary of Theories ascribes conceptual art as a “cerebral approach” championed by Lewitt in 1967 as a reaction against post-war formalistic art. Since the concept or idea becomes paramount in the artistic process, “the planning and concept are decided beforehand, but the end result is intuitive and without recognizable purpose” (Bothamley 1993, 108-09). Why and how do we explain this shift of aesthetic concern from the material embodiment of art-ideas to the ideas/notions themselves? One answer is provided by Marx’s theory of commodity-fetishism and its further elaboration in Marxist-Leninist thought (for expositions of the Marxist approach, see Arvon 1973; Laing 1978; Johnson 1984).
Reification and Alienation
In the initial chapters of Capital Volume 1, Marx delineated the two aspects of that mysterious entity, the commodity. Its use-value refers to the utility of the product, its realization in the act of consumption. Its twin aspect, the exchange-value, is only manifest in the process of exchange in the market where the deposited quantity of labor-time expended in producing the product—the form of value—is recognized. Its “metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” inheres in the fact that “the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour” so that the social relations among producers appear then as relations among the products/commodities. In short, “definite social relations between men...assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things” (Marx 1978, 320-321). That insight serves as the matrix of social alienation in a profit-centered political economy (for further elaboration, see Meszaros 1970; Ollman 1971).
What lesson is conveyed by Marx’s insight? In producing any useful thing that is exchanged, the objective value of that thing is ideal,
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a suprasensible notion translated into price, whereby private labor appears as part of social total-labor. However, the commodity’s abstract ideal property (exchange value) appears as if it were an objective, socio-natural property of the object itself, embedded in the product. Thus, social relations between people assume a phantasmagorical form of relations between things, “social hieroglyphs” (Osborne 2005, 15). Something purely social, exchange value, conceals itself in the product, generating social illusions found in religion, ideologies, and various mystifying practices: the rationale of the hegemonic neoliberal order now in crisis but still devastating the world today.
How do we escape from this fetishized world based on historically varied exploitation of labor-power? Marx responds: “The religious reflections of the actual world can vanish only when the practical relations of everyday life between people, and between humanity and nature, present themselves in a transparent and rational form. The social life-process, which is based on the material process of production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it becomes production by freely associated men and women, and stands under their conscious and planned control” (Marx 1976, 173). Art as a form of religious thinking draws its power from the exchange-value it commands, as illustrated earlier. In order to suppress this potential, conceptualists strive to eliminate the concrete embodiment (various media or performance) of the artists’ intention, including the situations or places where they customarily occur (museums, galleries, etc.). Those sites/situations are transvalued, negated, sublimated.
“Almost anything goes” as art today from the art-criticism point of view, Cynthia Freeland remarks. She writes: “Even shocking art like Serrano’s Piss Christ can now count as art, an object with the right sort of idea or interpretation behind it...It communicates thoughts or feelings through a physical medium” (2001, 39). Conceptualists claim that a physical medium is not obligatory. Paradoxically, despite this theoretical claim, their activity does not create transparent, rational arrangements since the whole transaction of learning, judging, and appreciating the art-idea still transpires in a capitalist, profit-dominated society. Ironically, the motivation-idea becomes a value to be communicated or exchanged. While art-as-commodity may be intentionally transcended, the artist remains anchored and circumscribed in a world of alienated institutions and practices governed by the profit-motive, by capital
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accumulation. The conceptualist remains a victim of this illusion, his desire for knowledge free from object-attachment was left unsatisfied due to the inescapable reality of his reified, commodified milieu (Wood 1996). This epitomizes the irony of commodified de-materialized art.
Aesthetic Discipline
Allow us to offer a brief historical parenthesis at this juncture. Before venturing further into nomenclature and further inquiry, it might be illuminating to review the traditional field of aesthetics and, with it, the theory of art. Art and aesthetics need to be differentiated, the former dealing with the object produced or created and the latter with the experience and knowledge of the art-object. Ultimately, however, with the postmodern interrogation of the concept of art (in both the ontological and phenomenological senses), the two aspects coalesce in the conceptualist revision. Whether such a result is helpful in clarifying both remains to be resolved. Meanwhile, a historical investigation into the status of the art-object as a distinctive category might be instructive and heuristic.
Foregoing a complete history of the origin of aesthetics from classical antiquity up to the Renaissance, we may begin with German philosophical idealism. Aesthetics (from the Greek aisthesis, “perception, sensation”), aesthetics was first theorized by Alexander G. Baumgarten in 1750 as “the science of sensory knowledge or cognition” whose aim is beauty, not truth. It was later elaborated by Kant as “the science of the rules of sensibility in general,”chiefly concerned with the a priori principles of sensible experience. In Thomistic aesthetics, the intuitive knowledge of the sensible is grounded in intellectual judgment as a knowledge of the universal. The artistic criteria of integritas, consonantia, and claritas are abstract ideas mediating the comprehension of the sensibles (Eco 1988).
In his Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant posited aesthetics as involved with the subjective feeling of pleasure and pain, hence aesthetic judgments pertain to the subject, not the object represented. What is beautiful is tied with disinterested pleasure, a judgment of taste based on immediate intuition without a concept. Kant argues that “Beauty is the formal aspect of purposiveness, insofar as it is perceived in the objectified without the representation of purpose...[T]hat which is
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generally pleasing, without a concept, is beautiful” (quoted by Guttman 1963, 18). In effect, conceptualists reject this aesthetic speculation about beauty as meaningless. Formal purposiveness without purpose-- this axiom established the privileged autonomy of art which prevailed up to Clement Greenberg’s pontifications on abstract expressionism.
Two additions to Kant may be cited here. First, Schelling proposed the romantic theme of beauty as “the Infinite infinitely presented,” while Hegel is said to have summed up the classic traditional thinking in his view that Beauty equals Idea, beauty as the sensuous manifestation of the Idea. However, the beautiful is nothing unless it is externalized or mediated in the work of art in which the beholder and the artist’s mind encounter each other. The idea then is the content of the art-work in its dynamic historical evolution. In the nineteenth century, the psychological approach dominated the investigations of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Herbart and Fechner, the latter inaugurating the empirical-experimental approach to aesthetics. This was followed by Theodor Lipps’s notion of empathy, with esthetic enjoyment conceived as “objectivized self-enjoyment,” an inner imitation of artistic creation. With Benedetto Croce, this idealist line of speculation culminates in art as intuitive activity, an expression of inwardness, eluding the screen of formal mediation.
Hegelian Articulation
To the rationalist-idealist line of speculation, Hegel introduced a historicizing orientation. He emphasized the philosophical function of art as a vehicle of reason in quest of universals realized in history. While Hegel believed art to furnish “the sensuous semblance of the idea,” for Croce, universals and history disappear. Croce reduced art to lyrical intuition, separated from the phenomenal contingent world, subsisting in pure intuition whose modes of expression germinate in the artist’s mind. The actualization of this intuition is secondary; expression and communication do not affect the value of the unreflected intuition. Unconcerned with the play of imagination or the immediacies of feeling, Croce absolutized intuition as a complex blend of idea, image, and expression whose singularity, however, resists philosophical generalization (Richter 1994, 145). Croce’s expression theory complements the formalist stress on essential form in Clive Bell, Roger Fry, I.A. Richards, and their American counterparts in the
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New Criticism. Whether the naturalism of John Dewey’s theory of art as intense experience can be reconciled with Croce, is still a debatable proposition.
Aesthetics as an inquiry into normative concepts and values regarding beauty may have given way to the modern interest in a descriptive and factual approach to the phenomena of art (production and reception) and aesthetic experience. Beauty is now construed as an effect of form, of discursive signifying practice. One can mention Charles Morris’ idea of art as iconic symbol of value, as well as Susanne Langer’s conception of art as the symbol or expressive form whereby emotions are rendered apprehensible in their formal embodiments or styles. Both thinkers are anathema to conceptualism. More congenial to postmodernist aesthetics would be the semiotic approach of Charles Sanders Peirce. He proposed an innovative approach in which a constellation of signs (icon, index, symbol) in the art-work becomes the bearer of meaning and significance. These signs generate a dynamic network of interpretants that encompass form and its organic links with lived experience, exploring virtually all the mimetic and expressive possibilities of art that we have so far summarized here (for elaboration, see San Juan 2022).
Historicizing Form
Together with beauty and the sublime, the ideal of autonomy and artistic genius dissolved with the age of mechanical reproduction. Walter Benjamin dealt a fatal blow to the norm of authenticity intrinsic to the romantic idea of imagination. In capitalist society, the Here and Now of the original is constantly being destroyed by the commodification of labor and practically all domains of human life. Besides the formal properties that authenticate the art-work, the contents of art (idealistic content-aesthetics) have suffered the impact of contingency, chance or accident, entropy, the inexorable incursions of the unpredictable. Art is not timeless but changeable, subject to the process of becoming. Hegel’s “bad conscience” implies that art is never for itself but requires, in fact demands, the exegesis and interpretation of others outside the artist. Art’s truth-content cannot be fully exhausted by any single hermeneutic organon. Since interpretations are open and endless, all art is subject to historicity and the mutability of standards and criteria of judgment (Morawski 1974).
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Alas, have we finally entered the forbidden zone of undecidability, relativism, antifoundationalist skepticism, and cynical reason? So if anything goes, what is the point of argument, dialogue, inquiry? Bitcoins, derivatives, simulacra, expungible fantasies previously called “the sublime” now dominate exchanges, making precarious or unfeasible any agreement or consensus on purposes, motives, intentions, goals. Only the process of everyday living compels us to proceed as though we are all on the same page, using a lexicon and code understood by all participants in the interminable conversation.
In this new catastrophic period of triumphalist globalism, the issue of materialist aesthetics appears not only anachronistic but also a perverse joke. Except those fashioned for immediate use- value (for therapy, etc.), all art in capitalism has become a commodity (exchange-value), as attested to by the auctions enumerated earlier. And since Marxist revolutionaries have allegedly become obsolete if not rare today, aesthetics has become the preserve of museum curators, academic experts/shamans, and pseudo-theologians attached to art galleries and auction houses. Except for Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, John Berger, Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez, and the late Polish philosopher Stefan Morawski, no serious Marxist thinker has devoted a wholesale engagement with the theory of art, with aesthetic criticism and inquiry in our late-capitalist stage. This is a conjecture, obviously open to future correction.
Indeed, in a 1983 international conference on “Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture,” Michelle Barrett bewailed the lack of adequate discussion of aesthetic pleasure and value among various tendencies in the left. Given the vogue of poststructuralist textualism and postmodernist nominalism, aesthetics was overshadowed by or subsumed in discourses on ideology, representation, and the deconstruction of the subject. Nature and objective reality have been cancelled out to give room to the floating signifier, differance, liminality, and contingency. Henceforth, the “free play” of the liberated signifier would call the shots. Subjectivity, or subject-positions, become reduced to simulacra, aporia, or undecidables wholly vulnerable to infinite semiosis,that is, interminable sequence of interpretations without any conclusion.
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Ironically, this putative chaos did not discourage Barrett from giving self-confident judgments. She nonchalantly dismissed vulgar concerns about art’s “truth” and social relevance because the meanings of art-works are not immanent but constructed “in the consumption of the work” (1988, 702). Readers/spectators actively co-create the meaning and significance of the art-work. Contrary to the orthodox ideas about typical characters and organic form, Barrett holds that ideological content and political implications are not given in the art-work but are effects or constructions by readers/audiences, an assertion justified within the framework of a reader-response/reception aesthetics. This position is clearly symptomatic of the move of Barrett’s cohort toward a more open-ended, adventurist, experimentalist stance, rejecting not only reflectionist theory (Lukacs; Goldman) but also interventionist approaches (Gramsci; Sartre). But what exactly do we mean by a Marxist approach to aesthetics as a mode of distributing the sensible (Ranciere 2004)?
Interrogating the Messenger
In the wake of the post-structuralist transvaluation of texts as the ceaseless play of differance, of the unchoreographable dance of signifiers, which one may interpret as a historically specific reaction in the Western milieu to dogmatist leftism in its various manifestations- -economistic, sectarian, mechanical, empiricist, etc.--I would like to reaffirm once more the occluded yet irrepressible matrix of art in the Marxist concept of praxis and political struggle based on Marx’s insight into commodity-fetishism. Enunciated by Marx in the “Theses on Feuerbach” and The Eighteenth Brumaire in particular, this inscription of the aesthetic in transformative action I would call the “Leninist moment,” the hegemonic or ethico-political crux in Marxist critical theory. Let us explore its relevance to understanding the politics of conceptualist writing as propounded by its main theoreticians (Alberro and Stimson 1999; Dworkin and Goldsmith 2011).
The original intent of conceptual artists was democratic, subversive and revolutionary. Not only were art and its institutions converted by them into a field of negotiation in order to link it with the everyday politics of bourgeois society; they rebelled against the fetishizaion of art and its systems of production and distribution. But as Benjamin Buchloh (2006) observed, Pop art, and other postconceptualists
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achieved a “liberal reconciliation” and compromise of high art and mass culture. A test-case can be offered here in the controversial performance of canonical “uncreative” writer Kenneth Goldsmith.
The Goldsmith Incident
On March 13, 2015, in the program Interrupt3 sponsored by Brown University, Goldsmith performed a 30-minutes reading of the official St. Louis County autopsy report on “The Body of Michael Brown.” Brown is the 18-year old black man fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. The first report stated that Goldsmith introduced his poem as “something to do with quantified self,” but an artist Faith Holland remarked that Goldsmith had re-arranged the original text, focusing on the description of the Cranial Cavity in the line “The weight of the unfixed brain is 1350 gm,” with the poem ending in the line “The remaining male genitalia system is unremarkable” (Steinhaven 2015). The hands of the “uncreative” poet displayed itself quite obtrusively. He was no innocent bystander or naive witness. Immediately came an avalanche of negative responses, such as: “Goldsmith appropriates Michael Brown’s murdered body, reframed as his poetry, and retweets the angry reactions. A troll with tenure,” with even more violent condemnation mounted a few days later.
Death threats ensued, prompting Goldsmith to apologize for the pain he had caused, asking Brown University to withold the video of his performance. C.A.Conrad summed up the outrage in quoting the poet Anne Waldman’s comment: “What was Kenny Goldsmith thinking? That it’s okay to self-appoint and perform the autopsy report of murdered black teenager Michael Brown and mess with the text, and so ‘own’ it and get paid for his services? No empathy no sorrow for the boy, the body, the family, ignorant of the ramifications, deaf ear to the explosive demonstrations and marches? Reeks of exploitation, of the ‘racial imaginary.’ Black Dada Nihilismus is lurking on the lineaments of the appropriated shadow of so much suffering” (Conrad 2015).
Anatomy of an Inquest
We have been ushered into the domain of ethico-political judgment. What seems on trial here are the central techniques of the allegorical gsture of appropriating a pre-existing object or text, and
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the procedure of montage. Is the artist free to do whatever he wants, at any time and place? True to his previous practice of copying and reproducing raw materials—eyewitness reports from radio/television broadcasts, as shown in his 2013 book, Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Goldsmith tried to prove that inflammatory material, handled in a certain way, can “provoke outrage in the service of a social cause.” His Facebook entry reveals the “idea” or motivating principle behind the import of information:
I took a publicly available document from an American tragedy that was witnessed first-hand (in this case by the doctor performing the autopsy) and simply read it. Like Seven American Deaths and Disasters, I did not editorialize; I simply read it without commentary or additional editorializing... The document I read from is powerful. My reading of it was powerful. How could it be otherwise? Such is my long-standing practice of conceptual writing: like Seven American Deaths, the document speaks for itself in ways that an interpretation cannot. It is a horrific American document, but then again, it was a horrific American death...
I indeed stated at the beginning of my reading that this was a poem called The Body of Michael Brown; I never stated,”I am going to read the autopsy report of Michael Brown’... That said, I didn’t add or alter a single word or sentiment that did not preexist in the original text, for to do so would be to go against my nearly three decades’ practice of conceptual writing, one that states that a writer need not write any new texts but rather reframe those that already exist in the world to greater effect than any subjective interpretion could lend. Perhaps people feel uncomfortable with my uncreative writing, but for me, this is the writing that is able to tell the truth in the strongest and clearest way possible.... Ecce homo. Behold the man....(quoted in Flood 2015)
Evidently, in quest of the truth via reframing, the poet’s ethics became muddled in defending his habit. His mendacity exceeds the boldness of his disingenuous apologia. Contradicting his testimony that he did not editorialize, Goldsmith added that he “altered the text for poetic effect; he translated medical terms into plain English and
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narrativized the words “in ways that made the text less didactic and more literary.” The qualification sounds pathetic. Goldsmith claimed that he acted normally for an artist: “People behave very badly in the art world, but it’s what pushes boundaries and makes discussion” (Wilkinson 2015). A group called Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo called Goldsmith’s conceptual poetry “building blocks of white supremacy.” The repartee that persisted for quite some time provides lessons in how postmodern aesthetics, despite its claims to go beyond conventional ethics and morality, cannot elude public criticism if they are staged in public, paid by the sponsors, with the sanction of institutional legitimacy. Poetry has become a commodity too even in the groves of non-profit academia.
Despite the conceptualist’s emphasis on context, sites, situations, Goldsmith failed to recognize the sociopolitical parameter of his performance and the institutional constraints of the information being moved. Concepts are historically grounded and mobilized/ immobilized. Instead of animating the fragments of copied texts, or satirizing them as quantifying modes, Goldsmith in “The Body of Michael Brown” evoked the “rigid immanence of the Baroque” devoid of any anticipatory, utopian sense of historical time,” fixed by an attitude of melancholic, awed contemplation—a deliberate theatrical gesture. His montage technique of fragmenting and juxtaposing depleted signifiers mimicked the fabrication of sold commodities. Thus, instead of rescuing the possible elements of communicative value in the report (for example, the excessive shooting inflicted on the victim’s body), Goldsmith allegorized his act of “uncreative” composition by accentuating the ethnic/racial resonance of the anatomical catalogue. Walter Benjamin presciently described the collage/montage aesthetics underlying conceptualist works: “The devaluation of objects in allegory is surpassed in the world of objects itself by the commodity. The emblem returns as commodities” (Buchloh 2006, 29). Goldsmith repeated and reinforced the instrumentalist devaluation enacted by the State, repudiating the classic avantgarde practitioner’s anti-conformist, anarchist stance.
Revenge of the Immaterial
Marx’s concept of commodity-fetishism exposes the irony in the post-Duchampian, conceptualist program of dematerialization. Goldsmith’s “uncreative” alteration of the “ready-made” did not issue
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into “immaterial” creativity; on the contrary, it materialized a racialized foregrounding of semantic features otherwise buried in scientific, empirical discourse instrumentalized by the State. As Boris Groys noted, the conceptual artist’s submission to the art institution (usually under academic patronage) and its commodifying hegemony is symptomatic of the failure of avant-garde movements in their avowed aims. What happens is the triumph of alienated abstract labor over non- alienated creative work so that, as Groys notes: “It is is this alienated labor of transporting objects combined with the labor invested in the construction and maintenance of art spaces that ultimately produces artistic value under the conditions of post-Duchampian art. Other concrete, historically specific examples, such as the artistic labor of Vito Acconci, Yoko Ono, Bruce Nauman, Lawrence Weiner, and others, may be scrutinized in Peter Osborne’s graphic documentation, Conceptual Art (2002).
The crisis of conceptualism originates from the stoic acceptance of a unity of opposites: marketed art produced by the culture industry enabling the sophisticated elite culture of the oligarchy. In 1979, Adrian Cristobal, a bureaucrat-spokesman for the Marcos authoritarian regime argued that mass culture serves profit-making big business, while the State sponsors its opposite, humanist culture. Amid widespread human- rights violations committed by State agencies, Cristobal pays homage to the dictator and his wife: “One sees and one appreciates the role of the First Lady in her sponsorship of such ventures as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Folk Arts Theater, the Metropolitan Theater and all other similar ventures. For these are, in the main, institutions which are designed to deliver that redeeming humanist culture to the people. A point of view no doubt shared by the President himself who is, in his own right, a competent writer and more than this, himself a contribution to the development of a truly national culture” (1979). Today, the conjugal dictatorship’s “humanism” has been exposed as euphemistic alibi for barbarism, with the brutalization of thousands of victims by the Marcos “martial law” regime (1972-1986; see McCoy 2001).
Provisional Epilogue
In the new millennium, the Philippine neocolony deteriorated further with the neoliberal rampage of the U.S. crusade against global “terrorism.” The “humanist” culture so highly extolled here coincides
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with the religious imagination, the realm of illusions, which is the antithetical reflex of the world of commodities in “the heartless world” invoked in Marx’s double-edged praise and rejection of the people’s opium: “Religion is, in fact, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet gained himself or has lost himself again....It is the fantastic realization of the human being because the human being has attained no true reality....The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression of and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people....The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their true happiness. The call to abandon illusions about their conditions is the call to abandon a condition which requires illusions...(1970, 131). Here, Marx grasps the superstructure (religion) not as phenomenon but as an integral element of an all-pervasive social practice. Religion, like art, subsists on the fixation with illusions. In conceptualizing the contradictory relation between intellectual objectification and social reality, Marx laid the groundwork for the active, dynamic and creative intervention of transformative agents such as artists and intellectuals fully cognizant of the power of fetishized objects, beliefs, practices, and institutions.
In a recent inventory of “the ideology of the aesthetic,” Terry Eagleton distinguishes Marx’s singular theory of art from Romantic humanism, “with its expression/repression model of human existence” (1990, 219). Marx’s vision of an “all-round human self-actualization” is premised on the establishment of socialist relations of production, with a communist ethic where mutual or reciprocal self-realization of persons is cultivated. Eagleton argues that Marx resolves the Kantian dilemma of the noumenal/phenomenal split—the problem that aesthetics/art endeavors to dissolve—by locating “the unity of ‘fact’ and ‘value in the practical, critical activity of men and women—in a form of understanding which is brought to birth in the first place by emancipatory interests, which is bred and deepened in active struggle, and which is an indispensable part of the realization of value” (1990, 226).
Thus, the moment of “revolutionary practice” posited in Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”(1978) is essential to fully appreciating the dialectical-materialist theorizing of art/aesthetics as a mode of the
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realization of human powers, capacities, virtues for the sake of universal happiness and well-being (see Lifshitz 1973; Solomon 1973; Williams 1977; Johnson 1984; Eagleton and Milne 1996). We have noted earlier that conceptual art-practice vitiates its radical impetus due to its nominalist tendency, “an essential scepticism about the existence of an objective reality, or the possibility of arriving at an agreed understanding of it by rational means,” as Eric Hobsbawm diagnosed the postmodernist malady. But an antithetical tendency exists within it of engendering a “socialist art practice” if it returns to its original inspiration in Russian art following the October Revolution (Burgin 2002, 256-58).
One evidence of a hopeful revitalization of the anti-commodity impulse in postmodern art may be found in Yoko Ono’s recent intervention, a billboard in New York’s Times Square inviting people to read its message: “Imagine Peace.” It appeared on a screen at Broadway and 45th Srreet. The message was spelled out in black letters on white, lasting three minutes; it appeared every night in March 2022 in public areas in London, Los Angeles, Milan, Melbourne and Seoul (Smee 2022). Before being overshadowed by Beatle John Lennon, Yoko Ono was acknowledged as one of the most sophisticated and bold artists of post- World War II, inventing the Event performance (such as “Cut Piece”) as part of the Fluxus art-movement in the fifties and sixties (Higgins 2002; Menand 2022). Her timely peace activism somewhat vindicates the flaws and inadequacies of conceptualists and other anti-Establishment projects over-determined by their disparate historical situations.
One conclusion emerges from this brief survey of the nodal stages in the vicissitudes of our brief reflection on the politics of aesthetics, with special reference to conceptual art. A fallibilistic proposition can be offered here: without the focus on the moment of praxis--the artist’s or critic’s intervention in the concrete arena of political struggle for hegemony, any reflection on the nature of art and its function will compulsively repeat the metaphysical idealism (Kant, Hegel, & Croce) it seeks to overcome. It is in the arena of political and ideological conflict that consciousness is grasped in its overdetermined trajectory as a complex of material practices functioning in conserving or disintegrating a determinate conjuncture, a lived situation. The problematic dialectic of conceptualist art that was previously discussed is an example of such a conjuncture. Without positing this moment of rupture or opening for intervention, we shall reproduce the predicament
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of the bourgeois intellectual that progressive thinkers such as Brecht, Lukacs (San Juan, 1972), Gramsci, Caudwell, Berger, and others (Arvon 1973; Laing 1978), acutely diagnosed: the division of mental and manual labor; the antinomy between subject and object, society and individual, nature and history, which revolutionary practice hopes to gradually and eventually resolve, despite the mistakes that were made by avant-garde artists who lack the totalizing vision and dynamic praxis of intellectuals working in the socialist tradition.
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Wood, Paul. 1996. “Commodity.” In Critical Terms for Art History. Ed. Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[20] MABINI REVIEW | Volume XI (2022)
</https>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-6156313940279267342023-06-05T06:13:00.002-07:002023-06-05T06:25:19.158-07:00TRANSLATION ART: ENGISH-FILIPINO PLAY-DRIVE (SPIEL-TRIEB) San Juan, Jr. / Filipino/English Play-drive 1
FILIPINO/ENGLISH PLAY-DRIVE
Reflections on the Translation Game
E. San Juan, Jr.
University of Connecticut, USA philcsc@gmail.com
About the Author
E. San Juan, Jr. is emeritus professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut and Comparative American Cultures at Washington State University. He was recently visiting professor in the Department of English of University of the Philippines Diliman and Cultural Studies professor at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. His recent books include Faustino Aguilar: Kapangyarihan, Kamalayan, Kasaysayan, Metakomentaryo sa mga nobela ni Faustino Aguilar (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2020); Carlos Bulosan—Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the United States: A Critical Appraisal (Peter Lang, 2017); In the Wake of Terror: Class, Race, Nation, Ethnicity in the Postmodern World (Lexington Press, 2007), and Sisa’s Vengeance: Jose Rizal’s Sexual Politics and Cultural Revolution (Vibal Publishing, 2021).
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What does it mean to speak of the “interpretation” of a sign? Interpretation is merely another word for translation . . . What are signs for, anyhow? . . . They are to communicate ideas, . . . some potentiality, some form, which may be embodied in external or in internal signs. But why should this idea-potentiality be so poured from one vessel into another unceasingly? Is it a mere exercise of the World-spirit’s Spiel-trieb—mere amusement?
—Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Basis of Pragmaticism” (388)
What is translation? On a platter / A poet’s pale and glaring head. / A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter, / and profanation of the dead.
—Vladimir Nabokov, “On Translating Eugene Onegin”(531)
If all discourse is effectuated as an event, it is understood as meaning... It is this dialectic of event and meaning which makes possible the detachment of meaning from
the event in writing.
—Paul Ricouer, ‘“Writing as a Problem” (321)
Translation studies as a disciplinary research field has recently become institutionalized in the Western academy, with university courses and publication programs devoted to it. Translators of European authors are highly paid in the trade-book industry. The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) has a flourishing trade in publishing English translations of obscure, esoteric texts. In a recent MLA Newsletter, Barbara Fuchs laments how, when the singer Jennifer Lopez interrupted her medley of songs in English with the Spanish translation of two lines of the Pledge of Allegiance during the 2021 Presidential Inauguration, her computer screen inserted the caption: “Speaking foreign language,” thus negating the point of her intervention. Fuchs objects to that “automated, mechanistic force of its characterization” as negating the singer’s “gesture of political inclusivity”: “While the performance was undoubtedly an important moment of signaling, its immediate framing as an interruption of the foreign, the untranslatable, the unknown—in the form of a language spoken by over fifty million people in the United States—signals the important work yet before us” (2). Fortunately, in the Philippines, we sing the national anthem in Filipino, spoken by at least 80 percent of 110 million citizens, not distracted by English captions. But in the daily practice of Filipinos in social media and in government and business affairs, English easily trumps Filipino or any of the vernaculars.
Translation may indeed be more than a gesture of political inclusivity. The Vulgate translation of the Hebrew and Greek Bible by Saint Jerome (347–420),
adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, underwent diverse mutations in the national languages of the Protestant countries in Europe. Luther’s German
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rendition and the King James version are easily the most influential. Incidentally,
they all followed St. Jerome’s error of translating the Hebrew word keren (meaning “radiated light”) into “grew horns,” thus Moses was sculpted with horns.
St. Jerome should have followed Constance Garnett’s habit of leaving out words she did not understand for her translation of the Russian classics into English.
The usual expectation that a cross-language version must be a carbon copy of the original, transferring facts, style, and structure of the source into the target language, is what business and government interpreters/translators must fulfill. But the literary translation of poetry, in particular, imposes more exacting demands. The complexity and singularity of the languages involved, not just structure (grammar and syntax) but also idiomatic or metaphorical networks, demands more rigorous standards. It thus involves what Schiller called “Spieltrieb” (407), an instinctive play- drive, whose object is the living form of beauty (Lebende Gestalt), the coalescence of material and form, being and becoming.
Schiller’s concept may be seminal but arguably utopian. Almost all practitioners seek a balance between extremes (the literal and tropological), between what Croce called “faithful ugliness or faithless beauty” (Holman 451). This may explain why the impulse to translate mutates into a demiurgic motivation to create an original, such as Edward Fitzgerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859). In any case, translation is not just a matter of producing verbal equivalents, either literal or not.
All translators produce what Charles Sanders Peirce calls “interpretants” linking signifiers to their objects on some ground, purpose, or rationale, not arbitrarily as Ferdinand Saussure assumed in his semiology. In Peirce’s semiotics, translations produce interpretants of three kinds: immediate, or the specific way that signifiers can be actualized in various ways; dynamic, or the “single actual event” or experience of making sense or getting the intent of the signifiers; and the final or logical interpretant, which is the understanding of or belief in the purpose or purposes for which the signs/signifiers are being used (“Lady Welby” 412–21).
What this amounts to is that there may not be any agreement about the ultimate purpose or intent of the translation (the dynamic and final logical interpretant) except the attempt to actualize the immediate interpretant. In Peirce’s semiotics,
“there is no final confluence of interpretations” (Short 187–90), that is, there is no such thing as correct, accurate, or faithful translation leading to a consensus of beliefs because authors/translators vary in time and place, as well as readers/ listeners. Sociohistorical contingencies cannot be eluded and must be taken into account, one way or another.
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HOMO LUDENS BECOMING HOMO FABER
This does not imply that anything goes, since meaning has to be formulated in further signs, into intelligible discourse for some community or other. Translation is then the versatile exercise of the play-drive. It is an artful linguistic game sui generis, its criticism a heuristic method for its appreciation. That is why, perhaps, Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), who at nine years old translated Oscar Wilde’s
“The Happy Prince” into Spanish, advised that we attend more to the context (the cultural horizon of communication and nuanced speech-acts) than the text or the formalized referent (178). In short, the six functions of linguistic communication outlined by Roman Jakobson needs to be given appropriate assignments. To be sure, translation is a human, not machine, performance. This may explain why translators such as Edward Seidensticker (in the case of the Japanese Yasunari Kawabata) and Gregory Rabassa (with Gabriel Garcia Marquez) produced versions more genuine-sounding or authentic to their English readers. Consider then this conundrum: can the translation claim to be a sovereign, original source-text, with a life of its own not dependent on its author? We are then plunged into the abyss of endless semiosis.
Modern literary criticism since the romantic period posited the organic fusion of form and content, thus questioning the possibility of translation as a faithful convergence of linguistic life-worlds. Shelley, for instance, likened translation to subjecting a violet to chemical analysis while Robert Frost opined that poetry is
“what gets left out in translation” (Hyde 200). Surely, no one expects a rigorously strict correspondence between source and target texts. The English poet John Dryden translated many classic works into the contemporary idiom of his time. He distinguished his practice as an act of paraphrasing the translated work’s style,
“to vary but the dress, not alter or destroy the substance,” thus violating the axiom of the organic unity of form and content (Hyde 201). Contradistinguished from Dryden’s formula of paraphrasing, imitiation as a mode of synthetic mimesis or reconfiguring of the original may be exemplified by Robert Lowell’s “Imitations,” as well as by Ezra Pound’s “Homage to Sextus Propertius” and Louis Zukovsky’s mimicry of Catullus’ Latin originals (Hyde 201). Wether paraphrase or imitation, this mode of translation seeks to capture the complex, singular phenomenology of a given artistic creation or artifice for their respective audiences, thus bridging disparate times and spaces.
We are reminded of Walter Benjamin’s concept of translation as the purgation of profane language so as to reach a higher spiritual divine level, releasing the
“unexpressed and creative word” from its merely communicative use. However, paradoxically, we begin with the literal rendering of the syntax of words to capture the “intentio of the original”: “For if the sentence is the wall before the language
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of the original, literalness is the arcade” (79). The more incomprehensible the translation (as Holderlin’s version of Sophocles) since it is further up the ladder of truth or doctrine that language is the symbol of the incommunicable, Benjamin concludes, so much the better! The more wayward the translation, the more cogent it is, thus confirming the indictment: traduttore, traditore. This accords with Peirce’s semiotics and the hierarchy of interpretants (immediate, dynamic and final/logical), still cognizant of the six linguistic functions already invoked.
Before situating translation in the Philippine context, I want to remind would-be linguistic traders and word-players of the dangers involved in this act of transfer as a mode of communication. In the global conflicts today, thousands of Afghan translators/interpreters who worked for the U.S. military are facing assassination by the Taliban for their services. About three hundred of roughly 18,000 Afghanis have been killed since 2014; and thousands today face certain death as the U.S. finalizes its withdrawal from that war-torn country (Zuccchino and Rahim). Iraqi interpreters suffered the same fate when the U.S. destroyed and then withdrew from Iraq. One wonders whether Filipinos who translated captured revolutionary communiques for the American invaders in the Filipino-American War of 1899- 1913 were prosecuted, or those who translated/interpreted for the Japanese aggressors in World War II were ever brought to trial as collaborators of the enemy. Translation then becomes treason or treachery and betrayal depending on which linguistic, political camp one happens to find oneself in the end.
Historical specificity thus informs and determines the ethical-political valence of linguistic exchanges. What is instructive is the fate suffered by Arab scholar- translator Mohamed Yousry in the wake of 9/11. Yousry, a graduate student at New
York University, was then employed by attorney Lynne Stewart who was convicted for allegedly aiding the blind Muslim cleric Abdel Rahman; Sheik Rahman was then serving a life-sentence in federal prison for conspiring to bomb New York City landmarks (Preston). Because Yousry translated from Arabic to English the messages of the cleric for attorney Stewart, he was implicated in the charge of violating prison rules, deceiving the government, and aiding terrorism. So translators, beware! Your scholarly talent and linguistic skills might render you vulnerable, since even the American Translators Association and the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators would not come to your succor in times of need or emergency, in a climate of moral panic and jingoistic exceptionalism.
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THE PERSONAL IS NOT YET POLITICAL
One of the more provocative commentaries on the politics and ethics of translation has been made by Steven Ungar in his contribution to the anthology Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization (2002). Ungar summarizes the opinions of various scholars who assayed the poetics of translation as a cultural political practice open to ethical dimensions involving greater respect for linguistic and cultural differences. He cites Sherry Simon’s feminist view urging a cultural turn so as to promote a critical, pragmatic, or functionalist approach: “Instead of asking the traditional question which has preoccupied translation theorists—‘What is a correct translation?’—the emphasis is placed on a descriptive approach: ‘what do translations do, how do they circulate in the world and elicit response?” (131) (For the application of Jakobson’s functionalist linguistics on translation, see Aveling; also Heaney and Hass).
From that perspective, the historical-ethical situation of the translator in the Philippines is anomalous if not an affront to their Western counterparts. Who cares about Filipino/Tagalog poetry and its translation into English or other prestigious languages? In the early years of Spanish colonization, the Spanish missionaries destroyed much of the pre-contact literature composed in syllabary and initiated the lexicographical inventory of the vernaculars. The first translations of Tagalog poetry into Spanish were ascribed to Fernando Bagong-banta, a ladino or bilingual native. They were included in a religious instruction book entitled Memorial de la vida cristiana en lengua tagala (1605) by the friar Francisco de San Jose. Bienvenido Lumbera describes the priest’s “archaic metaphorical prose” expounding the basic doctrines of the Catholic faith (27). Translation was thus a utilitarian, pedagogical instrument for proselytizing; in effect, it was weaponized for sustained evangelization in the service of imperial domination. Analogous to that pattern was the systematic imposition of American English as the official language in the first three decades of US colonial pacification of the Philippines (1899–1930).
Three centuries after Bagong-banta’s intervention, the Jesuit-tutored Jose Rizal deployed his language skills to educate his relatives by translating Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell and the French 1789 Declaracion des droits de l’homme et de citoyen (1789) into Tagalog (Ocampo 120, 341–472). Katipunan leaders Andres Bonifacio
and Emilio Jacinto followed Rizal’s example. In the period of revolutionary ferment, Filipinos who engaged in translation pursued a conscienticizing (to use Paulo Freire’s term) agenda—one might even label it “tendentious” translation—dictated by the needs of the embattled community. When English became the official and aspirational language of the US colony, the imperative to translate vernacular writing lost its rationale with the establishment of universal public education, the
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wide circulation of mass media in American English, and the inferiorization of indigenous speech-acts.
DECOLONIZING IMPERATIVE AND AGENDA
It is only in our recent history that translation—between the colonized and colonizer’s tongue—can be conceived as an emancipatory act. Moving from one language system/conceptual framework to another can be construed as not just a mode of cross-cultural understanding. It is also an exploration of our motives and purposes in engaging in the translation-act. One recent example is Bienvenido Lumbera’s adaptation, not translation, of Carlos Bulosan’s classic ethnobiography, America Is in the Heart. Lumbera’s artifice was not a symmetrical transfer but a re-functioning of narrative episodes in response to the political exigencies of the mass movement after Benigno Aquino’s assassination in 1983, a strategy inspired by Paula and Carolina Malay’s earlier translation of the book into Tagalog, Nasa Puso ang Amerika, praised by Lumbera as endowed with rich, sutble, vigorous,
“contemporary urban flavor” (Suri 291).
It is now difficult to obtain copies of Bulosan’s filipinized chronicle of the early diaspora. Those two play-drive attempts at verbal gaming may be compared with Jose Lacaba’s efforts to adapt (“halaw” is his rubric) to colloquial Filipino poems by Sappho, Marvell, Neruda, Brecht, Pound, Tu Fu, etc., and Pia Arboleda’s skillful translation of Ninotchka Rosca’s stories into Filipino, in order to gauge the distance between acts done under pressure (the mass protests against the Marcos dictatorship), and those performed in more leisurely, self-reflective fashion. The simple lesson is that we cannot appreciate and judge the art of translation detached from the historical-political situations of the translators, as well as their intentions, and the audiences that their projects addressed. Such variables constitute the parameters for evaluating the success or failure of translation-experiments.
This brings us finally to the question why we need to measure the power and potential of our vernacular tongue (in this case, Filipino) by the amount and quality of the works that have been carried out. The hypothesis is challenging, if not scandalous. In 2000, Mario Miclat cited the inventory of translations into Tagalog made by Lilia Francisco Antonio: two titles a year in 400 years since the Doctrina Cristiana (1593), the first book published in the Philippines. If it were not for the ladino Tomas Pinpin and his progeny, Miclat insinuates, we would still be barbarians, unlettered savages awaiting tutelage by our Castilian and Yankee conquerors.
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Miclat is pleased to inform us of the three-volume translation of Alejandro Dumas’s Ang Konde ng Monte Cristo by Pascual Poblete, but he bemoans the fact that no one has yet translated Don Quixote. He therefore urges more Westernization, following the path of Japan and China, forgetting the status of Chinese and Japanese as exemplary, archetypal languages with thousands of years of usage and elaborate refinement compared to our relatively primitive vernaculars. Miclat remarks that we are too lazy; however, he abruptly concludes that “Having defined the Other, we have defined ourselves”—a wholly mystifying conclusion. Undeterred, Miclat observes that we need to “define our translation needs” and rouse ourselves to satisfy those needs without which we cannot belong to the affluent industrialized nation-states of Europe and North America.
INVENTORY AND RECONNAISSANCE
A brief personal history may be instructive here. Long before I read Miclat’s alarming call and enjoyed the artifices of Lumbera, the Malays, and Arboleda, I had been recruited by the late Rogelio Mangahas in the 1960s to work with the collective Kapisanang Aklat, Diwa at Panitik (KADIPAN) compatriots. I helped Alejandro Abadilla edit his avant-garde magazine Panitikan. Long before I encountered the charge of “traduttore, traditore,” I had been engaged in this treacherous pursuit for some time. After a lengthy correspondence with the poet, I translated selected works of Amado V. Hernandez into English, published in 1966 as Rice Grains by International Publishers in New York—perhaps the first international edition for a Tagalog poet. The motive? Inspired by his fortitude during Cold War McCarthyism, I struck a friendship with the poet while completing my graduate studies at Harvard University where I discovered William James’s anti-imperialist writings.
The nationalist resurgence in the sixties combined with the Civil-Rights anti-war mobilization in the US produced an incalculable impact. Our generation shifted its bearings and orientation. In that conjuncture, I had begun to write in Filipino when I became more involved with other vernacular writers, especially with the feisty maverick Abadilla. Throughout the decade, I cooperated with Abadilla in publishing his anthology Ako ang Daigdig and other projects, and with Rogelio Mangahas in gathering materials for his 1967 anthology, Manlilikha, a project of KADIPAN, and the volume Makata by Makata, Inkorporada. We were also immersed in anti-martial-law agitprop and research into Filipino labor struggles, in particular the farm-workers movement in California and the Northwest where Bulosan and his comrades were active in the International Longshoremen and
Warehousemen’s Union.
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Historical circumstances ineluctably overdetermine personal choices. The nationalist upsurge from 1970 to 1986 influenced my decision to write fiction and poetry in Filipino and to publish in Liwayway, Free Press in Filipino, and other venues. I was encouraged in this by Hernandez, Abadilla, Mangahas, Ben Medina Jr., Teodoro Agoncillo, Anacleto Dizon, and others. This was before the bold effort to “intellectualize” the vernaculars in line with Virgilio Enriquez’s invention of
“sikolohiyang Pilipino” and Lumbera’s historical inquiries into Tagalog poetry.
In high school, we were assigned Balagtas’s awit as an exercise in grammar and syllable-counting, oblivious to its ethico-political function. This is still the standard way of teaching this classic touchstone. In 1969 I ventured a philosophical exegesis of “Florante at Laura” entitled Balagtas: Art and Revolution, which Patricia Melendrez-Cruz and Apolonio Chua included in their anthology Himalay. Around the same time, the artist-critic Rodolfo Paras-Perez invited me to translate Balagtas’ poem accompanied by his drawings for a limited deluxe edition issued in 1978. The background for this translation is my Filipinization of Western poetics ranging from the Anglo-Saxon “The Seafarer” and “The Dream of the Rood” to Horace, Gautier, Holderlin, Lu Hsun, Brecht, McDiarmid, Hemingway, Mayakovsky, Hikmet, Langston Hughes, Vallejo, Mao Tse-tung, Ernesto Che Guevarra, McGrath, and assorted Vietnamese poets (see my Sapagka Iniigbig Kita at Iba Pang Bagong Tula).
The milieu and vocabulary of those writers, not that of the hallowed George St. Clair version, mediated my play-drive performance or creative rearticulation of Balagtas’s epic narrative.
MODERNIZING THE LEGACY
My English reworking or, more precisely, my prosaic imitation of Balagtas’s masterpiece was finally given wider reception in the NCCA 2019 publication of Florante at Laura: The Exhibition, curated by Annatha Lilo Gutierrez. The flavor of that postmodern rendering of the archaic awit may be discerned in my transfiguration of the penultimate stanza: “Therefore the militant masses, in gratitude, raised their clenched fists to the sky. The king and queen thought of nothing but to scatter the fruits of production to their partisans.” The original was bare: “Kaya nga’t nagtaas ang kamay sa langit, / sa pasasalamat ng bayang tangkilik; /ang hari’t ang reyna’t walang iniisip / kundi ang magsabog ng awa sa kabig” (Paculan 99).
The interpretants I marshalled above were intended to activate the emotive and conative potentialities of the source-text. Since my focus was on the target text/ contemporary audience, I had resorted to the alchemical strategies that Andre
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Lefevere had catalogued in Translating Literature. Taking account of the ideological/ political frame of the original, its illocutionary nuances, and contrived tactics to modernize a dusty canonical text, I opted to register the spirit, the structure of feeling, not the referential veracity of my source. Hence, the “clenched fists,” “fruits of production” and “partisans” conformed to the universe of discourse of the third- world, left-wing youth, and civil-rights movement of the translator’s time (compare the Victorian idiom and monotony of George St. Clair’s version). Immersed in the author’s milieu, I recalled how that awit inspired Rizal and the 1896 revolutionary propagandists. The aim of readability coincided with the imperative of capturing the ambience, the contour of sensibility, of the original.
NAVIGATING ORIENTAL PASSAGES
Before the West Philippine Sea controversy, we were already fascinated with Taoism and Zen Buddhism via Ezra Pound and my teacher at Harvard, I.A. Richards, who had annotated Mencius’s speculations on thinking/mind. Mao’s Yenan Forum on literature was not far behind. The next act of “traitorship” occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century, with my Filipino version of Lao Tzu’s classic Tao Te Ching based on the interlinear translation of Gregory Richter. This method accords with Walter Benjamin’s tongue-in-cheek advice endorsing interlinear models as
“the prototype or ideal of all translation” (82). Why this experiment? Well, before I studied Peirce’s semiotics, I was inspired by Pound’s technique of capturing the ambience of canonical texts (from Propertius and troubadours to the Analects and Japanese Noh plays). I was also then engaged in inquiries into materialist dialectics and its analogies in Taoist/Zen Buddhist dynamics. So the Tao was re-christened:
“Landas & Kapangyarihan sa Makabuluhang Buhay.”
My other purpose in grappling with Tao Te Ching was to find out if the maxims of Taoism can be expressed in the vernacular idiom. Consequently, from the two last lines of the text in the English of Ames and Hall, “Thus the way of tian [heaven] is to benefit without harming; The way of the sages is to do without contending” (204), I inferred this insight: “Ang landas ng langit ay nagsasabog ng buti at pakinabang; hindi ito pumipinsala. /Ang landas ng pantas ay nagsasakatuparan nang walang pakikipag-unahan” (66). Notice that I do more “explicitation” or emendation, as well as compensation, to use Lefevere’s terms, to foreground the senses of “benefit”
and “contending,” as well as insert the notion of achieving or fulfilling some intent or mission. Viewed from Peircean semiotics, I yoked the logical (legalistic) with the immediate interpretant (enigmatic), eliding the dynamic moment of interpretation which would reconcile contradictions by dialectical mediation. This preference for analogical mirroring or mimicry as a recreative mode of translation has been
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observed by Prof. De Villa in her comparative appraisal of various translations of Amado Guerrero’s Philippine Society and Revolution, a problematic field of power/ knowledge which requires a longer analytic inquiry we reserve for another occasion.
BEYOND THE LURE OF VERBALISM
What are the lessons deducible from the trials and ordeals of the Spieltrieb discourse of translation? Suffice it to mention one, for now. My discovery is that the Filipino lexicon needs to expand its power of abstraction. It is rich in feeling- words, gestures, vocabularies of perception and sensory apprehension (see Maggay’s Pahiwatig). But this sensorium, this organon of cognitive investigation, needs universalizing terms to appeal to a cosmopolitan audience schooled in the language-games of public argumentation from Plato/Aristotle to Kant, Hegel, Peirce, Freud, Russell, Wittgenstein, and so on. The vernacular contains words that are condensed or compressed, e.g., “buti,” that needs spelling out to elaborate its various semantic possibilities when used in diverse frames. The frame enables various scenes (connotations, tropes, expressive nuances) to surface, with the cultural/ideological contexts determining which ones are appropriate in conveying shades of meaning. Again, however, the translator’s paramount objective—to transport the source-text’s original vision, temper, modus of sensibility—serves as the controlling principle of the transfer strategy. The spirit of the original should dictate the final configuration of the product, as Heaney and Gass affirm in re- validating the efficacy of Pound’s practice.
As a testimony to what I have suggested above, I confess to fabricating an early specimen of traitorship. One can verify my failure to transliterate or transcode verbatim, but nonetheless generating a nexus of interpretants yielded by the actual process of reading/glossing on the purport of the chain of signifiers. In short, what beliefs or actions are stimulated in the reading process? Here is a famous poem by Pound entitled “The Return” followed by my version:
See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened
As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind,
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and half turn back;
These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”
Inviolable,
Gods of the winged show! With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men! (Pound 24)
_______________
Ang Pagbabalilk
Masdan mo, bumabalik sila; ay, sundan ang nagbabaka-sakaling Paggalaw, at mga paang mabagal,
Ang bagabag sa paghakbang at ang walang katiyakang Panginginig!
Masdan mo, bumabalik sila, isa, at isa pa, Natatakot, at nangangalumata,
Wari bagang nag-aalinlangan ang yelo
At bumulong sa hangin, at lumingon
Iyan ang mga “May-Bagwis-ng-Sindak,”
Di masalang, Bathala ng mga paang may bagwis!
Kasiping ng mga asong pilak,
inaamoy ang bakas ng hangin!
Ay! Ay!
Ito ang maliksing umusig
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Mga matalim na pang-amoy; Mga kaluluwa ng dugo.
Malumanay sa buntot-page,
maputlang umuusig! (San Juan 133).
The biographer Noel Stock considers this poem exemplary for “the poet’s feeling for the weight and duration of words,” illustrating Pound’s belief in “absolute rhythm . . . which corresponds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed” (1964, 89–90). Sensory, feeling-ful cognitive mapping of interpretants is primary. In comparison to the accentual music of English, the Filipino syllabic mode demonstrates the possibility of a different tempo, the staccato rhythm, which evokes approximately the emotion of diffidence, anticipation, surprise. Each language enables a range of illocutionary effects that parallel or resonate with those of other languages, hence fidelity to what the poet wants to accomplish.
SEMANTIC EXTRAPOLATIONS
When I wrote my 1966 essay “Translation and Philippine Poetics” after the Balagtas experiment, my orientation was primarily empiricist and formalist (following the American school of New Criticism). After my course with I.A. Richards in English poetics at Harvard University which utilized Roman Jakobson’s linguistics, I was fascinated by Jakobson’s schema of language functions, specifically his judgment that “The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination” (358). What was missing was the historical or syntagmatic process in which discourse is inflected by the cultural shifts and ideological/political contingencies of addresser and addressee. The reason why the referential function of language, the context (out of the six functions of any communication that Jakobson diagrammed), is often sidelined is due to the stress
on the message/the code.
Of course, the other functions—the emotive (addresser), conative (addressee), the phatic and metalingual, are operative, in accord with the structuralist paradigmatic/syntagmatic formula (353–57). Jakobson’s hierarchy of functions explains the varying qualities of translation, depending on which other function is allied with or catalyzed by the strictly poetic function. This then accounts for my tendency to conjoin the poetic with the conative or agitational impulse, as evidenced in my manner of translating my poems below.
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Historical context is the desideratum for grasping what is worthwhile transferring. This is what I highlight when rendering the following three poems in Filipino, with the premise that readers today are familiar with the historical events and sociopolitical conflicts surrounding “Bangkusay,” “Smokey Mountain,”
“Mendiola,” etc. “Elehiyang Nabuking Binigkas ng Batang Tubong Blumentritt” itself alludes to Ferdinand Blumentritt, the Austrian scientist and close friend of Rizal. “Bangkusay” designates the Spanish conquistador’s defeat of the Muslim indigenes of Tondo, near Fort Santiago. “Smokey Mountain” connotes ongoing impoverishment of a neocolony ruled by oligarchic violence (killing of Mendiola demonstrators during Cory Aquino’s presidency). The same goes for the second poem, “Lakbay ng Baguntaong Naglagalag,” where the most important reference is the recent event of a fishing boat rammed by the Chinese in the disputed zone of the West Philippine Sea, as well as to allusions of historical events from the Tamil Tigers (the Maoist guerillas) in Sri Lanka to Rizal’s tulisan filibusteros/ rebels mounting an attack on Fort Santiago in Intramuros, the famous Walled City, signifying the hoary centuries-long burden of Spanish colonial heritage.
Parenthetically, innovative transfers, not just faithful imitations, can create miracles. Consider how the Portuguese singer Dulce Pontes transformed the erotic resonance and ambience of Ennio Moricone’s “Love Song” (from the Italian spaghetti Western film, Once Upon a Time in the West) into “Amor a Portugal,” which has become a Portuguese anthem via the Internet—a dazzling performance witnessed by millions on YouTube. She converted the original text’s imagery of
“Your love shines in my heart” into the impersonal “A thousand fires burn without being seen” in Portuguese, evoking the spirit of fado and the generic thematics of longing. Could we do the same with a new version of “Dahil sa Iyo” or “Bayan Ko” via traitorous transmigration?
INTERPRETATION COHABITING WITH TRANSLATION
Lest I end with a futile apologia for betrayal, allow me to use my translation of an older poem that captures the sense of estrangement linking various personae, locations, and historic intervals. My translation of “Biyernes nang Hapon sa Oktubre, Willimantic, Connecticut, USA” hopes to earn the trust of those already instructed not to expect fidelity, only assurance of the effort to aspire for being worthy of it.
Deploying a mock-surrealist tone in this poem, I attempt to suture the referential and phatic to the conative function of Jakobson’s linguistic chain so that a chain of immediate and dynamic interpretants are generated simultaneously. Meanwhile,
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the contemplative voice of the speaker reflects on the historical transition from rural-farm town to urban-money economy (neoliberal globalism) in the United States, especially after 11 September 2001, which inaugurated the “Global War on Terrorism.”
The speaker observes the cracks in the asphalted road (like wounds) from the town of Willimantic, Connecticut, to the American-Indian-operated Foxboro Casino near New London, a nuclear-submarine base. The pasture-land where Pequot Indians lived long ago have been covered by a bridge with sculpted frogs on each side, reminiscent of the legend in which frog-cries warned colonizing villagers of Indian attacks. Gone are the frogs like cigarette stubs while pigeons fly around, searching for food. Especially on Friday at dusk, folks drive southward to the Foxboro casino to gamble, chance governing future stakes. Here I combined immediate, dynamic, and logical interpretants so as to fix a belief in doubting the propaganda about extremism when the inaugural genocide against native
Americans (Pequots) remains stark proof of the lethal irrationality of disastrous neoliberal casino imperialism.
Indeed, after 9/11, what’s the future for migrant Filipinos avoiding the lack of employment in “shithole” countries threatened by Abu Sayyaf Muslim extremists? Is Willimantic a refuge for non-white “strangers”? Is the dream of success in milk- and-honey America an illusion behind curtains of decrepit windows in decayed towns? Here, the referential/denotative function blends with the sound symbolism of the Abu Sayyaf, Pequot, Bridge of Frogs, and Foxboro casino, in a climate of fear, doubt, and unpredictability evoked by “sugat na umaantak sa lamat” and “Naupos na sigarilyo’y ibinurol . . .” The last two lines cannot really be conveyed by the English phrases because the efficacy of the words “sumingit” and “sinisilip sa gunita ang kutob at kilabot” depends on recursive sound echoes, while “Abu Sayyaf” and
“Amerika” fuse into a menacing brew of hope and aversion. I recommend that readers just listen to the sounds of Filipino after the English prose summary to apprehend the sense/meaning as well as somatic resonance and import of the original poem, as Benjamin suggested.
Given the discordant texture of the Filipino text, I am doubtful if the English version can really convey the poignancy of the anger and pain in the source-text. This is only to say that the translator ironically succeeds by urging the reader to learn Filipino, to go back to the original, since the traitor always betrays. The melancholy ordeal of translation—as transubstantiation or sublimation of the source-text— confirms our tragic plight in the Tower of Babel, wondering if silence can be the only viable or feasible alternative. We can afford to be lazy, not translating Don Quixote, because we live in a more violent, quixotic time with nuclear windmills
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all defying control. But why do we need Google’s translation engine when we are plunged in jouissance, singing the refrain “magkasiping buong gabi” from a popular Rico J. Puno song?
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SAMPLE SPECIMENS
Three Poems with English Translations by the Author
ELEHIYANG NABUKING BINIGKAS NG BATANG TUBONG BLUMENTRITT
Oo, tapos na, ’di na tayo pupunta sa Tondo ng ating kamusmosan— Kung saan sabi mo mahal mo ako, di malilimutan—Tapos na iyon! Di na tayo babalik doon—Oo, sa Bangkusay o Plaza Moriones—
Hindi ko na matandaan kung sa Tayuman o Bambang tayo unang nagkita O baka sa tren sa Tutuban o sa loobang sanglaan sa Divisoria . . .
Oo, ’di na tayo babalik sa Tondo, doon sa lumundong dulo ng buhay—
. . . Hindi ko na nga maalala kung saang liko sa Juan Luna ang daan . . .
Oo, tapos na, ngayong gabi nagpasiya kang tapos na ang pagsuyo— Gabing kay lungkot, umaapaw hanggang sa estero ng Binondo Hindi na tayo babalik doon tulad nang nakalipas—Ay, hindi na!
Hindi ko na magunita kung saang sulok sa Tondo tayo nagtapo Tapos na, hindi na tayo babalik sa Gagalangin—mundong kaylupit! Kung saan ang sumpang binitiwan ay naligaw sa tulay ng Dimasalang
. . . Hindi ko na nga matandaan kung saang liko sa Dapitan lumisan . . .
Oo, ’di na tayo babalik sa pook ng lambingang ngayo’y Smokey Mountain . . .
’Di ko na nga maalala kung saan kita naiwan, saang lugar babalikan— Kapus-palad na pag-ibig, ay, nasawi sa mundong nagsalabit sa pangako—
Ay tapos na, ’di ko na nga matandaan ang daang papunta sa Tondo—
’Di ko na magunita ang tipanan sa Quiapo? Sa Mendiola ba o sa Luneta?
Oo, tapos na, ’di na tayo babalik sa tinding niyapos, ay, kumilig sa pag-sinta—
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. . . Dito na lang kayo muna sa Blumentritt pagkagaling sa Culi-Culi, Nakalimutan ko na ang ruta papunta sa sementeryong La Loma—
Oo, hindi na tayo babalik, hindi na, tapos na, magpakailanman— Pagkasiyahin ang pira-pirasong pulutang napanis sa gabi ng sumpaan . . .
______________________________________________________________
FOILED ELEGY RECITED BY A BLUMENTRITT NATIVE
Yes, it’s over, we’ll not go to the Tondo of our childhood
Where you said you loved me, never to be forgotten—That’s finished! We’ll never return to that spot—Yes, Bangkusay or Plaza Moriones—
I can’t recall whether it’s Tayuman or Bambang where we first met, Perhaps in a Tutuban train or an indoor pawnshop in Divisoria...
Yes, we will not go back to Tondo, there where life’s horizon-line sagged—
. . . I can’t remember now which street-turn in Juan Luna marked our path . . .
Yes, all over, tonight you decided that our dalliance is ended—
A night so wretched, overflowing up to the stinking canal of Binondo . . . We will not go back there as we did before—Aie, no more!
I cannot remember at which corner in Tondo we first met,
It’s finished, we’ll not retreat to Gagalangin—a world utterly ruthless! Where our promises, disavowed, got lost on the bridge in Dimasalang . . .
Indeed, I cannot remember which street-corner in Dapitan I fled from . . .
Yes, we will not withdraw to the place of caressing, now Smokey Mountain . . . I can’t recall now where exactly I left you, where I should retrieve you— Curse-stricken love, Aie, victimized in a world bewildered by promises—
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Aie, it’s done, I can’t remember the streets leading to Tondo—
I can’t find in memory our trysting spot in Quiapo? Or Mendiola or Luneta? Yes, it’s finished, we’ll not go back to the pain we embraced, amorous shudder—
Let’s stay here, linger in Blumentritt after visiting Culi-Culi,
Anyway I have forgotten the route debouching to the La Loma cemetery—
Yes, we will not go back, no more, it’s over, forever and ever—
Let the fragments of this appetizer suffice, spoiled in the night of avowals
and disavowals . . . ______________________________________________________________
LAKBAY NG BAGUNTAONG NAGLAGALAG
Pumalaot na, walang tiyak na daungan o dalampasigan—
Kung saan ko naisip makarating, wala ako roon, humantong man . . .
Sandaling sumungaw sa butas ng aking himlayan, bulalakaw!
Nakabalik ka rin mula sa Taormina, sintang balikbayan, Tumupad sa pangakong magbabalik kung kinakailangan
“Kusang binangga kami ng Intsik, di kami tinulungan— Umikot muna upang tiyaking lumubog na, tapos tumakbo!”
Batid mong ngayon ay inaanod, napapadpad sa kinabukasan
Kaya hindi ka na tumigil sa Thessaloniki, naibsan ang pighati—
Sabi ng pilosopo, ang gumugulong ay di hihinto hanggang di pinipigil . . .
Umiiwas ka sa unos o sigwa, di mo akalaing babanggain ka . . .
“Oo, umikot sila, nilente kami, nang matantong lubog na, Dagling sumibat, tumakbong palayo! Walang awang mga hayup!” [Testimonyo ng kapitan ng GEM VIRI, 6/14/2019]
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Nakabalik na mula sa Colombo, Sri Lanka, taglay sa pusong nawindang Ang memorabilya ng Tigreng Tamil, mandirigmang nakaligtas . . .
Kung hindi ikaw, sino ang sasagip sa nasawing manlalayag? Umiwas ka sa lagim ng sakuna, sa tukso ng Mutya ng Bali, Kundi ngayon, kailan pa? Saan isusugod ang katawang naipit?
Binangga kaming pumalaot, lumayag, tinawid ang panahong masungit . . .
Binangga nga—Gulat, nasindak, daigdig mo’y abot lamang sa hiyaw Ng saklolo sa dalampasigan ng Davao, Jolo, o Zamboanga—
Buti’t di ka napikot ng aswang sa Siquijor o tokhang sa Mindoro—
Binangga ka ng maamo’t mailap na buwitre ng imperyong sumasakop—
Di na kailangang humibik, ngitngit ng himagsik sa kapalarang nasapit— Bakit nga ba tumawid ang hayop sa kabilang ibayo?
Tanaw mo na sa pinto ng San Agustin ang kumakaway na bisig—
Sa Balwarte ng San Diego naglalamay armadong kaluluwang lagalag . . .
______________________________________________________________
JOURNEY OF THE YOUNG MAN WHO WANDERED
[From the Philippine Customs Declaration Form No.117, Item #7 prohibited: “Materials advocating or inciting treason, rebellion, insurrection, sedition against
the government of the Philippines”]
Shipped out, no definite pier to reach or shoreline—
Where I thought of arriving, I am not there, even if the drift compels the traveler . . .
For an instant, through a hole in my sleeping quarter, flashed a shooting star!
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So you’ve returned from Taormina, beloved expatriate, Fulfilling the promise that you’ll come back if needed—
“We were rammed by the Chinese, they didn’t help us— They circled first to make sure we’ve sunk, then scrammed!”
You know now you’re being carried away, floating toward tomorrow So, therefore, you did not tarry at Thessaloniki, with grief subsiding—
The philosopher taught: what is rolling will not stop until it is impeded . . .
You were trying to elude squalls or storms, you didn’t suspect they will strike . . .
“Yes, they turned around, spotlighted us, when sure we were sunk, Swiftly they fled, sped away! Beasts devoid of pity or mercy!” [Testimony of the captain of the fishing boat GEM VIRI, 6/14/2019]
You’ve returned from Colombo, Sri Lanka, bearing in your bruised heart Memorabilia from the Tamil Tigers, guerilla warriors who survived . . .
If not you, who else will save the disaster-stricken voyagers? You evaded the misery of accident, seduced by the Muse of Bali, If not now, when? What will the wrecked body assault?
We were rammed, far out in the ocean, defying the miserable weather . . .
They hit us—Shocked, panicked, your world touched only by the shout
Of succor at the shores of Davao, Jolo, or Zamboanga—
Lucky you were not tempted by the Siquijor witch or police-killers in Mindoro—
You were rammed by gentle but sneaking vultures of the colonizing empire—
No need to cry out for help, rebellious anger at the fortune encountered— Why indeed did the animal cross the road to the other side?
You can glimpse from the door of St Agustin’s church those arms waving— At the San Diego rampart, in nightlong vigil, armed souls wandering . . .
______________________________________________________________
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BIYERNES NG HAPON SA OKTUBRE, WILLIMANTIC, CONNECTICUT, USA
Sa hapong tag-lagas may sugat na umaantak
Sa lamat ng mga kalsadang aspalto sa lungsod na dating pastulan ng mga katutubong Indyang Pequot.
Anong kabulaanan ang itinatago ng mga kortina sa durungawan? Hindi alam ng mga kalapati kung ano ang kulay ng pag-asa.
Naupos na sigarilyo’y ibinurol ko sa tabi ng Tulay ng mga Palaka Habang patungo ang prusisyon ng trapik sa Foxboro Casino
na pag-aari ng Indyang Pequot.
Kung bakit sumingit sa isip ang Abu Sayyaf?
Sa takipsilim ng taglagas sinisilip sa gunita ang kutob at kilabot bago tayo naglakbay patungong Amerika.
(Oktubre 1, 2005, Willimantic, Connecticut, USA) ______________________________________________________________
FRIDAY AFTERNOON IN OCTOBER, WILLIMANTIC, CONNECTICUT, USA
In the autumn afternoon a wound festers
in the crack of the asphalt roads in the city once a pasture field for the native Pequot Indians.
What fraud and deceptions do the window-curtains hide? Doves and pigeons do not know the color of hope.
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My cigarette stub I interred beside the Bridge of Frogs
while the traffic procession headed for the Foxboro Casino now owned by the Pequots.
But why does the Abu Sayyaf sneak into the mind?
In the Fall’s twilight hour I sneak into memory’s fissure, a voyeur filled with
apprehension and terror
before we journeyed to America.
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Gass, William. Reading Rilke. Basic, 1999.
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Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2000.
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Culture and the Arts, 2001.
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Peirce, Charles Sanders. “The Basis of Pragmaticism.” The Essential Peirce, vol. 2, edited by The Peirce Edition Project, Indiana UP, 1998, pp. 360–397.
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———. Sapagkat Iniibig Kita at iba pang tula. U of the Philippines P, 2004.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-29058679742013434412023-04-14T10:22:00.001-07:002023-04-14T10:22:56.564-07:00WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE PHILIPPINES 1
<b>BRUTALIZING WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE PHILIPPINES
by E.. San Juan, Jr.<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt03Wawjt5-6zFHzM9Ude3t6j00XfSR98WS6zxdn6MW4MUqpT2CH93Dc75PxDcdpF9IDMXSwDCBFN_P1O8vRaRgSuOjPDy5AXyCq7_XBbG5kJPIZ4-mSFqCdRTYoRrcT2q_2mt82u3VjBQyGVVvwwMRtvRiZuaDp7gMKxHRHaAW_FUEy5SMY/s239/Unknown-1.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt03Wawjt5-6zFHzM9Ude3t6j00XfSR98WS6zxdn6MW4MUqpT2CH93Dc75PxDcdpF9IDMXSwDCBFN_P1O8vRaRgSuOjPDy5AXyCq7_XBbG5kJPIZ4-mSFqCdRTYoRrcT2q_2mt82u3VjBQyGVVvwwMRtvRiZuaDp7gMKxHRHaAW_FUEy5SMY/s320/Unknown-1.jpeg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2DU6bcNjhNnauXeixz6HcVq9CqC3gpo2adflAM7pQS1RokIl_51GFhHjm86lgwIRn6TcdAiCP7rvDu41woAKgKYPvkORA-paDhGcGbwbh3HDdvyU_wPtL-N-4J2PSPjeaX0931i72dmlX54MFCpPG3vjDXoGUuHmOjiyMdV6rdIp5VNDJrmo/s251/Unknown-2.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2DU6bcNjhNnauXeixz6HcVq9CqC3gpo2adflAM7pQS1RokIl_51GFhHjm86lgwIRn6TcdAiCP7rvDu41woAKgKYPvkORA-paDhGcGbwbh3HDdvyU_wPtL-N-4J2PSPjeaX0931i72dmlX54MFCpPG3vjDXoGUuHmOjiyMdV6rdIp5VNDJrmo/s320/Unknown-2.jpeg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFmatQ8jIelsSyVz8Tyo3DU1YyPbXwsFM21HX4ZVL5KXIfklCTFkKLXkTObfePPUDB5INBtxSsAxRTYeQpOBEeEZ_H9oqJBSaGaDpNlJQXbkd9CLywSkJiIgsby-iLMbUEsAQzv76jFRl1OBatoANjlyIH8K5VTC-wIOnKSAI8QQVe7GuIQnY/s225/Unknown.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFmatQ8jIelsSyVz8Tyo3DU1YyPbXwsFM21HX4ZVL5KXIfklCTFkKLXkTObfePPUDB5INBtxSsAxRTYeQpOBEeEZ_H9oqJBSaGaDpNlJQXbkd9CLywSkJiIgsby-iLMbUEsAQzv76jFRl1OBatoANjlyIH8K5VTC-wIOnKSAI8QQVe7GuIQnY/s320/Unknown.jpeg"/></a></div></b>
IN his classic “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” Karl Marx amends Hegel’s quip on history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce (1986 97). With the former Philippine dictator Marcos’s son in office, will farcical acts be the spectacle for the next six years?. Imagine the sons of Somoza, Trujillo or Batista returning to their banana republics—that would indeed be “the tradition of all the dead generations” acting as toxic “nightmare on the brain of the living.”
For over twenty years, the Marcos dynasty staged a comeback with their wealth and retinue of factotums intact. They consolidated power in the Ilocos provinces and began a program of selective retrieval. Aided by consumerist amnesia and a new generation bereft of historical knowledge, they inched their way to governorship and congressional seats. Amid widespread vote-buying and fixing of the Smartmatic computerized machines in the May 2022 elections, Marcos Jr., known as “Bongbong,” was installed as president (CENPEG 2022). They struck a bargain with strongman Duterte by allowing the daughter Sara to run as vice-president to safeguard the father from any criminal investigation after his tenure.
Despite some citizen-groups’ protests and media demands to review the election results by the Duterte-controlled Commission on Elections, nothing was done to block Bongbong’s proclamation. The corrupted State ideological apparatuses to pacify class conflicts (legislature, courts, police, military bureaucracy) had already been eviscerated. The farce seems to be the consensus of the oligarchic clans—Arroyo, Estrada, Duterte, Marcos, billionaire Chinoy networks—with huge funding by corporate interests, religious, and military blocs that have so far benefited from their rule.
Estranging Affinities
The Marcos dynasty has so far successfully defied all court verdicts since their return from Hawaii in 1992. Bongbong himself refused to pay back-taxes while his mother, Imelda Marcos, sentenced to jail a while ago, remains free to flaunt her wealth—not her fabled thousand shoes, but the dynasty’s “past glory” reconfirmed by Marcos’ burial in the cemetery of
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heroes by Duterte. The elaborate State funeral was the ritual designed to repair the frayed social cohesion that is somehow ascribed to the Aquino clan represented by the “pink party” of the Liberal Party (Roxas clan) and the defeated candidate Leni Robredo. A compromise was reached with the Duterte bloc, compensating for Bongbong’s frustrated vice-presidential ambition in 2016.
Meanwile, Bongbong’s sister Senator Imee Marcos devised another farcical stragegy. To reinforce the Cambridge Analytica/Google handling of the Marcos “brand” in social media, She financed a film entitled “Maid in Malacanang” to revise the spectacle of the family’s 1968 panicked escape from the palace as the infurtiated masses smashed the gates and soon occupied the dictator’s sanctuary. It was a desperate attempt to alter the media discourse on the impact of the people’s anger and repudiation of the patriarch’s martial law (1972-1986) and its horrors. Somehow, the tragic show needs comedic retouching.
Paradoxical Inversions
For many reviewers, Imee’s propaganda ploy was an abject failure. Rappler, the news outfit headed by Maria Ressa, recent Nobel Prize winner, fact-checked the film’s truthfulness by comparing it with the book by Arturo Aruiza, Marcos’s military aide. Rappler testified to the film’s disingenous erasure of Marcos’ failure to squelch the Ramos-Enrile mutiny which sparked the EDSA “People Power” insurrection (Tequero 2022). Instead of showing the mayhem overtaking the household, the film depicts Imee fully in charge of what was going on. She was jefe con cojones.
The film depicted Imee displacing the regular staff and projecting herself as her father’s trusted manager—the real heir to his prestige, authority, intelligence. Affinities eclipsed alienating divisions. Deconstruction of conventional gender-role and class-subordination, however, produced the opposite: glamorizing the new androgynous Imee as unifying official/ managerial elite, marginalizing Bongbong and vindicating the patron-client reciprocity—the supreme Filipino value, as mainstream academics assure us.
Imee’s cinematic role (“pinakamahusay na katulong”) with Marcos’ blessing—:”my darling genius of a girl”—seeks to salvage the eroded dignity/power of the dictator. Marcos was emasculated with physical
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disabiities that constrained patriarchal hubris. In its absence, Imee shed off whatever feminine mystique she had and took over the refurbishment of the damaged Marcos “brand” by role-switching and re-identifying her lot with the loyal subaltern-proletarian cohort. It’s difficult, however, to insinuate the EDSA crowd into the film, given its association with the Aquinos as persecutors.
We can not yet fully assess the impact of this farcical episode.The latest news is that embassies abroad have been ordered to propagate the film. While Imee’s concoction opened to much fanfare, another film entitled KATIPS about anti-Marcos activists and rebellious youth who fought the dictatorship attracted more attention and sympathy. We predict more farcical offerings to cement the widening fissures of the neocolonial structure established by more than a century of U.S. military, economic and cultural domination since the Filipino-American War (1899-1913; see San Juan 2021)..
The Gossip-Master Intervenes
Historian Ambeth Ocampo noted the film’s “twisted retelling of history,” but was more vexed by the director’s “artistic license,” as illustrated by the attempt to smear Cory Aquino by depicting her as “playing mahjong with Carmelite nuns when the fate of the nation hung in a balance. ” Ocampo adds that “the suppressed Marcos narrative provided by Imee Marcos is that the Marcoses were driven from Malacanang by fair weather friends who looked down on them for their provincial and nonelitist origins” (2022).
In short, “Maid in Malcanang” is a gambit to cast the Marcos dynasty as victims deserving empathy, and in fact becoming the uncanny exemplars of the nationalist movement. Contrary to the view that Imee’s vanity film hopes to exude a humanist appeal, its drawing-power are the female stars who supposedly can seduce thousands of fans and devotees on behalf of the oligarchs.
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Again, the irony traps Imee/dynasty’s effort to recapture the aura of the pre-Marcos image: Malacanang cannot be recast into a slumdweller or peasant-farmer’s residence. Nor can the fashionably-attired Imee mimick the harried servant-maid obsequisly following orders. Just about the same time the film grabbed headlines, the capture of a much-abused pollitical activist, Adora Faye de Vera, was announced by the metropolitan police.
Spoiling the Malacanang Opera
De Vera, 68 years old, was arrested last August 26 for alleged involvement in “multiple murder, with the use of exposives and antipersonnel mine.” She was first arrested for pasting anti-government posters in October 1976 and sexually abused and tortured by the military until June 1977. Parts of her body were burned, toenails and fingers crushed, remaining naked for some time; and she was repeatedly raped. The responsible culprits—eleven soldiers and three civilians—were members of the Military Intelligence Group, Constabulary Security Unit, and 231 PC Company of Quezon Province (Martial Law Files 2012). After repeated sexual assaults, De Vera got pregnant and had to induce an abortion. Her husband Manuel disappeared 22 years ago and has remained a desaparecido to this day.
It is publicly know that Filipino military officers since then—from Marcos to Duterte’s regime—have been notorious for relentless rapacity and barbarism. This seems to be their claim for manly honor and distinction ever since the U.S. established the Philippine Scouts to assist their bloody suppression of Filipinos refusing McKinley’s “Benevolent Assimilation.” The PC (now the PNP/Philippine National Police) was then headed by the late General Fidel Ramos. Together with De Vera were Rolando Moralles and Flora Coronacion who were raped by 14 men numerous times; after their torture, they performed the official roles of “desaparecidos” in the State’s theater of predatory entertainment.
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Just like Duterte’s death-squad, none of the torturers had been charged (Melencio 1998). All in all, twenty security men were involved in this documented outrage against De Vera, Morales, and Coronacion..
De Vera’s second arrest occurred in October 23, 1983 during a military encirclement in Bicol province. She was then 30 years old, married with two children. She was shot in the leg. Since her imprisonment in 1976 up to now, De Vera has been suffering from her traumatic encounter with the police and officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Varona 2022). Arrested in Metro Manila, she has been flown to a jail in Iloilo City, where more farcical events are sure to be witnessed.
Cry of the Multitude
De Vera is only one of the thousands of political prisoners who suffered the vicious depravity of the Marcos martial-law regime. Amnesty International and other human-rights observers have documented 3,275 killed, 35,000 tortured, and 70,000 incarcerated persons during the Marcos dictatorship....Some 2,520 Filipinos were ‘salvaged’—that is, tortured, mutilated and dumped on a roadside for public display” (McCoy 2001) KARAPATAN and the Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines have preserved records of the human-rights abuses of the Marcos years.
For lack of space, I can only cite here the case of Maria Cristina Rodriguez, one of the thousands of victims of the Marcos “conjugal dictatorship.” Rodriguez is now the executive director of Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument to Heroes), a museum for martial-law victims. In a public testimony dated September 8, 2016, as requested by the Supreme Court concerning the Duterte regime’s plan to bury Marcos in the nations cemetery for heroes, Rodriguez recounted her ordeal. Here is an excerpt:
Yes, Marcos soldiers tortured and abused me. I saw others as well, a boy screaming from zaps of electric torture, a friend with polio beaten black and blue, a man with both feet bandaged because a military officer had pressed them with red-hot iron during
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interrogation...My godmother was killed by intelligence agents inside a hospital room. I’ve talked with mothers whose son or daughter was shot pointblank by men in uniform. I’ve myself documented hundreds of cases of Filipinos who underwent varying levels of inhuman treatment from the Marcos dictatorship—farmers executed, pregnant women raped, children massacred” (quoted in Beltran 2022).
The return of the Marcos dynasty to power—surely not as maid-servants glamorized by Imee Marcos—signals a revanchist move to revamp the narrative of the February 1986 debacle. For the Marcos loyalists, history may just be “tsimis” or gossip. But they take it seriously. One sign is the attempt to abolish the Presidential Committee on Good Government (PCGG) tasked to recover Marcos’ stolen wealth amounting to billions of dollars. Another is the move to sustain Duterte’s withdrawal of the country from the sway of the International Criminal Court which has been pursuing cases filed by many victims of Duterte’s drug-war since he assumed office as mayor of Davao City (1988-98).
Duterte admitted complicity with deathsquads in 2015. He boasted wanting to kill 100,000 people before the end of his presidency. Over 30,000 victims of extrajudicial killlings under Duterte’s watch have been recorded, though only about 1,400 have been reported by the national police. Exhumations of the hundreds of slain “drug suspects” and autopsies are being processed to determine the authenticity of police records.
Political Prisoners Galore
The rampant practice of stigmatizing anyone critical of government policies as “terrorists” began with Cory Aquino and worsened with Duterte’s red-tagging policy. Any dissenter is tagged as a “terrorist” supporter of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army. This originated with Sec. Colin Powell’s declaration in 2001 of the two groups as “terrorist” organizations. Under Duterte’s rule, the number of political prisoners ballooned to 592. Compare the number of detainees under President Arroyo (343) and under Benigno Aquino Jr. (306). This was before “Bloody Sunday, March 7, 2021, when Duterte’s police killed nine union workers and arrested six—all justified by his “shoot-to-kill” style of eradicating those he had already judged guilty (Bolledo 2022; ABS-CBN 2015).
With continued imposition of arbitrary arrests, rabid witch-hunting of branded “reds,” and subservience of the courts and legislature to the diktat of Marcos-Duterte,
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the already congested prisons—ghettoes of poor farmers, workers, and unemployed— promise more misery and deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens who thought they had the Bill of Rights and other constitutionally-mandated liberties.
As of June 22, 2022, the total number of political prisoners—critics of the regime arrested with guns and grenades planted on them—was 803. Among the most deprived and penalized are women, dating back to the time of De Vera and Rodriguez. In 2010, I discussed the plight of fifteen political prisoners who count among the most dehumanized (San Juan 2010) and campaigned for their release.
According to KARAPATAN, the most trusted human-rights monitor in the Philippines, there were 126 woman prisoners in March 2021, the majority of whom are charged for being associated with dissidents labeled “terrorists.” Many are human rights defenders, activists involved in helping workers, urban squatters, indigenous communities. Because they work for the deprived sectors, they are accused of being supporters of the terrorist insurgents to justify their illegal arrest and continuing detention in horrible quarters. They are presumed innocent until proven guilty—a principle rejected by the “justice” system in the Philippines. They are punished for trumped-up charges; some have been released after a long expensive appeal.
We appeal to the global community to demand the immediate release of the following political detainees who have already borne the brunt of State terrorism and cruelty:
1. Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis, a peasant organizer of Amihan National Federation of Woman. She just gave birth to her baby Randall Emmanuel when she was arrested on Decenmber 2, 2020. At 5AM, soldiers broke into the farmer’s house she was staying in, pointed guns at her and her 2-month old infant; the soldiers could not produce any search warrant, harassed and tormented her and later claimed they found firearms and explosives.
2. Raina Mae Nasino, organizer for KADAMAY, Manila. Nasino was arrested with two other activists on November 5, 2019. She gave birth to Baby River on July 1, 2020. After two months, jail authorities separated mother and child. Her baby died on October 9, 2020, only three months old. The distraught Nasino was granted furlough for only 6 hours to attend her baby’s wake and internment, while suffering from COVID-19 symptoms for which no medical help was provided by prison authorities.
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3. Karina Mae dela Cerna,NNARA-Youth’s Nationall Deputy Secretary-General. Dela Cerna was arrested with 51 other persons in Bacolod City in the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Office. Trumped-up charges were filed due to the discovery of firearms and explosives in the surrounding area.
4. Myles Cantal Albasin, fomer chair of Anakbayan, Cebu. Albasin was arrested wth five other youth from Negros Oriental where she was participating in community immersion with the farmers. Soldiers alleged that she engaged with them in a firefight, a claim disputed by residents of the area.
5. Renalyn Gomez Tejero, paralegal aid for KARAPATAN, Caraga. She was arrested on trumped-up charges of murder in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte, on March 21, 2021. KARAPATAN has been in the government list of “communist fronts.”
6. Alma Moran, member of the secretariat of Manila Workers Union. Moran was arrested together with Reina Mae Nasino and Ram Carlo Bautista in a BAYAN office in Tondo, Manila. in November 5, 2019. After a second search of the office, the police claimed to have found firearms and explosives—the usual modus operandi.
7. Frenchie Mae Cumpio, journalist for Eastern Vista. Cumpio was arrested in Tacloban City on February 8, 2020. Police claimed to have found a pistol and grenade inside the room where she and a companion were staying. With the money confiscated upon their arrest, Cumpio and lay worker Mariel Domequil also face trumped-up charges of terrorist financing—still unproven to this day.
8. Rowena Rosales, former member of Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE). Rosales was arrested wih her husband Oliver after a day at their thrift store in Bulacan on August 11, 2018. Police claimed to have confiscated a bag of firearms and explosives in their premises without any testimony from other than the police department.
9. Gloria Campos Tumalon, member of MAPASU, Surigao del Sur. Tumalon is accused of being a member of the NPA and arrested in March 29, 2020, based on a warrant related to an incident when the NPA took soldiers as prisoners on war in December 2018/ She is one of 468 persons accused on the same warrant.
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10. Nenita Calamba de Castro, member of GABRIELA, Butuan. De Castro was arrested in May 32, 2038, with charges unknown. GABRIELA has been targeted as a terrorist front, an example of libelous defamation.
11. Romana Raselle Shamina Astudillo, deputy secretary general of KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno, Metro Manila. Astudillo was arrested in December 10, 2020, Human Rights Day. and accused of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. The militant KMU has been targetted by the police/military for being a communist front.
12. Ge-ann Perez, arrested in March 24, 2019, by virtue of association with Francisco Fernanex, a peace consulted for the National Democratic Front, and his wife Cleofre Lagtapon. All face charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives—the recurrent alibi of governmen security henchmen.
13. Virginia Bohol Villamor was arrested past midnight on November 8, 2018. She was accompanied by her husband, Alberto, and Vicente Ladlad, peace consultant of the National Democratic Front, Philippines. Although Villamor suffered agonizing pain from a pelvic fracture, she was forced to drop to the floor, while soldiers pointed their rifles at her and companions. They were later charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
A Warning to Military-Police Agencies
With the September 17, 2022 passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act (H.R. 8313) in the U.S. Congress, some constraint on the Phiippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Phiippines in inflicting warrantless arrests, harassment, torture and other human-rights violations might spare future victims. If those practices continue, the Bill seeks to suspend assistance to the police and military amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in logistics, weapons, training, etc. During his rule, Marcos Sr. received billions of U.S. military aid much of which he stole and transferred to secret bank accounts in Switzerland, Panama, and elsewhere, now utilized by his son and minions.
Bill 8313 is based on the U.S. State Department’s annual reports of “arbirtrary or unlawful killings” committed during Duterte’s drug wars. It mentions the case of Senator Leila de Lima who has been detained for two years as “a staunch critic of the drug war killings,” as well as labor leaders and legislators killed or held as political prisoners (exemplified by the prisoners tallied above), Not to be neglected is mention of the
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government’s infamous “vilification of dissent...being institutionalized and normalized” based on the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. This Act enables the billion-pesos-funded NTF- ELCAC (National Task Force To End Local Communist Armed Conflict) to stifle dissent from civil society. It functions to void the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights and resuscitate the authoritarian, fascist method of social harmony imposed by Bongbong’s father nearly forty years ago—a tragedy now being revived as excruciating farce.
REFERENCES
ABS-CBN. 2015. :”Duterte admits links to Davao Death Squads.” News. (May 25).
Beltran, Michael. 2022. “Haunted by our continuing pain: Martial law survivors react to Marcos restoration.” The News Lens (June 8). <international.thenewslens.com>
Bolledo, Jairo. 2022. “In Numbers: Political Prisoners in the Philippines Since 2001. Rappler (August 21).
CENPEG. 2022. “The May 2022 Elections and the Marcos Restoration: Looking Back and Beyond.” Monthly Political Analysis No. 15. Quezon City: Center for People Empowerment in Governance.
Martial Law Files. 2012. “Adora Faye de Vera.” Martial Law Files. (Dec. 4, 2012). <www.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/adora-faye-de-vera-2/floc>
Marx, Karl & Frederick Engels. 1968. “”The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In Selected Works. New York: International Publishers.
McCoy, Alfred. 2001. “Dark Legacy: Human Rights Under the Marcos Regime.” In Memory, Truth Telling and the Pursuit of Justice: A Conference on the Legacy of the Marcos Dictatorship. Quezon City: Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University.
Melencio, Gloria Esquerra. 1998. Report for Martial Law Files Website, Sponsored by the Commission on Human Rights, UN Devepment Program for Claimants 1081.
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Ocampo, Ambeth. 2022. “Maid n Malacanang: A biased review.” Philippine
Daily Inquirer (August 5). <https://www.inquirer.dotnet/>
San Juan, E. 2013. “U.S. Imperial Humanitarian BlessingL Torture of Women Political Prisoners in the Philippines.” International Marxist Humanist Organization. (27 August). ,https://imhojournal.org/articles/iperial-humanitarianism-u.s.- neocolony-torture-war-women-prisoners-philippines-e-san-juan>
——. 2021. Maelstrom over the Killing Fields: Interventions in the Project of National-Democratic Liberation. Quezon City: Pantax Press.
Toquero, Loreben. 2002. “A made-up Marcos name: False misleading claims abound in ‘Maid in Malacanang.” Rappler (August 11, 2022).
United States Congress. 2022. “H.R. 3884. Philippine Human Rights Act. “ Congressional Records. Washington DC: United States Congress. <https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-Congress/house-bill/3884>
Varona, Inday Espino. 2022. “Arrested rebel a symbol of Marcos atrocities against women dissidents.” Rappler (August 26).
___________
E. SAN JUAN, Jr. was recently visiting professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines; and a former fellow of the W.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. His recent books are U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan) and Peirce’s Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective (Lexington Books).
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-55270187563228159842023-03-21T13:17:00.009-07:002023-03-31T18:47:25.324-07:00SURI NG NOBELANG DESAPARESIDOS NI LUALHATI BAUTISTA
<b>
GUNITA, PAGSUSUMAKIT, PAGKILALA, KATUBUSAN
Isang Pagbasa’t Suri sa Sining ng Desaparesidos ni Lualhati Bautista
E. San Juan, Jr. University of Connecticut philcsc@gmail.com
<b></b></b>
Abstrak
Sinikap ng hermenyutikang suri rito na ilahad ang politikang seksuwal na nakapaloob sa karanasan ng mga aktibista sa panahon ng diktaduryang Marcos at kapaligirang sirkumstansya. Sa sakunang sinapit nila, nakatambad ang barbarikong dahas ng sistemang patriyarko’t piyudal at imperyalismo. Sa paghahanap sa nawalang anak, at nawaglit na pagka-magulang, naisagisag dito ang pinsalang dinanas ng marami, di lamang ang mga desaparesidos. Nakapagitna rin ang dangal ng ama/kalalakihan sa krisis na sumira sa ritwal ng kasal at partido, naipagsanib ang kapalaran ng mamamayan at kapalaran ng bansa. Nalikha sa partikular na danas ang isang pambansang alegorya mula sa testimonya ng mga biktima, kung saan ang trauma o hilakbot ay simbolo ng krisis ng buong bansa. Naging talinghaga ang tungkulin ng gunita sa sitwasyon ng mga anak, na magpapatuloy sa napatid na historya ng mapagpalayang pagpupunyagi— pahiwatig na malulutas ang kontradiksiyon ng panahon at lugar sa kolektibong pagsisikap ng mga salinlahi upang makamit ang pambansang demokrasya at soberanya ng bansa.
Susing Salita
Batas Militar, desaparesidos, ina, neokolonya, rebolusyon, sakripisyo
Kritika Kultura 40 (2023): 29–057 © Ateneo de Manila University
<https://ajol.ateneo.edu/kk>
San Juan, Jr. / Gunita, Pagsusumakit, Pagkilala, Katubusan 30
Abstract
This hermeneutical critique seeks to articulate the sexual politics submerged in the experiences of selected activists during and after the period of the Marcos dictatorship. In the disasters they suffered, we find revealed the barbaric violence of imperialism and the patriarchal- feudal system. In the quest for the missing child and their own kidnapped self-recognition, the narrative symbolized the damage suffered by whole communities, not just the forcibly disappeared. The plot center-stages the ordeal of oligarchic honor in the crisis that destroyed the rituals of marriage and party discipline. In the process, the fate of individual citizens and the fate of the nation coalesced. Embodied in manifold experiences, the interwoven testimonies of the families involved function as a national allegory in which the traumatic terror of the Martial Law regime becomes a concrete universal for all. Memory/recollection as protagonist becomes a key mediation for the children’s predicament, serving as an analogical figure for the disrupted dialectic of the historical project for the people’s liberation. It serves as a trope that the contradictions of time and space, body and soul, ethics and geopolitics, will be resolved by the collective effort of organic people’s agencies to achieve the goals of national democracy and sovereignty.
Keywords
Martial law, desaparecidos, mother, neocolonialism, revolution, sacrifice
About the Author
E. SAN JUAN, Jr., emeritus professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Ethnic Studies, was previously a fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, and Fulbright professor of American Studies, Katholieke Universitat Leuven, Belgium. He also taught recently at Polytechnic University of the Philippines and the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. His recent books are Faustino Aguilar (UST Press), Maelstrom over the Killing Fields (Pantax Press), Kontra-Modernidad (UP Press) and Peirce’s Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective (Lexington Press). His critical study of all the novels of Lualhati Bautista is scheduled to be launched this year 2023.
Kritika Kultura 40 (2023): 30–057 © Ateneo de Manila University
<https://ajol.ateneo.edu/kk>
San Juan, Jr. / Gunita, Pagsusumakit, Pagkilala, Katubusan 31
INTRODUCTION
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
—United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5
Hahanapin kita sa angil ng punglo/ Sa tinik ng gubat silahis ng sulo /Ipagtatanong ka sa libong kamao /Sa kawa’y ng bandera’t dagundong ng maso/ Hahanapin kita sa lunting bukirin / Sa ngiti ng sanggol, sa ihip ng hangin/ Kung sa paglaya na ang inyong pagdating / At wala ka roo’y hahanapin pa rin.
—Adora Faye de Vera
Hangga’t maaari, makisama kayong mabuti sa lahat ng tao. Mga minamahal huwag kayong maghiganti; ipaubaya ninyo iyon sa Diyos. Sapagkat nasusulat, “Akin ang paghihiganti, ako ang gaganti, sabi ng Panginoon.” Kaya “Kung nagugutom ang iyong kaaway, pakanin mo; kung nauuhaw, painumin mo; sa gayon, mapapahiya siya sa kanyang sarili.”
—Ang Sulat ni Pablo sa Mga Taga-Roma, 12:17-19
Ang Bagong Tipan
Ang malikhaing pagbasa ng panitikan ay isang pagpapakahulugan, isang sining o agham ng interpretasyon na tinaguriang hermenyutika. Mula pa sa klasikang siglo ng Antiquity, nina San Agustin at patristikong komentarista, mga exegesis ng Koran at Lumang Tipan ng mga Hebreo, napagkayarian ang wastong teksto at pag-unawa sa apat na aspekto ng Scripture: 1) anagohikal (kolektibo at politikal na kahulugan ng historya); 2) moral (sikolohiyang pagtarok sa indibidwal); 3) alegorikal (susi sa kodigo ng kahulugan); at 4) literal (reperensiya sa karaniwang danas). Kahit magsimula sa literal na antas ang pagtunton sa sirkulo ng hermenyutika, maiintidihan natin ang ugnayan ng lahat ng dimensiyong nabanggit sa isang makabuluhang totalidad.
Nilinaw ni Fredric Jameson na ginamit ito ng mga pantas ng Simbahan upang mabigyan-katuturan para sa mga di-binyag ang kulturang minana sa mga Hebreo: habang nakasalig sa obhetibong datos ng kasaysayan, bukas ito sa pagdulot ng sistema ng metapora o alegorikong pagpapakahulugan. Pahayag ni Jameson: “Allegory is here the opening up of the text to multiple meanings, to successive rewritings and overwritings which are generated as so many levels and as so many supplementary interpretations” (29-30). Batay sa perspektibong ito, susuriin natin ang ugnayan ng pigura at ideya, sagisag at konsepto, penomena at hiwatig na umuugit sa mga tauhan at pangyayari, na siyang bukal ng masusing “kritisismo ng buhay” ng nobela bilang likhang-sining.
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Isang halimbawa ng estratehiyang gamit dito ay mapapansin sa diskurso ni Mary Aileen Diez-Bacalso, pangulo ng International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances. Inihahanay niya ang dawalang pangyayari: ang pasinaya ni Pangulong Bongbong Marcos, anak ng diktador Ferdinand Marcos, at pagdiriwang sa ala-ala ng mga biktima noong panahon ng “martial law” sa Bantayog ng mga Bayani noong Hunyo 30, 2022. Walang imik si Marcos Jr. ukol sa mga biktima ng kaniyang ama, habang itinampok ng mga kamag-anak ng mga biktima ang kilabot ng diktadurya (1972-86). Nirepaso ang malupit na paglapastangan at pagpaslang sa ilan-libong aktibista nina Loretta Ann Rosales at Bonifacio Ilagan. Ipinaaabot nila sa anak ng diktador na “we do not absolve you of historical responsibility” sa mga naturang krimen, at tinambuli ang sumpa nila na “to continue to sacrifice our lives to destroy the distortions” na lantad sa pagbibida ni Marcos Jr. ng mga di- umano’y kabutihan at kaunlarang dulot ng malagim na yugto ng ating kasaysayan (Diez-Bacalso).
Nakasiksik sa pagtatambal sa dalawang tagpo ang apat na kategorya ng pagpapakahulugan: mula sa realistikong pangyayari (pagdurusang pisikal ng mga biktima), alegorikong pahiwatig (kasalanang hindi makakalimutan), hanggang sa moralidad (responsibilidad ng nagkasala) at analohikal na kahulugan (impak ng nangyari sa kapalaran at kinabukasan ng bansa). Masasalamin sa nobela ang pagsasanib ng mga kontradiksiyong kalakip sa kahirapang dinanas ng mga magulang, ang magkatunggaling reaksyon ng mga anak, at pagkakatahi ng katotohanan at kabulaanan sa pakikipagsapalaran ng mga kapanalig sa panahon ng batas militar at sumunod na pagsusuma nito.
Hanggang ngayon, ang sugat o trauma ng “martial law” ay hindi pa naghihilom. Patunay rito ang babala ng United Nations Human Rights Committee ukol sa “widespread practice of torture and ill-treatment in places of detention” (2022 Meeting). Pananagutan ng lahat na makialam sa eskandalong ito. Noong 2018, naging tanyag ang pagsasalin ng nobela sa teatro ni Guelan Luarca—walang espasyo rito upang asikasuhin ang pagkakaiba nito sa sining ni Bautista (konsultahin ang rebyu ni Tariman). Sa ngayon, tangka nating mailahad ang halaga ng pagsisikap mahulagpusan ang sakripisyong naisadula sa paraang pasalaysay. Nilunggati ng nobelista na maipadama sa bagong henerasyon ang kumplikadong buod at responsibilidad ng kanilang pagka-Filipino na nakaugat sa madugong bahagi ng ating kasaysayan.
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KRONIKA NG BANSAG AT KONTEKSTO NG PAGLAPAT
Halaw ang salitang “desaparesidos” mula sa Kastilang “desaparecidos,” o mga taong nawala. Naimbestigahan na ito ni Bautista sa naunang nobela niyang Bata, Bata... Pa’no Ka Ginawa? at Dekada ‘70 (San Juan, “Paano Ginawa”; San Juan, “Lakas”). Noong panahon ng “dirty war” sa Argentina noong dekada 1970, inilapat ang etiketang ito sa 10,000-30,000 dinukot at pinatay ng mga kawal ng sandatahang militar ng Estado, pulisya at mga galamay ng Estado. “Operation Condor” ang tawag sa sistematikong pagsugpo sa mga aktibistang estudyante at unyonista sa Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay) ng Latin Amerika suportado ng
U.S. tulad ng pag-suporta kay Ferdinand Marcos.
Maraming patalastas noon ay nakulapulan ng bansag na “sapilitang pagkawala”— hindi kusang nawala, o nagtago lamang—ng mga biktimang tinortyur at pinatay upang patahimikin sila o pigilang makapagsalita. Sinugpo ang karapatang pantaong lumahok sa pampublikong aktibidad (San Juan, U.S. Imperialism 163-80). Ang pagbabawal na ito ay tandisang paglabag sa doktrina ng mga karapatang pantaong pinagkasunduan sa UN Charter. Pinagkayarian iyon ng lahat ng bansang kasapi sa U.N., kabilang ang Pilipinas, kaya obligadong sundin lahat ng nagpatibay dito.
SUBAYBAYAN ANG BAKAS
Ngunit alam ng lahat ang kabalintunaan: iba ang nakasulat sa papel at iba naman ang masasaksihan sa realidad. Ang pinakaunang desaparesidong natukoy ay si Charlie del Rosario, estudyante sa Polytechnic University of the Philippines, na dinukot noong 13 Marso 1971, sa loob ng Lepanto Compound. Sinapantahang Task Force Lawin ng Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) ang responsable. Bago pa ito ipataw ang proklamasyong 1081 ng batas militar noong Setyembre 1972 (Javate-de Dios, Daroy, Kalaw-Tirol; McCoy). Paunawa ng sigwang umaalimbukay sa panganoring abot-tanaw ang kudetang lumansag sa republikang sistema ng politika at administrasyon.
Sa panahon ng batas militar nangyari ang pinakamasahol na sapilitang pagkawala, ang Southern Tagalog 10, mga aktibistang dinukot, tinortyur at pinatay. Pagkaraan ng ilang taon, apat na labi ng mga bangkay ng sampung biktima ang nadiskubre, na napagkilala, na sina Rizalina Ilagan, Cristina Catalla, Gerardo Faustino, at Modesto Sison. Dalawa pang mga buto nina Virgilio Silva at Salvador Panganiban ang nahukay sa Tagaytay, Cavite. Bago pa sa kanila, tatlong aktibista ang unang sinalvage
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(“salvage” ang idyomang nauso upang ipahiwatig ang pagpaslang, kabaligtaran ng ibig sabihin sa Ingles): sina Rolando Federis, Flora Coronacion, at Adora Faye de Vera—pinatay sina Federis at Coronacion, ngunit si de Vera ay nakaligtas (sa anong himala!) at nakapagsalaysay ng pagtampalasan sa kaniya. Iyon ang isa sa basehan ng testimonya nina Anna at Roy sa nobela (Ilagan 18-28).
Sa panahong sumunod, ang mga bantog na desaparesidos—sa ilandaang nakalista—ay sina Jonas Burgos, Karen Empeno, at Sherlyn Cadapan. Ang matinding kahirapang dinanas ng dalawang babaeng estudyante ay nakatala sa testimonya ni Raymond Manalo (294-314). Matingkad na alingawngaw o pag-uulit iyon ng mga nangyari kina Anna at Roy, protagonista sa nobela. Naging tunay ang katha. Subalit mapaglilimi na hindi naman tahasang “desaparesidos” ang mga pangunahing tauhan—sila’y dinakip at pinarusahan ng militar. Makahulugan ang pagkawala ng magulang, laluna ang ina, sa buhay nina Lorena at Malaya, na maituturing na manaka-nakang pagliban o kawalan. Iyon ang dobleng hiwatig na “desaparesidos,” na nawalan ng magulang ang dalawang anak (Mendiola). Nagsalikop ang literal at alegorikal na kahulugan sa interpretasyon ng karanasan ng mag-asawa, hindi nawaglit ang masaklap na realidad sa likod ng metapora o sagisag na nagpasiwalat ng matining na katuturan ng mga penomenang puwedeng isaisantabi kung walang kaagapay na figurang retorikal.
Hindi lang isang dimensyon ang masisipat sa talinghaga ng pagkawala. Idagdag pa natin ang mahuhugot na analohiya: ang pagkawala sa sarili nina Roy at Anna. Ito ang aspektong moral at anagohikal. Naturol ni Roy na “gusto niyang umuwi sa kanyang sarili” (Desaparesidos 209). Umuwi sa pinanggalingan? Nawala ang anak ni Anna, kambal ng sarili bilang ina. Parikala nito’y nabiyak ang mga sarili, nahati o nasibak, kaya kailangang pagkabitin at itahi muli ang mga pragmentong nahiwalay upang mabuo ang pagkatao at kilalanin ang dalisay na sarili o identidad. Gayundin ang pamilya at ang partidong naging kapalit ng iniwang pamilya ng mga aktibista. Ito ang temang sentral: ang paghagilap ng koneksiyon ng nakalipas at ngayon upang makabuo ng mas makatotohana’t makatuwirang hinaharap. Tinahi at tinuhog ng nobela ang sumabog at nagkawatak-watak na kabuuan ng buhay ng mga protagonista.
Ano ba talaga ang umuukilkil sa malay ng mga protagonista? Pagbabalik sa dati o paghahanap sa nawalang bahagi? Ang buong naratibo ay pagpupunyaging isalaysay ang proseso ng pagsasanib ng sabog na sangkap ng pagkatao nina Roy at Anna, ang mga kontradiksiyong nagpasalimuot sa pakikipagsapalarang ito, sampu ng kontekstong sosyo-politikal. Isinalig ang partikular na buhay ng mga karakter dito sa kasaysayan ng sambayanan ng panahon ng batas militar ng diktaduryang Marcos at humaliling rehimen nina Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, at Arroyo (tungkol sa mga katampalasang naganap ng rehimeng Cory Aquino, konsultahin si Maglipon;
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Nemenzo). Ito ang anagohikal na palapag ng ating pagdukal sa sapin-saping kahulugan ng nobela.
PATAWID SA LUBAK AT BANGIN
Mapanghimasok ang sinumang magsusuri sa signipikasyong etikal-politikal ng mga tagpong nagbunsod sa pagkawala ng anak. Sino ang responsable sa mga desaparesidos? Mapagbirong palaisipan ba ito?
Sa pangkalahatang tanaw, ang nawalang bagay o tao rito ay si Malaya, ang anak ni Anna, na iniwan kay Karla, buntis na asawa ni Jinky, isang kasama sa kilusan. Nawala ang mag-ina. Nakatira iyon sa tahanan ng pamilya ni Roy na pinatay ng militar sa isang raid, ngunit nakuhang itakas ng ama. Hindi malaman kung saan napunta sina Karla at Malaya sa gitna ng ligalig at gulong bumalot sa mga nayong sumiklab sa labanan. Iyon ang naging obsesyon ni Anna mula nang sila’y mapalaya nang pumutok ang Pebrero 1986 People Power Revolution. Isang sindak na puminsala sa kaluluwa, higit pa sa pagtorture sa kaniya, dahil ang sugat noon ay hindi gagaling hanggang hindi bumabalik ang nawalang sanggol. Sa alegorikal na paghulo, ang tinutugis ay ang nawaglit na damdaming nagbubuklod sa mag-asawa at mga anak dahil sa pakikisangkot sa rebolusyon, sa isang dakilang adhikaing may layong higit pa sa pansariling kaabalahan ng karaniwang mamamayan.
Isang lunas ang nakuhang mapursigihan. Humilig si Anna sa kulto ng mga ina, wangis babaylan ng mga balo o nasawing asawa. Kaakibat nito ang sakripisyo ng anak bilang alay upang malunasan ang pagkakasala: ang paglabag sa totemikong awtoridad ng kalalakihan. Sa ilang kababaihan, ang babaylan ay naging sentro ng kulto sa paniniwalang senyas iyon ng sinaunang matriyarkal na lipunan. Sa kritisismo ni Paula Webster, mito o mistipikasyon iyon. At bagamat isinuob at sinamba ang mga diyosa sa altar, sa kongkretong kondisyon, inilagak lang sila sa tahanan na walang kapangyarihan (Webster 141-56). Mapanlinlang at mabighani ang maternidad at domestisidad, na siyang haligi at pundasyon ng patriyarkong paghahari ng kalalakihan. Subalit sa pagkawala ng rebolusyonaryong aktibidad (sinagisag ng pagkawala ng anak), ano ang alternatibong solusyon upang malunasan ang trauma?
Kung ama (diktadurya nina Marcos at mga heneral) ang bumuwag sa katarungan, sino ang liligtas sa mga nabiktimang mamamayan? Sa maternidad ng ina, na lumikha ng pagkatao ng komunidad, nakasalalay ang kaligtasan ng mga
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makatarungang bayani. Sa baligho’t ironikal na pag-ikot ng banghay, nakataya ito sa pagsulong ng mga pangyayaring di lubos na mapangangasiwaan. Ang tema ng nobela ay kalakip ng pagsisiyasat sa anong kahulugan ng paglalarawan ng inang tanging layon sa buhay niya, na ibinuhos sa rebolusyonaryong kilusan, ang hanapin ang nawawalang anak. Iyon ay pagtuklas sa kabuluhan at halaga ng kanilang rebolusyonaryong sikap at pasakit.
Pagtunton din iyon sa kabuluhan ng pakikisangkot. Bakit mahalaga iyon? At ano ang ipinahihiwatig nito sa konteksto ng krisis ng bayan mula nang bumagsak ang diktadurya at humalili ang rehimeng Aquino na kalauna’y higit pang mabagsik at malupit kaysa sa pinalitang halimaw? Bakit itinampok ang problema ng ina, kalakip ang linggatong ni Lorena, bilang sentro ng ulat tungkol sa kapalaran ng mga miyembro ng Partido Komunista/Bagong Hukbong Bayan, at kanilang kamag- anakan? Bakit pinagtuunan ng pansin ang pagkagulumihanan, ang pinsalang gumagambala sa kamalayan nina Anna at Roy, na sadyang nakakahilakbot at lubhang kalunos-lunos?
Sa ultimong pagsusuri ng kritiko, salungat ba o sang-ayon ang daloy ng mga pangyayari sa mapang iginuhit ng mga lider ng rebolusyonaryong kilusan? Ano ang relasyon ng ideya at aktuwal na pangyayari? Tumanggi ba ang karanasan na makatas sa hulmahan ng konsepto ng simbolo at talinghaga? O ipinagkanulo ba sila ng metapora’t palamuting retorikal? Matutugon ito sa diskursong idudulog.
PALIGSAHAN NG PANUNTUNAN AT PRAKTIKA
Sa dokumento ng partido (Communist Party) hinggil sa “On the Relations of the Sexes” na nirebisa sa “On Marriage,” walang patakaran sa pag-aalaga ng anak o pamamahala sa pamilya. Mabusisi ang dokumento tungkol sa panliligaw, pagtatalik, diborsiyo, atbp. Pinuna na ng maraming iskolar ang konserbatibo’t “androcentric” na pananaw ng dokumento na di-umano’y tinalaban ng “sexual panic” (Abinales 282). Sa pakiwari ko, lihis ang dogmatikong panukalang nabanggit sa tradisyon ng Yenan sa Tsina. Iyon ay bukas sa mga peministang tulad ni Ding Ling, na nabigyan ng inspirasyon nina Clara Zetkin at Rosa Luxemburg (Duyanevskaya 108-09). Kung sabagay, maski itong dalawang babaeng nagpasimuno ng peministang daloy sa kilusang sosyalismong pang-internasyonal ay limitado rin sanhi sa historikong pangangailangan (Zaretsky 96-97).
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Palibhasa’y nasa buntot tayo, batid natin ang mga kamalian ng nasa una, kaya hindi matino o matapat ang paghusgang mali o wasto ang kaisipan ng mga kontemporaneong kalahok sa pakikibaka. Ibitin natin ang ating pagtatasa muna.
Dagdag pang tanong: trahedya ba itong mga nangyaring puwedeng makapagbunsod ng katarsis o kaluwagan? O masokistang paglalarawan ng nakaduduwal na gahasa ni Anna at lalong nakaririmarim na pagpapahirap kay Roy? Hindi tuwa kundi alibadbad, hindi galak kundi hilakbot at suklam, ang ihahain nito sa dalumat ng mambabasa. Umabot sa naturalistikong estilo ang pagtatambad sa ritwal ng torture nakulayan ng banal o mala-sakramental na “aura” tulad ng mga hayup na kinakatay sa altar ng mga paganong bathala. Sa kabilang dako, mungkahi ni Susan Sontag, mapagmumuni ang obserbasyon ni Edmund Burke na lapat sa modernong kultura ng espetakulo: “I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others” (97). Alalaong baga, walang inosenteng mambabasa o kritiko.
Pagnilayan natin ang ilang proposiyong ito at mga konsekwensiyang mahihinuha mula rito. Paghahanap sa anak ni Anna, si Malaya, ang litaw na motor ng mga pangyayaring sumunod sa pagkapuksa ng pamilya ni Roy kung saan inilagak sina Karla at Malaya. Kalangkap nito ang torture ni Roy at karanasan pagkatapos. Ngunit ang motibasyon ng mga ideyang nakapaloob sa mga tauhan at relasyon nila ay sangkot sa kasaysayan ng bansa noong dekada 1970-1990. Ang motibasyon ng krisis ng mga tauhan ay kalakip sa sitwasyong nagbunsod sa pakikibaka (tungkol sa dramatistikong konseptong ginamit dito, tingnan si Burke 3-120). Paano masisilo at maiintindihan ang ugnayan ng kahapon at kinabukasan, ang mapait na mga nangyari at inaasahang lunas at kakamting ginhawa?
Sa ibang pagsasaayos ng ungkat natin, ano ang kahulugan at katuturan ng mga nangyari noong panahon ng karahasan bago ipataw ang batas militar at pagkaraan? Paano matatarok ang padron, iskema, o estruktura ng mga pangyayaring naganap simula mapatay si Nonong, unang asawa ni Anna at ama ni Malaya, hanggang sa magkatagpo muli ang mag-ina sa huling kabanata? Taglay ba ng mga hinabing pangyayari sa buhay ng ilang aktbista at kamag-anak nila ang makahulugang balangkas ng kasaysayan ng bansa, sampu ng panghihimasok ng U.S. sa diktaduryang Marcos at humaliling rehimen ni Corazon Aquino?
Sa maikling tugon, ang aral na mahuhugot ay walang absolutong kontrol ang tao sa takbo ng mga pangyayari. Ang pagkatuto sa paniwalang ito ay inilarawan ni Bautista sa mga katha sa Bayan Ko! (“Giyera,” halimbawa). Pag-angkop o pagtugma ng ninanais at pinapayagan ng nesesidad ang masasaksihan, partikular sa kuwentong “Ang Pag-ibig ay Isang Tula” (Bayan Ko! 1-118), o sa nobelang Sixty in the City at Sonata. Sa ibang parirala, pangangailangang gawad ng kasaysayan—sa
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mga relihiyoso, ang Diyos o mga bathala—ang nagdidikta ng kapalaran ng tao, ang tadhana ng mga lipi, lahi, at bansa. Ang kalayaan ay malalasap sa pagkilala at pagdalumat sa nesesidad (Marx 84).
Ngunit ang nobela ay may hain na natatanging kasagutan: nasa ating kolektibong pagpapasiya ang interpretasyon ng kahulugan ng mga pangyayari sa ating buhay na nagdudulot ng kalayaan sa gitna ng tadhana. Ayon kay Marx, dalawang magkatambal na panig (aktibo at pasibo) ang dapat pahalagahan: “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being—and because he feels what he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential force of man energetically bent on its object” (Manuscripts 182). Sa pakiwari ko, ang Desaparesidos ay pagtatampok sa maigting na sagupaan ng mga “passion” o masimbuyong damdamin ng mga tauhang nakikilahok sa isang pangmatagalang proyekto ng pagbabago’t liberasyon ng buong sambayanan.
PAGTALOS SA MITHI NG LIKHANG-SINING
Ang sumusunod na kuro-kuro ay puna sa mga pangunahing karakter at kanilang sikolohiya—lalo na, ang masimbuyong damdamin—na mahigpit kalangkap ng kanilang kilos at ugnayan sa kapaligiran. Higit dito, ilalapag ang isang komentaryo tungkol sa kung paano ang motibong nagpapagalaw sa mga tauhan ay nagkukubli sa lohika ng patriyarkong ideolohiya at nagsisiwalat ng limitasyon ng burgesyang pananaw sa pagtuklas ng ugat ng mga suliraning sumaklot sa buhay nina Anna at Roy, Jinky at Karla, Lorena at Malaya. Mula sa “katayuang “desaparesidos” (Karla at Malaya), lumitaw at lumabas ang katotohanan: ang “reunion” o pagsasama muli ng ina at anak ay nakapupukaw na paalala na ito ay alibi o pansamantalang lunas sa mahapdi’t malalang krisis ng buong bansa. Senyal ang balita sa huling pahina ng nobela ng Proklamasyon 1017 ni Arroyo, “martial law” muli. Hindi pa man nailibing si Marcos, bumabalik na ang multo ng nakalipas na dapat mapurga sa sikmura ng kaluluwa at lubos na mapalis, mapawi, mapanaw. Malikmata ba o bigwas ng katotohanang hindi pa tapos ang pakikibaka?
Tambad na ang nobela ay pagsaliksik sa karanasang historikal ng bayan noong panahong humantong sa batas militar at kinahinatnan. Isinakatawan iyon sa mga pakikipagsapalaran ng mga taong kalahok sa pakikibaka at kanilang mga kadugo’t kasama. Iniulat ni Leonard Davis ang papel ng kababaihan sa pag-ugit at pagsulong sa kasaysayan ng buong Filipinas—samakatwid, hindi matatarok ang papel ng kababaihan tiwalag sa krisis ng sambayanan (San Juan, Between Empire 167-93;
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Aguilar 42-58; Santos Maranan 42-50). Karamihan sa bagong henerasyon ay halos walang alam tungkol sa diktaduryang Marcos at pagdurusang inihasik nito sa buong bayan. Patibay ang positibong opinyon ng marami kina Marcos, at ang di umano’y popularidad ng kandidatong Bongbong Marcos Jr. sa halalang Mayo 2022. Tiyak na bunga ito ng maling ulat o propaganda ng panig ng mga dinastiyang oligarkong kasabwat ng diktador, lalo na ang rehimeng Arroyo at Duterte. Hindi lahat ay sanhi sa mahinang gunita o makalimot na gawi ng millennials.
Biro-biro ba ang bantang bumalik ang mga anak ni Marcos upang maningil ng ganting-pabuya sa bayan? Bakit tayo muling nabingit sa ganitong kapahamakan? Ito ba’y malisyang laro ng tadhana, o bunga ng kolonisadong mentalidad ng nakararami na lubog sa pagkaduhagi, sa konsumerismo at pagkaalipin sa kapitalistang kultura ng egotismo’t pag-iimbot? Tinugon ito ni Bautista sa pag-inog ng predikamento ng mga tauhan sa nobela.
PAGKINTAL NG HILAHIL AT BALISA
Kasaliw din ang sumaryo ng dekada ng batas militar sa gitna ng nobela, sa pagitan ng Kabanata 9 at 10, pahina 85-104. Ang unang siyam na kabanata ay nagtapos sa pag-iisang-dibdib nina Anna at Roy; ang kasunod na mga kabanata ay nakapokus sa pagsisiyasat sa problema nina Lorena, Roy, Karla, at Malaya. Makatutulong kung sisipiin natin bilang saligang plataporma ng akda ang repaso ng awtor hinggil sa kapaligiran noon. Sa pagunita ng nobelista:
Tumindi nang husto ang mga protesta laban kay Marcos at sa U.S. imperialism. Naging magulo ang kalagayan. Naganap ang tinatawag na first quarter storm, January 1970, na nilahukan ng libu-libong kabataan. Pinagbabaril ng tropa ng gubyerno—PC (Philippine Constabulary) at Metrocom (Metropolitan Command) ang mga nagrarally sa Mendiola, apat na estudyante ang patay. Sinundan ng Labor Day massacre kaugnay ng rally noong May 1, 1971; pinagbabaril ng Metrocom ang mga nagra-rally, anim ang patay. Bukod pa ito sa mga nauna nang dinukot at hindi na nakita pa. Habang sa mga kanayunan, nagkakaroon na ng armadong sagupaan sa pagitan ng tropa ng gubyerno at New People’s Army, ang military arm ng Communist Party. [Sumunod ang deklarasyon ng batas- militar noong Setyembre 21, 1972, ang pagpataw ng pasistang dahas na pinalamutiang “awtoritaryanismong konstitusyonal”]
Gulantang ang taong bayan (pero ‘yung mga aktibista, hindi; expected na nila iyon.)… Naglipana ang mga sundalo, rumonda sa kalaliman ng gabi, nagsona sa mga komunidad… Tumago ang mga aktibista. Ilang buwan din silang nagpalipat-lipat sa bahay ng mga
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kamag-anak at kaibigan habang inaayos kung saang larangan sila pupunta at kung ano ang kanilang magiging gawain—sa propaganda ba o sa armadong pakikibaka?—marami sa kanila ang itinulak mismo ng martial law sa tuluyang pagpaloob sa kilusan at paglaban sa rehimeng Marcos. (Bautista, Hinugot 190-94)
Sa dalawang kabanatang nagbukas sa nobela, saksi na tayo sa resulta ng digmaang “people’s war,” giyerang sibil, na kung saan ang Estado ay suportado ng imperyalistang
U.S. Bakit inuungkat pa ito? Hinihingi ng kaso ng mga biktima ng batas militar ang paglilikom ng maraming testimoniya na isasama sa “class suit” laban kay Marcos upang makakuha ng indemnity. Isinuma ni Alfred McCoy ang kaso ng 9,541 biktima na ginawaran ng $2 bilyon bayad-pinsala ng Honolulu U.S. District Court noong Setyembre 1992 (129-44). Ilan lamang iyong nagkaroon ng tentatibong “closure” sa 79,000 inaresto, 30,000 pinahirapan, at 1,000 desaparesidos (Pforr). Napilitan ang mga biktimang yumari ng imbentaryo ng kanilang pinsala at iba pang kahirapang maibibintang sa diktadurya kakawing sa kalamidad na tiniis ng buong sambayanan.
Ang eksena ng imbestigasyon tungkol sa paglabag sa “human rights” ng Amnesty International at iba pang organisasyon, kaugnay ng “class action suit,” ay siyang naging pretext sa pangangalap ng testimoniya. Pagtuklap ito sa sugat na hindi pa lubos na naghilom, paghiwa sa pilat ng kapahamakan at di-maibsang trauma. Sindak tayo sa larawan ng dalagitang ginahasa ng vigilante, winarak ang dibdib upang kainin at magdulot ng “virility” o maskulinistang lakas. Patungkol ito sa Alsa Masa na pinamunuan noon ni Col. Franco Calida, ang “Rambo” ng Davao, kung saan sumibol ang mahilakbot na poder ni Rodrigo Duterte.
Tinutukoy din ito ng Amerikanong peryodistang si Stanley Karnow: “In 1986, when I visited Davao, the Communists controlled a slum district called Agdao. Calida cleaned out the area within two years with his three thousand men, numbers of them Communist defectors. But his and other groups, acting without official supervision, summarily killed suspects and settled old feuds. Some, like the Tadtad, which means ‘chop,’ were mystical cannibalistic cults that beheaded their victims and ate their livers” (427). Kakila-kilabot na paghulog sa barbarismo ang nasaksihan ng buong mundo. Gayunman, sapin-saping kahulugan ang masisipat sa pangyayaring iyon.
PAGHIMAY SA SINDROMA NG HILAKBOT
Bumalik tayo sa masaligutgot na suliranin ng mga pamilya. Wala pang kaganapan sina Roy at Anna. Bumalong sa alaala ni Anna ang nakalipas sa itinambad na
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bangkay ng kaniyang asawang si Nonong, gerilyang napuksa. Hindi siya makakibo. “Kaya na ba talaga niyang magsalita nang hindi nagsisikip-nagsisiklab ang loob? Dalawampung taon na—kaya na ba niya talagang ikuwento kung paano ibinilad ng mga sundalo sa plasa ang bangkay ng kanyang asawa, kasama ng bangkay…ng tatlong iba pa na pawang napatay daw sa engkuwentro? Mag-aanak lang iyon ng mahabang-mahabang kuwento na kakabit ng kanyang kasalukuyan” (Desaparesidos 3).
Nang pahintulutan si Anna ng kaniyang yunit sa New People’s Army (NPA) na patunayan kung asawa nga niya ang naibilad sa plasa, naipakita ang bigat ng pagpigil sa bugso ng damdamin—ang disiplina ng mandirigma—na mananatili habang hinahanap ang nawawalang anak na si Malaya: “Kailangan niyang magpakabato, timpiin ang sarili, mag-isip ng masaya. Sa harap ng bangkay ng kanyang asawa, sinikap niyang ilipad ang isip sa masayang sandali ng kanilang kasal, sa alaala no’ng unang gabi…” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 5). Isinalin niya ang realidad sa palapag ng alegorya at etikal-politikal na pagpapakahulugan—isang paraan sa unibersalisasyon ng partikular na bagay. Magugunita ang mga pinagbuhatang karakter ni Anna sa panitik ni Bautista: sina Amanda Bartolome sa Dekada ‘70 at Lea Bustamente sa Bata, Bata... Pa’no Ka Ginawa?—dumanas ng metamorposis at naging Anna o Karla (tungkol sa metodolohiya ng representasyon sa kababaihan, konsultahin sina Siapno, Libed, San Juan, Maelstrom 157-83).
Balighong pihit ng kapalaran! Ang payo ni Anna sa magulang na angkinin ang bangkay ay nagresulta lamang sa pagkapatay kay Tatay Dencio. Naging pahamak ang magandang intensiyon. Sa maniobra ng gunita, sinugpo ni Anna ang simbuyo ng matinding dalamhati. Sinawata niya ang lungkot at pinagpilitang lusawin iyon sa galit at ala-ala ng pangalan ng berdugong Tinyente Balmaceda “para sa araw ng pagtutuos.” Nakatutok sa kinabukasan ang pagsusulit ng lahat, ang pagpataw ng parusa sa mga malupit na sukab na umalipusta sa mga kasama. Ang sukling ganti ay babala sa mga buhong na lumigpit na at huwag tumulad sa mga taksil at palamarang kasama. Magbubunga ng mabuti ang pagpaparusa sa mga berdugo.
Masahol ang nakagigimbal na pagmasaker sa pamilya ni Roy, pati mga musmos na halos ikinasira-ng-bait ng lalaki. Hindi mapalis ang ulit-ulit na sumpang “Putang ina nila!” na tanda ng pagkapoot ng mga gerilya. Ay naku! Lalaking sundalo ang mga berdugo, pero ang mga ina ang sinisisi! Kahit ibulyaw na gaganti sila, mga pulang mandirigmang di-umano’y disiplinado, “hindi na sila kumbinsido sa sarili nilang mga salita. Hanggang sa kinalimutan na nila ang diwa ng pagganti. Kinalimutan na nila ang diwa ng pisikal ng paghahanap sa nawalang mga magulang, anak, kapatid. Patuloy na hinahanap na lang nila ang mga iyon sa loob ng kanilang mga duguang puso. Hinahanap sa pagod na isip nila…kahit na lang ang libingan ng kanilang mga mahal” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 29). Umiinog ang mga iba’t ibang palapag
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ng hermenyutika sa kanilang ulirat. Sa hangaring hanapin kung saan napadpad sina Karla at Malaya, bumaba sina Roy, Anna, at Jinky na nagbunsod sa kanilang pagdakip at pagtorture. Magandang balak at pakay, kay lupit na resulta.
Sa Kabanata 5 naikintal ang kinagawiang paghalay sa mga babaeng biktima ng militar. Lahat ng paglapastangan ay nagsulsol sa ganitong isip ni Anna: “Hindi niya mapapatawad ang pag-aglahi sa buong pagkatao niya. Higit kaysa pisikal na pagpapahirap sa kanya, mamamatay siya’y hindi niya mapapatawad ang pag- aglahi sa pagkatao niya. Years later, paulit-ulit pa ring dadalaw sa isip niya ang mga pag-aglahing ito at hindi pa rin siya makatugon gaano man kasuyo at kalambing ang pakikipagtalik sa kanya ni Roy” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 44). Naibsan lang itong malalim na sugat sa hinagap na buhay pa ang kaniyang anak sa kabila ng paglapastangan ng mga barbarikong sundalo: “Hindi magsisinungaling, hindi lang ang kitib ng suso niya, kundi higit sa lahat, ang tibok ng kanyang puso.” Pagmamahal sa anak ang bumura sa poot, sa di-masukat na pagkamuhi sa mga sundalo ni Marcos. Hindi biyaya o paumanhin iyon sa nagkasala kundi regalo ng inang taglay ang kapangyarihang maglunsad ng panibagong ugnayan, isang malasakiting transpormasyon ng kalikasan at santinakpan.
Ang sakripisyo ni Anna ay organikong dagok na bumiyak at halos dumurog sa rasyonal na personalidad. Nagkapira-piraso ang ulirat ng babae: sa isang panig, ang aglahing tanda ng pagtrato sa kaniya bilang isang bagay o gamit lamang; sa kabilang panig, ang pag-asam na nakaligtas ang kaniyang anak. Maipapasok dito ang mga kaso nina Trinidad Herrera (Bonner 191-93) at Angie Bisuna-Ipong, kapuwa nilapastangan ng militar ng Estado. Napako ang isip ni Anna sa unang anak, na ginawang simbolo ng lahat ng mabuti at maganda sa panahong bago bumagsak ang lagim, na hindi makasasapat ibuod. Kaya walang patid ang pauli-ulit ng nakaraan sa isip ni Anna, isang sintomas ng neurotikong pighati. Gayunman, kahanga-hangang hindi kumpletong naagnas ang kaniyang bait at budhi.
Walang pasubaling trauma nga sa depinisyon ni Richard Crownshaw ang idinulog sa atin ng predikamento ni Anna: ang tinawag na trauma ay insidente “that which defies witnessing, cognition, conscious recall and representation—generating the belated or deferred and disruptive experience of the event not felt at the time of witnessing” (167). Lumipat sa birtud ng katawan ang pagsuko ng isip. Saklob pa rin ng ideolohiya ng maternidad ang dalumat ni Anna, na nakatuon sa katawan (suso, tiyan, at matris). Batay ito sa anatomiya ng sanggol na kailangan ng mahabang aruga ng ina, o sinomang tutupad ng responsibilidad ng pagkalinga sa musmos. Itinakda ng biyolohiya ang panganganak na papel ng kababaihan, kaya ang pagiging ina at pangangalaga sa anak ay itinuring na esensiya ng pagkababae (sangguniin ang talakay sa paksang ito ni Torres-Yu; Aguilar; Eviota). Iyon ang tradisyonal na
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paniwala, ang ideolohiya at praktika ng maternidad, na may positibo at negatibong bisa.
HAMON SA PATRIYARKONG DANGAL
Sa Kabanata 6, nailarawan ang kahindik-hindik na torture ni Roy. Kapansin-pansin na hindi si Malaya ang bumabalisa sa ama kundi ang pagkawala ng kaniyang dangal. Kalunos-lunos ang kaniyang tinig na nagmamakaawa, humihingi ng atensiyon mula sa mga kasama o sinumang dudulog: “Kukumbinsihin na lang niya ang sarili na may naiiwan pa rin naman siyang dangal, meron pa naman siyang maipagmamalaki. Dahil at least hindi siya nagturo, hindi siya bumigay…Kasama, may dangal pa rin ako. Dahil kahit ano ang ginawa sa akin, hindi ako nagturo at hindi ako bumigay” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 33). Masalimuot ang danas sa mahapding pagdurusa. Nabusisi ng antropologong si Talal Asad ang paksang ito: “The instability of the concept of physical suffering is at one and the same time the source of ideological contradictions and of strategies available for evading them” (118). Sa isang anggulo, eksplorasyon ng paksang ito ang nobela ni Bautista.
Kamangha-mangha ang saloobin ni Roy. Maiintindihan iyon bilang palatandaan ng masalimuot na paglalangkap ng barbariko, piyudal, at mala-burgesyang sensibilidad sa isang neokolonya na walang matatag na industriya at nakasadlak pa rin sa agrikulturang ekonomya at kalakalang pang-komprador. Asimetrikal at di- sinkronisado ang maraming bahagi ng totalidad. Masasabing nilagom ng nobelista dito sa sintomas ng trauma/sugat sa pagkatao ni Roy ang krisis ng sistemang tiwali, ang paghahari ng minoryang oligarkiya, ng uring patriyarkong maylupa, burukrata-kapitalista, at komprador-kasabwat ng imperyo. Magkatiklop ang apat na dimensiyon ng hermenyutika sa anatomyang sikolohikal ni Roy.
“Dangal” ng pagkalalaki, hindi si Malaya, ang obsesyon ni Roy, hayag na kaiba kay Anna. Bagamat maka-kaliwa kundi man Marxista, ang sukat ng halagahan sa mga lalaking kasangkot sa rebolusyon ay piyudal pa rin. Hindi ito mahiwaga. Sa pangkat ng aristokrasya at kabalyerong maharlika sa Europa bago sumiklab ang rebolusyong burgesya sa Pransiya, ang dangal ay katangian ng panginoong may-lupa. “Honor” at amor-propio ang salik ng minanang ugali ng katapatan sa tradisyon ng mga mayamang ginoong dumadakila sa birtud ng katapangan sa labanan (Ossowska 131-54). Maharlikang puri ang nakapusta sa giyera. Kakatwa na hindi nagapi itong lumang tradisyon sa kampanya ng “rectification” ng partidong nakasalig sa simulain ng pagkakapantay-pantay, hustisyang panlipunan, at demokratikong patakaran.
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Ibig sabihin, matagal at mahaba ang proseso ng transpormasyon ng gawi/ugali ng lipunan.
Marahil, lubhang nalukob sa pangungulila si Roy dahil sa sinapit ng pamilya. Sapagkat walang ibang lalaki sa naratibo na susukli sa kaniyang nagawa—na magdudulot ng tingin ng pagkakilala sa kaniyang halaga bilang taong malaya’t makatwiran. Ang nalalabing resolusyon sa malubhang sugat sa pagkatao ni Roy ay isang babae, si Karla. Nakuhang isakripisyo ni Karla si Malaya at unawain ang simbolikong kinalaman nito sa pagsulong ng kapalaran ng sambayanan. Maituturing na ito ang mabisang gamot sa sakit ng mga lalaki nang hukayin muli ni Roy sa burol ng mga alaala ang pagtataksil niya kay Lito sa bilangguan, at pagsunod sa utos “galing sa itaas”—mahigit 20 taon na ang nagdaan:
Pero ito’y pangungumpisal at wala nang dapat ilihim. Wala nang dapat iwanan na hindi nasasabi.
“Isa pa, galit na galit ako. Pinatay ng mga sundalo ang pamilya ko, at hindi ko kayang patawarin…at least noon…hindi ko kayang patawarin pati kahit sinong makipagkutsaba sa kanila. Nagpapakamatay akong ubusin din ang lahi nila. Nagpapakamatay akong makaganti!”
. . . “Sa iba ko sinisisi pati ang sarili kong kahinaan. Gusto kong patunayan na iba ako kay Jinky. Kahit nasubukan ko na rin kung hanggang saan lang ang tapang ko. Hindi ako matapang…duwag ako!”
At tuluyan nang sumabog ng iyak si Roy. Dito mismo, sa harap ni Karla. Sa harap ng asawa na pinatay niya.
Masuyong kinabig ni Karla si Roy ang lalaking pumatay sa asawa niya. Sa tahimik na paraan, sa paraan na wala ni isang patak na luha, kinabig niya sa balikat niya si Roy at hinayaan niya kahit mabasa nang basang-basa ang kanyang dibdib sa luha nito. (Bautista, Desaparesidos 213)
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BABAYLAN NG KATUBUSAN
Lubhang nakapupukaw ang tagpong iyon, sinematikong eksena na nakatutuksong hindi isalin sa pelikula. Si Karla ang nagsilbing ahensiya sa paglilinis ng konsiyensiya ng lalaki, katarsis na sa ultimong analisis ay mediyasyon ng diyalektika ng ideolohiya at ekonomiyang pampolitika. Himalang nahugasan ang pagkakasala ni Roy sa isang maantig na tagpo. Maitatanong lang kung ito’y pagpapahinuhod o wagas na kabatiran na walang malisya sa nagawang pagkitil ng buhay ng kasama. Nasabi na ni Karla na dapat kalimutan na ang nangyari nang “mamatay” ang anak ni Anna. Humihingi ng kapatawaran si Anna sa anak na kaniyang iniwan kay Karla dahil hindi niya iniwan ang kilusan. Sa balik-tanaw na sana’y naghanap ng ibang paraan, pakli ni Karla, batid niyang limitado ang pagkakataong idinulot ng conjuncture ng mga pangyayari. Ito ang iginuhit na eksena ng nobelista:
“Walang ibang paraan!” Maigting na ngayon, mariin ang tinig ni Karla. Inilayo niya sa kanya si Anna na para tiyakin na kaya niyang salubungin din ni Anna ang mga mata niya.” Sapalaran ang buhay natin; sino ang makapagsasabi ng tama at maling paraan? Maski ang kilusan mismo, maraming pagkakamali! Mga pagkakamali na nagsanhi ng maraming kamatayan!” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 200)
Sumaksi ang sandali ng pagkilala sa kapuwa, pagkakakilanlan, nagbuhat sa sakripisyo ng bawat kalahok. Nakita ni Anna “sa unang pagkakataon, ang mga latay ng kirot na hindi rin ganap na binura ng panahon sa mukha ni Karla.” Magkayapos at magkahalikan halos, isang imahen ng kapatiran o solidaridad, ito ang katarsis na inaabangan natin bago pa man maibunyag ni Karla sa huling kabanata ang tunay na nangyari sa kaniya. Pagliripin ang tila melodramatikong pagkasal ng dalawa: “Wala nang nagsasalita, wala nang naririnig kundi ang hininga ng isa’t isa, dinadama ang init ng luha ng bawa’t isa sa kanilang mga pisngi…silang dalawang babaing minsa’y nagsukob sa iisang bandila ng pakikibaka” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 200). Nakatahi ang literal, moral, alegorikal, at anagohikal na aspekto ng teksto dito sa siniping talata.
Maingat tayong lumundag sa dakong wakas, ang pagtatapat ni Karla kay Malaya, anak ni Anna, sa tunay na nangyari—ang katotohanan na nagpalaya kay Roy na di matatalikuran. Amin ni Karla ang pananagutang ibunyag—isiwalat o ibulatlat— ang talagang nangyari na hindi alam ng anak. Sa tulay ng anak maipahahatid ang katotohanan. Determinadong iligtas ang supling ni Anna, kaya maski kailanman, hindi binitiwan ni Karla habang siya’y nakunan. Ipinagdasal niyang maisagip si Malaya. Kumpisal niya sa dalagang 20 taong gulang na ikakasal na: “Hindi ko binalak na angkinin ka…pero hindi na kita magagawang ibalik sa mga taong walang katiyakan ang buhay” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 217). Tumpak na desisyon kaya iyon o rasyonalisasyon?
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Sa ano’t anuman, pinalaki ang bata at itinuro ang landas upang makabalik sa tinubuang lupa at maging bahagi muli ng dati’y napariwarang kabuuan na ngayo’y unti-unting bumabangon. Sinikap dito na pagdugtungin ang nakalipas at kasalukuyan, punan ang nawaglit/kinalimutang yugto sa buhay, upang magpatuloy ang kaginhawaan ng buong lipunan. Hindi lang ito personal na desisyon kundi simbolo ng kolektibong pagpapasiyang mailigtas ang mga sugatang biktima ng diktaduryang Marcos. Nakakawing dito ang lohika at rason ng pagyari ng hugpungan ng mga karanasan na isinagawa ng tagapag-salaysay.
Sa huling kabanata, naganap kaya ang rekonsilyasyon ng kahapon, ngayon, at kinabukasan? Nagkasudlong kaya ang nahiwalay na bahagi ng mga buhay nina Anna, Roy, at Karla, pati na sina Lorena at Malaya? Paglimiin natin ang hiwatig ng pagtatapat ni Malaya na siya ang kadugo ni Anna, batay sa kumpisal ng inang umaruga sa kaniya. Ibig idiin rito na ang kusang nagdurugtong ng lumipas at ngayon ay ang anak na nawaglit, nawala, at ngayo’y lumitaw upang likhain ang hinaharap. Higing dito na lumayo si Karla, naglaho na tulad ni Roy mula sa inilawang entablado ng dula: “No’ng magkasunog daw ho sa baryong pinagdalhan sa kanya ng tatay ng asawa n’yo, ako raw ho ang nabuhay. Namatay daw ho ‘yong anak niya” (Desaparesidos 218). Maiisip ang mala-bibliyang kawikaan: “Kung hindi mamamatay ang binhi, hindi sisibol at mamumukadkad ang palay.”
Nabigla si Anna. Di akalaing makikita ang hinahanap. Pinakadiin niya ang talim ng kuko niya sa kaniyang braso—upang siguraduhin na hindi iyon panaginip o bangungot? Dugtong ni Malaya: “Kaya n’yo ho bang patawarin ang mama ko? Kasi, naging mabuting ina naman siya sa akin. Ni minsan man, hindi ko naramdaman na hindi niya ako tunay na anak.” Dama ang ambiguwidad, parikala, balighong katuparan, kakatwang ambil sa reaksiyon ni Anna. Samot-saring damdamin ang naghalo rito. Masinop nating namnamin ang dating ng makahulugang engkuwentro ng nawala at taong naghahanap na naikintal sa pinakasasabikang tagpo sa nobela:
Nang ibaba ni Anna ang kamay niya ay hindi para yakapin si Malaya kundi para yakapin ang sarili. Tumatawa-umiiyak siyang yakap at inuugoy-ugoy ang sarili na parang dalawang tao siya: isang kumokonsola at isang kinokonsola. Hanggang sa si Malaya ang yumakap sa kanya, niyakap, niyakap siya nang mahigpit, buong higpit, na parang sa yakap na iyon ay sinisikap ibalik ang dalawampu’t isang taon. (Bautista, Desaparesidos 220)
Matagumpay kaya ang pagkakabit ng nabiyak na buhay o kamalayan? Hindi komprontasyon ito ng dalawang ina kundi ina at isang taong may dalawang pusod o tali sa matris (pasaring sa “woman who had two navels” ni Nick Joaquin). Maibabalik kaya ang nakalipas? Mabubuo kaya ang nadurog na padron ng pamilyang nukleyar— ama, ina, anak—ng gitnang uri? Tiyak na oo, sapagkat sa metodo ng interpretasyon
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naipagkakabit ang apat na antas ng kahulugan sa hermenyutikang komentaryo sa punto de bista ng materyalismong historikal.
Sa pakiwari ko, ang tungkulin ni Karla bilang bukal ng paglitaw ng nawala ay mamagitan sa mga kontradiksiyong nahalungkat. Siya ang gumaganap ng mediyasyon sa mga magkakontrang puwersa. Nahinog sa kaniyang pagtatapat ang katarsis ng pagkilala sa suliranin ni Anna, at tuloy pagkilala sa traumang dinanas ni Anna. Silang dalawang ina ang nagpabisa sa papel ni Malaya bilang lumutang na kaganapan na maghihilom sa sugat ng mga magulang. Si Malaya ang nagsilbing kawing upang mapunan ang kakulangan, ang nawalang gunita ng nakalipas.
Susog ko ang thought-experiment na ito. Maipapalagay ito na pigura o analohiya ng pagpapalitan ng mga babae (“exchange of women” sa saliksik ni Claude Levi- Strauss na maiging binatikos ni Gayle Rubin; tingnan din si Webster) na ugat ng “incest taboo” na nagpasinaya sa sibilisadong lipunan. Taglay nito ang mensahe na ang identidad ninuman ay nakasalalay sa pagkilala o pagtanggap ng Iba/Kaibhan, ang negasyon o negatibidad sa loob ng pagkatao. Maipagsasanib ang lahat kung may kasunduang batay sa isang adhikain, panata o mithiing pinapatnubayan ng buong sambayanan.
MATERYALISTIKONG URIAN
Isang problematikong bagay ang dapat linawin. Bago natin tunghayan ang kalagayan nina Lorena at Eman, at paglalapit nina Lorena at Malaya, nais kong igiit dito ang isang sagot sa tanong tungkol sa pagbuo ng pagkatao at pagtuklas ng kahulugan ng partikular na buhay sa konteksto ng kasaysayan ng buong lipunan. Ito ang temang naturol sa unahan. Maidiriin dito na sa bagsik ng krisis, nayanig ang kanayunan at nawasak ang panatag na buhay ng pesanteng pamilya. Nasira ang luma’t walang katarungang kontrata sosyal. Sina Roy at Jinky ay nakaugat sa piyudal na ordeng patriyarkal na unti-unting nabubuwag ng pagdaralita at paglisan ng kabataan upang maghanap-buhay sa siyudad. Nakataya ang halaga ng dangal ng kalalakihan.
Samantala, ang petiburgesyang saligan nina Anna at Karla ay mapanganib. Nakadepende iyon sa lagay ng ekonomiya na natigatig ng krisis ng batas militar, korapsyon, kumpitensiya ng mga oligarkong pangkat ng mga komprador at burukratang kasabwat ng dayuhang korporasyon at imperyalistang Amerika. Bulnerable ang patriyarkong pundasyon ng pamilya na naka-angkla sa produktibong
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gawain ng kalalakihan at walang bayad na trabaho ng kababaihan sa pagsustina sa reproduktibong relasyon ng kabuhayan ng buong lipunan.
Bago natin bulatlatin at tistisin ang huling yugto ng kasaysayan, nais kong isingit dito ang lagom ng mga kuro-kurong nailatag na. Walang pasubali na ang mga tauhan at pangyayari ay maipapakahulugan na representasyon ng ilang ideya at hinuha, konsepto at paniniwala, na kakabit ng ating kasaysayan. Hinihingi ito ng hermenyutikang pagbasa rito. Ang mga tauhan dito ay sumasagisag sa ugali o gawing tipikal ng mga uri, lalo na ang uring anak-pawis (Roy, Jinky) na sa paglipat sa kapaligiran ng kalunsuran ay nagkaroon ng petiburgesyang kilos at pananaw. Dahil dito, ang naratibo at diskurso ay magkalakip sa proyekto ng “national allegory,” sa depinisyon ni Fredric Jameson: “the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third world culture and society”(Allegory 165). Bahagi ito ng hermenyutika ni Jameson na nabanggit sa umpisa.
Sa gayon, ang partikular na buhay ay nailipat sa mataas na palapag ng konkretong unibersal na masisipat sa mga tauhang nakikipagsapalaran. Malimit maisakatuparan ito sa pamamagitan ng testimonyal, o testimonya ng mga biktimang nilikom sa umpisa—isang demokratiko’t egalitaryang porma ng salaysay ng masang bumabangon, tulad ng testimonya ni Rigoberta Menchu (Larsen 9-10). Kahawig kay Menchu sina Maria Lorena Barros, Nelia Sancho, Adora Faye de Vera, Angie Ipong, Resteta Fernandez, Luisa Posa Dominado, Judy Taguiwalo, at marami pang kapanalig (Chapman 120, 151; Davis 127-31).
Ang protagonistang Anna, Roy, Jinky, at mga anak ay kumakatawan sa “public third world society.” Sina Anna, Karla, Lorena, at Eman ay produkto ng urbanidad, partikular ang kapaligiran ng gitnang-saray na dinaliri ni Amado Guerrero/Jose Maria Sison sa klasikong teksto ng mapagpalayang kilusan, Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino (271-77). Ang iba’y representatibo ng proletaryo’t pesante. Sa okasyong ito, baka magamit ang diyagramang ito sa pagsasaayos ng interpretasyon ng tema’t estruktura ng nobela alinsunod sa semiotikang historikal:
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Balangkas ng mga Konseptong Uminog sa Banghay ng Nobela bilang Pambansang Alegorya
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DIYALEKTIKA NG PAMANAGUTAN AT HIYA
Sa gitna ng krisis, bumukana ang mahalagang gawain ng kababaihan sa domestikong larang: pag-aalaga ng bata, pag-aayos ng tahanan, pagpaplano, pagtugon sa pangangailangang seksuwal ng ama/asawa, atbp. Sandaling umatras ang salaysay sa yugto ng pangangalap ng pagkain, pangangaso ng lalaki na umaktong armadong amang tanggulan ng tribu bago bumalik sa larang ng ugaling piyudal at mala- esklabo (Gough 51-76). Sa halip na indibidwalistikong pagkayod upang mabuhay, kailangan ang pagbubuklod upang mapanatili ang kalusugan at mapaunlad ang kapakanan ng komunidad. Simbolo ang partido at hukbo ng pulang mandirigma, kaalyansiya ng mga aktibistang mobilisado sa kilusan ng Nagkakaisang Hanay ng National Democratic Front.
Natupad kaya ang pagpunla ng kolektibong pagpupunyagi sa mga sakripisyo nina Anna at Roy, nina Karla at Jinky? Sina Lorena, Malaya, at Eman ba ang matipunong salinlahing huhugot ng aral sa nakalipas? Sila ba ang nag-angkin ng katungkulang magtatapon ng masama upang konserbahin ang mabuti, at magtatayo ng masagana’t mapagpalayang lipunan? Sila ba, hindi ang partido o masang sunud- sunuran, ang makapagpapatnubay sa transpormasyon ng buong sambayanan? May himig retorikal ang mga tanong na naipahayag dito, at hinuhang nasagot ito ng mga tagpong naisadula sa nobela.
Magugunita na si Lorena ay nawaglit sa kamalayan nina Anna at Roy habang tumutupad ng kanilang tungkulin. Lubhang bumuhos ang sigla ni Anna sa paghahanap kay Malaya. Samantala, si Roy ay saklot ng balisa sa kaniyang sekretong pagtataksil kay Lito, at pansamantalang pagkukubli ng pananagutan sa pagpatay kay Jinky—dalawang desaparesidong bagay. Napawi ang trauma sa kaniyang pagkumpisal at pagpapatawad ni Karla na tila naging babaylang taga- purga sa lason ng nakalipas. Mapapansin na lumabo ang pagtingin niya kay Roy pagkatapos mabigo sa pagdalaw sa mga magulang ni Jinky at naging mapaghinala siya. Nakabaon sa obhetibong kaganapan ang etikal-moral na kahulugan, at implikasyon nito sa takbo ng buong lipunan.
Sa katunayan, hindi kasalanan kundi hiya ang problema ni Roy, hiya na panlipunang pakiramdam—hiya sa harap ni Lito at mga kapanalig. Hindi guilt o saloobing nagkasala ang argumento rito. Hindi iyon kasalanan sa paglabag sa utos ng simbahan o relihiyon kundi kabiguan sa magilas na pagpapasikat ng dangal, tapang, mapangahas na asta o atitudo sa harap ng hamon ng mga kaaway. Muli, nais kong salungguhitan, hindi guilt kundi shame ang usapan dito. Bagamat maitutulad ang asta ni Roy sa amor propio, hindi naman egotistiko sapagkat ang konsepto ng sarili (makasariling malay) ay nakapaloob sa pagmamalasakit sa mga inaapi’t
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pinagsasamantalahan—sa madaling salita, ang hiya ay nakalakip sa damayan at pasakit sa ngalan ng kolektibong interes ng bayan na ipinaglalaban.
Sa historiko-materyalistikong pananaw, ang hidwaan ng karapatan at obligasyon ay nakapaloob sa tunggalian ng mga uri sa isang tiyak na panahon at lugar. Sa kabilang dako, ang abstraktong konsepto ng kalayaan, ang indibidwalistikong karapatan sa ordeng neokolonyal, ay hungkag at laging pinabubulaanan ng kapangyarihan ng salapi at pribadong pag-uuri (Kamenka). Wasto ang pagkitil sa buhay ng kaaway kung iyon ang taktikang kailangan upang maipagwagi ang paggiba sa kapitalistang sistemang sumusupil sa mayorya. Pasiya iyon ng partidong sinumpang sundin ni Roy bilang kasapi. Ang politika ng pakikibaka ang mananaig. Hindi matatawaran ang disiplina at pakikisangkot ni Roy bilang miyembro ng partidong rebolusyonaryo. Ngunit ang kaluluwa niya ay hindi disiplinado ng partido, nangibabaw ang afirmasyon niya ng ganti o personal na pagsingil sa buhay ng mga pumaslang sa kadugo. Malakas pa rin sa ulirat/damdamin ang ideolohiya o habitus ng tradisyong piyudal.
Subalit dapat pagmuniin na hindi simple at uni-dimensiyonal ang usapin. Kung ano ang epekto ng aksiyon ni Roy o sinopamang aktor sa konsensiya, malay, o sensibilidad ng aktor—iyon ay tanong na hindi malilinaw kung hindi sisiyasatin sa konkretong suri ng sitwasyon. Dapat sikaping ilugar ang anomang kilos sa isang tiyak at takdang sirkumstansiyang pangkasaysayan kasangkot ng napakaraming puwersang nagtatagisan. Sa masinop na pagkilatis, pinakamahalaga ang resulta at kinahinatnan ng anomang ginanap. Tiwalag sa rebolusyonaryong pamantayan, ang ganting ginawa ni Roy ay saklaw sa kategorya ng “retributive justice.” Hindi iyon ispesimen ng pagtalima sa “categorical imperative” ni Immanuel Kant o etika ng birtud pangkalalakihan nina Aristoteles at mga Romanong pilosopo’t mambabatas, o maski na sa utilitaryanistikong kodigo ng kapitalismong industriyal at komersiyal.
Mabigat na pangangatuwiran ang matitimbang sa repleksiyon ni Agnes Heller hinggil sa palaisipang ito: “The modern concept of retribution excludes revenge. Yet if the norms and rules of a society include revenge, the form of revenge carried out in terms of the norms and rules is retribution proper. The modern concept of retribution excludes collective retribution for the simple reason that we ascribe the act solely and exclusively to the individual (its actor)…But the idea of collective retribution has not completely withered. Balzac’s question, ‘Who is responsible for collective crimes?’ has been repeatedly raised in our century” (156). Ang sagot ng nobela ay walang pasubali o alinlangan: sa malupit na rehimeng pasista ni Ferdinand Marcos at mga sundalo-pulis na instrumento ng pagmamalupit at paniniil, suportado ng mga amo nila sa Washington, USA, at sa kapitalismong pinansiyal ng World Bank-International Monetary Fund.
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HERMENYUTIKANG PAGSASANAY
Sa kontrobersyang ito, maligoy ang mga argumento at hindi malulutas ang suliranin sa pormalistikong paraan. Naisusog na ni Marx (“Kant”) ang kakulangan ng burgesyang sumilang sa Alemanya noong siglo 1800, na mababakas sa metapisikang lohika ni Kant sa aksyom ng “categorical imperative.” Hindi nakamit ng marupok na burgesya ang kapangyarihan sa Alemanya, kaya nagkasiya na lang sa kanila ang aral ni Kant sa Critique of Practical Reason (ikumpara ang argumento ni Marcuse [133-47]). Indibidwalistiko at abstrakto ang pormula ni Kant na taliwas sa konkretong sitwasyon ng tao sa kasaysayan.
Gayundin ang apolohiya sa rehimeng Marcos ni Leon Maria Guerrero ng intelihensiyang ilustrado. Ikinumpara pa ang diktador kay Cromwell at pinahalimuyak ng mga reperensiya kina Rizal at Mabini. Sa kaniyang “Today Began Yesterday,” pinuri ni Guerrero ang diktador at ang tinaguriang “New Society” na taglay di-umano ang “high moral consciousness” (53). Ang punto-de-bista ni Guerrero ay nakaugat sa oportunistang lahi nina Paterno, Tavera, at Buencamino, na tuwirang ipinagkanulo ang rebolusyonaryong Republika nang sakupin tayo ng U.S. Mahigit ilang milyong biktima ang bunga ng pagsuko sa kolonyalista, hanggang sa administrasyon nina Quezon, Osmena, Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay, at Macapagal. Sina Guerrero, Ople, Cristobal, O. D. Corpuz, at kanilang alipores ay gumapas ng 3,275 bangkay at higit 3,000 bilanggong tinortyur, bukod sa 1,000 desaparesidos. Wala pang husga mula sa sambayanang sinalanta ng terorismo ng batas militar, isang kalamidad na hanggang ngayon ay umaani ng di-matingkalang kahirapan at pambubusabos. Basahin muli ang mga ulat ng peryodiko at iskolar ukol sa malagim na rehimeng hindi na desaparesido kundi lumabas na’t narito na sanhi sa pagbabalik ng anak ng despotikong berdugo (Ferdinand Marcos Sr.) sa Malakanyang.
Napipinto na naman tayo sa malubhang krisis sa inaugurasyon ni Marcos Jr. Wala kaya tayong natutuhan sa nakalipas? Natuyot ba ang memorya o nagumon lamang sa konsumerismo at sa nakalalangong simulakra ng megamall at milagrosang malikmata ng Internet? Ano kaya ang mamanahin ng mga “martial law babies” (tulad ni Lorena) at mga milenyal kung muling mamaslang ang angkang Marcos at magmulto ang batas militar? Noong una trahedya raw, ngunit sa pangalawa, sasaksi ba tayo ng isang nakatatawang komedya, o madugo’t kakila-kilabot na interlude? Siguro makatutulong ang pagbasa sa nobelang ito.
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SUBALIT HINDI IGINUHIT NG TADHANA
Kakawing ng usapin ng hustisya ang problema ng pananagutan. Sa gerang sibil sa neokolonyang bayan, kung saan ang imperyo ay sumusulsol sa Estadong mapanupil, kumplikado ang tanong: sino ang dapat managot? Hindi lang etikal-moral na isyu ito kundi sosyo-politikal (Asad 100-26; Sontag 74-126). Hindi rin ito maihihiwalay sa espesipikong lugar at panahon. Halimbawa ang pagtrato nina Anna at Roy kay Lorena. Sa Kabanata 10 inilarawan ang dalumat ng anak: “Dinala ni Lorena sa puso niya ang feeling na ‘taga-labas’ at walang tunay na sense of belonging” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 105).
Napanood ni Lorie ang “coup” nina Enrile at Honasan laban kay Cory Aquino nang siya ay sampung taon pa lamang. Bumalik si Roy, na bumubulalas na “Ako ang tatay mo!” Pero salita lamang iyon. Si Lorena ay patuloy na galit at ayaw papasukin ang magulang sa kaniyang silid. Sinabi sa kaniya ni Eman ang tungkol kay Lorena Barros. Natakot siyang mawala si Eman, na iiwan siya tulad ng ginawa ng kaniyang tatay at nanay. Sa Kabanata 14, nagalit si Lorena nang umalis ang magulang upang mahanap muli ang nawawalang anak: “Laos na ang rebolusyon, tigilan na dapat iyan. Paulit-ulit lang ang kuwento ng panahon.” Kontra sa kaniyang katukayo ang opinyong nasambit, magiting na bayani na pinagtaksilan ng unang asawang tumalikod sa partido—isang insidenteng nakatatak din sa motibasyon ng nobelista (Hernando 65-100; Chapman 214-62).
Isa pang interpretasyon ang maihaharap dito. Maari ring ipakahulugan ang pabaling-baling na hilig ni Lorena sa mga pabagu-bagong alyansiya ng mga puwersang politikal kagyat na mapatay si Senador Aquino noong Agosto 21, 1983 (Diokno 132-75; Maglipon). Integral na salik ito ng isang ekspresyon ng pambansang alegoryang natukoy natin, kung saan ang partikular ay salamin ng konkretong unibersal ng komunikasyon ng mga lumalahok sa ugnayang panlipunan. Ang aspektong reperensiyal ay saligan ng mapanuring elaborasyon tungo sa alegorikal at anagohikal na kahulugan. Ulirang birtud ito ng sirkulo o bilog ng hermenyutikang proseso.
Tunghayan natin ang nangyari sa Kabanata 21 bilang paglilinaw. Isiniwalat ni Anna ang kaniyang damdamin kay Lorena: “Mahal kita kahit habambuhay ko, hindi hihiwalay sa isip ko ang anak kong panganay…Dahil ina ako at anak ko rin iyon. Naiintindihan mo, Lorie?” Nawala ang espasyong nakapagitan sa dalawa: “Ito ang unang pagkakataon na damang-dama niya ang nanay niya. Na parang siya at ito ay iisa.” Sa bisa nito, niyakap niya sa Eman sa kanilang muling pagkikita: “...Hindi lang ito ang niyayakap niya kundi pati ang nanay niya at ang tatay niya at ang nanay nito at ang tatay nito at ang buong saysay at kahulugan ng kanilang mga buhay” (Bautista, Desaparesidos 207-08). Sa malas, humihingi ito ng alegorikal at
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anagohikal na interpretasyon dahil ang mga indibidwal ay representasyon na ng yugto ng kasaysayan ng buong lipunan. Sinalungguhitan ito ng nobelista sa ritmo at indayog ng salita at sa himig-orasyon o dasal ng pangungusap.
PAGSUBOK SA PAGSULIT
Karapat-dapat nang magwakas ang salaysay sa pagsasama ng ina at anak, ng anak at kaibigan. Buo na ang mga pamilya. Sa wakas, kusang nagpakita ang nawala. Ngunit mapupunan ba ang panahon ng sakuna, ang konkretong realidad ng pagsakripisyo ng pagkatao, puri, dangal, hapdi, mahapding pasakit ng kaluluwa? Unawain natin kung iyong unang imahen o signos ng babaeng ginahasa’t pinatay ay mabubura’t mapapalitan ng magandang litrato ng dalagang ikakasal na ipagbubunyi ng mga magulang, kapatid, at masuyong kapanalig. Mahirap paniwalaan ito.
Nagkaroon na ng ugnayan sina Lorie at Roy. Kulang na lang ang panganay na kapatid, si Malaya, na lilitaw muli sa entablado bilang emblematiko ng di-mabilang na desaparesidos. Sa huling eksena, naipagtapat ni Lorie na gustong-gusto niyang makilala si Malaya buhat noong itinakas si Marcos ng U.S. at inilipad sa Hawaii. Bitbit ni Lorie ang isang album na walang laman: “Gusto kong makilala noon dahil kapatid kita, dugtong pa ni Lorie. Ngayon, gusto kitang makilala dahil gusto kong makilala ang panahong pinagdaanan ng ating mga magulang. Ang kanilang mga karanasan na ang anino ay parati pa ring nakapatong sa ating mga likod” (Desaparesidos 220-21). Tumugon si Malaya na nais din niyang makilala si Lorie, “ang sarili kong ugat at ang dugong dumadaloy sa mga ito.” Dugo hindi lamang ng pamilya kundi ng buong lahi, ng sambayanang lumawig sa daloy ng kasaysayan, mga magkakaibang komunidad na nakabuklod sa iisang tadhana.
Mga mambabasa, itigil natin sandali ang paggulong ng montage ng dula at magbulay-bulay tayo. Kilatisin at suriin kung ang alegoryang pambansa ay usapin ng dugo at lupa, o usapin ng mga paninindigan at adhikaing ipinaglalaban. Marahil, madaling sagutin na magkasanib iyon, hindi maibubukod. Sina Malaya at Lorena ay kinatawan ng magkabigkis na tagpo ng nagdaang kahapon, ng nakaharap na ngayon, at inaantabayanang pagdating ng inaasam-asam. Ito rin ang turo ng hermenyutikang nailapat natin sa pagbasa.
Panghimasukan natin ang paglilirip na ito. Nakasiksik sa maramdaming indayog ng mga pangungusap ng talambuhay ang susi sa palaisipan kung ang mga pangyayaring naiulat ay nakatugon sa mga tanong na inilahad sa unahan: “At sa umaga
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ng kanyang kasal, mataimtim na ikinakasal din ni Malaya ang sarili sa nakaraan at kinabukasan ng kanyang bayan. Sa kasalukuyang pag-uugnay sa dalawang panahong ito. Sa mga binhi ng pangarap na walang sawang itinatanim sa lupang kakulay ng kanyang balat. Sa bawa’t isang kasukob sa kasaysayan” (Desaparesidos 220-21; tingnan din San Juan, “Panimulang Pagsubok”; at San Juan, Maelstrom; Mendiola). Panahon, binhi, lupa, balat, kasaysayan—maiging ipinagkabit-kabit sa pangungusap ang lahat ng palapag ng hermenyutikang nasubok dito. Magkabunga kaya ng kasaganaan, katarungan, at kasarinlan ang naipunlang binhi ng nobela? Nasa sa mambabasa ang kasagutan.
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<https://ajol.ateneo.edu/kk>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-73579097481865996232023-01-21T08:54:00.003-08:002023-01-21T08:54:49.793-08:00TRANSKRIPSYON--Tulang Postkonseptwal<p> <b style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">TRANSKRIPSYON NG ILANG BYTES NG KOMPYUTER NG NASA, WASHINGTON, DC,USA, 11 Setyembre 2008</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kinopya ni E, San Juan, Jr.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b><i>---"Everyone in the planet is under total surveillance today." --Edward Snowden</i></b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b><i>--"Nothing is meaningless...." --Sissi, sa pelikulang The Princess & the Warrior</i></b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; min-height: 14px;"><b></b><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNoS11d88dNQEXYcG9NvwkzKqCfmLCojchcEk8iNOfJa6cRrUQXnR9VR0WpMeqLBuxmV8HLXRYKJPsz33FOIMuAaJ0EFriUVfHjhUUzTN_WX95I2wkEEdQXJwGvnOfgbxxqd6XpN6mfmiOqLC0SJ_vzzAJkKs1y1z9UYRyZxvjBLKga4thv_E/s394/Kahlo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNoS11d88dNQEXYcG9NvwkzKqCfmLCojchcEk8iNOfJa6cRrUQXnR9VR0WpMeqLBuxmV8HLXRYKJPsz33FOIMuAaJ0EFriUVfHjhUUzTN_WX95I2wkEEdQXJwGvnOfgbxxqd6XpN6mfmiOqLC0SJ_vzzAJkKs1y1z9UYRyZxvjBLKga4thv_E/w549-h320/Kahlo.jpg" width="549" /></a></div><br />
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b>Gising ka na ba? Anong gumagapang na hayop sa silong? Bakit makulimlim? Naramdaman mo ba? Masakit ba? O nakakikiliti? Malambot ba? O matigas? May kumakatok ba? Nariyan na ba sila? Bakit may agunyas sa bukang-liwayway? Gusto mo ba? Ayaw mo? Barado ba ang tubo ng kubeta? Inaalimpungatan ka ba? Anong ginagawa ko rito? Nabasa mo ba si Kierkegaard? Malapit ba o malayo? Biro ba lang? Makibaka ba, huwag matakot? Nilabasan ka ba? Kailan tayo tutugpa? Sino iyang nakamaskara? Peks man? Sino ang nagsuplong? Swak na swak ba? Dapat ba nating dalhin ang kargada? Mabigat ba o magaan? </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b>Sino si Yolanda? Liku-liko ba ang landas ng mahabang martsa? Bakit kasing-pait ng apdo? Doon ka ba nakatira? Anong kulisap ang katulad ko? May kurakot ba sa mga pulong inaangkin? Sino'ng nagtatanong? Nasaan ang I-pad mo? Sino ka ba sa kanila? Iyon ba ang burol o lambak? Nakarating na ba tayo? Bakit mababa ang lipad ng kalapati? May kilala ka ba sa Abu Sayyaf? Nasaan ang hanggahan ng bughaw at luntian? May umutot ba? Paano ang hapunan? Iyon ba ang pulang sagisag? Papasok na tayo o lalabas? Magkano ba ang suhol? Puwede ka bang sumagot? Pinupulikat ka ba? Anong ibig mong sabihin? Bakit nag-alapaap ang salamin? May naamoy ka ba? Paano tayo makatatakas? Bakit bumaligtad? Na-etsa puwera ba sila? Ano ang kahulugan nito? Masaklap ba ang nangyari? Nasaan na ba tayo? May serpyenteng nagpugad sa dibdib mo? Bakit tumitibok ang bukong-bukong? Anong ginagawa ko rito? Malinaw ba ang kahulugan ng babala? Kinakalawang ba ang tulay na bakal sa Camp Bagong Diwa? Ano ang talaangkanan ng diskurso? Sino ang humihiyaw ng "saklolo"? May apoy ba sa butas ng karayom? Susi, anong susi? Bakit nagkanulo? Naipit ba ang bayag mo paglundag? Bumubulong ka ba? Ano ang kulay ng sinegwalas? Ano ang katuturan? Bakit nakunan kundi buntis? Mainit ba o malamig? Paano bubuksan ito? May napinsala ba? Bawat bagay ba ay kailangan? Puwede na ba tayong umuwi? May hinala ba sa nagpatiwakal? Kilala mo ba si Ludwig Feuerbach? Bakit walang asin ang sinigang? Paano tayo makalulusot? Bumulong ka ba? Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa? Nasa loob daw ang kaharian? Magaspang ba? Bakit may apog sa kalingkingan? Bingi ba ako? Mangyayari kaya ito? Kung magunaw ang mundo, mapapawi ba ang utang natin? Sindak ka ba? Hanggang saan mo malulunok ito? Bakit tayo narito? Mas gusto mo ba ng sopas o salada? Tanga ba ako? Bangungot ba ito o panaginip? Bakit mahapdi ang lalamunan ko? Malamig ba ang hipo ni Lazaro? Bakit tapos na? Inis at yamot ka ba? Bakit may nangangaluluwa? Nais mong dumalaw sa bunganga ng sepulkro? Magkano ba? Pag-ibig ba raw ang makalulutas ng lahat? Niloloko ba tayo? Akin na ang sukli? Bawal bang mag-alis ng kulangot? Bakit buhay-alamang? Puwede bang umihi rito? Bakit walang pinto o bintana? Malikmata ba ito? Bakit wala kang imik?—</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>[Transcribed by Felix Razon]</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; min-height: 16px;"><b></b><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-69244809447314555542023-01-20T07:40:00.002-08:002023-01-20T07:40:39.126-08:00LABAN SA CARTESIAN PANANAW<p> <b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">DISKARTENG SAYO NAWA [<i>Cogito, ergo sum….]</i></b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><i>Ni E. San Juan, Jr.</i></b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><b></b><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHz69nwtYN_5gt43eunxZXtCbBXF1Ps4l244iFfrHnFAFN7WPUZJmjBVMdMd-kFNicsPY301ZapWB-_MFyOk2_d6e1LVdigZay5NBWIsNha0lQNr2MO-UpGO0A5PSuQZZ8qn6-9yRuP2OMNo5pKIx7yhDp-0xJvkM6mOYFo0fM54r_uutv8QM/s1179/AbadSantos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1179" data-original-width="785" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHz69nwtYN_5gt43eunxZXtCbBXF1Ps4l244iFfrHnFAFN7WPUZJmjBVMdMd-kFNicsPY301ZapWB-_MFyOk2_d6e1LVdigZay5NBWIsNha0lQNr2MO-UpGO0A5PSuQZZ8qn6-9yRuP2OMNo5pKIx7yhDp-0xJvkM6mOYFo0fM54r_uutv8QM/w455-h320/AbadSantos.jpg" width="455" /></a></div><br />
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nagkamalay ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Naghinala ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><b></b><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Naghanggad ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><b></b><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nagulat ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><b></b><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Natuliro ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nagmura ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nanaginip ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nalibugan ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><b></b><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nadaya ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nainggit ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nagsinungaling ako, samakatwid ako ay</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nakipagdyugdyugan ako, samakatwid ako </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Kinilabutan ako, samakatwid ako </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nalamangan ako, samakatwid a</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Tumutol ako't nakibaka, samakatwid ak</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Nakulam ako, samakatwid </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Naghihingalo, samakatwi </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Humingi ng saklolo, samaka </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Kapos hininga, sa ka </b></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-15385492349958412962023-01-04T08:17:00.003-08:002023-01-04T08:17:48.365-08:00RE-VISITING DILIMAN SOUVENIRS<p> <span style="font-family: BodoniMT; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: 700;">Re-Visiting Diliman Souvenirs: Peirce’s Semiotics and the Return of the Suppressed</span></p><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">E. SAN JUAN, JR.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ6P6AUWggXMoGTT148-lsZoRTRGN4q6-RfdP_aLe4YcWVQsstdFcDJqOuN2qzxAsurgGwfwaCv8vjPC7Tx7It1e5fkYsm3r4WOaE7IAzJI1iCqOUmqaQqCqgHEBFeK5GcpYDMc4f02QzZsKB5wyvCPCybBKaw8-owLDabB8eeP3WlTDvkZFo/s431/Lumad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ6P6AUWggXMoGTT148-lsZoRTRGN4q6-RfdP_aLe4YcWVQsstdFcDJqOuN2qzxAsurgGwfwaCv8vjPC7Tx7It1e5fkYsm3r4WOaE7IAzJI1iCqOUmqaQqCqgHEBFeK5GcpYDMc4f02QzZsKB5wyvCPCybBKaw8-owLDabB8eeP3WlTDvkZFo/w448-h320/Lumad.jpg" width="448" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">ABSTRACT</span></p><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">In the July 1957 issue of The Philippine Collegian appeared a poem entitled “Man is a Political Animal,” a translation of Aristotle’s famous definition of human beings. It was written by an English major, E. San Juan, Jr., who became president of the U.P. Writers Club in 1958 and an instructor in the Department of English, U.P. (1958-60). The poem, a dramatic monologue, was modeled after the Vorticist style of the British avant- garde artist Wyndham Lewis. Objections were then raised by the Dean of the College of Music Ramon Tapales, writer Amador Daguio, and others, who persuaded the U.P. administration to suspend the author from being published. In 2018, the author was awarded a visiting professorship in the U.P. English Department. The institution seems unchanged, but the cultural landscape has incalculably altered. The current president uses foul language (not just “four-letter” words) in public pronouncements with impunity. This essay reflects on that experience sixty-one years later on the failure of communication, providing sociological- biographical context and using Peirce’s semiotics to approach possible ways of responding to the speech- act or utterance entitled “Man is a Political Animal” performed at a specific time and place in our history. In this postmodern era, is it self-indulgent to reflect on the complex intertextuality of a literary text to tease out its wider sociopolitical lessons drawn from comparing disparate viewpoints and contexts?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">KEYWORDS</span></p><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">interpretant, subject, author, meaning, identity, signifier</span></p></div><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">It was not </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">terra incognita. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Returning to the</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">University of the Philippines, Diliman, in January</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">to March 2018 as a visiting professor of English</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">and Comparative Literature has been not only</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">deja vu </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">but also </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">deja connu. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Not entirely, though.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">One can never return home again. You can never</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">step into the same river again, said Heraclitus,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">but you can recall or capture the initial shock of</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">recognition enough to hear the water swirling</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">again in its unimpeded turbulence. Perhaps</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">this reminiscence will register a sociohistorical</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">resonance beyond its merely personal or merely</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">local import about controversies regarding</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">language use, reader-response, and ideology-</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">critique.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Teaching again in U.P. has become<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">a re-baptism in the archives first explored in<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">my undergraduate days in the 1950s. Just like<br />my Fulbright lectureship in 1987-88 in U.P.,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">this occasion has been a learning experience<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">for me, as we (teachers and students) re-read Saussure, Jakobson, Lacan, Barthes, Irigaray, Derrida, Said, Foucault, among others in a Literary Theory seminar taught by Professor Ruth Pison. I volunteered to help shepherd the class through the semantic wilderness, hence this </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">note on this experience in relation to an earlier </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">stage of my engagement with readers who were panicked by a poem using “f**k” now a staple<br />of Hollywood conversation, a sign of quotidian modernity, notwithstanding Duterte’s unspeakable misogynism (Espina Varona).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Our Western gurus or idols have given us the scriptural idiom for discussing literary matters. These “monsters” or masters of theory have provoked, alarmed, or bewildered our smart co-learners—one of them coming all the way</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20</span></p></div><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">ISSUE 1</span></p></div><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">(2018)</span></p></div><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW 35</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">PERSONAL ESSAY</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 2"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">from Nueva Ecija to attend our Wednesday sessions. If I use the personal pronoun here, please consider it also as an allegorical stand-in for the generation that grew up after Liberation, from 1945 to 1965. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">We were post WW2/Cold War children exposed to Huk guerilla encounters, McCarthyite witch-hunts, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Red Scare epidemic, etc. Maybe post-millennials now, subaltern cyborgs obsessed with Facebook inventorizing, may consider those days quaint, antiquarian, obsolete despite the scandalous red-tagging of academics today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">From Monologue to Colloquy</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Of course, the speaking subject here—the “I’ as </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">balikbayan </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">OFW, for instance, cannot be enclosed in that time-space warp. So it is puzzling who is speaking, who is addressing whom, from the viewpoint of the postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion. One suspects that every act of remembering, especially one linked to institutional memory, like attempts at translation, is an act of betrayal of sorts. As a preface to the event I will recount below, I submit that the concept of the subject/subjectivity<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">here is the central problem in reading and interpreting of any text/speech-act. In contrast to the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">dominant Cartesian notion of subjectivity that underwrites bourgeois individualism, the self has been </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">“de-constructed” by thinkers ranging from Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Levi-Strauss, and others. The </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">entrepreneurial subject of the capitalist era, eroded by massive forces of alienation and commodity- fetishism, has become a specter haunting the disenchanted halls/groves of the academy, its authority evaporated. In speculating on the end of inquiry, given the loss of belief in substance or intuition, the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce discovered the solitary self as nothing else but ignorance, so that only a community of inquirers can reach truth or agreement on what is real or true. When appearances </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">are taken as facts, valid only for one private self, “error appears ... explained only by supposing a </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">self </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">which is fallible...Ignorance and error are all that distinguish our private selves from the absolute ego of pure apperception” (20; see also de Waal 154).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">In this context, the “I” here, or any commentator on experience, can only be a sign of an ensemble of participants in the narrative of creating values, meanings, significance. It is already a truism that society is not a collection of egos or floating psyches; it is the dynamic totality of social </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">relations. Thus the narrator of this sequence of events is always a supra-individual entity, a collective subject, not the monadic ego of psychoanalysis. I subscribe to the historical-materialist tradition that </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">posits the subject, “the active and structured unity which makes possible a significant account of the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">actions of men or of the nature and meaning of the [artistic] work, is not an individual but a super- individual reality, a human group” (Goldmann 135). So, in this essay, the “I’ that attempts to narrate </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">events in his life actually signifies a group, say, the petit bourgeois stratum in the Philippine neocolonial</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">formation during the Cold War. We hear the voice of a class-representative mediating the proletariat/ </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">peasantry and the comprador/ilustrado/landlord bloc, a figure aspiring to join the elite but also repelled by its hypocrisy and insipidity, and affirming its rebellious, nonconformist, anarchistic stance. One can discern lineaments of this character in the persona speaking in the poem on exhibit here, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">“Man is a Political Animal.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">Historicizing from the Dustbin</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">This is not the first time I have engaged in teaching in the U.P. English Department. After I </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">graduated in 1958, the patriarchs of the Department Professors Cristino Jamias and Leopoldo Yabes hired me as an instructor from 1958 to 1960. In due time, the patriarchal order was fortuitously</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">changed; my contemporaries Pete Daroy, Ernie Manalo, Max Ramos Jr., and others departed long </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">ago for the other shore; and so too, mentors like Ricardo Pascual, Alfredo Lagmay, Cesar Majul, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Francisco Arcellana, N.V.M. Gonzalez amongst others. After finishing graduate school in Cambridge,</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Massachusetts, I taught again in 1966-67 when world-famous Carlos P. Romulo was president (for a </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">summation of my U.S. experience, see San Juan 3-4). I taught again here in 1987-88 as a Fulbright </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">teaching fellow, and in 2008 shepherded the theory seminar with Professor Preachy Legasto. This may be my last stint, a memorable one, accompanied with our bequest to the U.P. Foundation for the</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">36 PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018)</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">joint Aguilar-San Juan scholarship awards for deserving majors in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. This is only a slight gesture of acknowledging our indebtedness to the people who actualized the potential of this neocolonial institution.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Just a few snapshots of the fifties may supply part of the context. My first teachers in English </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">1 were Professor Elmer Ordoñez whose memorable assignment was for us to comment on Ivan Bunin’s classic story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” included in the old WW2 pocketbook collection of short stories; and Professor Franz Arcellana, who wrote slowly on the blackboard, with his left hand, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the definition of “precis” taken from the big Harry Shaw textbook in Freshman English. Visitors </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Bienvenido Santos, Hortense Calisher, William Faulkner, and other famous authors came and said goodbye. We politely signaled our appreciation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">But there is no doubt that it was the textbook </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Approach to Literature </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, the archpriests of American New Criticism, which made a lasting impact on us<br />as English majors then. After that, I switched my interest to philosophy (Alfred Ayer’s </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Language, Truth and Logic </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">and Bertrand Russell’s works became our treasured indices of wisdom, which did not prevent us </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">from reading Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, Malraux, and others), having made friends with habitués in </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the Department of Philosophy, in particular Armando Bonifacio, Gerry Acay, and other heretics, whose periodical </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Inquiry </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">published Franz’s comment on my poem which I will refer to later (see San Juan, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Toward a People’s Literature</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">.).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">A short parenthesis: my textbook memories have faded, but one lesson that stuck may be </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">instructive. It was the occasion when N.V.M. Gonzalez (whose creative writing course was dominated by one single book, Herbert Read’s </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">English Prose Style) </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">took members of the class to attend the Manila Trial Court in City Hall to witness the drama of the libel suit against Estrella Alfon for the obscenity of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">her story, “Fairy Tale of the City.” That excursion outside the classroom conveyed to me the undeniable </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">entanglement of art, disciplinary institutions (aside from the classroom), and the sociopolitical regime </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">affecting human conduct. Later on, when I wrote a somewhat satiric review of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Signatures </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">(edited by </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">colleagues Alex Hufana and Rony Diaz) at Franz’s request, I was threatened with a lawsuit filed by the poet Oscar de Zuñiga who was offended by my unkindly comments. (Later on, Ricaredo Demetillo<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">and Leonard Casper would violently denounce me as a diehard Maoist, communist, etc.) That episode somehow put an end to my imitations of Mark Twain, Henry Mencken, and George Bernard Shaw.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">One scenario sticks out from our years of sitting at the table at the far end of the Department: </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Professor Pascual Capiz, perched at the opposite end, always finding the opportunity to advise me: </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">“Read Spinoza, Sonny, don’t forget Spinoza.” Four decades after, I read a paper on “What we can learn</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">about racism from Benedict Spinoza” to an audience at the University of Texas, Austin, in 2002 (see </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">San Juan, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Spinoza and the Terror of Racism</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">). I did not follow his advice until the revival of Spinoza in the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">sixties and seventies in Europe, Spinoza’s monism (adapted by Deleuze/Negri) utilized as antidote to variants of Hegel-Marx’s dialectics (Marcuse, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh) in the vicissitudes of Cold </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">War strategy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Interlude</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">What intervened after my apprenticeship with formalist New Criticism may be recounted </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">quickly as an effect of indoctrination in the New Criticism. My book on Oscar Wilde, despite the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">philological-historicist bent of my advisers Jerome Buckley and Douglas Bush, is basically formalist,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">not really contextualized in the gender wars then brewing in the early sixties--anti-Vietnam War and </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements culminating in May 1968--as well as the First Quarter Storm, the Diliman Commune, and the imposition of the Marcos dictatorship in 1972. This was followed by my translation into English of Amado V. Hernandez’s poems, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Rice Grains</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Balagtas: Art and Revolution</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">, and </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">The Radical Tradition in Philippine Literature</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">The social upheavals worldwide in the sixties may account for my editing of Georg Lukac’s </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">cultural criticism in </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Marxism and Human Liberation </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">(Dell). Despite this, my first U.P. Press book</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">, Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">(released a day or two before Marcos declared martial law)</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">,</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018) </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW 37</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 4"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">was still largely a formalist commentary. I had not yet fully understood Lukac’s historical materialist approach. Notwithstanding the title of the Bulosan commentary, it was a symptom of a cultural lag, typical of our backward or underdeveloped social formation, unsynchronized with the structuralist and post-structuralist tide that swept the Western academy from 1968 to 1986 (see my new book on </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Bulosan). Nothing strange for the mute subaltern of the neocolony, not postcolony, experiencing the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">turbulence of the crisis of global capitalism via the Marcos authoritarian interlude and the implacable </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">toxic plague of the Cold War.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">What happened? The influence of the changes that occurred, in particular the revision of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the canon, and the transformation of critical frameworks/paradigms--the eruption of feminist, ethnic, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">and subaltern/people-of-color agencies in the social text--overlaid/reconfigured my previous New </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Critical horizon. I did not jettison my formalist training--how could one do that? One’s consciousness </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">is determined by one’s social conditioning. The “I” is a fictional synapse of historical contradictions. Adjustments had to be made, resulting into a palimpsest of texts that requires an inventory (to heed </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Gramsci’s advice), of which this is the latest attempt.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">To recapitulate Peirce’s caveat: the private self is nothing but error and ignorance. One’s </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">identity is always the site of an intertextuality traversing the dialectic of base and superstructure,<br />often overshooting it. Marks of its effect may be found in the much-attacked book from left and right, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Subversions of Desire: Prolegomena to Nick Joaquin </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">in 1988. Unbeknownst to the public, it was recently reprinted by the Dominicans of the University of Santo Tomas, since the Jesuits are no longer</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">interested in the unorthodox, difficult and eclectic discourse filled with references to Lacan, Foucault, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin, Jameson, Deleuze-Guattari and Kristeva. They prefer the Nazi sympathizer Heidegger<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">and the Jewish mystic Emmanuel Levinas. This will be my excuse, at this juncture, to transit to the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">problem of semiotics based on the Saussurean premise that orients both structuralist and postmodernist thinking (including postcolonial criticism) so fashionable still, though Derrida has been replaced by Butler, Ranciere, Badiou, Agamben and other European imports to the metropole of the declining<br />but still ferocious American Leviathan of the Trump era. Peircean semiotics remains on the margins<br />of academic discourse, despite the popularity of Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Robert Brandom, among others. Harold Bloom is dead; long live Zizek,<br />Twitter, Instagram, Facebook!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Signifiers Galore</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">We are near the final reckoning. Even before May 1968, the deluge of the dancing signifiers </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">had begun to wreak havoc on the conservative bastions of putatively higher humanistic learning.<br />As everyone knows, a crucial event was the 1967 Johns Hopkins Conference on “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man,” where the archpriests of poststructuralism (Lacan, Derrida, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Barthes, Goldman, Todorov, and others) entered the scene, literary theory and criticism suffered a sea- </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">change, as it were.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">New Criticism has become old-fashioned, “auf-hebunged.” In </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">After Theory</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">, Terry Eagleton </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">summed up the historic contexts of 1965-1980--”the age of civil rights and student insurgency, national </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">liberation fronts, anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigns, the emergence of the women’s movement, and the heyday of cultural liberation,” in which the sensibility of society had “shifted from the earnest, self-disciplined and submissive to the cool, hedonistic and insubordinate. If there was widespread </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">disaffection, there was also visionary hope” (83) in consumerist, narcissistic society of the spectacle. The expletive “f**k” is now only a cute mannerism, a phatic performance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">The present conjuncture seemed then “the herald of a new future, the portal to a land of boundless possibility”--until 1989, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, shock therapy for the Soviet system, followed closely by the Iraq War, 9 /11 and the global war on terrorism, and the erosion of the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Neoliberal dispensation from the 2008 global capitalist earthquake and the explosions in Libya, Yemen, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Afghanistan, Syria and the entire Middle East. We are still living the aftershock of those events. For</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">38 PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018)</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">some, the age of identity politics </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">aka </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the culture of neoconservative reaction began, overshadowing the fall of the Berlin Wall, demise of the Soviet Union, Tiananmen Square, 9/11, the 2008 neoliberal capitalist meltdown, and the election of Trump and his neofascist “America First” agenda.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">To understand this re-arrangement of the furniture in the landscape, I urged our graduate students to review Saussure’s foundational remarks on the dyadic structure of the sign, and the larger </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">frame of Roman Jakobson’s six functions of language in communication. What has become salient<br />is the arbitrary nature of the signifier-signified nexus, with the inference that meaning is produced by systematic differences. Its divorce from objective reality seems assumed, though parole/speech thrives somewhere out there defying lawful order and any fixed rule. The Russian Marxist Mikhail Bakhtin was unheard of, and Jakobson forgotten. Meanwhile, the enigmatic influence of Lacan signaled the advent of deconstruction, with signifiers shifting over the signified, meaning not only deferred or undecidable, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">but virtually impossible to pin down. For Lacan, actually, the Name-of-the-Father terminates the sliding </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">of signifiers, thus his infamous phallocentrism overheard in chic salon conversations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Another parenthesis: when I took a class with I.A. Richards in poetics in my first year at Harvard in 1960--I recall Ching Dadufalza exulting over her acquaintance with the founder of close </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">formalist reading--he of course assigned his book </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Coleridge on Imagination</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">, as expected. But what surprised </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">me was his strong recommendation that we study carefully Jakobson’s 1958 landmark essay, “Linguistics and Poetics,” given at a conference in Indiana University, but only published later in 1960 in the book </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Style in Language</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">, which Richards also assigned. Contrary to the canonical views, Richards was not really a formalist but a neo-Hegelian pedagogue informed by the entire Western heritage and enriched by borrowings from Mencius and then current behavior psychology.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">I reminded our students not to forget Jakobson’s linguistic analysis. If Jakobson’s diagram </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">on the functions of language were absorbed and popularized, it would have exerted some brake on </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the prevalence of Nietzschean theorizing applied by Derrida, De Man, Hartman, Spivak, and their</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">huge academic following. Jakobson’s formula on the axis of similarity (metaphor) imposed on the axis of contiguity (metonymy), remains unexplored. To quote Jakobson: “The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination” (303). But instead<br />of this linguistic knowledge used by critics, it is Lacan’s “floating signifiers” that have ruled the day ever since it was given in 1957 and publicized in translation in 1966. Students’ perplexity over Lacan </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">persists, despite Jakobson and the salutary warnings of the American pragmaticist Peirce.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">Mis-recognizing the Speaker</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">It is no longer news to learn of the author’s demise (announced by Roland Barthes) in between the interstitial locus of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">differance</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">. By author, Barthes referred to the empiricist and rationalist conception </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">of the individual origin of the text, its final signified. This classical idea of the author presumably encloses the text within a single meaning enshrined in the author’s biography, instead of allowing<br />its intertextuality to induce a variety of readers to produce multiple readings. From the modernist, avant-garde perspective, the texts of Mallarme, Joyce, and others are considered the occasions of language, the circuit of signifiers speaking; they are not the author’s psyche, or a representation of its</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">subjectivity, its interiority. Presumably the narrators of Proust’s novel, or of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Ulysses</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">, are generated by the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">textual machine without anyone programming it--its DNA is the differential logic operating within it. Conceptual art and its sequel, post-conceptualism, thrives on this axiom.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">In “What is an Author?” Michel Foucault has also informed us that the author-function is </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">historically variable. It is defined by a variety of discourses and institutions (for example, copyright </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">laws). Ancient epics or medieval romances do not have authors in the modern construal of individual</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">originators or artificers. Foucault’s argument is tied to the death of the human subject, the Cartesian ego, determined not by conscience but by historically specific structures circumscribing its socio-political existence. Thus writing is not something that can be completed and appropriated but an interminable </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">practice, a postmodern theme epitomized by Samuel Beckett’s character saying: “What does it matter</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018) </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW 39</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 6"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">who is speaking,” someone said, what does it matter who is speaking?” (Foucault 123). Peirce had anticipated this in the 1870s with his anti-Cartesian critique and the inauguration of a triadic theory of language, in contrast to the dualistic one by Saussure and epigones.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">On second thought, it matters who is being addressed, who is listening or overhearing these </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">utterances. For now, I will quickly summarize Peirce’s semiotic triad so as to get to the prime exhibit for </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">today, the censored poem “Man is a Political Animal” reproduced below from the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Philippine Collegian </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">(see San Juan, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Balikbayan Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">249-252).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">For Peirce, meaning is produced by the triad of signifier (representamen), the object signified, and the interpretant, which connects signifier and signified (Peirce; San Juan). The representamen is </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">something which stands to somebody for something; it addresses someone and creates in the mind<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">an equivalent sign, the interpretant of the first sign, and this too stands for something, namely, the object or idea of that first sign. Communication is the result of the interplay between representamen,</span></p></div></div><img alt="page6image18711568" height="485.078000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/c1030132-f432-4bc6-8312-1b557ae94bb4" width="319.861000" /><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">40 PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018)</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 7"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">interpretant, and object/idea. This mediating item in Peirce’s theory of signification, or meaning- </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">production, namely, the interpretant, is missing or invisible in the Saussurean dyadic scheme. Without </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">this interpretant, it is impossible to figure out what connects the signifier and the hypothetical signified. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Robert Scholes remarks that, following Saussure, signs do not refer to things, “they signify concept, concepts are aspects of thought, not of reality.” We move then into the realm of thought.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Peirce is recognized as the founder of pragmaticism, not the psychologistic version of pragmatism popularized by his friend William James, or the postmodern version of antifoundationalism </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">propagated by Richard Rorty. Peirce’s maxim or principle was first formulated in his 1878 essay “How </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">to Make Our Ideas Clear”: “In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception we should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception” (146; see also Short, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Peirce’s Theory of Signs</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">). Peirce explained that the “sum of these consequences”<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">is equivalent to a process of rational conduct open to fallibilistic inquiry. The early Peirce may have </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">speculated on infinite semiosis, as Eco and Derrida supposed. Later on Peirce concluded that we should </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">strive for a “concrete reasonableness” and its embodiment in a community of inquirers open to the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">impact of experience, the intractable factuality of an objective world, the historicity of life, and the influence of traditions” (95).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">To go back to the connection between the signifier and the signified, namely, the interpretant, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Peirce enumerates three possible forms of interpretant (in his “Letters to Lady Welby”): “the interpretant as represented or meant to be understood, its interpretant as it is produced; and its interpretant in itself” (Peirce 404-06). There are two main kinds of interpretants: the dynamic interpretant, and immediate interpretant. Later in his life, Peirce speculated on the third kind of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">interpretant, the logical or final interpretant that would sum up the findings of the first two. The dynamic interpretant can treat the sign/signifiers as something the reasonableness of which will be </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">acknowledged; or as an act of insistence; or something for contemplation. Meanwhile, the immediate </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">interpretant considers the signifiers into three kinds: 1) those interpretable in thoughts or other signs<br />of the same kind in infinite series; 2) those which are interpretable in actual experiences; and 3) those </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">which are interpretable in qualities or feelings (for further elaboration, see essays on the interpretant in Muller and Brent).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Examine the varieties of interpretants drawn from the published reactions to the poem in </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">question. If we look at the three interpretants you have, those by Amador Daguio, Ramon Tapales, and </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Franz Arcellana, the first two can be classified as examples of immediate interpretants: they translate the poem into actual experiences that are morally censurable, invoking convention and disciplinary </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">codes or instruments of punishment. They are limited and inadequate. Meanwhile, the third would </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">exemplify the dynamic interpretant that treat the poem as something reasonable, but would judge its performance as lacking in qualities or feelings--not actual experiences--ascribable to an accomplished work of art. It would invoke the institution of like-minded arbiters of taste. In short, the first two interpretants draw inferences outside the parameter of aesthetics, while the third confines itself to the value of the signifiers/representamen as inadequate to expressing a hypothetical idea of art implied by </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the critic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">What is decisive, then, in the formulation of interpretants is the sociopolitical purpose framing </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">them and the historical conjuncture underlying the purpose. Contextualizing the act of reading/ </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">interpreting is thus imperative to arrive at a wide-ranging, judicious, and dynamic appreciation of a</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">text/speech-act. Otherwise, it would be a prejudiced, polemical or tactically instrumental reading and evaluation of the event/text/utterance—ultimately, a flawed comprehension for a limited audience or </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">community of inquirers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">Differences, however, need not supersede comparison and prohibit judgment. I would like<br />to recommend to readers my earlier reflection on this incident in my book </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Balikbayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">(249-252) as one more proof that the subject is indeed constructed through differences. Or, if not bifurcated, the subject-in-question (always identified as error or ignorance) is pluralized by time-</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018) </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW 41</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 8"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">space mutations. The subject speaking/writing in 2008 differs from the subject performing as author/ </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">speaker in 1957. Likewise, the subject now speaking today, March 13, 2018, in this lecture for a visiting </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">professor—the original pretext and matrix for this essay—is different from the author revising this text </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">before you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">However, despite these disjunctions and equivocations, this does not imply that meaning<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">is forever deferred. The ultimate interpretant awaits, even though the context is unstable, unfixed, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">relational, or essentially undecidable. Indeed, one may discern an aporia in the rhetoric of the<br />poem, the rubric “political animal” of Aristotelian origin clashing with the Browningesque dramatic monologue imitated from model poetic patterns of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, editor of avant- </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">garde publications like BLAST in the London milieu of the first two decades of last century. Of all the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">reactors, Franz Arcellana, who never really censored the poem as adviser of the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Collegian </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">then, was the most disingenuously ironic. Incidentally, Franz confessed to me in 1987 that he was a “fall guy” during </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">that time, as if to exonerate himself from some dilemma. To be sure, I would assert here that he was </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">not responsible for the proscription of the author from publishing for a year; I refrained from putting him and the editors in endless predicaments.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Provisional Epilogue</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">The event may be trivial for many now except as a means of reviving nostalgia for the </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">presence of Arcellana and Gonzalez in the U.P. faculty. Allow me then to add a footnote here by saying that I am grateful to Franz Arcellana for encouraging me during my undergraduate days, and as a token of this esteem I wrote the commentary on his short story about Christmas, and on “The Yellow Shawl” in the concluding pages of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Toward a People’s Literature </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">(170-173). Personally I did not associate </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">him at all with my suspension--there was no written statement from the UP administration, except a</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">verbal notice from the Editor that they would not print anything from me for a while--because this </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">whole incident was symptomatic of the religious-secular conflict in the University at that time arising </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">from the role of Father John Delaney and Prof. J.D. Constantino charging Professor Ricardo Pascual and his cohort of agnostics and atheists of Communistic leanings. This is a whole historic period </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">before Martial Law that I cannot review here (see the excellent analysis by Preciosa de Joya). There are other historic pressures one can infer from this complex conjuncture if one considers the institutional function of college newspapers, the selection of their editors and staff, their funding and distribution by </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">an ideological state apparatus such as the University of the Philippines.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">In retrospect, the whole affair was a repercussion of the Cold War and McCarthyism </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">particularized in the neocolonial situation of the Philippines during the regimes of Magsaysay and its successors. Indeed, from 1954 to 1960, the Cold War and its local manifestations (the Huk uprising, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">local McCarthyism, the internecine bloodletting among local oligarchs, the endemic corruption, extra- </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">judicial killings, gangsterism everywhere) constitute the condition of possibility for the poem and its programmed reactions (for a historical overview, see Constantino, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">The Philippines: The Continuing Past,</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">226-345; Abaya, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">The Making of a Subversive</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">One can perhaps locate somewhere the lesson of this incident in this abstract of the talk: With </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">the death of the “author,” the subject-position framed in postmodern critical theory becomes a field<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">of contestation. The linguistic turn in literary studies has made even this subject precarious, reputed<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">to be a victim of the perpetual sliding of the Lacanian signifier. As a performing subject of this public discourse, I hope to recover the position of the “author” by recollection of my U.P. experience in<br />the fifties, specifically as the suspended student-writer of a controversial poem. The narration of this </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">event is mediated through various interpretants. With a slight detour through Peirce’s triadic theory of </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">signs, this brief intervention hopes to rescue the protagonists of that field, temporarily stabilized here, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">from being swallowed forever in the “vertiginous abyss” of socio-cultural “underdevelopment.” As<br />for the identity of the subject-in-process, or subject-on-trial, as Julia Kristeva would put it, I seek your indulgence in ending this paper with reference to my 1986 comment on the now historic document,</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">42 PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018)</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 9"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">“Declaration of the Coalition of Writers and Artists for Freedom and Democracy” signed by Filipino writers, intellectuals, and bureaucrats allied to the then moribund Marcos dictatorship, a document destined for the fabled “dustbin of history” (for my comment, see San Juan, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic;">Commentary: What Shall We Do with All of Marcos’ Hacks? </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 10pt;">).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">WORKS CITED</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Abaya, Hernando. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Making of a Subversive. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1984.<br />Alfon, Estrella D. “Fairy Tale for the City.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Manila Chronicle, This Week</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">, April 1955, pp. 22-25.<br />Ayer, Alfred. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Language, Truth and Logic. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">New York: Dover Publications, 1952.<br />Brooks, Cleanth, John Purser, and Robert Penn Warren, editors. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">An Approach to Literature</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. New York: Appleton-</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Century-Crofts Inc., 1964.<br />Constantino, Renato. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Philippines: The Continuing Past</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. Quezon City: The Foundation for Nationalist Studies,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">1978.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">de Joya, Preciosa. “Exorcising Communist Specters and Witch Philosophers: The Struggle for Academic Freedom</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">in 1961.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Kritika Kultura, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">no. 26</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">2016, pp. 4-32.<br />de Waal, Cornelis de. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013<br />Eagleton, Terry. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">After Theory. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">New York: Basic Books, 2003.<br />Espina-Varona, Inday. “A Solidarity Statement of young women leaders, in response to President Rodrigo Duterte’s</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">misogynistic statements.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Medium, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">medium.com/@indayespinavarona/read-a-solidarity-statement</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Accessed 19 May 2018.<br />Foucault, Michel. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Language, Counter-Memory, Practice</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.<br />Goldman, Lucien. “Criticism and Dogmatism in Literature.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">To Free a Generation, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">edited by David Cooper, Collier</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Books, 1968, pp. 287-337.<br />Jakobson, Roman.“Linguistics and Poetics.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Essays on the Language of Literature</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">, edited by Seymour Chatman and</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Samuel Levin, Houghton Mifflin Co, 1967, pp. 296-322.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Kristeva, Julia. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Kristeva Reader, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">edited by Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.<br />Leitch, Vincent, editor. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. New York: W.W. Norton, Inc., 2001.<br />Lodge, David. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Modern Criticism and Theory. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">New York: Longman, 1988.<br />Muller, John and Joseph Brent, editors. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Peirce, Semiotics, and Psychoanalysis. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Press, 2000.<br />Peirce, Charles S. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Peirce on Signs, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">edited by James Hoopes. Durham NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. ——. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Selected Writings</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">, edited by Philip Wiener. New York: Dover Publications, 1958.<br />——-. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Essential Peirce Volume 1, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">University Press, 1992.<br />——. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Essential Writings</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">, edited by Edward C. Moore. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.<br />Read, Herbert. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">English Prose Style. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">New York: Pantheon, 1952.<br />Richards, I.A. “Poetic Process and Literary Analysis.”</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Style in Language, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">edited by Thomas Sebeok, MIT Press, 1960,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">pp.9-23.<br />San Juan, E. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Balikbayan Sinta: An E. San Juan Reade</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">r. Quezon City: Ateneo University Press, 2008.<br />——. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1975.<br />——. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Carlos Bulosan: Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the United States. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">New York: Peter Lang, 2017<br />——. “Commentary: What Shall We Do with All of Marcos’ Hacks?” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Philippine News, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">October 22-28, 1986, p.6. ——. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.<br />——. “Interview with Joon Park”. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Asian-Pacific American Journal, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">vol. 71, 1998, pp.100-109<br />——. “Man is a Political Animal.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">The Philippine Collegian</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">, July 1957, p.7.<br />——. editor, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Marxism and Human Liberation</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. New York: Dell, 1972.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Toward a People’s Literature</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1984.<br />——. “Metakomentaryo sa Pagkakataon ng Kolokyum ukol sa “The Places of E. San Juan, Jr.,” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Kritika Kultura 26</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/kk/article/view/KK2016.02625 Accessed 19 May 2018. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">——. ”Remembrance of Things Almost Past by an English Major in U.P. (1954-58),” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Manila Times</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">, March 4,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">2012, p. 6.</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018) </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW 43</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 10"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">——. “Saussure/Peirce: Escaping from the Prison-House of Language.” </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Filipinas Everywhere</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. Sussex, UK: Sussex </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Academic Press, 2016.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">—— . </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Subversions of Desire: Prolegomena to Nick Joaquin</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">. Quezon City: Ateneo University Press, 1988. ——. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Spinoza and the Terror of Racism. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University Press, 2002.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">Short, T, L. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic;">Peirce’s Theory of Signs. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 9pt;">New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">___________________</span></p><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">E. SAN JUAN, Jr. </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">is emeritus professor of English, Ethnic Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Connecticut & Washington State University; professorial lecturer, Polytechnic University of the Philippines; previously fellow of W.E.B. Institute, Harvard University, and Fulbright professor of American Studies, Leuven University, Belgium; recent books include: U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave MacMillan), Filipinas Everywhere (Sussex Academic Press), Carlos Bulosan: Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the U.S. (Peter Lang), and Between Empire and Insurgency, and Kontra-Modernidad (U.P. Press).</span></p></div></div><img alt="page10image1747680" height="43.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/dbacce9f-3cd4-4d7a-9ae4-e490cfbf00d5" width="15.875000" /> <img alt="page10image18586736" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/b7c82db4-e258-4e8f-ad7e-758ec061b6c7" width="447.026000" /> <img alt="page10image1786304" height="43.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/de5938b8-daec-42e8-b5da-67ee99af1572" width="2.250000" /> <img alt="page10image1656240" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/6d86011e-5783-4810-9ef1-7a2fe9fcfa74" width="2.250000" /> <img alt="page10image1659488" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/5e3a22a3-a7a6-4ba6-9c3a-db5e5d97879b" width="0.085500" /> <img alt="page10image1655456" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/ea304122-9e41-4b5f-aaa7-9af137580f9e" width="1.377900" /> <img alt="page10image1682144" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/32aec563-9693-47ca-9e7b-241c57b08c03" width="0.322200" /> <img alt="page10image1699648" height="43.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/618018eb-0c0b-43a1-b789-62152499b3cc" width="2.250000" /> <img alt="page10image1694048" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/793ea4a8-a555-45e1-877d-fc88a7cbfd56" width="0.373300" /> <img alt="page10image1866064" height="43.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/4d2431c7-9563-432b-ab67-bc83c1287455" width="78.753300" /><img alt="page10image18581744" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/32e61c8e-a26a-4287-8c7c-9e5a4766496a" width="447.026000" /> <img alt="page10image2089952" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/ebe4bc03-3b95-4814-b523-1abf51bd3853" width="2.250000" /> <img alt="page10image2033408" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/089cc42d-e0eb-4997-868e-3b1e75c90fc7" width="0.294200" /> <img alt="page10image2033296" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/f333ef31-44e2-466e-963d-e10910253056" width="0.081000" /> <img alt="page10image1971568" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/71b8d6f9-db3e-4590-8bdd-4d3e7da51eb4" width="15.875000" /><img alt="page10image18581328" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/ec0f8ba7-9348-4902-a59d-639d98259451" width="447.026000" /> <img alt="page10image1971680" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/8ff4a918-7127-4f5e-8194-377da743a1df" width="31.139000" /><img alt="page10image1972016" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/a298603d-969e-457b-92cf-8c39a0e3a35d" width="447.026000" /><img alt="page10image18582160" height="31.750000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/55b9fe4e-67a5-4828-a5e6-48541d2aa634" width="447.026000" /><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 700;">44 PHILIPPINE HUMANITIES REVIEW </span><span style="font-family: DINPro; font-size: 8pt;">VOLUME 20 ISSUE 1 (2018)</span></p></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-451177788801693102022-12-26T07:33:00.003-08:002022-12-26T07:33:28.654-08:00INTRODUCING SIKOLOHIYANG FILIPINO<p><b> <span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">INTER/CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUES AND INDIGENIZATION IN LATE MODERNITY:</span></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b>Introducing Filipino Psychology </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b><i>by E. San Juan, Jr.</i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN5WgRUjVkO7MT1cszhp15z3hknQhsGfxwBhz9ng6fRQ3WS3WdLSBsmVgIXV75Iz7KXxk4ARYTZqU-fk41Ncs2ggoxMSSBwny0AmAcapnuijYCnn0IojYRAbo_wzhS72cx8QqNUpeE4JJExsLpbB-6U-v4ATSqE5l09khhoOyzHQAvLzGUku0/s871/BrownMadonna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="871" data-original-width="604" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN5WgRUjVkO7MT1cszhp15z3hknQhsGfxwBhz9ng6fRQ3WS3WdLSBsmVgIXV75Iz7KXxk4ARYTZqU-fk41Ncs2ggoxMSSBwny0AmAcapnuijYCnn0IojYRAbo_wzhS72cx8QqNUpeE4JJExsLpbB-6U-v4ATSqE5l09khhoOyzHQAvLzGUku0/w396-h320/BrownMadonna.jpg" width="396" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><br /></i></b><p></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><i><b>The Philippine landscape is familiarly tropical and East Indian. But the world into which you have stepped is unlike anything of which you have yet had experience in the Orient. It is Spain—diluted, indeed, distored, and overlaid with Americanism.</b></i></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 288px; text-indent: 36px;"><i><b>---Aldous Huxley</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Except when a cataclysmic natural disaster strikes (an erupting volcano or earthquake), or a First Lady is discovered hoarding thousands of shoes, the Philippines is generally ignored by the international mass media. For U.S. investors, the Price Waterhouse Information Guide provides the seemingly eternal coordinates that any profit-seeking bloke needs to know:</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b> The Philippines lies off the southeast coast of the Asiatic mainland. It is a chain of 7,1000 islands and islets stretching a thousand miles northward from Borneo to Taiwan. It is just above the equator, between latitude of 4<span style="font-size: 8px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>0</sup></span> 23’ and 21<span style="font-size: 8px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>0</sup></span> 25’ N and longitude 116<span style="font-size: 8px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>0</sup></span> 30’ E. Bordering the Philippine coastline to the west and north is the China Sea; to the east, the Pacific Ocean; and to the south, the Celebes Sea and the coastal waters of Borneo. With a total land area of 115,000 sq miles (297,850 sq km), the Philippines is about the same size as Italy or the state of Arizona (1981, 1). </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Of late, the preemptive “war against terrorism” has elevated a small gang of bandits called “Abu Sayyaf” to center stage, with the country dubbed as “the second front of the war” after Afghanistan, before the U.S. conquest of Iraq. Not much is said about the long military occupation of the Philippines after the ferocious Filipino-American War (1899-1902), which cost over 1.4 million Filipino dead and over 8,000 American casualties (Constantino 1975). Seeking a gateway to the China market, the U.S. annexed the islands as its only Asian territory, and a neocolony after 1946. </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> After half a century of U.S. direct colonial rule, and the brutal slaughter of World War II, the Philippines remains a dependent periphery where the local and global meet in the course of uneven development. How were the natives globalized and the cosmopolitan localized? If “glocality” is a terrain of contradictions (Robertson 1994), the Filipino may have resolved some of the contradictions in a haphazard, aleatory fashion, epitomizing a hybrid type both familiar and ambiguous, even duplicitous. For example, the geographer Alden Cutshall describes the Filipino as a “gregarious, congenial person and a gracious host... The Filipino really lives two lives... One gets to know the Filipino when he goes beneath the surface, when he knows him in his family setting.” After a survey of diverse ethnic groups, Cutshall concludes that “Despite this general apparent homogeneity, the modern Philippines continues to be characterized by cultural, linguistic, and racial complexity” (1964, 24-25). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> A recent handbook by Alfredo and Grace Roces, <i>Culture Shock! </i>expands on the unexpected and, to some, unpredictable duplicity of Filipinos. Often the Westerner is misled by “their Western veneer” and so find Filipinos enigmatic, “sometimes strangely Western, sometimes familiarly Asian, always neither one nor the other. In fact, even Filipinos themselves are in a quandary about their own identity” (1985, 1-2). Sample any tourist guidebook and you will find nuggets of banal curiosities that exude an air of knowingness, such as this one on “Filipino Traits”:</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px;"><b>Filipinos are a gregarious, sociable lot: they are lively, friendly and hospitable. They sing and dance at the drop of a hat, laugh readily, and have a communal sense of fun. Some social characteristics have both plusses and minuses. For example, their attitude of <i>bahala na </i>(‘come what may’) enables them to meet difficulties and hardships with resignation, leaving it up to the Almighty to sort things out; but it can also result in overconfidence that things will work out in their interests, without much input on their part (1991, 50).</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>By focusing on certain observed peculiarities deemed typical, the guidebook expert succumbs not only to stereotyping but also to a psychologizing reflex in its diagnosis of a putative “national character.” Can a personality configuration substitute for a whole sociocultural formation, a singular “life form”? What criteria are used to decide that certain qualities are typical and others not in representing a heterogeneous people/nation?</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><b> Psychological, symbolic, and cognitive anthropologists are prone to concentrating on a modal personality configuration, a repertoire of actions/speech-genres that supposedly function as the stable, energizing core of particular societies. During World War II, the Japanese were portrayed as “pathologically obedient,” the Germans as authoritarian, and so on. Marvin Harris (1979) disputed Ruth Benedict’s thesis that the Pueblo Indians were peaceful and non-competitive by alluding to their bloody messianic wars against Spanish priests and colonizers. By encapsulating a whole people in the code of a “national psyche,” the dominant power can schematize rules and operationalize disciplinary measures to regulate the movements of groups as well as the everyday life of their subjects. This reductive discourse and its institutional apparatus functions as part of a strategy of maintaining control over subject populations and ideologically legitimizing such control as appropriate to their postulated collective psyche.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 36px;"><i><b>Rendering Subalterns Speechless</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><b>A colonized space in the Philippines became a unique laboratory for Cold War homogenization. In the fifties and sixties, during an upsurge of nationalist protests against the U.S. stranglehold, American scholars, in particular the culture-and-personality school of Frank Lynch and his colleagues based at the Ateneo de Manila University, inflated the saliency of value-orientation in regulating and preserving social coherence. They were echoed by the influential historian David J. Steinberg (1982) and a generation of experts whose impact can be gauged by the marketed appeal of Stanley Karnow’s <i>In Our Image </i>(1989). This Establishment epistemology summed up the unifying Filipino “value system” as one revolving around the centrality of the extended family and its network of “smooth interpersonal relationships.” These relationships grvitated around <i>hiya </i>(shame), <i>utang na loob </i>(debt of gratitude), the influence of kinship and the compadrazgo system which reinforced the “we-they” framework of interpersonal behavior. In my recent book <i>After Postcolonialism</i>, I had occasion to criticize Benedict Anderson’s portrayal of “cacique democracy” in the Philippines as vitiated by its adherence to the functionalist culture-and-personality school with its over-valorization of primordial ties of kinship and family loyalty. I noted that “this adaptation of Parsonian structural functionalism ignores power relations grounded on property and the political economy of the uneven formation. In particular, it obscures if not hides completely the profound extent of U.S. control of the economic, political, and military institutions that determine elections and the techniques of governance” (2000, 201). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><b>Since the sixties, the controversy over the interpretation of vernacular terms has become symptomatic of larger political/ideological engagements. We may take this conjuncture as the locus for the emergence of a place-based challenge to the logic of technocratic, developmentalist modernization. The neoliberal privileging of value-orientation as the key to unlocking a whole people’s history of underdevelopment entails the formulaic invocation of selected phenomena such as “<i>hiya</i>,” “<i>utang na loob</i>,” and “<i>bahala na</i>.” On this latter phrase, various glosses have been offered. The Roces guidebook noted earlier states that it literally means “<i>Bathala</i>”<i> </i>(god) will take care of us,” “let the circumstances take care of itself” (1985, 204). This decoding ascribes to Filipinos a predisposition to fatalistic resignation, withdrawal, shirking of personal responsibility, passivity. It is supposed to betray a refusal to plan, a decision that ultimately determines the course of one’s life. The <i>Cultural Dictionary for Filipinos </i>defines it as meaning “God’s will, or “Let God take care of it,” a surrender to more powerful surrounding forces. Is it really fatalism or simply a temporizing maneuver, avoiding long and complicated decision-making due to the customary deference to superiors, kins, other people’s opinions, etc?</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><b>The respected psychologist Alfredo V. Lagmay (1977) departs from the prevailing doxa. Rather than fatalism, according to Lagmay, the expression reveals determination and risk-taking. When anyone utters the phrase, she is telling herself that she is ready to face with courage the difficulties of the situation and will do her best to accomplish her objective. It is a kind of morale booster, an anticipatory stance meant to empower Filipinos with “what they need to do in times of crisis” (Kintanar 1996, 637). Meanwhile, the historian Zeus Salazar has pointed out an error of definition. “Bahala” does not mean “god” but “kapanagutan,” responsibility. When one says, “Ako ang bahala sa iyo,” it doesn’t mean that fate now has responsibility over you. Salazar contends that it means “I claim responsibility for you.” That is, we are anxious about someone we care for because our sense of responsibility extends to the situation in which a person is caught—we rely on ourselves, even though the situation seems hopeless. Salazar suggests that the correct deciphering of “bahala na” in English is: “Let’s cross our bridge when we reach it” and not “May God help me!” (1989, 54).</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Now the natives have suddenly bolted from slumber, it seems, and have begun to interpolate their own translations and, in effect, represent themselves. What caused this turn of events, this rectification of misrecognitions?</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>Genealogical Speculations</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> From the start of U.S. colonization of the Philippines, the gospel of capitalist rationality has oriented the “civilizing” discourse of governance. But it was not the Enlightenment program of educating the Filipinos for genuine autonomy and national self-determination. Americanization of the islands installed and sustained a quasi-feudal economy with a comprador-bureaucratic elite in charge of the ideological state machinery and its coercive agencies. Amid periodic insurrections, the energies of a nascent civil society were stifled or canalized; a patronage system allocated resources on the basis of traditional kinship ties and religious authority. A native oligarchy thoroughly Americanized suppressed peasant-worker insurgencies and chanelled nationalist aspirations to safe, officially supervised electoral rituals. By 1946, when formal independence was granted in the wake of the war’s devastation of the infrastructure and economy of the islands, the Filipino elite and large parts of the pettybourgeois intelligentsia or middle stratum had become exemplary neocolonial subjects geared for waging the U.S. “Cold War” in Asia. Throughout the forties and fifties, anticommunist ideology and its repressive institutions reinforced the “deFilipinization” that historian Renato Constantino (1978) traced from the cooptation of the <i>ilustrado </i>at the beginning of the century to current President Arroyo’s sycophancy to the reactionary policies of the Bush administration. In sum, the constructed Filipino “psyche” was completely transformed into an agent of a globalizing business ethos obedient to U.S. dictates.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Complicit with the invading military, U.S. academics were appointed to implement the systematic “tutelage” of the Filipino subject. One example is Dean Worcester, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who wrote one of the first sourcebooks of knowledge about the Philippines and its people. He participated in the first Philippine Commission in 1899 on the basis of his expertise on zoological speciments collected in the archipelago. As Secretary of the Interior for 13 years, Worcester became notorious for denouncing the “barbaric” practices of slavery and peonage of the Muslims, thus judging Filipinos unfit for being recognized as a people or a nation. Unfortunately, some journalists exposed Worcester’s ties to corporate interests that profited from the exploitation of the colony’s natural and human resources. On the whole, to legitimize the rationality of its civilizing mission, U.S. colonial administrators operationalized a world-view of evolutionary progress. This paradigm of development required taxonomic and other classificatory mechanisms in order to hierarchize humans into categories deemed natural and fit for market/commodity exchanges. Up to the thirties and before World War II, when thousands of non-English-speaking Filipinos died defending U.S. sovereignty over the country, Filipinos were portrayed as “a very peculiar mass, a heterogeneous compound of inefficient humanity, a ‘jumble of save tribes’ that cried for order and pacification. Like the Negro, Chinaman, and Indian, Filipinos were ‘alien races...incapable of civilized self-government’” (Doty 1996, 37, 43). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> It took the introduction of American-style structural-functionalist sociology to finally allow the Filipinos to emerge as a group susceptible to “free world” persuasion. At the height of Cold War McCarthyism and the suppression of the Communist-led Huk revolt of the fifties, the culture-and-personality scholars helped reinforce U.S. hegemony in the neocolony by instructing Filipinos on their code of ethical conduct. This code consisted of rules conducing to “smooth interpersonal communication” premised on the doctrine of contractual reciprocity signified by terms such as <i>hiya, utang ng loob, pakikisama</i>, and so on. In essence, the code prescribed a harmonious equilibrium of client-patron (that is, landlord-tenant) relation and its accompanying “terms of exchange” which “untold multitudes of Filipinos,” especially the exploited peasants, according to Jesuit professor Lynch, “have found both acceptable and desirable” (1979, 48), even though it impeded modernization, i.e., the conversion of all relations to the cash-nexus, the supremacy of profit-making via the unregulated exploitation of labor. In a neocolony administered by the U.S. and its local allies, it is indeed a long way from the “individual self-realization” that Lynch’s collaborator, Mary Hollnsteiner (1979, 101), believes to be the role that modernization reserves for Filipino men and women.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>The Interruption</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> With the rise of nationalism in the sixties attendant to the worldwide protests against U.S. aggression in Vietnam and interference in Philippine affairs, a new generation of Filipino intellectuals entered the scene. Filipinos demonstrating against the subservient Marcos dictatorship were no longer behaving according to tried-and-true Filipino values of reciprocity and “smooth interpersonal relations.” In fact, the political mobilization of youth, women, peasants and workers by the millions in the late sixties and early seventies, together with the rebirth of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, alarmed the U.S. and the oligarchy to the point that Marcos had to institutionalize military rule by 1972—until a “people power” insurrection overthrew him in 1986. Meanwhile, an intellectual movement called “sikolohiyang Pilipino” grew up in the interstices of workers’ strikes, student protests, brutal counterinsurgency campaigns, rampant impoverishment of the countryside, massacres of peasants, widespread prostitution of women and children, and the rapid dislocation and uprooting of millions of Filipinos from the seventies to the present.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <i>Sikolohiyang Pilipino</i> (hereafter SP), literally rendered as <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>”Filipino Psychology,” intervened at this period of intensifying crisis. I would characterize SP as a multifaceted project by at least two generations of Filipino intellectuals seeking to invent a discipline/practice of psychological investigation of everylife life and individual personality opposed to the hegemonic episteme imposed by the United States and institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, etc. It is a deliberate program of research and pedagogy consciously based on indigenous Filipino culture and history. It may be viewed as part of a worldwide indigenization movement that began in the sixties and proceeded in the next four decades as a response initially to the Cold War politics of containment and repression of nationalist “third world” insurgencies and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to neoliberal globalization. It is a Filipino response, in particular, to continuing U.S. interference in Philippine society, culture, and politics. In that context, SP coincided with the intensification of ethnic and national consciousness throughout the country immediately before and during the Marcos martial-law regime (1972-1986), the rise of Muslim/Moro separatism, and subsequent “people power” uprisings. So far it has achieved some kind of institutional respectability in the last two decades in several universities, aside from establishing contacts in Japan, India, Mexico, Russia, England, North America, and elsewhere in the Filipino diaspora of ten million citizens around the planet.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> With the collapse of the metanarrative of neocolonial modernization under authoritarian rule, U.S. social science lost credibility. Given the durable tradition of subaltern resistance to U.S. hegemony, and the persisting “weak links” in the regime of capitalist rationality in a tributary system, critique emerged. From the national democratic mass movement germinated organic intellectuals who fertilized the ground for the growth of SP. The advent of a place-oriented psychology in a social formation experiencing profound social crisis with regional and even global repercussions, becomes an intelligible event in the worldwide process of re-discovering the efficacy of laboring bodies in the body politic—or, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, the speaking body as a means not just of capital accumulation but also of re-opening time and thinking “according to others” (1969, 191). In this conjuncture, the local as a “site of resistance and liberation” (Dirlik 1997, 85), where grassroots constituencies can be mobilized for radical change, began to challenge U.S.-centered globalization.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>Engaging the Other</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> From the perspective of transformative postcolonial theory, the process of searching or inventing a psychology appropriate for newly independent peoples is an integral part of decolonization. It can be viewed as a re-affirmation of a nation-inspired identity achieved in the process of the national-democratic struggle. Part of that collective identity may draw from indigenous sources, but it is not equivalent to nativization since it involves a radical political program to democratize the social structure and its undergirding fabric of norms, beliefs, and constitutive behavioral elements. It implies not just cultural recuperation but a thorough overhauling of the world-view imposed by imperialist dogma and authority. We are not simply engaged in a “strategic essentialism whereby the signifiers of indigenous (native) cultures are privileged in a process of negative discrimination” (Ashcroft et al 1998, 159).<i> </i>Local knowledge becomes the matrix for inferring a universalizable concept of peoplehood rooted in a historically specific itinerary of struggle, a singular life-form.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Analogous to Frantz Fanon’s decolonizing of Freudian psychoanalysis and orthodox psychiatry, SP began as a repudiation of Western disciplinary paradigms as models for interpreting and judging Filipino everyday life, community, and personality. From the outset, SP staked out the privilege of a distinctly Filipino orientation in claiming “the study of <i>diwa </i>(psyche)”—obviously an indigenization strategy from within via a judicious translation of Western concepts and methods into Filipino, the evolving national language. This is accompanied by a versatile extrapolation of theoretical frameworks and methodologies from the experiences and lived cultures of diverse communities in the Philippines. I quote the summing-up of two major proponents of SP: “Much of the strategy for discovering SP is based on assessing historical and socio-cultural realities, understanding the local language, unraveling Filipino characteristics and explaining them through the eyes of the native Filipino...The principal emphasis of SP is to foster national identity and consciousness... “ (Pe-Pua and Protacio-Marcelino 2000, 51). SP is thus designed to be a psychology of, for, and by Filipinos, one appropriate and applicable to dealing with health, agriculture, art, mass media, religion, and other spheres of everyday life (the term “Filipino” being itself the target of inquiry and agenda for ongoing hypothesis-formation). </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>Pioneering Intervention</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Because of its now substantial and elaborate archive of research documents, I will not summarize the achievement of SP to date, a task already performed by Pe-pua and Protacio-Marcelino. What I want to do here is to illustrate briefly SP’s foundational insights by citing key texts of its foremost exponent, the late Virgilio Enriquez, and posing some questions hopefully to provoke constructive exchanges. </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Initially, Enriquez envisaged SP as an interdisciplinary humanistic-scientific endeavor. SP would try to demarcate its field of inquiry to encompass the study of emotions (<i>kalooban</i>), experienced knowledge (<i>kamalayan</i>), awareness of one’s surroundings (<i>ulirat</i>), information and understanding (<i>isip</i>), habits and behavior (<i>diwa</i>), and the soul (<i>kaluluwa</i>) as a means of understanding the people’s conscience (Enriquez 1989, 6). Despite this gesture toward catholicity, SP is anxious to establish its originality as an innovative science of praxis (thought/behavior) within the disciplinary milieu of a universal psychology.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> One may take Enriquez’s monograph <i>Filipino Psychology in the Third World </i>(1977) as one of the primary texts that inaugurated the advent of SP. Antithetical to the atomistic individualism of liberal thought, SP locates identity in the web of social relations: knowledge of the psychology of the Filipino derives from “intimate knowledge” of experience. Ultimately, this experience is a response to colonial oppression, indivisible from the core of what constitutes indigenous axiology. Enriquez equates this core with <i>paninindigan</i>, conviction or commitment, consisting of such values as: <i>paggalang at pagmamalasakit</i> (respect and concern), <i>pagtulong at pagdamay</i> (helping), <i>pagpuno sa kakulangan</i> (understanding limitations), <i>pakikiramdam </i>(sensitivity and regard for others), <i>gaan</i> <i>ng loob</i> (rapport and acceptance), and <i>pakikipagkapwa</i> (human concern and interaction as one with others). All these values with their variable behavior correlates foreground democractic cooperation, egalitarian reciprocity, and collective empathy. Why this move? </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> As noted above, the ideological strategy of US neocolonialism was cooptative and disintegrative: the structural-functionalist stress on quasi-feudal and tributary rules of conduct simply buttressed the unequal relations of a hierarchical social positioning of citizens. American technocratic experts selected those features that sanctioned dependency and subordination, the substance of law and order. A binary but asymmetrical linkage of groups became the model of a functional Filipino society; its normalizing cement consisted of values that are enshrined in the tourist guidebooks and academic texts I quoted earlier: <i>hiya</i> (shame), <i>pakikisama</i> (yielding to the will of the leader or the dominant party), <i>utang na loob</i> (unilateral gratitude), <i>amor propio</i> (sensitivity to personal affront), and <i>bayanihan</i> (togetherness in common effort). Enriquez quickly discerns the rationale for such theoretical judgment: “To argue that <i>utang na loob </i>is a Filipino value is therefore misleading, to say the least and dangerous at best. <i>Utang na loob </i>would be convenient in perpetuating the colonial status of the Filipino mind” (1989, 5).</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> One may interpose here the highly motivated, interested uses to which the notion “hiya” has been deployed by Western scholars. It has practically become synonymous with an alleged Filipino mentality, or even <i>habitus </i>as socialized subjectivity<i> </i>(to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term that synchronizes agency and situation; 1992, 126). <i>Hiya </i>was usually construed<i> </i>to mean “shame,” or “the uncomfortable feeling that accompanies awareness of being in a socially unacceptable position, or performing a socially unacceptable action” (Lynch 1961, 5). Such construals fail to grasp the linguistic rule of affixations in Philippine languages that give delicate nuances of meaning to a root word, enabling a lexical item such as “<i>hiya” </i>to be used with either positive or negative connotations depending on the varying affixes, internal and external aspects, and contexts. Exposing the foreign experts’ ignorance of the vernaculars, SP practitioners suggest that “<i>hiya</i>” more accurately signifies “sense of propriety,” not “shame” exclusively. </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Again, for SP, a psychology not cognizant of the cultural life-world of Filipinos will always misrecognize and superimpose alien interests. What Enriquez perceives as a deceptive if not fraudulent move by American social scientists is their insistence on a selective empiricism. This error betrays a narrow-minded temper if not wrongheadedness in not comprehending the multiple levels and modes of interaction in Filipino communication and behavior. Enriquez unveils a thesaurus of concepts that departs from <i>pakikisama</i> which Lynch and others have invoked as the prime support for the status quo of “smooth interpersonal relations.” He perceives at least eight behaviorally recognizable levels and modes of social interaction: <i>pakikitungo </i>(level of amenity/civility), <i>pakikisalamuha </i>(level of mixing), <i>pakikilahok </i>(level of joining/participating), <i>pakikibagay</i> (level of conforming), and <i>pakikisama </i>(level of adjusting), all with reference to outsiders. And on the level of insiders or “one-of-us,” we have three levels: <i>pakikipagpalagayang-loob </i>(level of mutual trust/rapport), <i>pakikisangkot </i>(level of getting involved), and <i>pakikiisa </i>(level of fusion, oneness and full trust). This domain of interpersonal relations as lexically and conceptually elaborated can be grouped, according to Enriquez, under the rubric of <i>pakikipagkapwa</i> (shared inner self),<i> </i>based on the superordinate concept of <i>kapwa </i>which embraces both the outsider and “one of us.” The prefix “pakiki” indeed can form numerous terms denoting a wide variety of group behavior, affording sophisticated distinctions of attitude, stance, subject-positioning and styles of performance. Quotidian public interaction as codified in the native language reveals basic concepts of Filipino personality, social psychology, world view and social philosophy.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> We then arrive at what Enriquez posits as the fundamental principle of Filipino psychology. It arises from the need to negotiate the parameters of inclusion/exclusion, the problem of identity and difference. Instead of beginning from the methodical doubt of the Cartesian ego, we start from an apprehension of commonality, an immediate sense of what binds humans in an ecumene or common biosphere:</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 21.6px;"><b> A person starts having <i>kapwa </i>not so much because of a recognition of status given him by others but more because of his awareness of shared identity. The <i>ako </i>(ego) and the <i>iba-sa-akin </i>(others) are one and the same in <i>kapwa</i> psychology: <i>Hindi ako iba sa aking kapwa </i>(I am no different from others). Once <i>ako</i> starts thinking of himself as separate from <i>kapwa</i>, the Filipino “self” gets to be individuated in the Western sense and, in effect, denies the status of <i>kapwa </i>to the other. By the same token, the status of <i>kapwa </i>is also denied to the self (1992, 43).</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>So then the Filipino performs a mode of dealing with others as equals, treating others with full regard for their dignity and worth. This seems like an enactment of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, a humanistic agenda of unifying people in a collectivity that transcends boundaries of class, gender, etc., thus dissolving political conflict. We focus instead on sentiments of agreement, felt affinities and other bonds of solidarity.What then distinguishes the Filipino from other collectivities or ethnys?</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> It becomes clear that Enriquez, despite a certain idealizing bent, refrains from absolutizing this template of harmonious fellowship, this model of reciprocity, because the language registers also the flow of circumstances and the changes of the natural and man-made environment, what C.S. Peirce (1958) would call the “Secondness” of reaction between perceptual judgments and the lived experience of recalcitrance, antagonisms, variations. In short, the dialectics of historicity and concrete ethical reasoning comes into play in the discourse of SP:</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 21.6px;"><b> Aside from the socio-psychological dimension, <i>pakikipagkapwa </i>has a moral and normative aspect as a value and conviction. Situations change and relations vary according to environment. For example, <i>pakikipagkapwa </i>is definitely inconsistent with exploitative human transactions. Giving the Filipino a bad deal is a challenge to <i>kapwa </i>(<i> -tao</i>).... If only to correct the impression that <i>pakikipagkapwa</i> as shared inner self is “other-oriented” just like the lower level of interaction in <i>pakikisama</i>, one must be reminded that the Filipino does not always concede. He knows how to resist even when he seems utterly powerless. As demonstrated in the People’s Power revolution of 1896, he knows that <i>pakikibaka </i>(joining a struggle) is a valid aspect of <i>pakikipagkapwa</i> in the face of injustice and adversity.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 21.6px;"><b> The complexity of interpersonal relations is recognized in the Tagalog proverb: “<i>Madali ang maging tao, mahirap ang magpakatao” </i>(It is easy to be born a <i>tao </i>[human], but it is not easy to be one.) (1992, 45).</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> In my view, Enriquez’s viable contribution to SP may be this postulation of the concept of <i>kapwa </i>(shared identity) as the kernel of Filipino social psychology and value structuration. He thus opposes the functionalist school of Lynch and its variants that privilege “smooth interpersonal relations” as the prime stabilizing mechanism of Filipino society. For Enriquez, however, <i>kapwa </i>divides into two categories: the Outsider (<i>Ibang tao</i>) and One-of-us (<i>Hindi ibang tao</i>), a dichotomy that underlies the dynamics of social interaction. How is this decided and materialized? Evidently, by contexts and other markers of difference and similarity such as language, religious practice, and other modes of spatiotemporal embodiments. Pe-pua and Protacio-Marcelino (2000) tabulate the levels of communication accordingly. If one is classified as an Outsider, the interaction can range from <i>pakikitungo </i>(transaction/civility with) to <i>pakikisalamuha </i>(interaction with), to <i>pakikilahok </i>(joining/participating)<i>, </i>to <i>pakikibagay </i>(in conformity with/in accord with), and to <i>pakikisama </i>(being along with). For those considered One-of-us, the levels of interaction range from <i>pakikipagpalagayang-loob </i>(being-in-rapport with), to <i>pakikisangkot </i>(getting involved), to the highest level, <i>pakikiisa </i>(being one with). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Following this schematization of what I would describe as modalities of group communication, Enriquez reconceptualizes Filipino behavior and value motivations into two categories. These are the colonial/accomodative surface values such as <i>hiya </i>(propriety/dignity), <i>utang na loob </i>(gratitude/solidarity), and <i>pakikisama </i>(companionship/esteem); and the confrontative surface values which include <i>bahala na </i>(determination), <i>sama/lakas ng loob </i>(resentment/guts), and <i>pakikibaka </i>(resistance). Why surface values? Because they presuppose the core and deeper values: <i>kapwa </i>and <i>pakiramdam </i>(shared inner perception) as the pivotal interpersonal value, and <i>kagandahang-loob </i>(shared humanity) as the connecting socio-personal value. Associated with them are the societal values such as <i>karangalan </i>(dignity), <i>katarungan </i>(justice), and <i>kalayaan </i>(freedom). Given the paramount status of these societal values, we can infer that the initial division between Outsider and One-of-us predicated on cultural difference is eventually sublimated or surpassed when all humans are treated under one universal egalitarian standard. But we ask: how and when is this sublimation carried out, and by what agencies? Would not other markers of difference such as gender, class, race, sexuality, etc., interfere and get in the way of eliminating boundaries, the signifiers of difference?</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>The Quest for Organizing Principles</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> While SP strives to “Filipinize” ideas borrowed from the West, one of its overriding tasks is to salvage what is autochtonous in the legacy of the past and in the contemporary situation. Its partisan project to demarcate indigenous from colonial identity foregrounds itself when Enriquez links “kapwa” with the struggle for justice, freedom and dignity. Filipinization requires a recovery of Filipino “personhood,” <i>pagkataong Pilipino</i>, which for SP inheres in language. Are we witnessing a revival of the famous Sapir-Whorf thesis?<i> </i>Enriquez explicitly affirms SP’s linguistic orientation: “What makes <i>sikolohiyang Pilipino </i>different is its intense pursuit of developing the indigenous national culture and its program of using the indigenous language in its conferences, research, teaching, and publication” (1992, 57). This linguistic approach is not just heuristic but constitutive (Enriquez and Marcelino 1984/1989). In the process of inquiry, Enriquez discovers the organizing concept of <i>kapwa </i>with its family of cognate terms and their nuanced usages. He also uncovers a crucial mediating mode of apperception, namely, <i>pakiramdam </i>(heightened sensitivity and awareness, feeling for another), which is considered as “the pivotal value of shared inner perception.” Without <i>pakiramdam</i>, an emotional a priori, one cannot understand an ambiguous, complex situation in order to plan and execute an appropriate response. In other words, <i>pakiramdam </i>serves as the sensorium or apparatus that enables one to distinguish levels of interaction, aspects of time and <i>kalooban </i>(inner self), and other surface values tied to the core value of <i>kapwa</i> (see Table I attached). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><b>Following the protocols of Peircean semiotics (Rochberg-Halton 1986), I would describe Enriquez’s procedure in this way: he connects the immediacies of perception with reactive judgments through categories and symbols that link core value and behavioral patterns, using four sets: surface values, pivot, core, and foundation. In this final schematization, <i>pakikipagkapwa </i>is re-codified as <i>pakiramdam </i>and the foundational value of the four-tiered structure becomes <i>kagandahang-loob </i>or <i>pagkamakatao </i>(shared humanity).</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> In this hypothetical organon of the Filipino personality, Enriquez’s version of SP is definitely an integrated structure or synthesis that risks being “deconstructed.” We seem to witness here a reclamation of the Enlightenment ideals of freedom, dignity and justice which, for Enriquez, make up the sociopolitical constituents and grounding of the national value system, with “<i>kagandahang-loob”</i> (shared inner nobility) as a basic principle of action. What complicates this schema is the Filipino ideal of social justice acting as the rallying point for the system delineated in Table I. Enriquez, however, does not elaborate on the elements defining the concept of social justice such as human rights, equity, fairness, truth and reason, law as distinguished from administration of law, justice as unity or consensus, and peace. We move from a psychology of personality to a network of metaphysical categories that Enriquez discusses in his essays on the theory of indigenization and on the linkage of national culture and liberation psychology.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The complicity of power and knowledge, in particular Western imperial hegemony and its monopoly of media and information, has been exposed by SP in its analysis of the machinery of ideological manipulation and conditioning. I assume that Enriquez is cognizant of what Bourdieu (1991) has called symbolic capital and symbolic violence in the operations of commodified/commodifying knowledge-production. But Enriquez seems to desire a reconciliation of antagonistic schools of thought promoting indigenization. He certainly opts for indigenization from within, more precisely cross-indigenization, with key indigenous concepts and methods as the point of departure, then moving to semantic elaboration, re-codification, systematization of implied theoretical frameworks, and application. He estimates the worth of assimilating western imports as a form of repressive modernization. </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> In his critical discourse, Enriquez does not employ the anthropological categories of emic and etic; in fact, he believes that SP should avoid the debate between the nomothetic and the ideographic, the nomological and hermeneutic. Obviously, he crafts a hermeneutic analysis and emic critique of Western knowledge and disciplinary regimes that pretend to be value-free. He endorses the view that SP should attempt to realize three major objectives: indigenization (<i>pagsasakatutubo</i>), science (<i>pagka-agham)</i>, and appropriateness to Filipino identity (<i>pagkapilipino).</i> In maneuvering among these alternatives and avoiding the need to prioritize, has Enriquez not muddled the lines of political forces and so fostered eclectic opportunism? It may be a pedagogical ruse or unintentional omission. Even if in the last analysis, he calls for “shared cultural responsibility” in the practice of indigenous methods, it is difficult to see how the local and the global, the immanent and the transcendental, can meet and communicate so as to achieve the goals of justice and liberation that Enriquez posited as paramount societal values in SP’s reckoning. </b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>Toward a Provisional Inventory</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Let me situate the heuristic and pedagogical worth of SP within the thematics of this conference. We are well advanced into a late or post-modern age in which two constitutive trends of global reality seem entrenched: the homogenizing or commodifying trend of transnational business, and ethnic/cultural fragmentation. Jonathan Friedman comments on this twin phenomenon of “being in the world”: “The dualist centralized world of the double East-West hegemony is fragmenting, politically, and culturally, but the homogeneity of capitalism remains as intact and as systematic as ever” (1990, 311). Taking the imperialist world-system as its point of departure, SP positions itself as a place-based intellectual/cultural movement that seeks to overcome the limits of Eurocentric neocolonial knowledge by indigenization and cultural re-validation. It strives to attain knowledge of the Filipino psyche by displacing Western epistemes with testable hypotheses based on the life-world and competencies (to use symbolic interactionist terms) of Filipinos in all walks of life, including diverse ethnic groups. Pe-Pua and Protacio-Marcelino emphasize the political project of SP to rectify “Philippine psychology’s colonial character as a captive of an American dominated, English-speaking world” (2000, 67). This form of collective therapy, however, does not reject the scientific character of psychology, only the claim of a regional or one civilizational psychology to be universal. Aside from broadening its data base, according to Enriquez, psychology if it aspires to be universal needs to take into account “Asian experience and perspectives.” </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Despite its localization, SP is neither ethnocentric nor exclusivist. Its dialectical vision is somewhat obscured by its polemical temper, which is understandable given the deep and thoroughgoing subjugation of the Filipino body politic. SP acknowledges the imperatives of universal science but it also appreciates “the value of affirming the peculiarity and distinctiveness of man as a sociocultural being” (Enriquez 1992, 27). From its angle, universals can be approached through cross-indigenous and cross-cultural modes of research, making possible the recovery of hidden histories and a retelling of the story of the Filipino subject “from the bottom up” (Hall 1997, 184). The rigorous scientific study of culture need not prohibit SP’s goal of using psychology “to develop a national culture which [though Western-dominated] considers the aspirations of the Filipino....Through the discovery and use of indigenous concepts and methods, SP is contributing to a truly universal psychology which is based on a new set of principles: diversity and equality” (Pe-pua and Protacio-Marcelino 2000, 67).</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> This pluralist, liberal standard, while commendable on pragmatic grounds, betrays SP’s awareness of its position as an emergent yet beleaguered social movement. SP welcomes diversity and equality, diversity in that psychology is drawn from the particularities of distinctive cultures, and equality in that all these various psychologies (whether materialist or idealist in philosophical principle) are equally valid. SP not only tests hypotheses based on Western theories but also tries to generate its own set of hypotheses and corpus of falsifiable knowledge—meaningful not only for Filipinos but also for other Asian cultures—by rescuing from marginality and revitalizing indigenous concepts and methods. This is certainly a strategy for winning hegemony, realistic and astutely flexible, but also burdened with inconsistencies and vulnerabilities. For example, SP’s attempt to reconcile the colonial and indigenous aspects of Filipino personality reveals not a dialectical mode of mediation but a dualistic process of generating a hybrid and indeterminate species, as evinced in this formulation: “The Filipino is a blend of East and West. The Western influence can be seen more in external ways—dressing, liking for hamburger and other food, Western music and dance, etc. However, the internal aspect, which is at the core of his <i>pagkatao </i>(personality), is Asian—deference for authority, modesty/humility/ concern for others, etc.” (Pe-pua and Protacio-Marcelino 2000, 56). We are back to the commercial commonplaces of the baedekers.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> There is no doubt that SP is highly critical of the positivism, functionalism, and abstract empiricism of Western psychology, especially its use as a political and ideological apparatus for imperial oppression and exploitation. As an alternative, SP deploys a hermeneutical mode of assaying the vernacular as organic speech-acts conveying meaning or significance through contexts and historically embodied agencies. Social reality for SP is not independent of agents who exercise competencies to produce coherent and significant social events in cooperation with others. Following the example of ethnomethodology and other phenomenological approaches, SP highlights the competence of agents as grounded in their recognition that actions and utterances are indexical—that is, social actions display specific meanings in determinate contexts. It seems to me that SP has implicitly benefited from the postmodern emphasis on language-games and from the Bakhtinian idea of dialogism and utterance. But in relying on language or discourse removed from historical-natural contexts, SP has a tendency to lapse into a fatal nominalism whose implicit relativism and communitarianism (for a critique, see Harvey 2000, 238-91) entails a subjectivist idealism that eschews the testing of truth claims by a universal logic of inference. If society is founded only on beliefs expressed in specific linguistic forms, beliefs not substantiated by reality because beliefs don’t represent reality, then we are led to an instrumentalist use of beliefs for purposes as narrow as those advanced by a sect, ethnic tribe, racialized community, or even a militarist nation-state seeking world supremacy by means of preemptive violence. This is surely the opposite of critique (Bensaid 2002) whose vocation is the demystification of absolutisms and the interrogation of what appears natural, right, and immutable in the face of its negations and contradictions.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>Approximating a Utopian Trajectory</b></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> In charting the vicissitudes of SP’s critique of Western psychology, we cannot do away with the issue of representation and the problematic dualism of subject/object, of appearance/reality. Aware that I have not fully surveyed the entire archive of SP (which, to be sure, is not my purpose here), I venture the following tentative observations.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> One of the symptoms that indicate the inability of SP thus far to negotiate the agency-structure bifurcation, the etic-emic polarity, may be seen in Enriquez’s comment on the difference between the nomothetic and the ideographic style of research. Enriquez holds that SP is not committed to any one style. However, as a matter of necessity, SP elevates the native informant to the status of reliable judge of the adequacy of the observer’s descriptions and analyses of the informant’s culture. Emic analysis is able to generate statements that the native accepts as meaningful and appropriate, whereas etic analysis employs categories and rules that are not necessarily meaningful or appropriate to the native but that can be tested by procedures universally accepted by the community of inquirers. Now, as Harris observes, to be objective is not to adopt an etic view, nor is it subjective to adopt an emic view: “It is clearly possible to be objective—i.e., scientific—about either emic or etic phenomena. Similarly, it is equally possible to be subjective about either emic or etic phenomena. Objectivity is the epistemological status that distinguishes the community of observers from communities that are observed. While it is possible for those who are observed to be objective, this can only mean that they have temporarily or permanently joined the community of observers by relying on an operationalized scientific epistemology” (1979, 34-35). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> So what is problematic is not whether SP is emic- or etic-oriented, but rather whether the strategic program prioritizes culture (language; conventional usages) as an arbitrary code that provides in itself the rationale or explanation for difference. Or else it seeks the determinant coordinates of mental and emic difference in something else to which it is related as cause/effect in a mediated, concretely dialectical way. In short, is the Filipino psyche (personality configuration) unnecessarily essentialized in SP’s discourse? </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> We fully appreciate the methodical manner in which Enriquez has skilfully excavated the shared cognitive orientation and belief systems of the majority whose grammar and syntax clarifies the complexity of Filipino behavior and attitudes. But can this closed finite set of rules for social interaction—the moral and ethical consensus articulated in Table 1—account fully for significant sociocultural differences? How do we explain the multiple conflicts (Muslim separatist rebellion, peasant insurgency, military abuses, etc.) going on throughout the Philippines today? How do we elucidate the causes and direction of profound social transformations now occurring? Or is the anatomy of the Filipino psyche made more adequately intelligible by first, or simultaneously, elucidating the social relations of production and reproduction that shape the cultural control mechanisms and behavior stream of Filipinos in a global setting? In short, the nature and function of culture in Philippine society need to be more adequately theorized and critically analyzed in its various historical periods and geopolitical locations.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> My final reservations, despite SP’s historic gain in its salutary effort in articulating an indigenous psychology of/for/by Filipinos, center on an uneasy compromising move by Enriquez concerning the “great cultural divide.” In analyzing Filipino personality, Enriquez (1992) classifies society into two: those who enact a mass-oriented outlook who speak Filipino and a regional language, and those who subscribe to an elitist worldview who speak English. Thus it is not regionalism that divides Filipinos but their diverse culture. In another article, Enriquez agreed with another psychologist on the ambiguity of the referent of “Filipino”—is it the mainstream urbanized citizen or the “unsophisticated” <i>provinciano</i>? For Enriquez, both are Filipino and there are many Filipino psychologies contingent on the cultural and ethnic diversity of the Filipino people. He adds: “[R]eference to cultural distinctions within Filipino society does not imply a fragmented Philippine society. Rather, the distinctions in the culture of the people provide a challenge to psychological research and a rich base for a truly national culture” (1981, 195). </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><b>But why deny fragmentation in a neocolonial formation that everybody knows is saturated by commodity fetishism and reification reproduced through the anomic bureaucratic institutions and the indoctrinating efficacy of the transnational corporate media? Symbolic and actual violence pervades the whole society. This drive to posit a unitary society based on a supposedly uniform physiognomy or national character that transcends class boundaries (class is figured in Enriquez’s discourse as the distance between the lifestyle of the masses and that of the elite) betokens a kind of unwarranted populist idealism that discourages critical inquiry. Another question interjects itself which SP has not yet addressed, as far as I know: What historical and environmental factors explain this division between the masses and the elite?</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> Here I sketch a hermeneutics of suspicion for SP. What is so far lacking in SP, in my view, is the theory of a differentiated and dynamic totality of Filipino society without which the concrete variables of experience cannot be meaningfully assessed. However, as Fanon and others have argued, this scheme of inventing a totality called the “Filipino psyche” defined by value orientation risks eliding many invidious differences—one of which is the sexist ideology inhabiting local folkways or mores (Estrada-Claudio 1995). It risks a nativist valorization of the mechanical solidarity found in feudal or tributary societies, thus obviating the need to anchor the analysis and critique of culture in the underlying mode of production and reproduction, together with the complex division of labor, that delineates the limits and possibilities of long-range social transformation (Godelier 1986). Since SP claims to commit itself to an emancipatory ideal—the affirmation of an autonomous Filipino national identity—it cannot evade the task of a historical and materialist critique of culture as a determinate field in which the conflict of opposing political forces, together with their symbolic and material representations, are played out. This is the “political unconscious” that SP may be invoking when it discovers the importance of <i>pakiramdam </i>as “feeling for another,” a request to feel or be sensitive to the circumambient stratified milieu. This in turn leads to a rich and fertile repertoire of methods of empirical research that still needs further refinement and elaboration, among them, “<i>pakapa-kapa</i>” (groping and probing into a mass of random data), all of them generated by the central bifurcation of society into the Outsider (<i>Ibang tao</i>) and One-of-us (<i>Hindi-Ibang-Tao</i>) and its possible overcoming on the level of <i>pakikipagpalagayang-loob</i>, the level of mutual trust, understanding, and rapport. Bridging that gap is the imperative, evoking the presence of foreign bodies and strangers’ voices in our midst (Lingis 1994). May we symbolize our dialogue here (communicative action among inquirers) as the passage from the domain of the Outsider to the liberating circle of One-of-us?</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b>REFERENCES</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Ashcroft, Bill et al. 1998. <i>Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. </i>London and New York: Routledge.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>---- and Loic J. D. Wacquant. 1992. <i>An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. </i>Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>----. 1978. <i>Neocolonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness. </i>White Plains, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe Inc.</b></p>
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<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1996. <i>Imperial Encounters. </i>Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Enriquez, Virgilio. (1977) 1989. <i>Filipino Psychology in the Third World. </i>Quezon City, Philippines: Philippine Psychology Research House.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>---. 1981. “Decolonizing the Filipino Psyche: Philippine Psychology in the Seventies.” <i>Philippine Social Sciences & Humanities Review </i>xlv.1-4 (January-December 1981): 191-216.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>---. 1989. “Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Perspektibo at Direksyon.” In <i>Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Teorya, Metodo, at Gamit</i>, edited by Rogelia Pe-pua. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>---. 1992. <i>From Colonial to Liberation Psychology. </i>Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>--- and Elizabeth Protacio-Marcelino. 1984/1989. <i>Neo-Colonial Politics and Language Struggle in the Philippines. </i>Quezon City, Philippines: Akademya ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>----, Sandra Herrera and Emir Tubayan. 1991. <i>Ang Sikolohiyang Malaya Sa Panahon ng Krisis. </i>Quezon City, Philippines: Akademya ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Estrada-Claudio, Sylvia. 1995. “Ang Sikolohiya ng Kababaihan.” In <i>Mga Idea at Estilo</i>, edited by Lilia Quindoza Santiago. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Godelier, Maurice. 1986. <i>The Mental and the Material. </i>London: Verso.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Hall, Stuart. 1997. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” In <i>Dangerous Liaisons</i>, edited by Anne McClintock et al. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Harris, Marvin. 1979. <i>Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. </i>New York: Random House.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Harvey, David. 2000. <i>Spaces of Hope. </i>Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Hollnsteiner, Mary Racelis. 1979. “The Filipino Family Confronts the Modern World.” In <i>Society, Culture and the Filipino, </i>edited by Mary R. Hollnsteiner. Quezon City, Philippines: The Institute of Philippine Culture.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Kintanar, Thelma and Associates. 1996. <i>Cultural Dictionary for Filipinos. </i>Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press & Anvil Publishing Inc.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Lagmay, Alfredo V. 1977. “Bahala na.” In <i>Ulat ng Ikalawang Pambansang Kumperensya sa Sikolohiyang Pilipino </i>(Proceedings of the Second national Conference on Filipino Psychology), edited by L.F. Antonio et al. Quezon City: Pambansang Samahan ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Lingis, Alphonso. 1994. <i>Foreign Bodies. </i>New York: Routledge.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Lynch, Frank. 1969. “Social Acceptance.” In <i>Four Readings on Philippine Values</i>, edited by F. Lynch. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>----. 1979. “Big and Little People: Social Class in the Rural Philippines.” In <i>Society, Culture and the Filipino</i>, edited by Mary R. Hollnsteiner. Quezon City, Philippines: The Institute of Philippine Culture.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1969. <i>The Essential Writings of Merleau-Ponty</i>, edited by Alden Fisher. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Peirce, C. S. 1958. <i>Selected Writings,</i> edited by Philip Wiener. New York: Dover Publications.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Peplow, Evelyn. 1991. <i>The Philippines: Tropical Paradise. </i> Lincolnwood, IL: Passport Books.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Pe-pua, Rogelia, ed. 1989. <i>Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Teorya, Metodo at Gamit. </i>Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>----- and Elizabeth Protacio-Marcelino. 2000. “<i>Sikolohiyang Pilipino </i>(Filipino Psychology): A legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez,” <i>Asian Journal of Social Psychology </i>3 (2000): 49-71.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Price Waterhouse. 1981. <i>Doing Business in the Philippines. </i>Manila, Philippines: Price Waterhouse Center for Transnational Taxation.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Robertson, Roland. 1994. <i>Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. </i>Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>-----. 1995. “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity.” In <i>Global Modernities</i>, edited by Mike Featherstone et al. London: Sage Publications.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Roces, Alfredo and Grace. 1985. <i>Culture Shock! Philippines.</i> Singapore: Times Books International.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Rochberg-Halton, Eugene. 1986. <i>Meaning and Modernity.</i> Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Salazar, Zeus. 1989. “Ilang Batayan Para sa Isangt Sikolohiyang Pilipino.” In <i>Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Teorya, Metodo at Gamit,</i>edited by Rogelia Pe-pua. Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>San Juan, E. 1994. <i>Allegories of Resistance. </i>Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>---. 2000. <i>After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontations. </i>Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><b>________________________________________</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; min-height: 13px; text-indent: -36px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; min-height: 13px; text-indent: -36px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-align: center; text-indent: -36px;"><b>TABLE I</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; min-height: 13px; text-indent: -36px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-align: center; text-indent: -36px;"><b>Behavior Patterns and Value Structure: Surface, Core and Societal</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; min-height: 13px; text-indent: -36px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 273.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 77.0px;" valign="top">
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Colonial/</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Accomodative</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Surface Value</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Associated</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Behavior Pattern</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Confrontative</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Surface Value</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>-----------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Pivotal Inter-</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Personal value</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>CORE VALUE</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Linking Socio-personal value</b></p>
</td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 273.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 348.0px;" valign="top">
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b> </b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <i>hiya utang na loob pakikisama</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>(propriety/ (gratitude/solidarity) (companionship/esteem)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> dignity)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>-------------------------------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <i>biro lambing tampo</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> (joke) (sweetness) (affective disappointment)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>--------------------------------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <i>bahala na sama/lakas ng loob pakikibaka</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> (determination) (resentment/guts) (resistance)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>-----------------------------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <i>Pakiramdam (Pakikipagkapwa-tao)</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><i> </i> (shared inner perception)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>-------------------------------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><b> KAPWA (Pagkatao)</b></i></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> (shared identity)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>--------------------------------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><b> Kagandahang-loob (Pagkamakatao)</b></i></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> (shared humanity)</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 77.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 77.0px;" valign="top">
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Associated Societal Values</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Reductionist/</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Functional</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Interpretation</b></p>
</td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 77.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 348.0px;" valign="top">
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><b><br /></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> <i>karangalan katarungan kalayaan</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> (dignity) (justice) (freedom)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>----------------------------------------------------------------------</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b> “social acceptance” “social equity” “social mobility”</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-39081737034758682772022-12-05T18:19:00.005-08:002022-12-05T18:19:53.794-08:00USAPING. KULTURA<p> </p><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-size: large;">PAKIKIPAGSAPALARAN TUNGO SA PAGTUKLAS NG MAPAGPALAYANG MODERNIDAD SA PILIPINAS</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-size: large;">ni E. SAN JUAN, Jr.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV-xIZqsZE481bDfPDA0SyAbzabk3RN--ppIppjCvfgE6Xpe65SwmDiwtGI1WFYR3XGAa_Na8kHRy_SpFi41eyiamww3euOEVPSjYCA4dOXErOpd451L52XNBFuC1WTi6l3HjgN9X6m9nh7ZYi2BrMP-SVXp8EbIcQfxo6_NWmNtWGwHDY7ag/s576/image002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="576" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV-xIZqsZE481bDfPDA0SyAbzabk3RN--ppIppjCvfgE6Xpe65SwmDiwtGI1WFYR3XGAa_Na8kHRy_SpFi41eyiamww3euOEVPSjYCA4dOXErOpd451L52XNBFuC1WTi6l3HjgN9X6m9nh7ZYi2BrMP-SVXp8EbIcQfxo6_NWmNtWGwHDY7ag/w556-h304/image002.jpg" width="556" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Bakit naging problema ang modernidad ng Pilipinas? Kasi 12 milyong OFWs ang kumalat sa buong mundo? Di tulad ng maunlad na bansa sa Europa, Hapon, atbp? Nangangahulugang di pa tayo umabot sa modernidad ng mga industriyalisadong bansang siyang modelong halimbawa ng modernidad? Kaya nga naging laboratoryo tayo ng mga dalubhasa sa programang modernization tatak U.S. noong dekada 1960 batay sa paradigm nina Talcott Parsons, W.W. Rostow, atbp.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ayon sa teoryang modernisasyon, walang “structural differentiation” sa lipunan natin. Teknolohiya ang humuhubog sa halagahan (values), ang iskema ng paniniwala, saloobin, diwa ng karamihan. Ang tipong pampersonal ay naisillid sa de-kahong “smooth interpersonal relations” (SIR) ni Fr. Frank Lynch, habang ang karakter pambansa ay nakakategorya sa kuwadrong oryentasyong Amerikano. Sa pagsusuma ng mga eksperstong sina Frederick Wernstedt at Joseph Spencer sa kanilang teksbuk, </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">The Philippine Island World </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">(1967): ang Pilipinas “is a unique country, of the ancient Orient, but more wholly integrated into the world of the Occident than is any other Asian country? (1967, 135).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Pinuri nito ang pagpasok ng Ingles bilang “lingua franca,” na tahasang kumulong sa kultura sa ilalim ng Amerikanisasyon. Bagamat umunlad raw ang ekonomya base sa tradisyong Malay na sadyang Hispanicized at Americanized, inamin ng mga geographers na nagpatingkad ito ng “internal pressures in such problem zones as agrarian tenancy, capital control, political structure, and social custom” (1967, 297)— ibig sabihin, tumindi’t lumala ang pagtatagisan ng mga uri sa lipunan, ng grupong makapangyarihan at mariwasa laban sa maraming pulubing pinagsasamantalahan. Samakatuwid, litaw ang “structural differentiation” sa posisyon at ginaganap na papel ng mga pangkatin sa lipunan, pati ideolohiyang kinakasangpan nila.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Sinkretikang Akda</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Pinaghalong balat at inalupan, o buto’t laman? Lumilitaw na ang sukatan ng modernidad ay hango sa Kanluran, sa hegemonya ng burgesyang namumuno sa industriyalisadong lipunan. Sa pagtagumpay ng uring kapitalista, nalusaw ang ordeng piyudal at Kristyanong ideolohiyang kaakibat nito. Ito ang base materyal ng modernidad, na naging imperyalistang sandatang “modernisasyon” noong panahon ng Cold War. Laganap ang krisis ng lumang daigdig, saklot ng pragmentasyon at introbersiyon sanhi sa dominasyon ng indibidwalistikong interes. Bukod sa sopistikadong teknolohiyang nasaksihan sa WW1, ang produksyong pangmasa (assembly line), namayani’t sumidhi sa larangang publiko o sosyedad sibil ang mga teorya ng relativity (Einstein), seksuwalid & “unconscious” (Freud), kritika nina Marx</span></p></div></div><img alt="page1image5013504" height="0.720000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/0cacebc3-10a4-4139-a437-4d301452a9ee" width="90.240000" /></div><div class="page" title="Page 2"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">2</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">& Engels, sampu ng pagdiin ni Nietzsche sa drama ng kamalayang artista na lumilikha ng realidad tiwali sa matandang realismo noong epoka ni Reyna Victoria—sining ang siyang lumilikha ng buhay, ang realisasyon ng sarili—naging pinakaimportanteng katangian ito ng modernidad bilang pluralisasyon ng pangitain-sa-mundo, ng Wletanschauung.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Nailunsad na ito ng mga Propagandista—Rizal, del Pilar, Jaena—hanggang kina Mabini, Isabelo de los Reyes, Lope K. Santos, atbp.—ang pangangailangang mabuwag ang monolitikong orden ng kolonyalismong Espanyol. Isinakatawan ito sa Katipunan at rebolusyong armado laban sa Estados Unidos hanggang binitay si Hen. Macario Sakay (1906) at rebelyon ng Moro noong 1913. Ngunit napatda, naputol ang kilusang yumari ng katutubong modernidad. Humalili ang Amerikanisasyong ng kolonya. Nugnit hindi ito pagkakataong historikal na tunay na magbabago ng relasyon ng mga tao at personalidad. Ito’y tugon sa problema kung paano pangangasiwaan ang isang kolonyang puno ng taong-may-kulay, hindi puti o Europeo, sa gayon mababang uri, hindi sibilisado, kailangang pasunurin at sanayin.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Paano pamamahalaan at kokontrolin ang katutubong populasyon? Sa halip na todong paghahari ng liberal o utilitaryang gawi, saloobin at halaga, nalimitado ito sa edukadong minorya na dinisiplina upang magsilbi sa burokrasya at institusyon ng adminitratibong kolonyal. Sinanay ang ilang pensionado, guro, abogado’t teknikal na katulong upang patakbuhin ang aparato ng gobyerno, militar, pulisya, korte, bangko, komunikasyon, transportasyon, atbp. Pinatili ang sistemang piyudal, ang pribadong pag-aari ng asyenda’t plantasyon ng asukal, niyog, abaka, at iba pang produktong pang-eksport. Kaya nang ipatupad ang Jones Law noong 1916, nahirang sa lehislatura ang mga miyembro ng mga dinastiyang siyang ugat ng kasalukuyang naghaharing oligarkiya.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sa nabuong balangkas ng sosyedad buhat 1898 hanggang 1935 Komonwelt at pagsuko ng Bataan at Corregidor noong 1942, anong klase ng modernidad ang matatagpuan? Banggitin dito ang estilong modernista sa kultura: punksyonalismo sa arkitektura, musikang atonal, manerismo o abstraksyon sa sining biswal, stream of consciousness sa nobela, vers libre, sopistikadong paggamit ng teknikal na metodo, introbersiyon o matinding pagdududa’t pagtatanong sa sarili salungat sa romantisismong barokong masisilip sa El Filibusterismo o sa Spoliarium ni Juan Luna</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">, na bunga ng ideya’t sentimyentong nasagap nila sa Europa noong panahon ng mga anarkista’t simbolistang makata.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Sa pangkalahatan, hindi tayo dumaan sa landas ng mga bansang Europa. O maski sa bansang Hapon ng isinabalikat nito ang modernisasyon simula 1873. Bakit wala itong masilakbong suhetibismo sa atin? Bakit mahinang pitlag ng reflexibidad lamang ang masasalat sa mga unang pagsubok nina Jose Garcia Villa at Galo Ocampo? Bakit iba o nagsasarili ang kilatis ng “modernidad” na bumulas sa panahong nagsusumikap makalaya ang sambayanan sa pamatok ng kolonyalismong Amerikano at mga kakutsabang subalterno nito? Retorikal na tanong ito; simpleng sagot ay iba ang daloy ng kolonisadong lipunan batay sa paghahati’t tunggalian ng mga ibat ibang uri, sektor, pangkat at sa magkahalo’t di-singkronisadong moda ng produksyon at reproduksiyon. Hihimayin natin ang masalimuot na habi ng kulturang ito.</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">3</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Paghimay sa Buhol ng Panahon/Lugar</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sinumang mangagahas mag-ulat tungkol sa sitwasyon ng mabilis na pagbabago sa ating lipunan ay sadyang nakikipagsapalaran. Nakatindig siya sa gitna ng agos ng mga pangyayaring dumarating habang nagsisikap ilarawan ang kanyang nakaraan. Produkto ng panahon at lunan, ang kamalayan niya’y nakasalalay sa sapin-saping dagsa ng mga aksyon, diskurso, tunggalian ng iba’t ibang lakas. Kaya anumang bunga ng pagmamasid, pagkukuro’t paghuhusga, ay pang-sumandali’t bukas sa pag-iiba’t pagbabago. Sa gayon, ang kaisipan hinggil sa modernidad ng ating bansa ay nakasalang sa masalimuot na naratibo ng ating kasaysayan bilang bansang namumukod sa ibang bansa, taglay ang sariling katangiang katutubo’t sariling tadhana.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ngunit mayroon na ba tayong napagkasunduang naratibo ng ating pagsasarili? Mayroon ba tayong sariling pagtaya’t gahum tungkol sa uri ng ating kolektibong karanasan ngayon, noong nakalipas na mga siglo, at pangitain ng kinabukasan? Hiram lang ba sa Kanluran—sa Espanya at Estados Unidos—ang ating pananaw o sensibilidad tungkol sa ating pagkatao bilang bayang may natatanging nakalipas at natatanging paroroonan? Sa tingin ko, ang kulturang modernidad ng Pilipinas ay hindi isang paralisadong ideya kundi isang proseso, isang nililikhang gawain na nakaangkla sa nakalipas na karanasan na siyang ugat at binhi ng niyayaring istruktura ng bagong mapagpalayang kaayusan. Hindi utopya kundi relasyong panlipunang kung saan ang kaganapan ng isang indibidwal ay nakasalig sa kasaganaan at kalayaan ng lahat.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Mahihinuha na ang tema ng modernidad ay sadyang istorikal at may oryentasyong pangmadla. Salungat sa indibidwalistikong saloobing umuugit sa ordeng liberal/neoliberal ng kapitalismong global, ang modernidad ng isang bayang nagsisikap makahulagpos sa minanang kolonisadong mentalidad at praktika ay katambal ng proyektong liberasyong pambansa, ng nasyonalista’t demokratikong pag- aalsa laban sa kolonyalismo’t imperyalismong negasyon ng ating sariling pagkatao’t dignidad.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Maisasaloob na dalawang pagsipat sa panahon ang naisusog ng mga bayani. Isa, sa “Kung Anong Dapat Mabatid” ni Andres Bonifacio. Ipinagunit niya na sa kagandahang-loob ng mga katutubo, pinakain at kinalinga ang mga kongkistador hanggang umabuso’t sinamsam ang ating kayamanan, at hindi na nakuhang magpasalamat at suklian ang pagkamapagbigay ng ating mga ninuno. Samakatwid, himagsikan ang makapagdudulot ng katuturan sa agwat ng panahong nakalipas at ngayon. Kilos at gawa ng mga anak-ng-bayan ang makahihilom sa kakulangan ng naratibo, ang mga puwang o siwang na hindi pagkilala ng pakikitungo natin sa dayuhan. Sa panig ni Rizal, sa kanyang anotasyon sa historya ni Morga at dalawang akda tungkol sa indolensiya ng mga Pilipino at paghula sa lagay ng bayan makaraan ang isang siglo, hinagap ni Rizal na sa balikatang pagsisikap maibabalik ang mala- utopikong lipunan bago dumating ang Espanya (Agoncillo 1974). Samakatwid, sa kolektibong proyekto madudulutan ng kahulugan ang kawing ng mga pangyayari, at maibabalik ang pagtutugma ng sarili at mundo.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kapwa nakatuon sina Bonifacio at Rizal sa karanasan ngayon, sa buhay ngayon, hindi noong nakaraan. Kapwa natuto sa mga turo ng pilosopiya ng Kaliwanagan (Enlightenment) at rebolusyong Pranses, ang importante ay kamalayang humaharap sa</span></p></div></div><img alt="page3image5120544" height="0.720000" src="blob:https://draft.blogger.com/ebd81707-2ed1-401e-b8af-24a2f48a4deb" width="187.680000" /></div><div class="page" title="Page 4"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">4</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">kasaysayan, ang pakikisangkot ng karakter sa nangyayari, at pagsusuri kung lihis o lapat ang dalumat sa kalikasan ng mga nagaganap. Ang retorika ng modernidad nila ay dinamikong pagtitimbang sa halaga ng kostumbre’t tradisyon ngunit hindi konserbatibong kumakapit doon bilang transendental na katotohanang dapat laging sundin. Bagkus lumilingon doon upang mahugot ang binhi ng kinabukasan, pinipiga’t ginagamit ang salik noon upang buuin ang makabagong yugto ng kasaysayan. Sumisira upang lumikha—ito ang buod ng rebolusyong ipinanukala. Nakalubog sa kamalayang indibidwal ngunit hindi narisistikong obsesyon ang dumurog sa lahat, tulad ng mga nihilistang ideolohiya na binabalewala ang materyales na nakapaligid upang isuob iyon sa absolutong mithi. Taglay ng modernistang kritika ng ating rebolusyon ang maingat na pagkilatis sa tradisyon upang mapili ang mabuti sa salubungan ng mga kontradiksiyon at maiangat ang katayuan ng lahat sa mas masagana at mabisang antas ng kabuhayan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Matris ng Mga Kontradiksyon</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Pangunahing suliranin ang hinarap ng intelihensiyang katutubo ng masugpo ang armi ng Republika sa pagsuko ni Hen. Aguinaldo. Paano maipagpapatuloy ang rebolusyonaryong adhikain nina Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini at Sakay sa panahon ng okupasyon/pasipikasyon? Paano maimumulat at maimomobilisa ang sambayanan upang maigupo ang dayuhang sumakop at itindig ang isang nagsasariling gobyerno, demokratikong ekonomya at humanistikong kultura? Paano malilikha ang hegemonya ng isang diwa’t kamalayang mapagpalaya sa gitna ng piyudal at kumprador- indibidwalistikong pundasyon?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Tatlong lapit sa pagtugon sa palaisipang ang mailalahad dito, sa panimula: Una, ang alegorikong pagtatanghal sa sitwasyon ng bayan. Pangalawa, ang realistiko’t didaktikong paraan, sampu ng paggamit sa kulturang pabigkas, o pistang pangkultura ng balagtasan. Pangatlo, ang diskursong pedagohikal-agitprop ng United Front ng Philippine Writers League, at sosyalistang pagsubok ni Amado V. Hernandez. Kalakip dito ang paglulunsad na malalimang diskurso hinggil sa layon ng sining, ang etiko- politikong prinsipyo ng mapagpalayang estetika, na sinimulan ni Salvador P. Lopez sa kanyang librong </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Literature and Society </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">at ipinagyaman ni Carlos Bulosan sa kanyang mga sanaysay at katha. Sa lohikang mahihinuha sa ibat ibang paraan ng paglutas sa krisis ng bansa, mailalarawan natin ang buod ng singular na mapagpalayang modernidad na may tatak Filipino.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Paano maimumulat at maimomobilisa ang bayan sa gitna na pagsuko ng Republikang pinamunuan ni Hen. Aguinaldo? Paano makayayari ng panibagong egemony o gahum, ibig sabihin, ang lideratong moral at intelektuwal ng masang produktibo (manggagawa’t magsasaka) sa isang nagkakaisang hanay?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ipinatapon sa Guam ang mga ilustradong </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">irreconcilables </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">na sina Mabini,Artemio Ricarte, Pablo Ocampo, atbp, Dahil sa mabagsik na </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Anti-Sedition Law </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">ng Nob. 4, 1901, at Brigandage Act ng Nob. 12, 1902, na ipinataw laban sa mga gerilya ni Hen. Macario Sakay na pinaratangang “tulisan,” samakawid walang makatwirang rason upang tumutol sa soberanyang Amerikano (Agoncillo & Guerrero 1970, 284-95). Sa istriktong sensura, napilitang ipasok sa alegoryang paraan ang publikong protesta ng mga mandudulang sina Juan Abad, Aurelio Tolentino, Juan Matapang Cruz, atbp. Nabilanggo’t pinagmulta sina Abad at Tolentino, gayundin ang may-ari’t editor ng </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">El Renacimiento. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Pinakatanyag ang dulang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Malinaw ang</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">5</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">impluwensiya ng sensibilidad pangkasaysayan ni Rizal sa sarsuwelang ito, na nilapatan ng mga eksenang may pagbabalat-kayo’t panaginip na hiram sa aparatong teknikal ng sainete, opera, bodabil, moro-moro, atbp. Tulad ng paglilihim ng tunay na identidad ni Simoun sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">El Filibusterismo’</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">t hiwagang pagbababalik ng kaluluwa ng mga biktimang pinaslang ng kolonyalismo, ginamit ni Tolentino di-tuwirang pagbabangon ng sambayanan, sa pamumuno ni Taga-ilog upang maligtas ang Ynang Bayan sa huli. Natulak si Malaynatin, ang kasalukuyan, na sumang-ayon sa hiling ng madlang kaluluwang bumangon sa kanyang panaginip, pati na Haring Kamatayan, upang tigilan ang paglalaban ng madla upang mapalaya ang Ynang Bayan sa mananakop (Medina 1972, 211-16). Sa alegoriya, ang tunay na problemang inasinta ay ang tunggalian ng mga nasyonalistang puwersa laban sa mga ilustradong umayon sa kapangyarihan ng Estados Unidos: sina Pardo de Tavera, Pedro Paterno, Felipe Buencamino, Benito Legarda, at iba pang dating kasapi sa Republikang Malolos. Walang kolektibong pagpapasiya kung hati ang intelihensiya at ipinag-aaway-away ng Amerika ang mga katutubo. Lubhang masahol na kasalanan ang pagtataksil, ang pagkatraydor, na tila masisinag sa ginawang linlang ni Dr. Dominador Gomez sa kampon ni Sakay, kahalintulad nina Paterno’t Buencamino.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sa sarsuwelang B</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">agong Kristo </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">matagumpay na naisusog ni Tolentino ang proletaryong prinsipyo ng pag-aklas sa kapitalistang mananakop, bagamat alegoriyang hango sa pasyon, senakulo’t pagbasa ng nakalipas na siglo. Masalimuot ang pahiwatig ng alegoriya, kung isasaisip ang paunawa ni Walter Benjamin na siyang metodo ng paglalahad sa isang mundong tinggagalan ng kahulugan, inalisan ng espirit at wagas na kanbuhayang makatao (Jameson 1971, 70-71). Sapilitang sekularisasyon ang mahihinuha sa pag-iral ng alegoriyang estilo. Kung sa bagay, ang modang ito kaakibat ng didaktiko’y mapanturong moda’y laganap na sa gawaing ebanghelyo ng mga misyonaryong Dominikano, Francisco, Hesuwita, atbp. Laganap ang pangangaral sa sermon at edukasyong umiiral mula pa dumating sina Fr. Urdaneta kasama nina Legaspi’t Martin de Goiti. Gayunpaman, mamamalas sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Bagong Kristo </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">na dumudulog na ang awtor sa pag-alsa’t paglago ng proletaryong uri.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang “drama socialista” ni Tolentino noong 1907 ay maituturing na bugtong- anak ng </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Banaag at Sikat </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">ni Lope K. Santos. Pakinggan ang tila talumpating politikal ni Jesus Gatbiaya sa wakas ng dula:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Mabuhay ang mga obrero sa sanglibutan!....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang araw na ito, unang araw ng Mayo, ay araw na pinipintakasi ng lahat ng obrero sa sanglibutan. Sa mga sandaling ito hindi tayo lamang ang nagsasaya. Akalain ninyong nagsasaya ngayon ang lahat ng mahirap sa balat ng lupa. At ano ang ipinagsasaya? Walang iba kundi ang pagkakaisang-loob, at pagkakaisang-layon ng lahat ng obrero sa sangsinukuban....Huwag tayong magpahuli, tayo’y umanib at sumabay sa kanila upang tayo’y lumusog at maging katawan din ng nasabing sangkataohang hari.....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Katotohanan, katotohanang sinasabi ko sa inyo, na ang alin mang bayan, kapag nagkadalawang balak, na ang isa’y pawang mga poon, at ang isa nama’y pawang mga alila, ang bayang iyan ay maasahang patay na, bangkay na mistula at wala nang ibang mahihintay kung di na lamang ang mapanglaw na araw ng libing. (1975, 218).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Binalangkas ng Kathambuhay</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 6"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">6</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sanhi sa pagsikil sa teatro at iba pang palabas, nawalan ng awdiyens at tagapanood ang propagit na dula. Maselan ang mga pagpupulong sa sperong pampubliko hanggang tuluyang pagkadakip at pagbitay kina Hen. Sakay at kapanalig. Ang 1907 batas sa pagbabawal ng pagladlad ng bandilang Katipuna ay hindi binawi hanggang 1919. Sa buong unang dekada hanggang pagtatag ng Asamblea noong Oktubre 16, 1907, ang mga lathalain ang humalili sa tulang pambigkas at dulang itinatanghal bilang instrumento ng kamalayang mapagpalaya. Bagamat may paghihigpit, kumalat ang mga peryodiko’t magasin na kinagiliwan—pagsambulat ng pagnanasang maibulalas ang tinitimping damdamin, sentimyento’t pagnanasang makapagsalita’t makipagbalitaa’t makipagtalastasan sa kapwa tungkol sa matinding pagdurusa’t paghangad ng ginahawa’t ligayang ipinagkait ng mga Kastila sa mahigit tatlong dantaong pananakop at pagpapahirap sa buong sambayanan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Maipagninilay na ang pamumulaklak ng nobela mula sa halimbawa ng </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Noli </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">& </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Fili </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">ay utang sa ilang hakbang ng kaunlaran. Bukod sa pagrami ng palimbagan at libreria ng mg librong inangkat mula sa Europa at ibang bansa, nawala na ang sensura ng gobyernong teokratiko. Nahikayat din ang mga manunulat, sa tangkilik ng Republika, na ibuhos ang kanilang imahinasyon at dalumat sa pagsusuri’y paglalarawan ng mabilis na mga pangyayari sa kapaligiran na tiwalag sa romantikong daigdig ng </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">corrido, pasyon, </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">duplo. Lumabas ang mga unang nobela Tagalog nina Gabriel Beato Francisco, Lope K. Santos, at Valeriano Hernandez Pena sa lingguhang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Ang Kapatid ng Bayan </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">noong 1899-1901, at iba pang lathalain. Sabay ring bumulas ang mga nobela sa ibang wika (Pampango, Ilokano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon). Nakatulong na mahigit ang libreng edukasyong pampubliko na lumago mula 177,000 estudyante noong 1897 hanggang 530,000 noong 1913; nagdoble ang mga taong marunong bumasa sa pagitan ng taong 1903 hanggang 1918.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Nagsilbing laboratoryong eksperimental sa pagbuo ng makabansang gahum ang nobelang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Banaag at Sikat </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">(1904) ni Lope K. Santos at </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Pinaglahuan </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">(1907) ni Faustino Aguilar. Makulay ang buhay at gawa ni Santos: naging unang pangulo ng Union del Trabajo de Filipinas UTF) at patnugot ng peryodikong </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Muling Pagsilang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">na naglathala ng maraming akda tungkol sa unyonismo mula sa Europa. Bagamat napaghinalaang nasulsulan siya American Federation of Labor, si Santos ay sinuporta nina Isabelo de los Reyes at Dominador Gomez. Kasapi si Santos sa rebolusyonaryong tropa sa Laguna at Batangas—hindi ilustradong nagbabad sa Espanya—at nangasiwa (katulong ang beteranong Hermenegildo Cruz) ng isang “Paaralan ng Sosyalism” (itinuro roon ang mga aralin nina Marx, Zola, Reclus, Gorki, pati na si Karl Kautsky) noong unang dekada.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Itinampok ni Santos sa nobela ang mga ideyang inani sa mga nabanggit na awtor sa pakikipagtalastasan nina Delfin, peryodistang makasosyalista, at Felipe, isang anarkista. Kapwa nakasilid at nakasadlak ang dalawa sa masalimuot na usaping palasintahan, na siyang pain o panghalina sa madlang mambabasang nahirati sa mga romantikong pakikipagsapalarang hilig. Sila ang mga “bayani ng katubusan,” ng pagbabagong-buhay. Ngunit hindi ito tahasang nailarawan sapagkat ang tiyakang hinimay at sinuri ay ang patriyarkong ugali at pamantayan ng pamilya at ang kostumbre sa pagmamana ng ari-arian, sa panig ng mayamang Meni at amang Don Ramon. Tumpak ang puna ni Jim Richardson na kahawig ng isip ni De Los Reyes, ang sosyalismo ay walang iba kundi ang prinsipyong ligal ng pagkakapantay-pantay, sa pangitain ng liberalismong moralidad ng Kaliwanagan (2011, 22). Kaya sa palagay ni Delfin, ang Konstitusyon ng Estados Unidos ay umaapaw sa mga sosyalistang mithiin,”</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 7"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">7</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">at ang gobyernong Amerikano ay tuwirang nakasalig sa mga prinsipyong sosyalista” na higit pa sa bansang nagpapanggap na sosyalista. Ito ang isang dahilan na halos walang matipunong kritika sa manaakop ang nobela.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Diyalektika ng Indibiduwal at Madla</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Napatunayang mabisa ang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Banaag at Sikat </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">sa pagkalat ng mga kaisipang anti-kapitalista—3,000 kopya ang nabili sa ilang linggo lamang pagkalabas ng nobela. Marahil, mas makahulugan ang pagmuniin na ang sirkulo ng mga peryodista, manunulat, impresores, at unyonista’y kabilang sina Crisanto Evangelista, Domingo Ponce at Cirilo Bognot, mga tagapagtatag ng Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas noong sumunod na dalawang dekada (Saulo 1990, 6-9). Bago pa man dumating sina Tan Malaka at James Allen (Sol Auerbach), malusog at mayaman na ang kaalamang mapagpalaya ng uring mangagawa’t artisano sa kalunsuran ng Pilipinas sa yugtong ito ng kasayayan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang makatuturang naitanghal ni Santos sa nobela yaong wala roon o naipahiwatig lamang: ang pagkakalapat ng teorya at praktika. Ano ang nararapat pag- ukulan ng matamang pagkukuro sa mabuting pagkakatugma ng kamalayan at kapaligiran, ng simulain at pagkilos? Sa kabanatang “Dilim at Kaliwanagan,” nasaling ang pagkakaiba ng rebolusyong sosyal sa rebolusyong pampulitika sa diskusyon ng magkaibigan. Sambit ni Felipe, “panahon na ngayon ng ating </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Rebolusyong sosyal</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">, sapagkat sa akala ko’y puno na sa pagtitiis ang ating ma maralita.” Sagot ni Delfin: ‘Hindi pa marahil , sapagkat hindi pa nagsisikilos nang kusa; hindi pa sumsigaw sa kanila ring bibig. Nangangailan pa ng mga taong hirang, ng mga bayaning tagaakay, tagasulsol at uliranin.” Samakatwid, wala pang integral na dalumat upang palayain ang sarili.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Maingat si Delfin sa pagtaya sa antas ng mobilisasyon ng masa; tinitimbang niya kung may saloobin o pagnanais na magbago ng buhay ang masa kaagapay ng kanilang dinaramdam. Kailangan pa ang edukasyon, disiplina, kabatiran sa transpormasyon ng pamumuhay. Sa panig ni Felipe, kailangang buwagin ang anumang poder o “kapangyarihang makagagambala sa pagkaganap ng tunay at katutubong kalayaan ng tao,” alalaong baga’y ibalik ang likas na pakikipamuhay ng walang estado o institusyong mamumuno o mangangasiwa. Alisin man ang pribagong pag-aari, nariyan pa rin ang kapangyarihan “ng iba sa iba/“ Sa anarkistang pag-iisip ni Felipe, “Ang sarili lamang ang dapat makapangyari sa sarili....” Sumasang-ayon si Delfin sa ultimong adhika ni Felipe, ngunit hindi pa napapanahon, sa tingin niya, at isinaad ang isang tanawing kasintunog ng ebolusyonaryong iskema ni Auguste Comte o ng mga alagad nina Herbert Spencer at mga ebolusyonaryong repormista :</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">...hindi pa araw ito ng ganap na </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Rebolusyon. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang buhay ng mga lahi, ang lakad ng mga bayan, ay nagdaraan sa tatlong baitang ng panahon: una, ang panahong lahat ay iniaasa at iniuukol ng tao sa Maylikha.” Pangalawa, ang epoka ng mga bayani, at pangatlo, ang lahat ay galing sa lahat at mauuwi sa lahat—epoka ng komunismo. Payo ni Delfin: “Iangkap mo sa ating lahi at bayan ang tatlong baitan na iyan, at makikita mong iisa pa ang ating nalalampasan. Kasalukuyan pa tayong nagtutungtong sa pangalawa ng iisang paa, habang di pa naaangat ang isa sa una (1960, 538-39).</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 8"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">8</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang naturol na baitang-baitang na pagsulong ay halaw sa linyadong pagsukat ng kasaysayan ng kahayupan nagmula sa mga imbestigasyon ni Charles Darwin. Subalit hindi angkop ito sa kasaysayan ng lipunan na batay sa kontradiksyon ng mga uri buhay maihiwalay ang nagmamay-ari ng mga gamit sa prodyksyon at ang mga walang-pag-aaring mangagawa. Kailangan ang isang diyalektikag paraan ng pagsusuri upang maiitindihan ang problema ng modernidad sa atin. Sa puntong ito, ang ambag ng nobelang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Pinaglahuan </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">ni Aguilar ay natatangi.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Maidadagdag na parikalang interpretasyon ang mahuhugot kung isasaisip na ang anarkista’t sindikalistang ideolohiyang pinag-uusapan ng dalawang magkaibigan ay kapwa lihis o salungat sa alitan ng magulang at anak, at lumulutang sa itaas o ibaba ng kalakarang palasintahan. Balighong pagbubuhol ng dalawang hibla ng naratibo kundi babasahin na sinadyang pag- aayos ito. Ibig ipahatid na malaki ang agwat ng mga kaisipan nina Delfin at Felipe sa kapaligiran, sa daloy ng kalakaran</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Kasukdulan, Tapos Kakalasan?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kakaiba ang lapit ni Aguilar sa suliraning kontra-egemonya. Bagamat tinalakay pa rin sa banghay ng nobela ang hidwaan ng magulang at anak, tumambad ang tandisang tema ng makabagong nobela ni tinurol ni Lukacs: ang problema ng indibiduwal sa mundong walang tiyak na kahulugan o halagang pumapatnubay sa lahat, walang bathala o diyos o anumang batayan nagdudulot katwiran o katuturan sa lahat. Kung sa alegoriya ng mga sarsuwelang rebelde nagkawatak-watak ang mga nadaramang bagay at kahulugan nito, sa nobela naligaw ang tao sa isang mundong kakatwa’t banyaga, hindi mahulo kung saan nanggaling at saan patutungo.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sinikap ng nobelistang makatugon sa krisis ng lipunang naitulak sa makabagong panahon. Ang problema ng bayaning nangungulila’t giniyagis ng pagkabahala’t pag-aalanganin, ay masisilip sa katayuan ng protagonistang mayamang si Rojalde. Litaw na kinasangkapan din ang pag-iibigan nina Danding, ang mayamang kasintahan, at Luis Gat-buhay, ang pulubing organisador ng unyon sa isang kalakal na pag-aari ng isang Amerikano, at inilarawang maigi ang maalab na sintahan ng dalawa, binigyan ni Aguilar ng malaking puwang ang realistiko’t sikolohikong analisis sa malikot at mapusok na damdamin ng kumprador-usurerong Rojalde na, bagamat matagumpay sa pagsuyo sa mga magulang ni Danding, ay bigo naman sa pagtamo ng kaganapan: ang anak ni Danding ay anak nila ni Luis, ang nabilanggo’t namatay na katipan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Masinop ang pagtatagni-tagni ng mga pangyayari, dramatiko’t kapana- panabik ang pagsunud-sunod ng mga tagpo sa dalawang banghay ng pag- iibigan nina Danding at Luis, kaalinsabay ng maniobra ng tusong Rojalde upang masagkaan ni Rojalde ang kanilang pag-iisang-dibdib. Kasakiman at patriyarkong kalupitan ang sumugpo sa marangal at busilak na pagmamahalan ng dalawang biktima ng sistemang sumusuob sa salapi’t makahayup na pagmamalabis. Mala-Kristo ang pagkasawi ni Luis, himatong na sakripisyo lamang ang mga bayani ng kaligtasan ng uring inaalipin ng dayuhang kapitalista. Sa malas, wala pang kolektibong kapasiyahan at lakas ang mga bisig na yumayari ng produktong nagpapayaman sa kapitalista-kolonisador, bagamat</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 9"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">9</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">inaangkin pa rin nila ang katapangan, katatagan, at makataong paninindigan na siyang tutubos sa dinuhaging lipunan sa kinabukasan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Senyal na dalisay na pagnanais ng kalayaan ang anak ni Danding at Luis, sagisag ng minimithing pagbabago. Nang manalo ang Partido Nacionalista (PN) nina Quezon at Osmena, sa bisa ng islogang “kagyat, ganap at buong kasarinlan,” patunay na matindi’t malaganap pa rin, mula 1907 hanggang 1922. Isang paraan ito upang malinlang ang sambayanan. Ang Asambleyang Pilipino na pinamunuan ng mga NP politiko, ang bagong prinsipalya na nagsilbing instrumento sa madaling pangongolekta ng buwis upang mapondohan ang administrasyon kolonyal. Patuloy na namayani ang uring panginoong maylupa. malaking burgesiyang komprador, at burokrata-kapitalistang pangkat nina Quezon, Osmena at Roxas hanggang sumabog ang Pangalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Namulaklak ang nobela sa kabila ng mga batas kontra-Sedisyon at Bandolerismo, at kasong nagparusa sa pabliser at editor ng El Renacimiento noong 1908. Naging komersiyalisado ang sarsuwela’t humina na rin ang pamimili ng nobela. Ang Filipinisasyong inilunsad ni Taft ay humantong sa pagdami ng mga Filipino sa burokrasya (laluna sa administrasyon ni Francis Burton Harrison, 1913-21).Nang ipasa ang Jones Law ng 1916, nagkaroon ng limitadong awtonomiya—palsipikado, sa tingin ng iba, sapagkat sa bisa ng “malayang kalakalang” ipinataw ng Payne-Aldrich Act noong 1909, sinagip ang bulok na sistemang agrikulturang piyudal na pumigil sa anumang industriyalisasyon, ugat ng katayuang dependienteng lipunan hanggang ngayon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sintomas marahil ng mga ilusyon hinggil sa pagkahuwaran ng U.S. bilang demokrasya ang “Ang Beterano” ni Lazaro Francisco. Paniwala ang ilang awtor sa ideyang kung makikilala lamang ang katapangan at kadakilaan ng Pilipinong marunong magsakripisyo para sa uliraning halimbawa ng Estados Unidos, bibigyan ng kasarinlan ang Pilipinas. Tandisang indibiduwalismo ito: ang usaping panlipunan ay malulutas sa panloob na moralidad ng bawat indibiduwal, laluna kung matalino’t taglay ang dugong maharlika sa panig ng Amerikanang si Bertha Carvel, at pagkamasunurin sa Punong Puti ni Arcadio Pulintan. Tugon ng binibini: “Ibibigay ko ang buo kung buhay sa ikapagiging dapat ko sa mga dakila ninyong pagtuturing” (1998, 156).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Bago naitatag ang Komonwelt noong 1935, madugong pakikibaka ang yumanig sa buong bansa. Nagpakita ang mga manggagawa sa Maynila at mga magsasaka sa Gitnang Luzon, Timog Luzon, Bisaya at Mindanaw ng espontanyong karahasan, kaalinsabay ng rebelyon ng mga Colorum sa Mindanao at sa Pangasinan noong 1923-24, 1931; sa mga pabrika ng asukal sa Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, at Iloilo. Noong May 2-3, pumutok ang insureksyon ng mga Sakdalista sa Laguna, Rizal, Kabite, Tayabas at Bulacan, na kasangkot ang maraming pesante, magsasaka’t trabahador. Dito lumantad ang isang tipo ng pagkakawing ng sining at pulitika sa katauhan ni Benigno Ramos, tagapundar ng Partido Sakdalista.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Pananagutan ng Sining</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 10"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">10</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kung babalik-tanawin, ang arte poetikang sinusunod ng henerasyon nina Lope K. Santos, Inigo Ed. Regalado at mga kapanahon. ay hango sa tradisyong inilatag ng mga Griyego’t Romonang pantas. Ayon kay Julian Cruz Balmaseda, “Ang tula ay isang kaisipang naglalarawan ng kagandahan, ng kariktan, ng kadakilaan,” na kailangang magtipon-tipon sa isang kaisipan (2013, 58). Abstraksyong walang laman ito kung hindi isasakonteksto sa isang tiyak na panahon/lugar. Sa pagtalakay sa paksa ng anong uri ng modernidad mayroon tayo, naimungkahi ko na ito’y isang dulo ng kontradiksiyon, kasanib sa naratibo ng imperyalismo/monopolyo kapitalismo. Walang modernidad o kamalayan-sa- sarili ang kolonisadong lipunan kundi yaong hiram o dulot ng Kanlurang sibilisasyon. Samaktuwid, ang mapagpalayang kilusang lilikha sa modernidad ng mga taong sinakop ay magtataglay ng dalawang katangiang bubuo sa pangkasalukuyang kultura: realistiko’t popular.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Madaling matarok ang dimensiyong pagka-popular: naiintindihan ng masa, ginagamit ang anyo ng kanilang komunikasyon, ipinahahayag ang buod ng kanilang paninindigan. Sa dimensiyong reaistiko, madaling mawatasan ang aspeto ng pagka-realistiko: kongkreto sa kalawakan ng detalyeng nailarawan, ibinubunyag ang sanhi ng mga pangyayari, ipinapakita ang dominanteng pagtingin na angkin ng mga naghahari. Nasipat natin itong naibadya ng mga nobelang natukoy sa una. Ang mga kaibuturang katangian ng radikal na sining ay hindi pa ganap na naisisiwalat sa nobela nina Santos o Aguilar, at utopikong pahiwatig pa lamang sa mga alegorikong dulang nabanggit. Ano ang mga elementong kailangan pang linangin ay: pagsusuri sa punto-de-bista ng uring taglay ang pinakamasaklaw na kalutasan sa mga masidhing suliraning humahamon sa bayan, ipagdiinan ang dinamikong pagsulong ng lipunan, pagpupunyaging igiit ang pinakaprogresibong paninindigan upang makamit nito ang pamunuan, iangkop ang tradisyon sa kasalukuyan na maiintindihan ng lahat, paglipat ng mga naisakatuparang kagalingan sa mga pangkat na nakikibakang makagabay sa buong bansa—sa madaling salita, ilipat ang liderato ng lipunan sa uring proletaryo/manggagawang siyang susi sa kaunlaran at tunay na kasarinlan. Paano naisagawa ito nina Jose Corazon de Jesus, tawag nating “Batute” rito (1896-1932), at Benigno Ramos (1892-1945)?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Puso’t Kaluluwa Nagsandata</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Pinakatanyag sa timpalak-balagtasan (circa 1924) noon, si Batute ay<br />abogado’t peryodista na kadalasa’y lumahok sa mainit na usaping pampulitika<br />sa tuwiran o paambil. Nakalubog din siya sa kapitalistang milyu ng kalunsuran.<br />Sa panahon ng mass produksyon ng anumang maipagbibiling bagay, gumaya rin si Batute sa pagsasalisi ng talata, parirala, hulagway, na may magkamukhang tabas. Naging pabrika ng palasak na berso ang mga upisina ng </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Taliba </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">(dalawang makina sa pagtabas ng taludturan ang umaandar doon: "Buhay Maynila" at "Mga Lagot na Bagting ng Kudyapi</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">), Liwayway, Ang Mithi, Bagong Lipang Kalabaw</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">, at </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Sampagita</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Naging negosyante ang makata, salamat sa modernong teknolohiya ng imprenta at distribusyon ng peryodiko't lingguhan, polyeto't libro. Naging pansumandaling libangan ang pagbabasa ng tula, o pakikinig sa balagtasan na nagdulot-aliw sa madlang dumadalo sa mga pista.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Mapanganib ang lagay ng manunulat na medyo nakaangat sa mga karaniwang obrero sa imprenta ngunit madaling maalis sa trabaho. Minsan, sinuportahan si Batute</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 11"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">11</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">ng pabliser sa isang sakdal ng Amerikanong guro; sa pangalawang kaso, tinanggal na siya nang hindi siya tumigil sa pagsulsol sa mga estudyante sa Manila North High School sa pagtutol sa panlalait ng mga Amerikano (San Juan 2015, 178). Bago pa rito, naisakdal at pinagmulta si Batute dahil sa pagtuligsa niya kay Mrs. J.F. Oliver, isang guro noong Marso 2, 1921. Sa tulang “Black and White,” at maraming tulang itinipon ni Monico Atienza (1995), masasalat ang popular at realistikong aspeto na nailahat ko. Tunghayan ang ilang taludtod mula sa “Dugo” at ‘Pakikidigma,” lathala noong 1929, halimbawa: “Ikaw’y makidigma sa laot ng buhay / At walang bayaning nasindak sa laban; / Kung saan ka lalong mayroong kahinaan, doon mo dukutin ang iyong tagumpay” (Lumbera & Lumbera 1982, 215-217). Mas mapusok at mapangahas ang himig ng boses sa “Malikmata,” kung saan ang tema ng dinamiko’t kongkretong kapaligiran ang paksa: “Hali-halili lang ang anyo ng bagay / At hali-halili ang tingkad ng kulay; / Kay rami ng ating inapi’t utusang / Sa paghihiganti—bukas, sila naman” (hinggil sa paksang-diwa ng mga sinipi, konsultahi Atienza 2006).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Lubos na bantog si Batute sa kanyang tulang “Ang Bayan Ko” (1928), nilapatan ng musika ni Constancio de Guzman, at idinagdag sa tanyag na sarsuwelang “Walang Sugat” (1902) ni Severino Reyes. Kalayaan ay birtud ng kalikasan: “Ibon mang may layang lumipad /Kulungin mo at umiiyak /Bayan pa kayang sakdal dilag /Ang di magnasang makaalpas..” (kalakip sa Cruz & Reyes 1984, 142). Hindi lamang makata ng palasintahang paksain si Batute, kundi manlilikhang masaklaw ang dalumat pangkasaysayan, litaw sa epikong tulang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Sa Dakong Silangan </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">(1928). Dalawang taon bago pumanaw si Batute noong 1932, naisulat ni Amado V. Hernandez ang kanyang “Kung Tuyo na ang Luha Mo, Aking Bayan” (Cruz & Reyes 146-47), na siyang naging pampasiglang sigaw ng mga demonstrador ng “First Quarter Storm” sa bisperas ng batas-militar ng diktadurang Marcos. Sinamantalang sumakay sina Batute at Hernandez sa namamayaning hilig sa sining-pambigkas hanggang hindi pa ito pinapalis ng pagkagumon sa bodabil, radyo at pelikula sa bago itatag ang Komonwelt.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ngunit hindi si Batute o Hernandez ang kumatawan ng kontra-gahum na pakikibaka noong dekada ika-1930-40, kundi si Benigno Ramos. Lumahok si Ramos sa balagtasan noong 1926 sa kanyang “Balagtasan ng Kalayaan” (Zafra 2006, 274). Bago pa naging empleyado sa Senado bilang tagaslin noong 1917, naisulat na niya ang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Pancho Villa: Maikling Kasaysayan ng Bantog at Kilabot na Taong Ito sa Mehiko. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Taglay na ni Ramos ang istoriko-materyalistang pananaw na masisinag sa mga akda niya sa peryodikong </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Ang Bayang Filipino </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">noong 1913 hanggang 1917. Pagkatapos magbitiw sa burokrasya noong 1930 sa kanyang pagtutol kay Presidente Quezon sa usapin ng Amerikanong pamamahala at karapatan ng mga Filipinong estudyante sa Manila High School, ibinuhos ni Ramos ang kalooban sa lingguhang pahayagan </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Sakdal </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">na matapang na taliba ng sambayanan laban sa oligarkiya at kolonyalismong Amerikano. Noong Oktubre 1933, itinatag niya ang Lapiang Sakdalista na sumalungat sa panukala ng naghaharing Partido Nacionalista hinggil sa usapin ng pambansang kasarinlan at katarungang panlipunan. Nang sila’y sikilin at pigilin, naglunsad ng armadong aklasan ang masa noong Mayo 2-3, 1935 sa labing-apat na bayan ng Gitnang Luzon. Bagamat naging maka-Hapon o kolaboraytor si Ramos pagkaraang mabilanggo noong Disyembre 1939, hindi mapapasubalian ang kanyang pananalig sa nasyonalistikong demokrasya para sa nakararaming anak-pawis (Tolentino 1998).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Bukod sa matalinong pagkukuro sa pagbabago ng anyo ng sining sa mga unang tula niya, si Ramos ay likas na mapanghimagsik at mapagsubok sa pagtatambal ng kamalayan at kapaligiran. Pinagpugayan siyang “poeta revolucionario” dahil sa eksperimentasyon at pagkamakabago. Matayog at nakaantig ang mga tulang</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 12"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">12</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">“Gumising Ka, Aking Bayan,” “Panulat,” “Asyenda,” “Katas-Diwa,” at iba pa, makikilates sa “Mga Agam-Agam” (inilathala sa El Renacimiento, 28 Abril 1911) ang katangiang realistiko’t popular na sangkap sa paghikayat sa masang magkuro, sumuri, at maghinuha ng kinakailangang kilos sa pagsira ng di-rasyonal na institusyon at pagtutugma ng katwiran at ayos ng relasyong panlipunan. Ang aral o turo na naibigkis dito ay kasingkaw ng imahen o kakintalang maramdamin:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang taong kumita sa tulo ng pawis, sa mga paggawa at banat ng bisig ay taong marapat sa mga pag-ibig at sa pagkilala ng bawa’t may isip.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang mga mahirap ang pinanggalingan ng salaping hari ng nangabubuhay,<br />sa kanilang palad ito namuhatan<br />at sa tuyong bulsa’y siyang nagpayaman.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang bawat may milay ay nagmula muna sa buhay-hikahos ngayong nakikita. Humigit-kumulang ay nangagtamasa<br />ng sa mahihirap na taglay na dusa.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang bawa’t hangingging ng mga pagbulyaw sa mga mahirap ay isa rin namang<br />hukay na sa ganid na paglilibinga’t<br />sasaksi sa kanyang waka na mapanglaw.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang palad ay walang palagiang banig ni isang uupang sukat na makamit. Pagkagiring pula! Siya’t magtitindig ng api’t mamamatay sa mga malupit.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Hindi nasisilip agad ang ligaya<br />kung hindi magwagi sa pakikibaka. Ang mga mahirap na nananandata kung api ma’y busog sa mga pag-asa.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Tubig na malinis ang nakakatulad<br />ng pusong bayani ng isang mahirap, kahi’t tampisawin ng paang may burak ay hindi malabo: di mapapaglusak.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang pigil ng sama’y nasa dakong huli,<br />at kung sa gayon ma’y laging nagwawagi<br />asahan at bukas nama’y mga api<br />ang magtatagumpay at hindi ang imbi. (Ramos 1998, 13-14)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Dalawampung taon pa ang magdaraan bago pumutok ang masigabong martsa ng bayan sa Kaarawan ng Paggawa na idinakila ni Ramos sa kanyang tula. Binuo at</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 13"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">13</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">pinamunuan ng Partido Komunista ang aksyon, na winasak ng papet na konstabularya ni Quezon sa utos ng imperyalistang Amerikano. Maraming inaresto’t ibinalanggo. Ulat ni Amado Guerrero: “Ang Partido ay ipinagbawal ng papet na Korte Suprema at ang mga lider ay sinintensiyahang mabilanggo [noong 1932]. Gayunman, sa kabila ng pagbabawal sa Partido, sumiklab ang mga espontanyong pagbabangon ng mga magsasaka tulad ng naganap sa Tayug, Pangasinan, noong 1931 at ng ibinunsod ng mga Sakdal” (1970, 52-53) noong 1935, na naitalakay na sa unahan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Aklasan: Pagsasanay sa Himagsikan</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Inihudyat ng mga pagbabalikwas ng nakararaming mamamayan na nakahulagpos na sa antas ng rebolusyong Pranses ang modernong kabihasnan at humhangos na sa yugto Komunidad sa Paris ng 1871. Magkatalik na ang uring magbubukid, manggagawa’t intelektuwal sa kalunsuran sa nagkakaisang pagsalakay sa kapangyarihang piyudal, kumprador at kolonyalistang dayuhan. Unti-unting nayayari ang lideratong moral-intelektuwal ng makabayang pangkat. Masasalamin ito sa imahen ng aklasan. Mabalasik na naihatid ito sa tulang “Aklasan” ni Hernandez, na kasama sa kanyang librong Kayumanggi (1940). Nakalutang sa isang argumento na kung hindi napapalitan ang mali o masamang pamamalakad, iigpaw ang udyok ng himagsikan. Narito ang huling talugtod ng pagbabanta’t pagbabala:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ngunit habang may pasunod na ang tao’y parang hayop samantalang may pasahod na anaki’y isang limos....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">at may batas na baluktot<br />na sa ila’y tagakupkop,<br />ang aklasan ay sisipot<br />at magsasabog ng poot,<br />ang aklasa’y walang lagot, unos, apoy, kidlat, kulog, mag-uusig, manghahamok<br />na parang talim ng gulok, hihingi ng pagtutuos<br />hanggang lubusang matampok, kilalani’t mabantayog</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">ang katwirang inaapop,<br />hanggang ganap na matubos<br />ang Paggawang bagong Hesus<br />na ipinako sa kurus. (Medina 1972, 345)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Pansinin na ang harayang Hesukristo ang ikinabit sa “Paggawa” ay nagpagunita sa atin ng imahen sa huling tagpo sa nobelang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Pinaglahuan, </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">wari bagang ang sakripisyo ng sambayanan ay nagpapangako ng di-mahahadlangang katubusan sa wakas. Maaaring hinagapin na sagisag ito ng nakaugat na tradisyong milenaryo ng mga Colorum, sektaryang pangkat tulad ng Cofradia ni Hermano Pule, atbp. Sa kabilang dako, isinaalang-alang ng makata’t nobelista ang gawi, ugali, hilig ng madla na inilubog sa Kristiyanong ritwal ng cenaculo at pagbasa sa Pasyon.</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 14"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">14</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang aklasan ay nailarawan naman sa mas realistikong paraan sa kuwento ni Brigido Batungbakal, “Aklasan.” Maantig at maudyok ang ritmo ng mga pangugusap sa naratibo, katugma ng daloy ng pagbabalita sa radyo, isang teknolohiyang lumaganap na noong Komonwelt. Mas makapangyarihan ang impluwensiya ng pelikulang may tinig noong dekada 1930 (Lumbera 1998, 397-98), kung saan ang metodo ng montage ang kontra-egemonyang lakas na dumurog sa katahimikan kunwaring-rasyonalidad ng kapaligiran. Maihahalimbawa na ang maikli’t putol-putol na taludtod sa unang bahagi ng “Aklasan” ni Hernandez. Sindak sa sigalot ang hiwatig ng puta-putaking detalye sa “snapshots.” Sa kuwento, hindi lang maramdaming paglalarawan ang kinasangkapan ng nag-uulat na reporter, kundi ang pagtatagning parataktika ng eksena ang mabisang representasyon ng gulo, paglalaban ng hinagap at kalakaran—sa malao’t madali, ang sindak ng krisis sa montage ang nakasiwalat ng katotohanang binaluktot ng inilimbag na ulat ng pahayagang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Katarungan</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Subaybayan ang indayog ng mga pariralang nakapaloob sa talatang ito:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Muling nagsalita si Andres Santos sa kanyang mga kasamahan. Sinabi niyang ingatan ang pagsakit sa mga taong hindi kasang-ayon ng kanilang simulain. Umugong ang hiyawan. Tumututol ang marami sa kanyang ibig mangyari. Hindi maaari ang ganyan. Kailangang patayin ang sinomang mag-eskirol. Walang itatangi. Isang babae ang tumindig. Nagsalita. Kailangang ipagtanggol ang karapatan ng mga nagsisi-aklas. Kailangang ipagtagumpay ang simulain natin sa kabuhayan. Umugong ang sigawan ng mga sumang-ayon. Pamaya-maya, isang trak ang huminto. Saka naghiyawan ng Mabuhay. Makikiramay sa atin ang mga taga-La Insular. Hindi tayo pababayaan ng mga taga-La Yebana. Tigas ng loob laman ang kailangan natin upang tayo’y magtagumpay (1982, 227- 28).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kung aalagatain ang mabagal at mabigat na paglalatag ng mga pangyayari upang makabuo ng kapanabikan sa sinaunang kuwento nina Cirio Panganiban, “Bunga ng Kasalanan,” o ni Deogracias Rosario sa “Walang Panginoon,” malaki ang kaibahan ng paraan ng pagsasalaysay (Abadilla, Sebastian & Mariano 1954, 84-112). Pwedeng banggitin din ang sopistikadong pagsasalaysay ni Narciso Reyes sa “Lupang Tinubuan,” na pinagsusudlong ng pagtuklas ng nasyonalistikong saloobin sa pagkilala sa gunitang nagbubuklod sa salinlahi sa isang angkan sa isang tiyak na lugar. Dugo at lupa ang batayan ng pag-ibig sa bansa, hindi ang pakikibaka para sa kasarinlan at kalayaan ng mamamayan. Namumukod ang “Aklasan.” Walang pasubali kinagiliwan ang mga kuwentong nabanggit, naging popular; ngunit nakatuon ang pagmamasid ng naratibo sa inbididuwalistikong sikolohiya ng mga tauhan. Nalulutas ang tensiyon at suliranin sa moralistiko’t sikolohiyang pagkakalas ng mga komplikasyon. Sa akda ni Batungbakal, ang pag-inog ng mga pangyayari ay nagmumula sa igting ng relasyong sosyal, popular at realistiko sapagkat idinidiin ang dinamikong sagupaan at salpukan ng makabuluhang lakas sa lipunan at ibinubunyag ang pagkakaugnay ng mga puwersang siyang nagpapagalaw sa bawat sulong ng mga pangyayari sa kasaysayan. Ito’y ambag sa kabatiran ng masa at sagot sa kung paano mababago ang buhay sa kolektibong pagtutulungan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Paglalakbay sa Sangandaan ng mga Barikada</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 15"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">15</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Paano nakaabot sa antas na ito ang mga manlilikha? Paano nasiyasat at naikintal sa mabalasik na artikulasyon ang pag-uugnay ng nag-iisang kamalayan/isip at ang masalimuot na pakikisalamuha sa obhetibong realidad?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Nagbago ang klima ng opinyon sa larangan ng komunikasyon at diskusyon pampubliko noong dekada ika-1930 hanggang 1942. Sumidhi ang digmaan ng mga uring panlipunan. Bukod sa pagkayanig sa status quo ng insureksiyon ng Sakdalista, at mabulas na demonstrasyon ng mga alagad ng Partido Komunista ni Crisanto Evangelista at Partido Socialista ni Pedro Abad Santos, na humantong sa pagkakasanib ng dalawang kilusang ito, naitatag ang Philippine Writers Leaguenoong 1939. Pinamunuan nina Federico Mangahas, Teodoro Agoncillo, Salvador Lopez, Manuel Arguilla, Arturo Rotor, at iba pang intelektuwal, nagkaroon ng kolektibong kamalayan at plataporma ang nakakaraming manunulat. Ibinuod ang pagtugon ng mga manlilikha sa maselang problema ng bansa sa analitikong sanaysay ni Lopez sa librong </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Panitikan at Lipunan </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">(1940).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Naigiit ko sa una ang dalawang katangiang pagkapopular at pagkarealistiko na kailangan upang makabuo ng egemonya ng uring manggagawa. Nakasalalay ito sa pamumunong moral/espiritwal ng mga organikong intelektuwal ng masa. Utang sa pananalig ng uring manggagawa’t magbubukid, sa kanilang pagtutol at pagkilos laban sa pang-aapi ng imperyalismo’t kakutsaba nito, namulaklak ang damdaming mapagpalaya sa kaisipang nailahad ni Lopez sa kanyang akda. Nahati ang pangkat ng mga manunulat sa dalawang bahagi: una, ang mga aesthete na naniniwala sa primaryang aksyoma ng sining-para-sa-kapakanan ng sining” at, pangalawa, ang naniniwala na ang pinaimportanteng layon nila ang “pagpapaunlad ng kagayan ng tao at sa pagtatanggol sa kanyang karapatan.” Nag-panukala na “makikilala lamang ng tao ang kanyang sarili sa pamamagitan ng pagkilala sa iba,” masinop na nilagom ni Lopez ang sitwasyon ng alagad-ng-sining sa katanungang ito: “Tutugtog ba sila ng biyolin habang nagliliyab ang Roma? ...O nang hindi nakakalimutan na ang sining ay dapat manawagan sa tao sa pamamagitan ng ganda’t kapangyarihan, gagampanan ba nila ang kanilang tungkulin sa daigdig ng mga tao, hihingahin ba ang hanging hinihinga natin, pag-iisipan ba ang mga problemang lumilito sa atin, ipapahiram ba ang pananaw at pagkahenyong ipinagkaloob sa kanila upang ganap na malultas ang mga ito?” (1984, 255).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sa matalas na komprontasyon ng dalawang ideolohiyang natukoy, ang isa nakaugat sa burgesya/kapitalismong orden, at ang kasalungat na nakaugat sa uring pinagsasamantalahan, sumipot ang malinaw na kontradiksiyong hinaharap ng sambayanan. Ito ang kontradiksiyon ng mga gumagawa o yumayari ng kayamanang panlipunan, at ang mga makapanyarihang sumasamsam sa kayamanang iyon at nagpapalaganap ng kahirapan at kasamaan. Hustisya sosyal ang programa ni pangulong Quezon upang malutas ang kontradiksiyon. Samantala, sa panig ng mga organikong intelektuwal ng sambayanan, ang tugon sa krisis ng demokrasyang liberal na nakasalig sa kapitalismo ay rebolusyong sosyal at pulitikal—ang pag-alis ng pribadong pag-aari ng gamit sa produksiyon, pati lupaing sinasaka, kasabay ng pagtaboy sa mananakop, sa kolonyalismong Estados Unidos. Ang modernidad ng Kanlurang sibilisasyon ay barbarismo, samantalang ang modernidad na sumisibol at lumalago sa Pilipinas ay nagmumula sa kawalan o kabiguang nasa pusod ng Kanlurang sibilisasyon: ang kalayaan at kasarinlan ng inaalipin, inaapi, pinagsasamantalahan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Sa mga akda ni Carlos Bulosan, ang manunulat na tumungo sa U.S. noong 1930 upang makipagsapalaran kasama ang ilang libong Filipinong kinontrata ng mga</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 16"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">16</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">pabrika’t plantasyon doon, natugunan ang hinihinging pakikipagbalitak ni Lopez at mga kapanlig sa Philippine Writers League. Naging kaibigan niya si Amado Hernandez at tumulong sa pagpapalthala ng Born of the People, talambuhay ni Luis Taruc. Nakilala rin niya sina Mangahas, Lopez, Rotor, at iba pang kababayang nakilahok sa kilusang makakaliwa (San Juan 1995). Noong 1946 lumabas ang kanyang tala ng mga karanasan niya at madlang kalahi: </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">America Is in the Heart</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Tumulong nang matagal sa pag-organisa ng mga unyon at pagtaliba ng mga simulain ng kilusang progresibo’t sosyalista, naitangal ni Bulosan ang pagsasanib ng digmaan laban sa kapitalismo sa U.S. at ang anti-imperyalistang pakikibaka ng masang Filipino sa kanyang nobelang </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">The Cry and the Dedication</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ang modernidad ng bansang bumabalikwas, nagsisikap tumakas sa pagkaduhagi, nagtataguyod ng mapagpalayang diwa’t damdamin, ay makikita sa mga akda ni Bulosan. Isang testimonyo nito ang tulang “If You Want to Know What We Are,” na kalakip sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Literature Under the Commonwealth</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">, na pinamatnugutan nina Manuel Arguilla atbp. Sinisipi ko ang bahaging kumikilala sa panahon ng pagkamakabago na katambal ng mapanlikhang bayanihan ng mga anak-pawis bilang pangwakas:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kami ang mga nagpapakasakit na nagdurusa para sa likas na pagmamahal ng tao sa kapwa, na gumugunita sa pagkatao<br />ng bawat nilalang; kami ang mga manggagawang nagpapagod<br />upang ang tigang na sangkapalalua’y maging isang pook ng kasaganaan,<br />na nagpapabagong-anyo sa kasaganaan upang maging halimuyak na walang</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">kamatayan.<br />Kami ang pita ng mga di-kilalang tao kahit saan,<br />na nagpupunla ng yaman sa kaningningan ng malawak na daigdig kami ang bagong diwa<br />at ang bagong saligan, ang bagong pagsasaluntian ng kaisipan; kami ang bagong pag-asa bagong kagalakan kahit saan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kami ang pangarap at ang bituin, ang nagpapahupa ng dusa; kami ang hangganan ng pagsisiyasat, ang simula<br />ng bagong kilusan; kami ang lihim ng landas<br />ng pagdurusa; kami ang mithiin ng kadakilaan;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">kami ang buhay ng katibayan ng isang sumisibol na lipi.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Kung nais ninyong mabatid kung sino kami—<br />KAMI ANG REBOLUSYON!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">SANGGUNIAN</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Abadilla, A.G., F. B. Sebastian and A.D.G. Mariano. 1954. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Ang Maikling Kathang Tagalog. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Quezon City: Bede’s Publishing House Inc.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Agoncillo, Teodoro 1974. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Filipino Nationalism: 1872-1970</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Manila: R. P. Garcia Publishing Co.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">——-& Milagros Guerrero. 1970. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">History of the Filipino People</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Manila: R.P. Garcia. Atienza, Monico. 2006. “Mg Tula ng Pulitika at Pakikisangkot ni Jose Corazon de</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Jesus.” Nasa sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Kilates</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Ed. Rosario Torres-Yu. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 17"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">17</span></p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Balmaseda, Julian Cruz. 2013 (1938). “Ang Tatlong Panahon ng Tulang Tagalog.” </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Mga Lektura sa Kasaysayan ng Panitikan</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Ed. Galileo Zafra. MetroManila: Aklat ng Bayan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Batungbakal, Brigido. 1982 (1935). “Aklasan.” Nasa sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Eds. Bienvenido Lumbera and Cynthia Nograles-Lumbera. Manila: National Book Store.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Bulosan, Carlos. 1984 (1940). “Kung Nais Ninyong Mabatid Kung Sino Kami.” Salin mula sa Ingles nina Lilia Antonio, H. Beltran Jr., at Richie Valencia. Nasa sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Ang Ating Panitikan</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Eds. Isagani Cruz & Soledad Reyes. Manila: Goodwill Trading Co.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Cruz, Isagani & Soledad Reyes. 1984. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Ang Ating Panitikan</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Manila: Goodwill Trading Co.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Fernandez, Doreen G. 1996. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Francisco, Lazaro. 1998. “Ang Beterano.” </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">50 Kuwentong Ginto ng 50 Batikang Kwentista</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Ed. Pedrito Reyes. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Guerrero, Amado. 1971. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Maynila: Lathalaang Pulang Tala.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Jameson, Fredric. 1971. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Marxism and Form</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lopez, Salvador. 1984 (1940). “Panitikan at Lipunan.” Nasa sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Ang Ating Panitikan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Eds. Isagani Cruz & Soledad Reyes. Manila: Goodwill Trading Co.<br />Lukacs, Georg. 1971 (1920). </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">The Theory of the Novel. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Tr. Anna Bostok. Cambridge, MA:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">MIT Press.<br />Lumbera, Bienvenio & Cynthis Nograles Lumbera, eds. 1982. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Philippine Literature: A</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">History & Anthology</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Manila: National Bookstore.<br />Medina, Ben S. 1972. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Tatlong Panahon ng Panitikan</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Manila: National Book Store. Mojares, Resil B. 1983. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Quezon City: University</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">of the Philippines Press.<br />Ramos, Benigno. 1998. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Gumising Ka, Aking Bayan</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Ed. Delfin Tolentino, Jr.. Quezon</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.<br />Richardson, Jim. 2011. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Komunista</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. San Juan, E. 1995. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Philadelphia:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Temple University Press.<br />Santos, Lope K. 1960 (1906). </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Banaag at Sikat. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Quezon City: Manlapaz Publishing Co. Saulo, Alfredo B. 1990. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Communism in the Philippines. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">University Press.<br />Tolentino, Aurelio. 1975. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Selected Writings. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ed. Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz. Quezon City:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">University of the Philippines Library.<br />Tolentino, Delfin Jr. 1998. “Paunang Salita.” Nasa sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Gumising Ka, Aking Bayan: Mga</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Piling Tula ni Benigno Ramos</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Wernsted, Frederick L. & Joseph Spencer. 1967. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">The Philippine Island World</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">. Berkeley: U</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">of California Press.<br />Zafra, Galileo. 2006. “Ang Dalumat ng Katwiran sa Balagtasan Bilang Salik ni</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Estetikang Pampanitikan.” Nasa sa </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Kilates. </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt;">Ed. Rosario Torres-Yu. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.</span></p></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-61470828695924233312022-10-05T08:02:00.000-07:002022-10-05T08:02:00.574-07:00WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE PHILIPPINES<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE U.S. NEOCOLONY?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px; text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">A GLIMPSE OF THE MARCOS-DUTERTE HOUSE OF HORROR IN THE </p>
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<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">PHILIPPINES</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">by E. San Juan, Jr. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">Philippines Studies Center, Washington DC</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8QLQ_UkasrxiPMjvZhznIQMVlKGz77EUzGKZIeFLb0kEK9-nmjP_q-45H4ju8w-xHyoz7gHli9xwuUdbCX6JuPSEIADQf1TWzwj3mx5A3W9YPkx0Unom6Wx-6PvMpzFsDt1KiEHUmpLc_dCmK6evasfpkN2YBQrQdHj87GqJ1EY54MYBRY-k/s1600/IMG_0505.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8QLQ_UkasrxiPMjvZhznIQMVlKGz77EUzGKZIeFLb0kEK9-nmjP_q-45H4ju8w-xHyoz7gHli9xwuUdbCX6JuPSEIADQf1TWzwj3mx5A3W9YPkx0Unom6Wx-6PvMpzFsDt1KiEHUmpLc_dCmK6evasfpkN2YBQrQdHj87GqJ1EY54MYBRY-k/s320/IMG_0505.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuLfuA77fSSEYLtqyPrW3q0KwKYKPvkNjqOsFCDGhcbF4U1NepwiFwLl3SjpScQY7wQdc_bz81FUsrrb0GIPXZUBGxRZshA54e8RCzuS6v8pwUbvNLFbAsroD1FBZXaJ2c8QVrWmY2b5xqK5P58QCt-MNTmD9CxloEwI5xDM3fFm80vYmgWDQ/s1600/NPA.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1600" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuLfuA77fSSEYLtqyPrW3q0KwKYKPvkNjqOsFCDGhcbF4U1NepwiFwLl3SjpScQY7wQdc_bz81FUsrrb0GIPXZUBGxRZshA54e8RCzuS6v8pwUbvNLFbAsroD1FBZXaJ2c8QVrWmY2b5xqK5P58QCt-MNTmD9CxloEwI5xDM3fFm80vYmgWDQ/s320/NPA.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px; text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> IN his classic “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” Karl Marx amends Hegel’s quip on history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce (1986 97). With the former Philippine dictator Marcos’s son in office, will farcical acts be the spectacle for the next six years?. Imagine the sons of Somoza, Trujillo or Batista returning to their banana republics—that would indeed be “the tradition of all the dead generations” acting as toxic “nightmare on the brain of the living.” </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The oldest U.S. neocolony, the Philippines, was plundered and ruined by Ferdinand Marcos from 1966 to 1986. Biding their time in Hawaii, a refuge offered by the colonizers, the Marcos dynasty staged a comeback with their wealth and retinue of factotums intact. They consolidated power in their localities (Ilocos, Leyte) and began a program of selective retrieval. Aided by consumerist amnesia and a new generation bereft of historical knowledge, they inched their way to governorship and congressional seats. Amid widespread vote-buying and fixing of the Smartmatic computerized machines in the May 2022 elections, Marcos Jr., known as “Bongbong,” was installed as president (CENPEG 2022). They struck a bargain with strongman Duterte by allowing the daughter Sara to run as vice-president to safeguard the father from any criminal investigation after his tenure.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"> </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Despite some citizen-groups’ protests and media demands to review the election results by the Duterte-controlled Commission on Elections, nothing was done to block Bongbong’s proclamation. The corrupted State ideological apparatuses to pacify class conflicts (legislature, courts, police, military bureaucracy) had already been eviscerated. The farce seems to be the consensus of the oligarchic clans—Arroyo, Estrada, Duterte, Marcos, billionaire Chinoy networks—with huge funding by corporate interests, religious, and military blocs that have so far benefited from their rule.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>Estranging Affinities</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Marcos dynasty has so far successfully defied all court verdicts since their return from Hawaii in 1992. Bongbong himself refused to pay back-taxes while his mother, Imelda Marcos, sentenced to jail a while ago, remains free to flaunt her wealth—not her fabled thousand shoes, but the dynasty’s “past glory” reconfirmed by Marcos’ burial in the cemetery of heroes by Duterte. The elaborate State funeral was the ritual designed to repair the frayed social cohesion that is somehow ascribed to the Aquino clan represented by the “pink party” of the Liberal Party (Roxas clan) and the defeated candidate Leni Robredo. A compromise was reached with the Duterte bloc, compensating for Bongbong’s frustrated vice-presidential ambition in 2016.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Meanwile, Bongbong’s sister Senator Imee Marcos devised another farcical stragegy. To reinforce the Cambridge Analytica/Google handling of the Marcos “brand” in social media, She financed a film entitled “Maid in Malacanang” to revise the spectacle of the family’s 1968 panicked escape from the palace as the infurtiated masses smashed the gates and soon occupied the dictator’s sanctuary. It was a desperate attempt to alter the media discourse on the impact of the people’s anger and repudiation of the patriarch’s martial law (1972-1986) and its horrors. Somehow, the tragic show needs comedic retouching.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For many reviewers, Imee’s propaganda ploy was an abject failure. <i>Rappler</i>, the news outfit headed by Maria Ressa, recent Nobel Prize winner, fact-checked the film’s truthfulness by comparing it with the book by Arturo Aruiza, Marcos’s military aide. <i>Rappler</i> testified to the film’s disingenous erasure of Marcos’ failure to squelch the Ramos-Enrile mutiny which sparked the EDSA “People Power” insurrection (Tequero 2022). Instead of showing the mayhem overtaking the household, the film depicts Imee fully in charge of what was going on. She was <i>jefe con cojones</i>. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The film depicted Imee displacing the regular staff and projecting herself as her father’s trusted manager—the real heir to his prestige, authority, intelligence. Affinities eclipsed alienating divisions. Deconstruction of conventional gender-role and class-subordination, however, produced the opposite: glamorizing the new androgynous Imee as unifying official/managerial elite, marginalizing Bongbong and vindicating the patron-client reciprocity—the supreme Filipino value, as mainstream academics assure us.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Imee’s cinematic role (“pinakamahusay na katulong”) with Marcos’ blessing—:”my darling genius of a girl”—seeks to salvage the eroded dignity/power of the dictator. Marcos was emasculated with physical disabiities that constrained patriarchal hubris. In its absence, Imee shed off whatever feminine mystique she had and took over the refurbishment of the damaged Marcos “brand” by role-switching and re-identifying her lot with the loyal subaltern-proletarian cohort. It’s difficult, however, to insinuate the EDSA crowd into the film, given its association with the Aquinos as persecutors. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We can not yet fully assess the impact of this farcical episode.The latest news is that embassies abroad have been ordered to propagate the film. While Imee’s concoction opened to much fanfare, another film entitled KATIPS about anti-Marcos activists and rebellious youth who fought the dictatorship attracted more attention and sympathy. We predict more farcical offerings to cement the widening fissures of the neocolonial structure established by more than a century of U.S. military, economic and cultural domination since the Filipino-American War (1899-1913; see San Juan 2021)..</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>The Gossip-Master Intervenes</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Historian Ambeth Ocampo noted the film’s “twisted retelling of history,” but was more vexed by the director’s “artistic license,” as illustrated by the attempt to smear Cory Aquino by depicting her as “playing mahjong with Carmelite nuns when the fate of the nation hung in a balance. ” Ocampo adds that “the suppressed Marcos narrative provided by Imee Marcos is that the Marcoses were driven from Malacanang by fair weather friends who looked down on them for their provincial and nonelitist origins” (2022). </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In short, “Maid in Malcanang” is a gambit to cast the Marcos dynasty as victims deserving empathy, and in fact becoming the uncanny exemplars of the nationalist movement. Contrary to the view that Imee’s vanity film hopes to exude a humanist appeal, its drawing-power are the female stars who supposedly can seduce thousands of fans and devotees on behalf of the oligarchs. Again, the irony traps Imee/dynasty’s effort to recapture the aura of the pre-Marcos image: Malacanang cannot be recast into a slumdweller or peasant-farmer’s residence. Nor can the fashionably-attired Imee mimick the harried servant-maid obsequisly following orders. Just about the same time the film grabbed headlines, the capture of a much-abused pollitical activist, Adora Faye de Vera, was announced by the metropolitan police.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>Spoiling the Polemical Opera</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i> </i> De Vera, 68 years old, was arrested last August 26 for alleged involvement in “multiple murder, with the use of exposives and antipersonnel mine.” She was first arrested for pasting anti-government posters in October 1976 and sexually abused and tortured by the military until June 1977. Parts of her body were burned, toenails and fingers crushed, remaining naked for some time; and she was repeatedly raped. The responsible culprits—eleven soldiers and three civilians—were members of the Military Intelligence Group, 2<span style="font-size: 8px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>nd</sup></span> Constabulary Security Unit, 231 PC Company of Quezon Province (Martial Law Files 2012). Specifically, the torturers responsible belong to the Philippine Constabulary under General Fidel Ramos, together with the Ground Team 205 of 2<span style="font-size: 8px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>nd</sup></span> Military Intelligence Group, AFP, which counts Col. Alejandro Gallido, Corporal Alberto Trapal, Corporal Charlie Tolopia, Capt. Eduardo Sebastian, Capt Jesus Calaunan, Lt. Joseph Malilay, and assorted civilian accessories (Ilagan 2019, 24-26). </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After repeated sexual assaults, De Vera got pregnant and had to induce an abortion. Her husband Manuel disappeared 22 years ago and has remained a <i>desaparecido</i> to this day.Together with De Vera were Rolando Federis and Flora Coronacion who were raped by 14 men numerous times; after their torture, they performed the official roles of “<i>desaparecidos</i>” in the State’s theater of predatory entertainment. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is publicly know that Filipino military officers since then—from Marcos to Duterte’s regime—have been notorious for relentless rapacity and barbarism. This seems to be their claim for manly distinction ever since the U.S. established the Philippine Scouts to assist their bloody suppression of Filipinos refusing McKinley’s “Benevolent Assimilation.” The PC (now the PNP/Philippine National Police) was then headed by the late General Fidel Ramos. Just like Duterte’s death-squad, none of the torturers had been charged (Melencio 1998). All in all, twenty security men were involved in this documented outrage against De Vera, Morales, and Coronacion.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>De Vera’s second arrest occurred in October 23, 1983 during a military encirclement in Bicol province. She was then 30 years old, married with two children. She was shot in the leg. Since her imprisonment in 1976 up to now, De Vera has been suffering from her traumatic encounter with the police and officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Varona 2022). Arrested in Metro Manila, she has been flown to a jail in Iloilo City, where more farcical events are sure to be witnessed. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>Cry of the Multitude </i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> De Vera is only one of the thousands of political prisoners who suffered the vicious depravity of the Marcos martial-law regime. Amnesty International and other human-rights observers have documented 3,275 killed, 35,000 tortured, and 70,000 incarcerated persons during the Marcos dictatorship….Some 2,520 Filipinos were ‘salvaged’—that is, tortured, mutilated and dumped on a roadside for public display” (McCoy 2001) KARAPATAN and the Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines have preserved records of the human-rights abuses of the Marcos years.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> For lack of space, I can only cite here the case of Maria Cristina Rodriguez, one of the thousands of victims of the Marcos “conjugal dictatorship.” Rodriguez is now the executive director of <i>Bantayog ng mga Bayani (</i>Monument to Heroes), a museum for martial-law victims. In a public testimony dated September 8, 2016, as requested by the Supreme Court concerning the Duterte regime’s plan to bury Marcos in the nations cemetery for heroes, Rodriguez recounted her ordeal. Here is an excerpt:</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-indent: -36px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yes, Marcos soldiers tortured and abused me. I saw others as well, a boy screaming from zaps of electric torture, a friend with polio beaten black and blue, a man with both feet bandaged because a military officer had pressed them with red-hot iron during interrogation…My godmother was killed by intelligence agents inside a hospital room. I’ve talked with mothers whose son or daughter was shot pointblank by men in uniform. I’ve myself documented hundreds of cases of Filipinos who underwent varying levels of inhuman treatment from the Marcos dictatorship—farmers executed, pregnant women raped, children massacred” (quoted in Beltran 2022).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The return of the Marcos dynasty to power—surely not as maid-servants glamorized by Imee Marcos—signals a revanchist move to revamp the narrative of the February 1986 debacle. For the Marcos loyalists, history may just be “tsimis” or gossip. But they take it seriously. One sign is the attempt to abolish the Presidential Committee on Good Government (PCGG) tasked to recover Marcos’ stolen wealth amounting to billions of dollars. Another is the move to sustain Duterte’s withdrawal of the country from the sway of the International Criminal Court which has been pursuing cases filed by many victims of Duterte’s drug-war since he assumed office as mayor of Davao City (1988-98). Duterte admitted complicity with deathsquads in 2015. He boasted wanting to kill 100,000 people before the end of his presidency. Over 30,000 victims of extrajudicial killlings under Duterte’s watch have been recorded, though only about 1,400 have been reported by the national police. Exhumations of the hundreds of slain “drug suspects” and autopsies are being processed to determine the authenticity of police records.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>Political Prisoners Galore</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The rampant practice of stigmatizing anyone critical of government policies as “terrorists” began with Cory Aquino and worsened with Duterte’s red-tagging policy. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Any dissenter is tagged as a “terrorist” supporter of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army. This originated with Sec. Colin Powell’s declaration in 2001 of the two groups as “terrorist” organizations. Under Duterte’s rule, the number of political prisoners ballooned to 592. Compare the number of detainees under President Arroyo (343) and under Benigno Aquino Jr. (306). This was before “Bloody Sunday, March 7, 2021, when Duterte’s police killed nine union workers and arrested six—all justified by his “shoot-to-kill” style of eradicating those he had already judged guilty (Bolledo 2022; ABS-CBN 2015).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>With continued imposition of arbitrary arrests, rabid witch-hunting of branded “reds,” and subservience of the courts and legislature to the diktat of Marcos-Duterte, the already congested prisons—ghettoes of poor farmers, workers, and unemployed—promise more misery and deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens who thought they had the Bill of Rights and other constitutionally-mandated liberties. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> As of June 22, 2022, the total number of political prisoners—critics of the regime arrested with guns and grenades planted on them—was 803. Among the most deprived and penalized are women, dating back to the time of De Vera and Rodriguez. In 2010, I discussed the plight of fifteen political prisoners who count among the most dehumanized (San Juan 2010) and campaigned for their release.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>According to KARAPATAN, the most trusted human-rights monitor in the Philippines, there were 126 woman prisoners in March 2021, the majority of whom are charged for being associated with dissidents labeled “terrorists.” Many are human rights defenders, activists involved in helping workers, urban squatters, indigenous communities. Because they work for the deprived sectors, they are accused of being supporters of the terrorist insurgents to justify their illegal arrest and continuing detention in horrible quarters. They are presumed innocent until proven guilty—a principle rejected by the “justice” system in the Philippines. They are punished for trumped-up charges; some have been released after a long expensive appeal. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We appeal to the global community to demand the immediate release of the following political detainees who have already borne the brunt of State terrorism and cruelty:</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>1. Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis,</i> a peasant organizer of Amihan National Federation of Woman. She just gave birth to her baby Randall Emmanuel when she was arrested on Decenmber 2, 2020. At 5AM, soldiers broke into the farmer’s house she was staying in, pointed guns at her and her 2-month old infant; the soldiers could not produce any search warrant, harassed and tormented her and later claimed they found firearms and explosives.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">2. <i>Raina Mae Nasino</i>, organizer for KADAMAY, Manila. Nasino was arrested with two other activists on November 5, 2019. She gave birth to Baby River on July 1, 2020. After two months, jail authorities separated mother and child. Her baby died on October 9, 2020, only three months old. The distraught Nasino was granted furlough for only 6 hours to attend her baby’s wake and internment, while suffering from COVID-19 symptoms for which no medical help was provided by prison authorities.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">3.<i> Karina Mae dela Cerna,</i>NNARA-Youth’s Nationall Deputy Secretary-General. Dela Cerna was arrested with 51 other persons in Bacolod City in the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Office. Trumped-up charges were filed due to the discovery of firearms and explosives in the surrounding area.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">4. <i>Myles Cantal Albasin</i>, fomer chair of Anakbayan, Cebu. Albasin was arrested wth five other youth from Negros Oriental where she was participating in community immersion with the farmers. Soldiers alleged that she engaged with them in a firefight, a claim disputed by residents of the area.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">5. <i>Renalyn Gomez Tejero</i>, paralegal aid for KARAPATAN, Caraga. She was arrested on trumped-up charges of murder in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte, on March 21, 2021.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">KARAPATAN has been in the government list of “communist fronts.”</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">6. <i>Alma Moran,</i> member of the secretariat of Manila Workers Union. Moran was arrested together with Reina Mae Nasino and Ram Carlo Bautista in a BAYAN office in Tondo, Manila. in November 5, 2019. After a second search of the office, the police claimed to have found firearms and explosives—the usual <i>modus operandi.</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>7. Frenchie Mae Cumpio, </i>journalist for<i> Eastern Vista. </i>Cumpio was arrested in Tacloban City on February 8, 2020. Police claimed to have found a pistol and grenade inside the room where she and a companion were staying. With the money confiscated upon their arrest, Cumpio and lay worker Mariel Domequil also face trumped-up charges of terrorist financing—still unproven to this day.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>8. </i>R<i>owena Rosales,</i> former member of Confederation for Unity, Recognition and </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE). Rosales was arrested wih her husband Oliver after a day at their thrift store in Bulacan on August 11, 2018. Police claimed to have confiscated a bag of firearms and explosives in their premises without any testimony from other than the police department.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">9. <i>Gloria Campos Tumalon</i>, member of MAPASU, Surigao del Sur. Tumalon is accused of being a member of the NPA and arrested in March 29, 2020, based on a warrant related to an incident when the NPA took soldiers as prisoners on war in December 2018/ She is one of 468 persons accused on the same warrant.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">10. <i>Nenita Calamba de Castro,</i> member of GABRIELA, Butuan. De Castro was arrested in May 32, 2018, with charges unknown. GABRIELA has been targeted as a terrorist front, an example of libelous defamation.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">11. <i>Romana Raselle Shamina Astudillo</i>, deputy secretary general of KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno, Metro Manila. Astudillo was arrested in December 10, 2020, Human Rights Day. and accused of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. The militant KMU has been targetted by the police/military for being a communist front.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">12. <i>Ge-ann Perez, </i>arrested in March 24, 2019, by virtue of association with Francisco Fernanex, a peace consulted for the National Democratic Front, and his wife Cleofre Lagtapon. All face charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives—the recurrent alibi of governmen security henchmen.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>13. </i>Virginia Bohol Villamor was arrested past midnight on November 8, 2018. She was accompanied by her husband, Alberto, and Vicente Ladlad, peace consultant of the National Democratic Front, Philippines. Although Villamor suffered agonizing pain from a pelvic fracture, she was forced to drop to the floor, while soldiers pointed their rifles at her and companions. They were later charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>A Warning to Military-Police Agencies</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> With the September 17, 2022 passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act (H.R. 8313) in the U.S. Congress<i>, </i>some constraint on the Phiippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Phiippines in inflicting warrantless arrests, harassment, torture and other human-rights violations might spare future victims. If those practices continue, the Bill seeks to suspend assistance to the police and military amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in logistics, weapons, training, etc. During his rule, Marcos Sr. received billions of U.S. military aid much of which he stole and transferred to secret bank accounts in Switzerland, Panama, and elsewhere, now utilized by his son and minions.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bill 8313 is based on the U.S. State Department’s annual reports of “arbirtrary or unlawful killings” committed during Duterte’s drug wars. It mentions the case of Senator Leila de Lima who has been detained for two years as “a staunch critic of the drug war killings,” as well as labor leaders and legislators killed or held as political prisoners (exemplified by the prisoners tallied above), Not to be neglected is mention of the government’s infamous “vilification of dissent…being institutionalized and normalized” based on the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. This Act enables the billion-pesos-funded NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force To End Local Communist Armed Conflict) to stifle dissent from civil society. It functions to void the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights and resuscitate the authoritarian, fascist method of social harmony imposed by Bongbong’s father nearly forty years ago—a tragedy now being revived as excruciating farce.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">REFERENCES</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">ABS-CBN. 2015. :”Duterte admits links to Davao Death Squads.” News. (May 25)</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Beltran, Michael. 2022. “Haunted by our continuing pain: Martial law <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>survivors react to Marcos restoration.” The News Lens (June 8).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><international.thenewslens.com></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Bolledo, Jairo. 2022. “In Numbers: Political Prisoners in the Philippines Since 2001. Rappler <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(August 21).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">CENPEG. 2022. “The May 2022 Elections and the Marcos Restoration: <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Looking Back and Beyond.” Monthly Political Analysis No. 15. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Quezon City: Center for People Empowerment in Governance.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Ilagan, Bonifacio. 2009. “Alingawngaw ng ST10.” Pagtatagpo sa Kabilang Dulo. Quezon City: <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Amado V. Hernandez Center & Pamilya ng Desaparecidos.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Martial Law Files. 2012. “Adora Faye de Vera.” Martial Law Files. (Dec. 4, <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2012). <www.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/adora-faye-de-vera-2/floc></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Marx, Karl & Frederick Engels. 1968. “”The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bonaparte.” In Selected Works. New York: International Publishers.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">McCoy, Alfred. 2001. “Dark Legacy: Human Rights Under the Marcos <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Regime.” In Memory, Truth Telling and the Pursuit of Justice: A <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Conference on the Legacy of the Marcos Dictatorship. Quezon City: Office of Research <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Melencio, Gloria Esquerra. 1998. Report for Martial Law Files Website, <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sponsored by the Commission on Human Rights, UN Devepment Program for Claimants <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1081.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Ocampo, Ambeth. 2022. “Maid n Malacanang: A biased review.” Philippine <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Daily Inquirer (August 5). <https://www.inquirer.dotnet/></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">San Juan, E. 2013. “U.S. Imperial Humanitarian BlessingL Torture of <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Women Political Prisoners in the Philippines.” International Marxist <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Humanist Organization. (27 August).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><https://imhojournal.org/articles/iperial-humanitarianism-u.s.-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>neocolony-torture-war-women-prisoners-philippines-e-san-juan></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">——. 2021. Maelstrom over the Killing Fields: Interventions in the Project <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>of National-Democratic Liberation. Quezon City: Pantax Press.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Toquero, Loreben. 2002. “A made-up Marcos name: False misleading <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>claims <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>abound in ‘Maid in Malacanang.” Rappler (August 11, 2022).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">United States Congress. 2022. “H.R. 3884. Philippine Human Rights Act. “</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Congressional Records. Washington DC: United States Congress.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-Congress/house-bill/3884></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Varona, Inday Espino. 2022. “Arrested rebel a symbol of Marcos atrocities <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>against women dissidents.” Rappler (August 26).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">___________</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">E. SAN JUAN, Jr., emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies and Comparative Literature, was recently visiting professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines; and a former fellow of the W.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. He has lectures at Leuven University, Belgium; Tamkang University, Taiwan; and Trento University, Italy. His recent books are U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan) and Peirce’s Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective (Lexington Books).</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-67701932887842072482022-09-25T00:17:00.004-07:002022-09-25T00:28:27.782-07:00INTERVIEW <b>
Intervention From Inside the “Belly of the Beast”
Dr. Rainer Werning Interviews E. San Juan, Jr.</b>
Ang di lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay di makararating sa paroroonan.
—FOLK PROVERB
“I’ve lived in the belly of the beast and I know it well….”
—JOSE MARTI
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeGdI6sNA0KYYBJiT1DVb87kCwfZ7px4Blfpct0YUC2z1G0n-qqIOQyj-w2eDApvJz-w8ildTODvAPMQUyiup5TUTu1-R0co4D5u-jFgx2RZxkJiouwqd_ZgPg13YAzPUFjYl5RS9d1ldQw9ar5h-kll0SVy2EgqKI-gFqDE5taVsBO_xdhps/s1554/hp_scanDS_75272216247.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1085" data-original-width="1554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeGdI6sNA0KYYBJiT1DVb87kCwfZ7px4Blfpct0YUC2z1G0n-qqIOQyj-w2eDApvJz-w8ildTODvAPMQUyiup5TUTu1-R0co4D5u-jFgx2RZxkJiouwqd_ZgPg13YAzPUFjYl5RS9d1ldQw9ar5h-kll0SVy2EgqKI-gFqDE5taVsBO_xdhps/s320/hp_scanDS_75272216247.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This interview (recorded in October-November 2021) was initiated by Dr. Rainer Werning, a widely-known political scientist and journalist based in Cologne, Germany. He is considered an authority on the history and culture of the Philippines, Korea, and the affairs of other Southeast Asian countries. He is a lecturer at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Bonn, and the German Society for International Cooperation. His latest book is Crown, Cross and Crusaders (Essen: Verlag Neuer Weg, 2011). A part of the interview was published in the German newspaper Junge Welt No. 283 (December 4-5. 2021), and is slightly revised here, with concluding reflections. E. San Juan, emeritus professor of English and Comparative Literature, was recently visiting professor at the University of the Philippines, and author of Maelstrom Over the Killing Fields (Pantax Press, 2021; and Peirce’s Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective (Lexington Books, 2022).
_<div><br /></div><div>__________
1) Where and under what conditions did you grow up? What were the most formative experiences of your youth?
I was born in Manila, Philippines, the only U.S. colony in Asia at the end of 1938, and now an inveterate neocolony. It was a month before Barcelona, Spain, fell to the Franco army aided by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Memories of the Japanese occupation (1942-45)—fleeing to air-raid shelters during Japanese bombing, evading Japanese brutality—gave me lessons about the horror of war. In 1946, the Philippines was granted nominal “independence” but only to become a neocolony with U.S. military bases utilized in the vicious war against Korea, Vietnam, and indigenous (Moro; Huk) rebels. That subordinion persists, with tawdry alibis such as the Visiting Forces Agreement and other secret diplomatic protocols.
My formative years (1946-58) occurred during the anti-Huk/Magsaysay/CIA witch-hunts and counterinsurgency bloodbaths at the height of the Cold War. I recall the newspaper headlines about the Korean War. My parents, alumni of the University of the Philippines (U.P.), were biology teachers reared in public schools. I was influenced by the secularist, progressive faculty in U.P. where I taught English literature in 1958-60. My exposure in local politics began with my participation in the Recto-Tanada electoral campaign in 1957-58, and my association with the partisans (Ricardo Pascual, Alfredo Lagmay, Cesar Majul, Leopoldo Yabes) for academic freedom and nationalism against clerical obscurantism and U.S. imperial domination. As a staff member of the Philippine Collegian, I reported on the conflict between the religious sects in U.P. and the college fraternities in the 1950s. I collaborated with Armando Bonifacio and Rony Diaz in editing Inquiry and the Literary Apprentice. The most decisive turn came with my involvement in the anti-Marcos dictatorship movement here (1969-1986), working with the national-democratic group UGNAYAN, the Friends of the Filipino People, and other organizations.</div><div><br /></div><div> 2) What prompted you to go to the United States?
My generation had parents who were grateful to the U.S. for “saving” us from Japanese barbarism. Everyone thanked General Douglas McArthur for liberating us; we all sang “God Bless America” in grade school. My uncles sheltered American journalists in the hills of Montalban, Rizal, during the war (see Doris Rubens, Bread and Rice, New York 1947). The U.S. was the fantasized utopia of freedom, prosperity, liberty. We marveled at EuroAmerican glamor and tragicomic ordeals via Hollywood cinema. My contemporaries all aspired to share in the blessings of that consumerist paradise. Indeed I was a neocolonized subaltern, long before the postcolonial vogue. My situation (in Sartre’s sense) was engendered by the Others and the habitus imprinted by colonial State ideological apparatuses. Since I was already a creature of U.S-designed institutions, the best way to insure tenure then was to follow the mechanics of earning a higher degree from a U.S. university.
Incidentally, I recall that before this, I went to the German Embassy in Manila to apply for a scholarship to study Goethe and Hegel, but all they had were slots in forestry, farming, etc. So I was lucky to receive a Smith-Mundt-Fulbright Award which enabled me to study at Harvard University in the historic period of the Civil Rights struggles (1961-65) and the accelerating opposition to the IndoChina carnage. Peace Corps veterans and KM (Kabataang Makabayan) militants fresh from MetroManila were influential in spreading news of the national-democratic struggle before and after the First Quarter Storm (January 1970). </div><div><br /></div><div>3) What were the most important stages of your political commitment and academic career there?
We were moving toward the climax of the Cold War, with confrontations against China, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. While at Harvard, I was further indoctrinated in New Critical doxa with I.A. Richards, the venerable British sage. However, my other teachers were orthodox, traditional philologists like the Canadian Jerome Buckley, my adviser for my thesis on Oscar Wilde; Douglas Bush, the Renaissance scholar; and Howard Mumford Jones, the major liberal Americanist during that period. This was long before my 1972 edition of Georg Lukacs’ writings translated into English and my book on Bulosan.
While finishing my graduate work, I began a correspondence with the beleaguered poet Amado V. Hernandez and other reputedly subversive artists. This led to my contributing articles in Filipino (Tagalog) for Hernandez’s newspaper. I wrote on William James and the Anti-Imperialist movement against U.S. colonial aggression (I did not know then that C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmaticism, was also involved; see my 2022 book). When I returned to the Philippines in 1966-67, I became involved with the adhoc Manila circle around Alejandro Abadilla, the bohemian poet, and helped edit his avantgarde review, Panitikan. My understanding of colonial subjugation sharpened—even before Marcos declared martial law—and impelled me to shift to writing in Filipino with a commitment to popular- democratic principles. A few years before the First Quarter Storm, the nationalist movement took off under Jose Maria Sison’s leadership, with the help of leftwing public intellectuals like Renato Constantino, Teodoro Agoncillo, Jose Lansang, Francisco Nemenzo, Nemesio Prudente, Dolores Feria, and others.
In the meantime, I finished Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle published in September 1972 (which narrowly escaped Marcos censorship), endorsed by Salvador Lopez. That was after a year of teaching (1965-66) at the University of California, Davis, where I made contact with “old-timer” Manongs for the first time and discovered the roots of the farmworkers’ “conscientization” (to borrow Freire’s term). Since then, the diasporic community has changed—no longer are our compatriots here farmworkers. Most professionals have assimilated by mimicking petty-bourgeois life-styles, while the proletarian majority continues to struggle to survive in the abysmal interstices of a violent racialized society in rapid decline after the 2008 crash and the rise of China as an industrial powerhouse.
In the period 1967-1986 I was involved in the project of educating/mobilizing our compatriots in the U.S.to help against U.S, imperialist war-crimes in IndoChina, and U.S.-guided counterinsurgency in the homeland. It was the period of urban rebellions still smoldering from the assassination of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. We helped initiate the anti-Marcos movement among migrants, and collaborated with the Friends of the Filipino People which engaged mainly in pedagogical and lobbying efforts.
Times have changed, however, so you find the majority of Filipinos here rallying to the white-supremacist program of Trump and his ilk. With the neoconservative ascendancy of Reagan and Thatcher, I became more involved with ethnic and racial studies, with left-wing comparative cultural studies, while participating in the debates on the National Question, party-building, ideology-critique, postcolonialism, etc. From 1993 up to the new millennium, I have focused on research into Philippine history, cultural politics, and the problem of “uneven and combined development,” including the interface between semiotic pragmaticism and classic historical materialism. </div><div><br /></div><div>4) Where were you during the overthrow of Marcos? How do you assess this event, which after all received a lot of attention worldwide?
I was then teaching at the University of Connecticut. From that base, we helped the natdem leadership to mobilize local communities to expose Marcos’ murderous violation of human rights. We collaborated with Filipino union activists to establish solidarity with U.S. counterparts. We were constantly in touch with our comrades in MetroManila and knew how the boycott tactic boomeranged, and how the unilateral focus on armed struggle in the countryside failed to actualize the concept of counter-hegemony. There seemed to be a delusive romanticization of guerilla war derived from the Chinese example which, I hope, has now been rectified. We are still in the juncture of a new-democratic revolution (anti-feudal, anti-comprador, anti-imperialist)—the election of Duterte and then Bongbong Marcos testifies to the prevalent archaic, tributary mindset or habit-patterns of cacique/elite electoral “democracy,” the fragmented or coopted union movement, and the addiction to neoliberal beliefs/values inimical to the development of a nationalist sensibility rooted in our long durable history of anticolonial struggle. We are a long way to a full-fledged socialist reconstruction, as witnessed in Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, and of course Cuba.
For some critics, the old Maoist dogma of protracted war of maneuver became a sectarian principle. It acquired an obsessive force that ultimately negated the war of position—the necessary political organizing and revolutionary praxis needed to win middle forces, isolate the diehard reactionaries, and affirm intellectual-moral leadership of the national-popular front. Of course, these two should be dialectically adjusted at every conjuncture. There was really no historical-materialist strategy of how to transform the neocolonial social relations—the received habits, mentalities, practices—even on the basis of a semi-feudal, dependent infrastructure. My contacts believed that dialectics was abandoned in favor of an empiricist-opportunist wager for easy sectoral victories. And for a quasi-religious cult of martyrdoms and hero-worship of so many young brilliant minds of at least two generations now.
And so the February event, while indeed a popular uprising in MetroManila catalyzed by years of leftist organizing, was captured by the Aquino camp of traditional, self-serving politicians. It led to the consolidation of oligarchic rule despite coups by disgruntled military elements. The Marcos cronies were out, the old technocrats and corporate-backed managers were in—a change in personnel. After Aquino, the Ramos presidency solidified the continuing dominance of those classes that once supported Marcos—the bloc of feudal landlords, compradors, religious fanatics (incited by U.S. evangelical agents patronized by the Aquino administration), and reactionary bureaucrat-capitalists. The gang of crooks and hustlers behind Estrada, Arroyo, Aquino III, and Duterte were financed by Marcos operatives, or obtained clandestine support from them, including the expertise of some who claimed to be veterans of Maoist guerrilla fronts and Marxist polemics—they are now accomplices of red-tagging mercenary technocrats. They are now lackeys/flunkeys of the Marcos-Duterte machine for plunder and violent repression.
Duterte himself is a Marcos wannabe but without the faux legalism of his idol—a gangster, pseudo-populist provincial “godfather” schooled in warlord violence, now subsidized by foreign agents and big druglords. He is a transmogrification of the Filipino jefe. Lacking any genuine political program, Duterte relies on vigilante methods, bribery, threats, and manipulation of military/police operatives. It also relies on the passivity of the middle-strata and the opportunism of the old elite—the Ayala-Elizalde, Lopez, Araneta, Cojuangco clans, etc. But this is a very precarious mode of rule that, despite the alibi of pandemic exigencies, displays lunatic symptoms and nihilistic perversity so flagrant in the fixed agendas of social-media trolls and paid public relations impresarios.
One can hypothesize that Duterte’s regime—and its accomplice, Bongbong’s bloc of sycophants— may be the last gasp of neocolonial political shenanigans that the U.S. started when they coopted the ilustrado class in the early twentieth century. That method of “Benevolent Assimilation” climaxed in the Quezon- Osmena authoritarian partnership, and then maintained by U.S. puppets Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay, Garcia, Macapagal, and Marcos. That genealogy characterized the old school of political bargaining and Realpolitik. The sequence from Cory Aquino to Duterte, at the tail of the Cold War and the advent of neoliberal globalization signalled by 9/11, is now sputtering out with the bloody, vulgarian, expedient rule of thugs, criminals, and their hirelings.Their sole legitimacy is the Anti-Terrorism Act which justifies the provision of billions of tax money to the NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict) clique and their accessories in the Philippine National Police and te Armed Forces of the Philippines.
One can speculate that these are all symptomatic of the decline of U.S. imperial “democracy” and the onset of a multipolar world where China has become in fantasy the new enemy of the U.S.-led coalition of morbid corporate/finance capitalism. Or else it is a local phenomenon with quaint “Filipino” characteristics. A new world war is in the works (of which the U.S.-NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is a symptom)—unless climate change and ecological disaster overtake us all. </div><div><br /></div><div> 5) In 2022 the next presidential elections will be held - with Bongbong Marcos as a promising candidate - and it also marks the 50th anniversary of the imposition of martial law by his father, Ferdinand E. Marcos. How do you explain this rather bizarre continuity?
Bizarre, yes, but also explicable as part of Filipino accomodationism, bargaining or adhoc utilitarianism. Filipinos today are either ignorant of what happened during the martial-law era, or have been taught that the Marcos regime accomplished wonderful things— Imelda’s Cultural Center, Green Revolution in rice-farming, etc. Marcos-appointed or patronized bureaucrats are still in government or in highly remunerative positions in business, elite cultural circles, etc. This is not a strange development because the 1986 February uprising did not change the class-polarized structure enabling neocolonial injustice and inequality. The form of rule —from Marcos’ authoritarianism to elite/cacique democracy—was a version of the old neocolonial pattern of client-patronage, compadre opportunism, equilibrating a prfoundly conflicted system. It did not transform the mode of production and the associated social relations reproducing it.
After the EDSA revolt, the ideology of Marcos’ “New Society” was refurbished or retooled, while the country remained underdeveloped, lacking any viable big industry, reliant on the exploitation of human labor (chiefly the remittances of overseas Filipino workers) and natural resources by foreign and local elites. We remained a peripheral appendage of global finance capitalism. The school system and various religious agencies reinforced the petrified family and bilateral kinship as the primary conservative institution that sustains the neocolonial production of goods, services, and world-view (the complex of illusions, fantasies, wish-fulfillments),and its reproduction in everyday life.
But not everything looks stable and solid—in fact, precarity renders everything vulnerable to heterogenous forces, to contingent circumstances. A new element in the political economy, initiated by Marcos’ policy of labor export, began to calibrate domestic as well as transnational policies. I am referring to over twelve million Filipinos scattered across the planet. Dollar remittances from OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers)—the “new heroes” celebrated by Cory Aquino—became crucial for relieving the foreign debt, population density, homelessness, unemployment misery, alienation, anomie, etc, But this new stratum of workers (feminized labor) harbors a potential for anti-oligarchic mobilization, that is why the Marcos-Duterte camp is trying to control it. But with the deterioration of the economy in city and countryside, this sector might introduce an unpredictable tendency whose politics depends on subjective political agencies.
A note of cautionary advice is in order here. The decline of job opportunities in the Middle East and elsewhere also injects a worrisome element for Filipino oligarchs determined to hang on to power and their luxurious if abusive life-style. After all, the Philippines is a neocolonial outpost that claims no privileged status or drawing-rights. In fact, it is a pawn now in the China- U.S. jockeying for world hegemony. With China instead of the Soviet Union as the main enemy (with Iran and Muslim extremism as Pentagon/CIA alibis for continued drone warfare), a whole reservoir of Orientalist racism and geopolitical demonizing is opened up for a new Cold War and its horrendous consequences. Some pundits are speculating that the continued attacks on Asians (Filipinos being mistaken for Chinese) in New York, San Francisco, and other cities are symptoms of a virulent xenophobia concurrent with unemployment, urban decay, hostility to immigrants, natural disasters, breakdown of public utilities, persistent pandemics, etc. It may be the tip of the iceberg of a White Supremacist-initiated civil war in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot. </div><div><br /></div><div> Meanwhile, the United States has to reckon with Chinese support for Duterte and the Marcos-Duterte regime safeguarding him from the tentacles of the International Criminal Court. But so long as the extant mode of production remains basically feudal, with the rentier class tied to comprador/militarized allies, and with the social consensus pivoting around clan/family dynasties, the structure is there to support Marcos clones and his epigones —whether Duterte or some other populist surrogate. Despite cracks and fissures, the material base still supports the ideological structure and the State apparatus reproducing it. If electoral politics fails to normalize the political economy, then authoritarian rule/militarized administration might be the temporary remedy. Why not since Duterte’s regime is de facto martial rule that Bongbong Marcos has inherited, absent the challenge of any other populist strongman supported by fractions of the ruing elite.
Meanwhile, of course, the Makabayan bloc and other progressive-nationalist forces are still around, not as strong as before, but formidable in the cultural and intellectual fields. Whether they can summon enough counterhegemonic efficacy, win more activists and marshal collective energies, remains to be seen. The future is still open—the class struggle grows sharper everyday. Sooner or later, either the people’s representatives gain ascendancy and seize power, or the whole country edges toward intolerable misery, criminality, agonizing deprivations, depravities, and deaths under the reign of violent terrorist deathsquads and warlords. It is easy to conjecture all sorts of dreadful scenarios, of course, since the conflicted reality resists the old Parsonian structural-functionalism or the neoclassic politics of Western modernization. Reality is more complex and rich than any theorizing, as Lenin said, so we need to continue inquiring and analyzing highly mutable variables, the balance of forces changing at every conjuncture, and try to adapt our thinking to the needs of social praxis for more sustainable emancipatory interventions. </div><div><br /></div><div>6) How would you categorize the Duterte administration and its performance?
In 2016, there was severe dissatisfaction with Noynoy Aquino’s laid-back style of governance culminating in the Mamapasano massacre as well as the collapse of social services during periodic natural disasters. So the mood prior to Duterte’s notoriety as Davao’s action-oriented mayor was a demand for aggressive leadership. Filipinos tend to believe that a change in leadership personnel signifies a change in the whole system—a pattern cultivated since the period of U.S. tutelage.
Duterte inherited a structure of authoritarian rule inspired by the Marcos model of reliance on the State’s coercive agencies (PNP, AFP, a corrupt bureaucracy; controlled legislature and court). Like all State operations, it is based on the client-patron model managed by a patrimonial coalition of big landlords, comprador, and financial bureaucrats. We still suffer from the effects of 300 years of Spanish colonialism and over a hundred years of U.S. tutelage. The term “postcolonial” is thus a misnomer or an alibi for continuing dependency and marginality.
The Marcos dynasty’s money and crony support funded the polling surveys and social media that inflated Duterte’s image as the awaited savior. His performance, misogynistic, vulgar and anti-intellectual, can only entertain but not produce substantive changes: the drug problem has considerably worsened. To aggravate nationalist sensitivity, China has claimed more territory in the West Philippine Sea despite Duterte’s inutile bravura, and acquiescence to China’s elite who will surely back his daughter’s (Sara Duterte’s) candidacy.
Contrary to the pundit’s view that Duterte is a populist leader backed by grassroots farmers and petty-bourgeois stratum, Duterte’s pseudo-charisma exploits the cinematic role of a neighborhood tough-guy who can do things quickly, ignoring customary proprieties. His campaign against drugs—the killing of more than 8,000 suspects (according to government records)—coupled with the pandemic crisis, has intensified corruption. Officials siphoned off the budget for health/medical services and anti-Covid vaccines. It has allowd the police-military to inflict abuses. After using the peace talks to uncover Communist Party networks and kill peace consultants, Duterte has resorted to red-tagging under the cover of the Anti-Terrorism Act to maintain peace and public order. The real situation is chaotic, with citizens making-do and coping with hunger, sickness, desperation all around.
Notwithstanding the arguments of Ernesto Laclau and Nicos Poulantzas, Duterte’s ascribed populism is a tawdry mimicry of Peron or any tinpot Latin-American jefe. Duterte has no wide trade-union support or ideological party machinery. He appeals to alienated individuals and fear-stricken middle-strata. But It has a Filipino provenance, dating back to Quezon’s “social justice” slogan to Magsaysay’s anti-Huk campaigns and recently to Marcos’ “New Society” agit-prop. Its hackneyed rhetoric glorifies Duterte’s role as protector of the masses, so its personalism bears affinities with fascist authoritarianism rather than with Russian Narodnism appealing to underprivileged, dislocated groups.
Neither does Duterte’s regime resemble classic Bonapartism nor Caesarism. It’s really an ad-hoc setup of mediocre, thuggish compadres to shore up the bankrupt cacique democracy we suffer under. Duterte is annoyed or challenged by the critical ethos of nationalist, progressive forces of radicalized youth, women, religious activists, immiserated peasantry, rural and urban workers, etc. But I suspect that he is more disturbed by the indignant grievances of middle-strata professionals who are forced to become low-paid migrant workers whose remittances of over $12 billion a year pays off the foreign debt and enables a tiny percentage of 110 million Filipinos to indulge in wasteful consumption.</div><div><br /></div><div> 7) Why haven't the left had a real chance of doing reasonably well in elections so far? Do they lack mass appeal and/or won't a left-wing project - however well founded - fail because of the powerful bastion of Catholicism on the islands?
There is a problem of implementing united-front policies or principles on the part of the national-democratic camp in the arena of electoral politics. This is an old stumbling-block since the Huk rebellion in the 1950s with its adventurism and sectarian dogmatism born of the complex alignments during the Pacific War. Especially in a predominantly Catholic country, Gramsci’s dialectic of war of movement and war of position needs to be examined again and carefully adjusted to our unique social formation.
Religion or its manifestation in folk millenarianism, should not be a problem, as the theology of liberation has shown in the case of Latin America. Millenarianism is a symptom of the crisis of the system. We had a really flourishing native version of liberation theology in the seventies and eighties—until the Vatican stifled it, though Pope Francis seems to have revived it in his own unique way. But the conservative and even reactionary forms of cultish Bible-based sectarianism introduced by American evangelicals with the blessing of the CIA/Pentagon during Cory’s time to counter the National Democratic Front’s popularity may be a problem for Christians-for-National Liberation activists.
We have many progressive democratic partisans in the Church and other religious formations, including the Muslim and indigenous (Lumad) groups who have all responded productively to the appeal of Bayan Muna and national-democratic programs and objectives. A united front of diverse groups may be emerging in the wake of Duterte’s terrorism and the Marcos ascendancy. I think the proven success and viability of the Bayan Muna (Gabriela, AnakPawis, etc) bloc testifies to the left’s resourcefulness in electoral politics amid bribery of barangay officials by traditional politicians. Money may win votes, but loyalty and political allegiance defy pecuniary distractions. By any measure, Bayan Muna’s peformance in previous electoral exercises has been a phenomenal success, despite Neri Colmenares’ failure to garner enough votes for a senate seat.
As you will recall, the People’s Party in the 1990s initiated the first attempt to test if electoral politics can be utilized to promote a national-popular agenda. This resulted in the assassination of Roberto Olalia and murderous threats on all nationalist-democratic organizations. This symptom of Cold-War hysteria still infects the whole State apparatus, from the lower courts to the Supreme Court, Senate and Batasan. This fascist mode of conducting governance can lead only to the destruction of the unstable political economy of the country and the anarchistic war of olligarchic wolves. </div><div><br /></div><div> 8) Would you agree with me that underneath the thin surface and facade of alleged democracy, electoral processes and macropolitics in the Philippines still remain essentially feudal?
That is precisely what needs to be addressed: the mixed, conflicted modes of production that constitute the singular social formation of the Philippines in this current conjuncture. “Feudal,” of course, is a general term in the political-sociological discourse, so we need to contextualize it in Philippine history. One aspect of feudalism experienced in the Philippines is the lack of awareness of racism—the white-supremacist ideology and practice of U.S. colonialism which reinforced the Spanish/Eurocentric strategy of dividing groups according to ethnic/racial categories, and establishing hierarchies of power. The techniques of how U.S. white-supremacist ideology and practices were institutionalized among Filipinos need to be fully analyzed and evaluated, an imperative task for all Filipino activists so that we can begin to explain why a majority of Filipinos in the U.S. support Trump’s flagrant racism and demagoguery.
Most Filipinos, both at home and abroad, have been educated/trained to identify with the white-racial code of norms, so that most Filipinos in the U.S. continue to support Trump and his unconscionable racist politics. They do not see themselves as victims of U.S. imperial domination. They are grateful for being tolerated or accepted as part of the hegemonic consensus because they see themselves as individuals, not as an oppressed group, rewarded for trying hard to adapt or adjust. The threat of anomie is warded off by identifying with Statist authority. The lack of any sense of national/racial solidarity among the victims of imperialist-colonialist subjugation may be diagnosed as a symptom of the feudal mentality, the native’s colonized ethos of subordinating herself/himself to the lord-master’s will.
I submit that no amount of analyzing Hegel’s dialectic of lord and bondsman, or scrutinizing the intricacies of the class struggle portrayed in broad strokes in the Marx/Engels canon, can remedy the Filipino habitus (if I may use Bourdieu’s term) of subalternity. We have our own counterpart to Fanon’s discourse on racialized violence and resistance in the works of Rizal, Mabini, Agoncillo, Constantino, Sison, Lumbera, and vernacular artists such as Faustino Aguilar, Ramon Muzones, Amado V. Hernandez, Lualhati Bautista, etc. But Filipinos don’t really know these writers, nor the Rizal-Mabini genealogy of counter-hegemonic resistance. So, again, we need a new age of Enlightenment (with appropriate pedagogy) to purge the toxic legacy of feudalism and its postmodern variants—a virus worse than Covid-19—sustained by imperialist patronage and charity.
9) In your opinion, what are the main weaknesses and strengths of your compatriots?
Your question, provocative and perhaps redundant in the light of what I have already discussed earlier, invokes the permanent need for historical specificity and contextualization. If you inquire closely into the vicissitudes of our anti-colonial struggles, we suffered two defeats or reversals: the suppression of the revolutionary first Philippine Republic by the U.S., and the breakdown of the Huk rebellion in the fifties. One other defeat may be the failure of the EDSA rebellion to enact thorough land reform and eliminate political dynasties—the foremost being the Marcos-Arroyo-Duterte collusion. Lessons have not yet been fully extracted from those events, given the inadequacy of our history textbooks, our Westernized intelligentsia, and our amnesia-stricken national memory as a whole. We also lack a steady corps of fulltime organic intellectuals mediating between the middle-strata and the grassroots. We have no sustained public forums and genuinely free press to promote participatory democracy, given the terrorist government threats and rampant arrests, with hundreds of political activists jailed and tortured or extra-judicially neutralized. We cannot dialogue with ourselves uninterrupted by arrest. death-threats, etc.
In my view, if I may be permitted a guess, we as a people have not completed the process undergone by the masses in the French Revolution, or the decades of Mao’s intuitive but systematic mobilization of China’s countryside. Our neocolonial situation does not permit it for now and the foreseeable future. Our “enlightenment” stage was cut off by the colonial imposition of U.S. individualist-utilitarian habits that continue to commodify bodies, souls, dreams, fantasies. Underlying it is the seemingly impregnable mould of feudal-dependent mores, customs, and sensibility that suppresses critical, reflexive reasoning and prevents any integral judgment of the totality of collective experience.
Our neocolonized belief-system has inculcated obedience and worship wsithout questioning purpose, means, or ends. The compadrazgo mechanism functions under the umbrella of a comprador-middlemen way of conducting business that makes a mockery of the judicial-meritocratic paradigm of industrial capitalism. We are still a profoundly colonized formation without any heavy industry and an impoverished agricultural sector exporting cheap raw materials—lately, including our staple crop, rice. </div><div><br /></div><div>Our main exports now are OFWs (Filipino Overseas Workers), about 12 million worldwide, including Filipinos settled in North America. The market-oriented economy subsists on the hedonistic consumerism of people with relatives working abroad. Urban MetroManila, however, boasts of supporting a network of call centers and transnational corporate clearing-houses with sophisticated technological platforms required by inclusion in a neoliberal system of commerce and transnational communication.
As for strengths, they are part of our weaknesses. Our sikolohiyang Filipino experts usually cite the bayanihan and pakikisama modes of cooperation. We have some formidable trade unions and public associations engaged in scientific research and humanistic pedagogy. Nonetheless, our public sphere is dominated by clan/familial networks of damayan and pakiramdaman, barkada companionship and lugubrious sentimentalism. Witness to this is the nationwide sympathy for Flor Contemplacion, the Filipina migrant worker hanged by the Singapore government, that panicked the Ramos regime. And earlier, the country was shocked by the killing of Senator Aquino on the airport tarmac, a distant echo of the martyrdom of the three secular priests garroted by the Spanish tyrants that catalyzed Rizal and the Propagandista movement. This explains our predilection for martyrdom, the slave-penchant for ressentiment, vindictive amor propio. Now, however, a form of inverted millenarianism has infected the academic milieu with the postmodern nihilism of Deleuze, Foucault, even Rorty and Butler, and other Western celebrities lauding the end of ideology, history, Marxism, etcetera. We are surely facing the end of Duterte’s presidency, but can the International Criminal Court and Maria Ressa’s Nobel Prize prevent the daughter from safeguarding the father’s responsibility for his crimes? </div><div><br /></div><div>10) So what is your prognosis of what’s in store for the next decade or two?
Our American friends always remind me that Filipinos have one of the longest and most durable revolutionary traditions in the whole world, not just in Asia. And so I should perhaps allude here to a certain stubborn, hard-headed quality of patience learned in centuries of surviving colonial privations, and a more than Christian sense of hope that the Messiah, flying the red flag and singing the “Internationale,” will intervene at any moment now. There is an emergency, particularly when we are plunged in the moment of danger and intolerable suffering, while Duterte’s trolls whip up the old anti-communist hysteria. This moment of peril is the emergence (in polling surveys and social-media advertisements) of Bongbong Marcos as a favored candidate for president in the 2022 elections. An ironic twist of events? Or a bad joke by the algorithms of Twitter, Facebook and paid opinion-fabricators?
Cultural commentators (as the present interviewee) should refrain from forecasting the outcome of elections, so hazardous is the enterprise of gazing into the crystal ball. Prophets are often cast out from their homeland, if not crucified. However, one can speculate about trends. The trend is often manipulated, but one can discern the public’s desire for some form of reasonable, well-managed, efficient governance, especially in controlling wild skyrocketing prices of electricity, gasoline, transportation, food and other basic necessities, and helping the disabled, the unemployed, and the many victims of natural disasters.
The shameful failure of Duterte’s militarized approach to the pandemic, which brought about the mushrooming of “community pantries” red-tagged by the police and military, is sure to spark opposition to the Marcos-Duterte collusion. In other countries, such a failed regime would have resigned, shamed widely, or booted out of power. Public figures like the mayors of Manila and Pasig are now highly acclaimed as honest, competent administrators, notwithstanding their links with traditional politicians. In this regard, the “pink” candidate Robredo is trailing behind the popularity of other candidates who are paid surrogates for shadow politicians, or just plain mediocre. In this climate of free-for-all jousting, even the boxer Manny Pacquiao has been toseed into the electoral ring. Senator Pacquiao scarcely attended the Senate sessions; he has absolutely no qualification for the job except, maybe, his physical prowess and stamina—which, not to underestimate these qualities, may be what is lacking in Duterte’s debilitated and narcotic if not wholly moribund, wasted physiognomy.
So I think if money-driven propaganda and poll-surveys are discounted, I think there will be a change to another regime with personnel not completely beholden to the Marcos-Duterte collusion. In any case, Filipinos have not lost hope in a change for the better, although their choice of Duterte landed them from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak. It is time to say, “Enough! Basta!” Indeed, how long can one endure imprisonment, torture, unwarranted arrests, extra-judicial killlings, rape, rampant abuse of authority, corruption, insult and injury to women and Lumads, and anyone who criticizes such atrocities? How long can one endure such brutal privations? How long can one suffer servitude without raising a cry of protest and vote one’s conscience (one act allowed by law) to transform the status quo into a more egalitarian and just society? There are, of course, collective means and ways other than elections to change the current situation. This is not just the usual display of “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” We expect the conscienticized citizenry in the Philippines to register their general will and elect a humane alternative to the bloody Duterte regime and its farcical replacement, the Bongbong mimicry of his father’s reign. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>POSTSCRIPT: Traversing the Purgatorial Fire </b></div><div><br /></div><div> The Vietnam, Iraq, Aghanistan wars] exposed the first cracks in the edifice of Western moral superiority….Samuel Huntington’s remark—“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion….but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence”—is important to bear in mind….
—CHANDRAN NAIR </div><div><br /></div><div> Unrelenting revolutionary activity coupled with boundless humanity—that alone is the real life-giving force of socialism. A world must be overturned, but every tear that has flowed and might have been wiped away is an indictment….
—ROSA LUXEMBURG </div><div><br /></div><div> As this century of wars and revolutions comes to a close, Mark Twain's "person sitting in darkness" is bound to experience a lightning shock of recognition. Those dark-skinned natives in southeast Asia, conquered by the brute force of "Manifest Destiny" soon after the occupation of the homelands of the American Indian nations, have now stood up by expelling US military bases from their sovereign territory in 1992.
The event may come as a surprise to western observers. But not to the countless martyrs from Macario Sakay, Salud Algabre, and Crisanto Evangelista to the nameless victims of Maliwalu, Escalante, Lupao and of other still undiscovered sites of anti-communist barbarism. And surely not to Maria Lorena Barros, Macli-ing Dulag, Rolando Olalia, Cherith Dayrit, and thousands more who have sacrificed their lives so that the Filipino masses can achieve a measure of autonomy, justice, and equality. Such, indeed, has been the destiny of the "White Men’s Burden" in the Philippines after the 1896 revolution against Spain and the protracted resistance against the invading “White Supremacist” behemoth with its seductive offer of “Benevolent Assimilation.”
It has taken almost a century for us to appreciate the visionary force of what our compatriot Jose Rizal prophesied in "The Philippines A Century Hence": the people's struggle for national liberation, though suppressed many times, will overcome in the end. Amid the triumphalism of a hierarchical "New World Order," one harks back to the enduring truth of Marx's statement in 1870 with reference to the British colonial subjugation of Ireland: "The people that oppresses another people forge their own chains." Qualified accordingly, Marx's insight applies to the United States where today an alleged social-democratic brand of nationalism is being propagated throughout the whole society at the expense of the peoples of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the "internal colonies" (inhabited by millions of African Americans, American Indian nations, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Asian Americans) whose mass mobilizations constitute the cutting edge of modern emancipatory and life politics in late capitalism.
Is the postcolonial agenda of abrogation and appropriation of colonial discourse still valid and viable after 9/11? The emergence of a U.S. “Homeland” consensus or climate of thought (codified, for example, in the USA Patriot Act) seems to have rendered suspect the deconstructive project of postcolonial theory to repeat as a reflexive mantra the news about the death of the “nation-state,” the self-identical subject, and all totalizing forms of rationality (including varieties of marxism). Born of the Cold War reaction to the utopian critique of capital, postcolonial thought has so far invested its chief energies in the analysis of difference as manifest in the “fractured and ambivalent discourse of colonial power.” It rejected the universalist claims of national-liberation struggles as forms of Eurocentric mimicry. It celebrated the ideals of hybridity, in-between or borderland experience, and other fantasmatic performances of agency parasitic on the liberal market and the circulation of addictive, ever-varying commodities. Consequently, it found itself endorsing the war against Islamic fundamentalism (the “internal enemies” of the pluralist order). It unwittingly became complicit with the predatory program of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. What needs attention today is the exposure of this complicity, together with a practical critique of U.S. hegemonic imperial discourse legitimized by the current “war on terrorism” (a euphemism of neoliberal predation) and “humanitarian” interventions, as in Ukraine, Syria, Haiti, and so on.
We need to elaborate on how anti-Orientalist criticism can renew its oppositional and emancipatory vision by addressing aspects of the “terrorism” problematique, among others: (1) the ethos and pragmatic schemes of the new American Century ideologues; (2) the globalizing strategy of finance capital as mediated through the WTO, IMF and World Bank; and (3) the intellectual apologetic and rationalization of the “clash of civilization” scholasticism that functions as the postmodern reincarnation of “Manifest Destiny” and the “civilizing mission” of the old-style colonialists. It would be useful to investigate more rigorously the problems of the Other (alterity), subaltern identity, the question of difference, materialist locality, performative bodies, and other phenomena of the present conjuncture.
Grappling with Alibis and Subterfuges
Today, in the periphery of the "New World Order," the domination of the human species by commodity fetishism and the alienating power of the cash-nexus encompasses all spheres of private and public life. Even the negative can be coopted if not neutralized. The celebration of Columbus's "discovery" of the New World by the northern centers of privilege is symptomatic of a new theoretical program to constitute the field of "the postcolonial" as a regulated mode of discourse, another disciplinary regime for elaborating theories of difference, alterity, and positional identity. The U.S. prison-military-industrial complex regurgitates its wornout shibboleths of democracy and freedom via total control of information, cybermedia, and the banking/currency system.
The fashionable signs for this strategy of recuperation are "multiculturalism," pluralism, and consumerism. Commodity-fetishism prevails throughout. In Philippine Studies administered by American scholars, following the model of Frank Lynch whose Cold-War functionalism dominated local social-science practitioners since 1959 (May 1998). For example, this recolonizing move is exemplified by the ascription of responsibility for domination to the victims themselves, under the guise of liberal objectivity and the postmodern vogue of relativized power in a consensual normative order. Even paradigms like "Third World" or "underdevelopment" are stigmatized as totalizing and therefore totalitarian. Only a micropolitics of local utility and deconstructive cosmopolitanism (or self-serving opportunism?) seem tolerable to academic pundits and would-be public intellectuals. In brief, as Raymond Williams points out in The Year 2000, global transnationalism can articulate for its own interest the emancipatory politics of oppositional forces - the struggle for fully active social identities and for egalitarian self-governance. This is of course limited and surveilled within the market parameters of exchange value and profit that continue to inform the "rational" discourse of the social sciences and humanities in the Global North at this historical conjuncture.
Today the situation is overdetermined by emergent, residual and current trends. Within this ideological field constituted by the still pervasive authority of Western disciplinary norms, voices are exploding from the margins. They are traversing borders and boundaries, challenging this discourse of universal postcoloniality and transnationalist interdependency. This layered, heterogeneous zone of conflict is what Frederic Jameson calls "cultural revolution" after the Chinese experience of the sixties and seventies. But a more precise figuration of this dialectic of the new evolving from the old can be gleaned from C.L.R. James's homage to the Rastafari's subversive exuberance (quoted in Paul Buhle's excellent biography C.L.F James: The Artist as Revolutionary): "Their world is just beginning .... The colossal stupidities, the insanities of the Rastafari are consciously motivated by their acute consciousness of the filth in which they live, their conscious refusal to accept the fictions that pour in upon them from every side. These passions and forces are the ‘classic human virtues.’ As long as they express themselves, the form may be absurd, but the life itself is not absurd” (1988, 160).
We confront the dialectics of form and content, the universal and the historically specific. What is fundamental here is the perception that form cannot be essentialized and valorized in itself. We need to stress the desideratum that forms of cultural expression as well as of political allegory and social representation need to be grounded in the complex of historical antagonism in a world system whose relational dynamics has determined the configuration of national, class, gender, and racial forces in our contemporary milieux. Totality demands recognition and judgment. What commands priority is the mode of production and the social relations in which culture, ideology, beliefs, and purposes are inscribed.
Again, we need the optic of historicizing events. In the triumphalist celebration of technocratic modernization through racial, gender and class divisions, it is important to note that the current ascendancy of the unregulated market together with the bureaucratic welfare-state has become vulnerable and precarious. We stress the view that this is only a moment in a world-historical process that began with the genocidal exploitation of the Indians in the Americas and the triangular slave trade. US imperial hegemony is thus built on the cadavers and skulls of its victims.
One moment of that process is of course the Spanish-American War of 1898 which led to the US colonization of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. But how long can the oppression and exploitation of people of color go on? Almost everyone anticipates massive problems reproducing and intensifying the crisis of global capitalism. We have space here to cite a few: unemployment, homelessness, rural exodus, corruption, inflation, worsening social inequalities, decline in health care and other social services, aggravated racial and ethnic conflicts, rampant criminality, subordination of national economies to the multinational banks, unmitigated exploitation of migrant labor (particularly, women of color), heightened sexist violence, moral decay and general decadence. Amid this turbulence, the collective response is (to echo George Floyd), “We can’ breathe!”
In this context, Henri Lefebvre, the great philosopher of la quotidienne, reminds us that the all-inclusive agenda of Marxism, that of changing life itself, remains unsurpassed: "Marx envisaged a total person of the future, being deployed as a body, as a relation between the senses, as thought. What remains to be thought now? Marx certainly thought the world in which he lived, but the modern world has not yet begun to think Marxism." As Sartre and others have reminded us, Marxism is still the unsurpassable philosophy of our time.
Prophesying Exorcism
The restoration of oligarchic rule in the Philippines in 1986 ushered a new stage of retrogression. Duterte’s bloody drug-war heralded the return of the Marcos dynasty to Malacanang in 2022. We confront the retooling of the neocolonial apparatuses of domination which today are mediated through the World Bank/International Monetary Fund, various financial credit agencies and instrumentalities, including fundamentalist sects. The myth of the United States' redemptive mission in the Philippines, its almost unlimited potential for self-aggrandizement, has been given a new lease on life with the use of hired social media and manipulated ballot-counting computers for preserving inequities in all sectors.
The “labor of the negative,” however, continues to animate the egalitarian specter. While authoritarian, elitist values saturating the mass media persist, a praxis of national liberation in art and literature has emerged on the face of Pentagon-sponsored "low intensity warfare" and virulent Cold-War red-tagging. “Terrorism” functions as the convenient device of stigmatization, ostracism, death-sentence. Ideas, styles, conventions of feeling and conduct, artistic forms—all have become sites of ethical, political, and ideological contestation that implicates authors, texts and audiences alike. What is at stake? Not so much the fate of reading or writing as such, but rather the material and spiritual life chances of over 110 million Filipinos—the abject subaltern who dare not speak, people of color whose voices have been silenced for a long time, but whose labor has virtually enabled artists and writers (including their Western counterparts) to survive and fulfill themselves in manifold styles of opposition and resistance.
Grounded in the struggles of women, tribal and ethnic nationalities, workers and peasants, youth, and people of the church, a culture of resistance has emerged to interrogate the status quo, forge new subjectivities as collective agents of empowerment, and unfold possibilities of alliances among various groups sharing common memories of being victims and
of participants of multiple modes of resistance. New initiatives for intervention by the marginalized, the excluded and subordinated, have sparked creative acts speaking truth to power. Within the space demarcated by the erosion of traditional client-patron politics and the bankruptcy of oligarchic-comprador revival of election rituals, one can discern new structures of self-governing communal life particularly among women's collectives and in peasant villages of the liberated zones.We can hear again Andres Bonifacio’s call sounded on the eve of the 1896 uprising against Spanish colonialism: “It is now time for the light of truth to shine…O my countrymen, let us open the eyes of our minds and voluntarily consecrate our strength to what is good in the true and full faith that the prosperity of the land of our birth…will come to pass” (Agoncillo 1974, 199).
Praxis of Mass Mobilization
It is no longer heretical to assert that hermeneutics—glossing and interpreting— is thus political in its grounding and effects. The process of "reading" western hegemony generates its complementary act of "writing" by the subjugated natives as creative reappropriation, a reorientation of old forms given new content or substance by this catastrophe of bondage, and by being witness to transgression and deliverance. These two dimensions of cultural interaction are integral parts of the “third world” experience, polarities of one historical event. When Filipino writers begin to “read” the culture and ideological practices of US power, imperial authority is bound to reveal the limits of its legitimacy, its transcendentally mystified but ultimately historical immanence, its transitoriness.
In a recent discourse on power propaganda, John Pilger reminded us of the universal carnage that U.S. imperialism has inflicted on over a hundred countries, suppressing liberation movements in twenty nations and destroying untold populations (as in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, etc.). He cites Nobel-prize awardee Harold Pinter’s critique: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis” (2022). The subalterns are beginning to awake from abject hypnosis to construct a new genuinely plural, post-Western world order (Nair 2022).
Before the abyss of rampant ecological disaster wrought by capitalist profitmaking, there is no alternative but refusal and defiance. A phenomenology of master and slave is necessarily inscribed in North-South confrontations, given the unequal and uneven development of the world-system. In such an inquiry, the "critique of weapons" can yield the weapons of criticism for those already convinced that what is needed is not merely to interpret but also to transform the social texts/praxis of our everyday reality. "Change your lives!" —such is the calling, the vocation, of the Filipino artist in her embattled situation.
The resurgence of revolutionary nationalism in the Philippines in the last two decades can be viewed as a response to this necessity. In the genealogy of subaltern intransigence, even the writing and career of a diehard aestheticist like Jose Garcia Villa can be interpreted as a mode of dissonant and sublimated articulation of refusal. The cunning of Caliban's protest/dissidence against the Ariels of capital - art's goal of metamorphosing the real - is as protean and resourceful as the ruses of imperial pacification. Every artistic work is ideological and utopian at the same time; every poem is both a document of culture as well as of barbarism (to repeat Benjamin’s aphorism). We confront the imperative of choosing which side to join, which principles and ideals to fight for.
In the variations of this transition from past to future, what this critique of symbolic exchange hopes to convey is that Marxism is (in Lenin's phrase, "concrete analysis of concrete conditions,” “concrete" meaning multideterminant) the permanent principle of hope in action. Hope equals collective praxis, popular mobilization. It is a sense of the beginning of a long-range journey of socialist reconstruction; the play of utopian energies investing the counterhegemonic art of the everyday life with value. This process becomes actualized by Filipino activists in cities and countryside where the crisis of neocolonial dependency, indeed the claims of "Manifest Destiny" recycled today by the apologists of transnational capital, will be finally resolved. —###</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-3527599283163685902022-09-19T18:35:00.009-07:002022-09-19T18:41:21.761-07:00MARCOS-DUTERTE SPECTACLE OF HORRORS
<b>
BRUTALIZING WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE PHILIPPINES:
A GLIMPSE OF THE MARCOS-DUTERTE SPECTACLE OF HORRORS </b><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b> by E. San Juan, Jr.</b> <div><br /></div><div> I
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IN his classic “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” Karl Marx amends Hegel’s quip on history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce (1986 97). With the former Philippine dictator Marcos’s son in office, will farcical acts be the spectacle for the next six years?. Imagine the sons of Somoza, Trujillo or Batista returning to their banana republics—that would indeed be “the tradition of all the dead generations” acting as toxic “nightmare on the brain of the living.” </div><div><br /></div><div> The oldest U.S. neocolony, the Philippines, was plundered and ruined by Ferdinand Marcos from 1966 to 1986. Biding their time in Hawaii, a refuge offered by the colonizers, the Marcos dynasty staged a comeback with their wealth and retinue of factotums intact. They consolidated power in their localities (Ilocos, Leyte) and began a program of selective retrieval. Aided by consumerist amnesia and a new generation bereft of historical knowledge, they inched their way to governorship and congressional seats. Amid widespread vote-buying and fixing of the Smartmatic computerized machines in the May 2022 elections, Marcos Jr., known as “Bongbong,” was installed as president (CENPEG 2022). They struck a bargain with strongman Duterte by allowing the daughter Sara to run as vice-president to safeguard the father from any criminal investigation after his tenure. </div><div><br /></div><div> Despite some citizen-groups’ protests and media demands to review the election results by the Duterte-controlled Commission on Elections, nothing was done to block Bongbong’s proclamation. The corrupted State ideological apparatuses to pacify class conflicts (legislature, courts, police, military bureaucracy) had already been eviscerated. The farce seems to be the consensus of the oligarchic clans—Arroyo, Estrada, Duterte, Marcos, billionaire Chinoy networks—with huge funding by corporate interests, religious, and military blocs that have so far benefited from their rule.
Estranging Affinities
The Marcos dynasty has so far successfully defied all court verdicts since their return from Hawaii in 1992. Bongbong himself refused to pay back-taxes while his mother, Imelda Marcos, sentenced to jail a while ago, remains free to flaunt her wealth—not her fabled thousand shoes, but the dynasty’s “past glory” reconfirmed by Marcos’ burial in the cemetery of heroes by Duterte. The elaborate State funeral was the ritual designed to repair the frayed social cohesion that is somehow ascribed to the Aquino clan represented by the “pink party” of the Liberal Party (Roxas clan) and the defeated candidate Leni Robredo. A compromise was reached with the Duterte bloc, compensating for Bongbong’s frustrated vice-presidential ambition in 2016.
Meanwile, Bongbong’s sister Senator Imee Marcos devised another farcical stragegy. To reinforce the Cambridge Analytica/Google handling of the Marcos “brand” in social media, She financed a film entitled “Maid in Malacanang” to revise the spectacle of the family’s 1968 panicked escape from the palace as the infurtiated masses smashed the gates and soon occupied the dictator’s sanctuary. It was a desperate attempt to alter the media discourse on the impact of the people’s anger and repudiation of the patriarch’s martial law (1972-1986) and its horrors. Somehow, the tragic show needs comedic retouching.
Paradoxical Inversions
For many reviewers, Imee’s propaganda ploy was an abject failure. Rappler, the news outfit headed by Maria Ressa, recent Nobel Prize winner, fact-checked the film’s truthfulness by comparing it with the book by Arturo Aruiza, Marcos’s military aide. Rappler testified to the film’s disingenous erasure of Marcos’ failure to squelch the Ramos-Enrile mutiny which sparked the EDSA “People Power” insurrection (Tequero 2022). Instead of showing the mayhem overtaking the household, the film depicts Imee fully in charge of what was going on. She was jefe con cojones.
The film depicted Imee displacing the regular staff and projecting herself as her father’s trusted manager—the real heir to his prestige, authority, intelligence. Affinities eclipsed alienating divisions. Deconstruction of conventional gender-role and class-subordination, however, produced the opposite: glamorizing the new androgynous Imee as unifying official/managerial elite, marginalizing Bongbong and vindicating the patron-client reciprocity—the supreme Filipino value, as mainstream academics assure us.
Imee’s cinematic role (“pinakamahusay na katulong”) with Marcos’ blessing—:”my darling genius of a girl”—seeks to salvage the eroded dignity/power of the dictator. Marcos was emasculated with physical disabiities that constrained patriarchal hubris. In its absence, Imee shed off whatever feminine mystique she had and took over the refurbishment of the damaged Marcos “brand” by role-switching and re-identifying her lot with the loyal subaltern-proletarian cohort. It’s difficult, however, to insinuate the EDSA crowd into the film, given its association with the Aquinos as persecutors.
We can not yet fully assess the impact of this farcical episode.The latest news is that embassies abroad have been ordered to propagate the film. While Imee’s concoction opened to much fanfare, another film entitled KATIPS about anti-Marcos activists and rebellious youth who fought the dictatorship attracted more attention and sympathy. We predict more farcical offerings to cement the widening fissures of the neocolonial structure established by more than a century of U.S. military, economic and cultural domination since the Filipino-American War (1899-1913; see San Juan 2021)..
The Gossip-Master Intervenes
Historian Ambeth Ocampo noted the film’s “twisted retelling of history,” but was more vexed by the director’s “artistic license,” as illustrated by the attempt to smear Cory Aquino by depicting her as “playing mahjong with Carmelite nuns when the fate of the nation hung in a balance. ” Ocampo adds that “the suppressed Marcos narrative provided by Imee Marcos is that the Marcoses were driven from Malacanang by fair weather friends who looked down on them for their provincial and nonelitist origins” (2022).
In short, “Maid in Malcanang” is a gambit to cast the Marcos dynasty as victims deserving empathy, and in fact becoming the uncanny exemplars of the nationalist movement. Contrary to the view that Imee’s vanity film hopes to exude a humanist appeal, its drawing-power are the female stars who supposedly can seduce thousands of fans and devotees on behalf of the oligarchs.
Again, the irony traps Imee/dynasty’s effort to recapture the aura of the pre-Marcos image: Malacanang cannot be recast into a slumdweller or peasant-farmer’s residence. Nor can the fashionably-attired Imee mimick the harried servant-maid obsequisly following orders. Just about the same time the film grabbed headlines, the capture of a much-abused pollitical activist, Adora Faye de Vera, was announced by the metropolitan police.
Spoiling the Malacanang Opera
De Vera, 68 years old, was arrested last August 26 for alleged involvement in “multiple murder, with the use of exposives and antipersonnel mine.” She was first arrested for pasting anti-government posters in October 1976 and sexually abused and tortured by the military until June 1977. Parts of her body were burned, toenails and fingers crushed, remaining naked for some time; and she was repeatedly raped. The responsible culprits—eleven soldiers and three civilians—were members of the Military Intelligence Group, Constabulary Security Unit, and 231 PC Company of Quezon Province (Martial Law Files 2012). After repeated sexual assaults, De Vera got pregnant and had to induce an abortion. Her husband Manuel disappeared 22 years ago and has remained a desaparecido to this day.
It is publicly know that Filipino military officers since then—from Marcos to Duterte’s regime—have been notorious for relentless rapacity and barbarism. This seems to be their claim for manly honor and distinction ever since the U.S. established the Philippine Scouts to assist their bloody suppression of Filipinos refusing McKinley’s “Benevolent Assimilation.” The PC (now the PNP/Philippine National Police) was then headed by the late General Fidel Ramos. Together with De Vera were Rolando Moralles and Flora Coronacion who were raped by 14 men numerous times; after their torture, they performed the official roles of “desaparecidos” in the State’s theater of predatory entertainment.
Just like Duterte’s death-squad, none of the torturers had been charged (Melencio 1998). All in all, twenty security men were involved in this documented outrage against De Vera, Morales, and Coronacion..
De Vera’s second arrest occurred in October 23, 1983 during a military encirclement in Bicol province. She was then 30 years old, married with two children. She was shot in the leg. Since her imprisonment in 1976 up to now, De Vera has been suffering from her traumatic encounter with the police and officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Varona 2022). Arrested in Metro Manila, she has been flown to a jail in Iloilo City, where more farcical events are sure to be witnessed.
Cry of the Multitude
De Vera is only one of the thousands of political prisoners who suffered the vicious depravity of the Marcos martial-law regime. Amnesty International and other human-rights observers have documented 3,275 killed, 35,000 tortured, and 70,000 incarcerated persons during the Marcos dictatorship….Some 2,520 Filipinos were ‘salvaged’—that is, tortured, mutilated and dumped on a roadside for public display” (McCoy 2001) KARAPATAN and the Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines have preserved records of the human-rights abuses of the Marcos years.
For lack of space, I can only cite here the case of Maria Cristina Rodriguez, one of the thousands of victims of the Marcos “conjugal dictatorship.” Rodriguez is now the executive director of Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument to Heroes), a museum for martial-law victims. In a public testimony dated September 8, 2016, as requested by the Supreme Court concerning the Duterte regime’s plan to bury Marcos in the nations cemetery for heroes, Rodriguez recounted her ordeal. Here is an excerpt:
Yes, Marcos soldiers tortured and abused me. I saw others as well, a boy screaming from zaps of electric torture, a friend with polio beaten black and blue, a man with both feet bandaged because a military officer had pressed them with red-hot iron during interrogation…My godmother was killed by intelligence agents inside a hospital room. I’ve talked with mothers whose son or daughter was shot pointblank by men in uniform. I’ve myself documented hundreds of cases of Filipinos who underwent varying levels of inhuman treatment from the Marcos dictatorship—farmers executed, pregnant women raped, children massacred” (quoted in Beltran 2022).
The return of the Marcos dynasty to power—surely not as maid-servants glamorized by Imee Marcos—signals a revanchist move to revamp the narrative of the February 1986 debacle. For the Marcos loyalists, history may just be “tsimis” or gossip. But they take it seriously. One sign is the attempt to abolish the Presidential Committee on Good Government (PCGG) tasked to recover Marcos’ stolen wealth amounting to billions of dollars. Another is the move to sustain Duterte’s withdrawal of the country from the sway of the International Criminal Court which has been pursuing cases filed by many victims of Duterte’s drug-war since he assumed office as mayor of Davao City (1988-98).
Duterte admitted complicity with deathsquads in 2015. He boasted wanting to kill 100,000 people before the end of his presidency. Over 30,000 victims of extrajudicial killlings under Duterte’s watch have been recorded, though only about 1,400 have been reported by the national police. Exhumations of the hundreds of slain “drug suspects” and autopsies are being processed to determine the authenticity of police records.
Political Prisoners Galore
The rampant practice of stigmatizing anyone critical of government policies as “terrorists” began with Cory Aquino and worsened with Duterte’s red-tagging policy.
Any dissenter is tagged as a “terrorist” supporter of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army. This originated with Sec. Colin Powell’s declaration in 2001 of the two groups as “terrorist” organizations. Under Duterte’s rule, the number of political prisoners ballooned to 592. Compare the number of detainees under President Arroyo (343) and under Benigno Aquino Jr. (306). This was before “Bloody Sunday, March 7, 2021, when Duterte’s police killed nine union workers and arrested six—all justified by his “shoot-to-kill” style of eradicating those he had already judged guilty (Bolledo 2022; ABS-CBN 2015).
With continued imposition of arbitrary arrests, rabid witch-hunting of branded “reds,” and subservience of the courts and legislature to the diktat of Marcos-Duterte, the already congested prisons—ghettoes of poor farmers, workers, and unemployed—promise more misery and deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens who thought they had the Bill of Rights and other constitutionally-mandated liberties.
As of June 22, 2022, the total number of political prisoners—critics of the regime arrested with guns and grenades planted on them—was 803. Among the most deprived and penalized are women, dating back to the time of De Vera and Rodriguez. In 2010, I discussed the plight of fifteen political prisoners who count among the most dehumanized (San Juan 2010) and campaigned for their release.
According to KARAPATAN, the most trusted human-rights monitor in the Philippines, there were 126 woman prisoners in March 2021, the majority of whom are charged for being associated with dissidents labeled “terrorists.” Many are human rights defenders, activists involved in helping workers, urban squatters, indigenous communities. Because they work for the deprived sectors, they are accused of being supporters of the terrorist insurgents to justify their illegal arrest and continuing detention in horrible quarters. They are presumed innocent until proven guilty—a principle rejected by the “justice” system in the Philippines. They are punished for trumped-up charges; some have been released after a long expensive appeal.
We appeal to the global community to demand the immediate release of the following political detainees who have already borne the brunt of State terrorism and cruelty:
1. Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis, a peasant organizer of Amihan National Federation of Woman. She just gave birth to her baby Randall Emmanuel when she was arrested on Decenmber 2, 2020. At 5AM, soldiers broke into the farmer’s house she was staying in, pointed guns at her and her 2-month old infant; the soldiers could not produce any search warrant, harassed and tormented her and later claimed they found firearms and explosives.
2. Raina Mae Nasino, organizer for KADAMAY, Manila. Nasino was arrested with two other activists on November 5, 2019. She gave birth to Baby River on July 1, 2020. After two months, jail authorities separated mother and child. Her baby died on October 9, 2020, only three months old. The distraught Nasino was granted furlough for only 6 hours to attend her baby’s wake and internment, while suffering from COVID-19 symptoms for which no medical help was provided by prison authorities.
3. Karina Mae dela Cerna,NNARA-Youth’s Nationall Deputy Secretary-General. Dela Cerna was arrested with 51 other persons in Bacolod City in the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Office. Trumped-up charges were filed due to the discovery of firearms and explosives in the surrounding area.
4. Myles Cantal Albasin, fomer chair of Anakbayan, Cebu. Albasin was arrested wth five other youth from Negros Oriental where she was participating in community immersion with the farmers. Soldiers alleged that she engaged with them in a firefight, a claim disputed by residents of the area.
5. Renalyn Gomez Tejero, paralegal aid for KARAPATAN, Caraga. She was arrested on trumped-up charges of murder in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte, on March 21, 2021.
KARAPATAN has been in the government list of “communist fronts.”
6. Alma Moran, member of the secretariat of Manila Workers Union. Moran was arrested together with Reina Mae Nasino and Ram Carlo Bautista in a BAYAN office in Tondo, Manila. in November 5, 2019. After a second search of the office, the police claimed to have found firearms and explosives—the usual modus operandi.
7. Frenchie Mae Cumpio, journalist for Eastern Vista. Cumpio was arrested in Tacloban City on February 8, 2020. Police claimed to have found a pistol and grenade inside the room where she and a companion were staying. With the money confiscated upon their arrest, Cumpio and lay worker Mariel Domequil also face trumped-up charges of terrorist financing—still unproven to this day.
8. Rowena Rosales, former member of Confederation for Unity, Recognition and
Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE). Rosales was arrested wih her husband Oliver after a day at their thrift store in Bulacan on August 11, 2018. Police claimed to have confiscated a bag of firearms and explosives in their premises without any testimony from other than the police department.
9. Gloria Campos Tumalon, member of MAPASU, Surigao del Sur. Tumalon is accused of being a member of the NPA and arrested in March 29, 2020, based on a warrant related to an incident when the NPA took soldiers as prisoners on war in December 2018/ She is one of 468 persons accused on the same warrant.
10. Nenita Calamba de Castro, member of GABRIELA, Butuan. De Castro was arrested in May 32, 2038, with charges unknown. GABRIELA has been targeted as a terrorist front, an example of libelous defamation.
11. Romana Raselle Shamina Astudillo, deputy secretary general of KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno, Metro Manila. Astudillo was arrested in December 10, 2020, Human Rights Day. and accused of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. The militant KMU has been targetted by the police/military for being a communist front.
12. Ge-ann Perez, arrested in March 24, 2019, by virtue of association with Francisco Fernanex, a peace consulted for the National Democratic Front, and his wife Cleofre Lagtapon. All face charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives—the recurrent alibi of governmen security henchmen.
13. Virginia Bohol Villamor was arrested past midnight on November 8, 2018. She was accompanied by her husband, Alberto, and Vicente Ladlad, peace consultant of the National Democratic Front, Philippines. Although Villamor suffered agonizing pain from a pelvic fracture, she was forced to drop to the floor, while soldiers pointed their rifles at her and companions. They were later charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
A Warning to Military-Police Agencies
With the September 17, 2022 passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act (H.R. 8313) in the U.S. Congress, some constraint on the Phiippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Phiippines in inflicting warrantless arrests, harassment, torture and other human-rights violations might spare future victims. If those practices continue, the Bill seeks to suspend assistance to the police and military amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in logistics, weapons, training, etc. During his rule, Marcos Sr. received billions of U.S. military aid much of which he stole and transferred to secret bank accounts in Switzerland, Panama, and elsewhere, now utilized by his son and minions.
Bill 8313 is based on the U.S. State Department’s annual reports of “arbirtrary or unlawful killings” committed during Duterte’s drug wars. It mentions the case of Senator Leila de Lima who has been detained for two years as “a staunch critic of the drug war killings,” as well as labor leaders and legislators killed or held as political prisoners (exemplified by the prisoners tallied above), Not to be neglected is mention of the government’s infamous “vilification of dissent…being institutionalized and normalized” based on the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. This Act enables the billion-pesos-funded NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force To End Local Communist Armed Conflict) to stifle dissent from civil society. It functions to void the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights and resuscitate the authoritarian, fascist method of social harmony imposed by Bongbong’s father nearly forty years ago—a tragedy now being revived as excruciating farce.
REFERENCES
ABS-CBN. 2015. :”Duterte admits links to Davao Death Squads.” News. (May 25)
Beltran, Michael. 2022. “Haunted by our continuing pain: Martial law survivors react to Marcos restoration.” The News Lens (June 8).
<international .thenewslens.com="">
Bolledo, Jairo. 2022. “In Numbers: Political Prisoners in the Philippines Since 2001. Rappler (August 21).
CENPEG. 2022. “The May 2022 Elections and the Marcos Restoration: Looking Back and Beyond.” Monthly Political Analysis No. 15. Quezon City: Center for People Empowerment in Governance.
Martial Law Files. 2012. “Adora Faye de Vera.” Martial Law Files. (Dec. 4, 2012). <www .wordpress.com="" adora-faye-de-vera-2="" floc="">
Marx, Karl & Frederick Engels. 1968. “”The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In Selected Works. New York: International Publishers.
McCoy, Alfred. 2001. “Dark Legacy: Human Rights Under the Marcos Regime.” In Memory, Truth Telling and the Pursuit of Justice: A Conference on the Legacy of the Marcos Dictatorship. Quezon City: Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University.
Melencio, Gloria Esquerra. 1998. Report for Martial Law Files Website, Sponsored by the Commission on Human Rights, UN Devepment Program for Claimants 1081.
Ocampo, Ambeth. 2022. “Maid n Malacanang: A biased review.” Philippine Daily Inquirer (August 5). <https: www.inquirer.dotnet="">
San Juan, E. 2013. “U.S. Imperial Humanitarian BlessingL Torture of Women Political Prisoners in the Philippines.” International Marxist Humanist Organization. (27 August).
<https: articles="" imhojournal.org="" iperial-humanitarianism-u.s.-="" neocolony-torture-war-women-prisoners-philippines-e-san-juan="">
——. 2021. Maelstrom over the Killing Fields: Interventions in the Project of National-Democratic Liberation. Quezon City: Pantax Press.
Toquero, Loreben. 2002. “A made-up Marcos name: False misleading claims abound in ‘Maid in Malacanang.” Rappler (August 11, 2022).
United States Congress. 2022. “H.R. 3884. Philippine Human Rights Act. “
Congressional Records. Washington DC: United States Congress.
<https: bill="" house-bill="" th-congress="" www.congress.gov="">
Varona, Inday Espino. 2022. “Arrested rebel a symbol of Marcos atrocities against women dissidents.” Rappler (August 26).
___________
E. SAN JUAN, Jr. was recently visiting professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines; and a former fellow of the W.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. His recent books are U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan) and Peirce’s Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective (Lexington Books).
. </https:></https:></https:></www></international></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-49702573604638379342022-09-07T13:41:00.000-07:002022-09-07T13:41:48.451-07:00REVIEW OF E.SAN JUAN'S SISA'S VENGEANCE by Jeffrey Cabusao<b
<b> >Sisa’s Vengeance: Jose Rizal’s Sexual Politics & Cultural Revolution By E.
San Juan, Jr. Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2021</b<b><b></b></b></b>
>
Review by Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao
English and Cultural Studies, Bryant University
Smithfield, Rhode Island
The 2021 edition of Sisa’s Vengeance: Jose Rizal’s Sexual Politics & Cultural Revolution by E. San Juan, Jr. reintroduces a volume structured around an essay (“Sisa’s Vengeance: Rizal & the “Woman Question”) originally presented at the 2011 International Rizal Conference at the University of the Philippines, which commemorated the 150th birthday of the national hero of the Philippines (vii). Reflecting upon insights in previously published works such as Toward a People’s Literature (1984), Rizal In Our Time (1996), and Balikbayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader (2008), San Juan uses the auspicious event of the sesquicentennial celebration to address a specific gap or silence in his earlier assessments of Rizal—assessments which “somehow eluded tackling the crucial problematic of the gendered division of social labor and its implied sexual politics” (vii). The collection Sisa’s Vengeance takes on gender and sexual politics within the context of “the Rizalian project of discovering potential agents/leaders of the ongoing enterprise of national redemption” (x). San Juan examines the centrality of “the woman question” in Rizal’s “call for participating in the vocation of forging the collective conscience” (x).
San Juan recovers the radical Rizal by pushing against dominant modes of reading which position Rizal as reformist (Constantino) or remove Rizal from history and the colonial environment he inhabited in order to psychoanalyze him (Radiac) or frame him as a “short-sighted moralist” (Anderson). By pushing against the grain, San Juan’s collection teaches us how to read Rizal through a uniquely Filipino historical materialist feminist optic. San Juan’s methodological approach combines three interlocking projects. The first is the Rizalian project of becoming Filipino (“forging the collective conscience”). We are reminded that there “is no question that Rizal’s prodigious commitment in trying to represent an emergent nation/people is unprecedented in the annals of the ‘third world’” (7). The second is a historical materialist approach that situates Rizal and his writing within the historical specificity of 19th century Philippine colonial society—an approach that “relocate[s] individual protagonists in the political economy they inhabit” (26). The third is a project of decentering Rizal’s novels to read that which is submerged—a critique of gender and sexual politics which function as the “kernel of Rizal’s radicalism” (68).
Decentering refers to shifting our gaze to the function of women characters in Rizal’s novels – Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (Sisa, Juli, Dona Consolacion, Dona Victorina, Maria Clara, Paulita Gomez, and others). San Juan’s methodological approach highlights Rizal’s interest in critiquing women’s oppression while simultaneously supporting the development of women’s agency. San Juan is able to discern this crucial dimension of Rizal’s literary imagination by reading the novels in conversation with other works within the Rizal archive – the Memorias, letters, essays. For instance, San Juan returns to “Message to the Young Women of Malolos” (written in Tagalog in February 1889) which reveals Rizal’s deep interest in the development of Filipino women’s independence as it intersects with Philippine national sovereignty.
In “Message to the Young Women of Malolos,” Rizal provides support for women’s education—specifically learning the Spanish language in order to “have access to the mentoring wisdom of Teodoro Sandiko, Rizal’s progressive compatriot, whom they wanted as a teacher” (89). Rizal’s interest in the development of women’s literacy is informed by his understanding of the ways in which the maintenance of Spanish colonialism relies on the oppression of Filipino women. Rizal “protested against frailocracy or ‘rule of the friars’ as the epitome of the gender-based authoritarian system” (19). Within Philippine colonial society, the family and church function as ideological apparatuses within which women’s minds, bodies, and reproductive labor are regulated, surveilled, and controlled. In his letter, Rizal rearticulates the institution of motherhood (where the heteronormative family and religion intersect) as a protest against frailocracy. Motherhood could be reimagined to support women’s education, independence, and agency (a reclaiming of mother-right from pre-Hispanic Philippine society) as central components of Philippine sovereignty. According to San Juan, “Rizal valorizes the agency of mothers as educative/formative forces primarily responsible for shaping the character of their children” (90). This is evident when Rizal encourages the young women of Malolos: “… you are the first to influence the consciousness of man… Awaken and prepare the will of our children towards all that is honorable, judged by proper standards, to all that is sincere and firm of purpose, clear judgement, clear procedure, honesty in act and deed, love for the fellowman and respect for God” (San Juan, 90).
Revisiting Rizal’s emphatic support for Filipino women’s agency in “Message to the Young Women of Malolos” enables San Juan to return to representations of gender and sexuality within the Rizal archive. Throughout the four essays that comprise the collection, San Juan advises us on how to read Rizal. We must read his life and work as they are situated within the historical context of Philippine colonial society and its multiple conflicts. This approach is applied in San Juan’s reading of Sisa in Noli – a character who descends into an unspeakable form of madness (one that literally escapes language) as a result of the dissolution of marriage and motherhood. How do we read this representation of Filipino womanhood? Leaning upon the insights of Ernst Bloch, philosopher Douglas Kellner reminds us of the complexity and “Janus-faced” nature of ideology as a site of manipulation that reproduces the oppressive social order. Ideology also contains a “utopian residue” that could offer a critique of social institutions in need of change (see Kellner, Media Culture, 2020). On one hand (on the surface), Sisa’s madness reproduces dominant representations of womanhood as constructed by the ideology of domesticity. In other words, the disintegration of marriage and motherhood leads to the disintegration of the female subject. On the other hand, San Juan’s reading reminds us that Sisa’s madness must be contextualized within the systemic violence of patriarchal colonialism. Her madness within the text also functions as “transgression against patriarchy” (84). It is symptomatic of the corruption and oppression of Spanish colonialism and offers a critique of a Philippine colonial society in need of transformation.
San Juan points out that Sisa’s madness represents alienation from colonial urban civilization. Her escape into nature is a disavowal of “the urban circuit of money and commodity-exchange” (76). Sisa’s dehumanization by Spanish patriarchal colonial violence (accused by guardia civiles as the “mother of thieves”) leads to a process of naturalization—her “transformation into the voice of Nature, the sentient environment of rural Philippines” (77). Sisa becomes one with the rural landscape within which masses of Filipinos toil under a system of feudal exploitation. Unlocking the revolutionary potential of the Filipino masses is inextricably intertwined with the process of unlocking Filipino women’s agency which was suppressed (pre-Hispanic mother-right which provided economic independence) with the rise of class society as developed under Spanish colonialism. San Juan cites Filipino feminist scholar Elizabeth Eviota: “Centuries of economic, political and religious imposition had transformed the lively sexual assertiveness of Filipino women into a more prudish, cautious image of womanhood” (67).
While Sisa functions as a “metaphor for the problem of gender inequality” (111), she also anticipates the emergence of woman warriors in the movement for Filipino self-determination. Sisa’s vengeance refers to how that which has been suppressed (Sisa’s anguished and muffled voice) re-emerges in the flesh of “other surrogates and avatars—Melchora Aquino, Salud Algabre, Felipa Culala, Maria Lorena Barros, Cherith Dayrit, Luisa Posa-Dominado, Kemberley Jul Luna, and other militants in today’s national-democratic insurgency” (80). Sisa’s vengeance is also registered in San Juan’s method for re-reading Rizal. Casting Sisa at the center of our analysis highlights how the subversive and transgressive nature of Rizal’s novels actually stems from addressing the politics of gender and sexuality as they intersect with anticolonial critique. (See detailed thematic mapping on page 132—decentering Rizal’s novels by centering Sisa.)
With the return of the Marcoses to Malacanang, the approach of the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in the Philippines, and the intensification of poverty and political repression in the Covid age, it might seem that the only options are succumbing to despair or performing various rituals of neoliberal activism (transformation of the individual as consuming subject). Sisa’s Vengeance, however, reminds us of a long and durable tradition of anticolonial struggle in the Philippines by way of re-reading Rizal. In fact, San Juan advances Rizal’s reflections on the liberatory potential of literacy (the ability to read, write, and think critically) as articulated in his letter to the young women of Malolos—a document that, according to San Juan, demonstrates Rizal’s understanding that “political agency implie[s] sophistication in ideology-critique” (20). Beginning with the essay “Discovering the Radical Rizal” and ending with “Sisa’s Vengeance: Rizal & the ‘Woman Question,’” San Juan’s collection could easily be titled How to Read Rizal in its application of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s concept of “conscientization”—a rearticulation of the Marxian notion that [s]tudy, as collective learning, is part of emancipatory praxis that connects human agency and the ecosystem” (88). Moving beyond the fetishism of hero worship, Sisa’s Vengeance gives us the tools to read like Rizal—to comprehend the complex trajectory of Filipino becoming in ways that connect us to our rich history while simultaneously unleashing our collective potential to determine our future.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-11480615403111394682022-08-26T12:51:00.010-07:002022-08-26T12:56:39.007-07:00APOLINARIO MABINI: MAKABAYANG DIWA'T KONSIYENSIYA NG SAMBAYANANG FILIPINO
<blockquote><b><strike><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Apolinario Mabini: Paghamon sa Tadhana ng Mapanghimagsik na Kamalayan
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ni E. San Juan, Jr. University of Connecticut <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> It matters not whether we die in the middle or at the end of our painful journey; the generations to come, praying over tombs, will offer their tears of love and gratitude, and not of bitter reproach. (Walang kaibahan kung mamatay tayo sa gitna o dakong huli ng ating mahapding paglalakbay; ang salinlahing darating, nagdarasal sa harap ng ating libingan, ay maghahandog ng kanilang mataimtim na pag-ibig at pasasalamat, hindi mapait na pagsumbat.)
--Apolinario Mabini </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Palasak na taguriang “Sublime Paralytic,” o “Dakilang Lumpo,” si Apolinario Mabini, tanyag na bayaning naglingkod sa unang Republika ng Pilipinas na inilunsad sa Malolos, Bulacan, noong Enero 23, 1899. Hinirang siya ni Heneral emilio Aguinaldo na maging tagapayo niya sa pagbuo ng gobyernong rebolusyonaryo sa Dekreto ng Hunyo 18, 1898.
Ngunit hindi si Aguinaldo kundi ang kaaway ang ultimong kumilala sa kanya. Tanyag siya sa naratibo ng imperyalistang gobernador w. Cameron Forbes: “The brilliant and irreconcilable Apolinario Mabini exercised a predominant influence in determining the policy pursued by his chief leading up to and following the rupture of friendly relations with the Americans” (1945, 51). Tila walang ironya ang pagtukoy kay Mabini. Puna naman ni Stuart Creighton Miller na si Mabini ay “ilustrado with lower-class origins with radical ideas of a ‘simultaneous external and internal revolution’ na siyang nakasindak sa elitistang pangkat nina Paterno, Buencamino, atbp. na kumikiling sa isang “oligarchy of intelligence” (1982, 38). Bunyag na ang oligarkong iyon ang tusong pumaslang kay Bonifacio, tagapagtatag ng Katipunan, at kumitil din sa buhay ng masilakbong Heneral Antonio Luna.
Karapat-dapat ang pagdakilang iyon kay Mabini. Subalit hindi iyon ang nagbukod sa kanya bilang pangunahing rebolusyonaryong dalubhasa, ang utak at pilosopo ng rebolusyonaryong lakas ng kolonisadong masa. Ang pambihirang katangian niya ay nasa pagkabatid sa tunay
Social ScienceS and development Review
na katuturan at kahulugan ng pakikibaka para makamit ang mabisang kalayaan/kasarinlan ng sambayanan laban sa mananakop, Kastila man o Amerikano. Ang proseso, bago muna ang natamong layon, ang dapat idiin bilang desideratum.
Pagpapasiya kaagapay ng kolektibong praktika ang pinakamahalaga. Ang makauring kamalayang taglay ni Mabini ay produkto ng pagtambal ng namulatang kapaligiran, angking kakayahan, at malikhaing pagtatalik ng mga sangkap ng karanasan at karakter na nahubog ng mga pangyayari’t kolektibong danas ng inapi’t pinagsamantalahan.
Tatak at Lagda sa Talambuhay
Balik-tanawin natin ang pinanggalingan ni Mabini. isinilang noong Hulyo 23, 1864, sa Tanauan, Batangas, si Mabini ay anak nina Inocencio Mabini at Dionisia Maranan na nagmamay-ari ng maliit na sakahan ng palay, tubo, mais at gulay. Uring pesante, malapit sa uring manggagawa sa kanayunan. Nag-aral sa paaralang lokal. Pagkatapos ng sekundarya sa gabay ni Padre valerio Malabanan, nag-aral si Mabini sa San Juan de Letran (1884-85) habang nagtuturo ng Latin sa isang pribadong institusyon upang matustusan ang mga pangangailangan. Tumigil siya sa Lipa noong 1886-87, nakihalubilo sa karaniwang tao roon.
Noong 1888, kumuha siya ng abogasya sa Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas at nakasulit noong 1894. Dahil sa sakit na polio, naparalisado siya noong Enero 1896 habang aktibo sa kilusang pampropaganda nina Jaena, Del Pilar at Rizal. Dinakip siya dahil sa pakikisangkot sa Katipunan (damay sa kaibigang Adriano) at ibinilanggo sa Ospital ng San Juan de Dios noong Oktubre 1896 (Corpuz 2002, 212).
Di naglaon, kapiling na si Mabini ng insureksiyong lumaganap mula sa mabangis na labanan sa Cavite. Noong Hunyo 1898, hinirang siyang pangulo ng Gabinete ni Hen. Aguinaldo, bukod sa katungkulan bilang kalihim ng kalakarang panlabas. Sinulat niya ang maraming dekreto ng pamahalaang rebolusyonaryo (hanggang Mayo 1899) bago nadakip ng mga Amerikano noong Disyembre 1899. Dalawang taon pagkaraan, sanhi sa paglalathala ng mga artikulo niyang nagtatanggol sa rebolusyon, ipinatapon siya sa Guam noong Enero 1901. Nang bumalik siya sa Pilipinas
146
APOLINARIO MABINI: PAGHAMON SA TADHANA NG MAPANGHIMAGSIK NA KAMALAYAN
dala ang natapos na testimonyong La Revolucion Filipina, nadamay siya sa salot ng kolera’t pumanaw noong Mayo 13, 1903 sa edad na 39 taon.
Si Mabini ay mababansagang isang pangyayaring mapangahas sa kasaysayan ng lahi. Sa pagitan ng kanyang pagsilang at pagkasawi humagibis ang buhawi ng mga pagbabago. walong taong gulang si Mabini nang sumiklab ang aklasan sa Cavite noong 1872, Maraming filibusteros na mestizo’t creole ang ipinatapon sa Marianas, bukod sa pagbitay sa mga paring Burgos, Gomez at Zamora. Dahil doon, lumipat sina Marcelo del Pilar at Graciano Lopez Jaena sa Espanya at nagtatag ng La Solidaridad sa Barcelona noong Disyembre 13, 1888, 24 edad si Mabini noon, kapapasok lamang sa UST (Constantino 1975, 154-55).
Mabilis at matarik ang agos ng kasaysayan. Apat na taon pa, nakisalamuha na siya sa mga kapanlig ng Liga—nina Domingo Franco at Andres Bonifacio—kung saan siya ang sekretaryo ng Supremong Kunseho. Nakagraduweyt na si Mabini sa kurso ng pakikitunggaling anti- kolonyal. Hindi kataka-taka na imungkahi niya pagsabog ng digmaan laban sa Amerika: “Hindi natin makakamit ang kalayaan ng ating bayan kung hindi natin iaalay muna ang ating laya para sa kanya” (Zaide 1970, 285). Maidaragdag dito bilang talababaan: sa interogasyon ni Rizal, sinabi niyang hindi niya kilala si Mabini—walang dudang pag-ilag ito sa lambat ng mga awtoridad (Palma 1949, 278). Kakatwa ang inog ng mga kaganapan na naging malapit si Mabini kay Heneral Paciano Rizal sa kasagsagan ng pagbalikwas laban sa Espanya (Alvarez 1992, 203).
Sa pakiwari ko, si Mabini ang unang kritiko ng sambayanan laban sa rasismong ideolohiya/politika ng imperyalismong U.S. Siya ang anti- imperyalistang diwang patnubay ng mga naghihimagsik. Kaugnay nito, siya ang unang teoretikang kamalayan na lumikha ng konsepto ng bayang naetsa-pwera, ang nagkakaisang hanay (united front) ng inalipusta’t dinuhagi, na tutol sa hirarkya’t makauring kaisipan ng ilustrado’t kolonyalismong inuugitan ng Simbahan. Tutol siya sa pribilehiyo ng mga may-ari ng lupa, ng petiburgesyang kasabwat ng oligarko’t kapitalistang panginoon. Samakatwid, si Mabini ang unang organikong intelektuwal— ayon sa partikular na depinisyon nito ni Gramsci (1971)—ng masang sumasalungat sa pwersang sumusugpo sa makataong adhikain nito. Bagamat taglay ang edukasyong pormal sa abogasya, nakasanib ang sikap
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at talino sa mapagpalayang kilusang pangmasa, una sa Liga Filipina at sumunod, sa lideratong rebolusyonaryo. Sa gayon, hindi ilustrado sa ugat at tunguhin si Mabini.
Rasismo at Pambansang Kaligtasan
Sa kabila ng inimbentong “sanduguang kasunduan” nina Legaspi at Sikatuna noong Siglo 1600, hindi mahulagpusan ang pagkakaiba ng mga bagay-bagay. Nakukulayan iyon ng hidwaan ng mga uri sa lipunan. Ang hugis ng katawan at mukha ay naging simbolo’t senyas ng ideolohiya, ng pagpapahalagang moral o espirituwal. Sa halip na rasyonalidad, lasa at damdamin ang namagitan. Magayumang talinghaga ang lumpong katawang ginagabayan ng mataray na utak.
Subaybayan ang takbo ng Zeitgeist sa modo ng produksyong materyal sa lipunan. Naglaho na ang Siglo ng Kaliwanagan, lumaganap na ang sensibilidad ng kontra-repormasyon, ang milyu ng Inquisition. Mula pa sa kilusang sekularismo nina Burgos, Gomez at Zamora, noong unang hati ni Siglo 1800, litaw na mahayap ang pakiramdam ng mga sambayanang tinaguriang “indio” sa pagkakabukod ng lipunan ayon sa katangiang pisikal—sa kulay ng balat, ayos ng katawan, marka ng tinig o bigkas, at iba pang makikitang tanda. Umaayon ito sa antropologong kaalaman sa europa: ang imperyong puti ang siyang bukal ng sibilisasyon. Matindi ang sipat at kritika nina Marcelo del Pilar, Isabelo de los Reyes, at Jose Rizal sa rasismo ng Kastila. Natuto si Mabini sa kanilang halimbawa.
Ang pinakamatingkad na pagpapatibay sa mapagpasiyang saloobin ni Mabini hinggil sa rasismo ay makikita sa kanyang reaksyon sa manipesto ni Schurman noong Abril 5, 1899. Nakapaloob sa manifesto ang deklarasyon na di umano’y inilipat sa Estados Unidos ang soberanya ng espanya sa Pilipinas. Puspos ng kasinungalingan at kabulaanan iyan! sambitla ni Mabini. Nais ipataw ng Amerika ang dahas nila sa Pilipinas na noon pa man ay wala na sa kamay nila, dahil sa natalo sila ng armas ng rebolusyon. Paliwanag ni Mabini:
Anong palabas ito na naitambad sa siglong tinawag na sibilisado at may pinag-aralan ang isang bansa na marunong umibig sa kasarinlan at nakapagmamalaki sa kanyang wani sa hustisya ay siya ngayong gagamit ng pinagbuklod na dahas
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upang agawin sa isang mahinang bayan ang mga karapatan na, sa kanilang pagtitiwala, ay angkin nila ayon sa batas ng kalikasan. Nalugmok tayo sa matinding kalungkutan sa pagkabatid na ang mga magiting na mga bansa, na binigyan ng Banal na Maykapal ng mahal na misyon at kasangkapan upang mapanitili ang kapayapaan at katarungang unibersal, ay malamig at walang kibo sa harap ng kalapastanganang ito.... Tinutugis tayo ngayon ng perhuwisyong rasista, akalang nakapipinsala na sadyang malalim, malupit at walang humpay mula sa Anglo-Sahon ng Hilagang Amerika (Agoncillo 1974, 231; salin ni ESJ).
Pinagdiinan ni Mabini na ang rasismong gawi’t patakaran ng mananakop ay katumbas ng pag-kaalipin ng lahi. ikinabit niya ito sa kasaysayan ng estados Unidos, sa sistema ng pambubusabos sa mga katutubong indio at mga esklabong inangkat mula sa Aprika. iginiit ni Mabini na ang pagsakop ng Amerika ay “mangangahulugan ng walang patid na kaalipinan sa kamay ng mga taong talagang kaiba sa atin sa asal, kostumbre; mga panginoong ayaw makapiling ang mga taong balat- kayumanggi; mga mananakop na hindi natin matatakasan ng walang madugong pakikibaka” (Agoncillo 1974, 233-34). Kung ayaw nating maulit ang sinaunang kasaysayan, kailangan ang sama-samang interbensiyon.
Dumako tayo sa isa pang komprontasyong makatas sa katalasan ng paghimay sa masalimuot na suliraning pampulitika at katapangan ng diwa ni Mabini. Kaugnay ito ng kanyang pakikipagpalitang-kuro kay Heneral James Franklin Bell ng estados Unidos. Sumulat si Bell kay Mabini upang balewalahin ang gerilyang taktika ng mga Pilipino. Sumbat ni Bell na matatanggap lamang ang digmaan kung maaaring manalo ang mga Pilipino; kung sila’y magpapatuloy, wala silang muwang sa sibilisasyon, sila’y dapat ibukod sa sangkatauhan at sa gayon sila ay kriminal na hindi makapagpapahalaga sa kabutihan ng gobyernong sibil na handog ng estados Unidos. Litaw na rasyonalisasyon ito sa mabangis at walang awang pag-masaker ng mga katutubong nilalang.
Ano ang sagot ng paralitiko? ikinatwiran ni Mabini na ang argumento ni Bell ay walang iba kundi, dahas ay makatwiran. Ang makapangyarihan ay tama at masusunod. Ang sibilisado’t makataong sentimyentong inaangkin ni Bell ay kunwari lamang, madaya’t mapanlinlang. Ang pakikitunggali ng mga Pilipino sa paraang gerilyang estratehiya ay pag-agap sa kahinaan ng rebolusyonaryong hukbo kumpara
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sa estados Unidos. Gayunpaman, taglay ng kapwa naglalaban ang parehong dami ng panganib sa pakikipagsapalaran. Hindi kalabisan ito ng nagtatanggol sa kanilang tahanan at kanilang kalayaan. Napilit ang maliliit na bayan sa pagpili ng gerilyang pamamaraan sa harap ng panghihimasok ng malalaki’t maunlad na bansa. Bakit mali ito?
Mangahas Magnasa, Mangahas Humangad
Matining ang lohika ng pantas. Giit ni Mabini, ito ay “pagtatanggol sa ating karangalan at mga karapatang natural, mahanga’y pagbintangan tayong walang kabihasnan at walang pananagutan sa isang mabuting gobyerno... Kung tutuusin, ang gerilyang pagsalungat ay sagisag na may sapat na kalinangan ang mga Pilipino.... Ang resistensiyang kilos ng mga Pilipino ay hindi tulak ng pagkutya sa rasa kundi pinapatnubayan ng mga simulaing pinagpala’t binendisyunan din ng dugo ng mga ninuno ng mga sumasalakay sa atin” (Kramer 2006, 135-36; salin ni ESJ).
Hindi mapapasubalian ang tindig ni Mabini. Sa paglagom, maisususog: kung walang kalayaan at kasarinlan, walang identidad at dignidad ang sambayanan. Sa pakikibaka lamang mabubuo ang kaluluwa ng bansa, ang taal at dalisay na pagkatao na tatak ng humanidad. Malayo iyon sa sopistikong lohika ng mga upisyal ng imperyalistang hukbo, tulad nina Bell at MacArthur—ang huli ang siyang nagpatapon kay Mabini sa Guam pagkatapos bigyan siya ng lektura tungkol sa pagsasarili at kalayaan (Miller 1982, 161; San Juan 2004).
Ang dakilang katapatan ni Mabini ay hindi nakakuwadro sa karunungan niya sa agham o sa ibang disiplina. iyon ay kaagpang sa transpormasyon ng kapaligiran. Laging handa si Mabini sa pagbabago, tulad ng pagkaparalisado niya bago lumahok sa pamahalaan ni Aguinaldo. Tanggap ang kapalaran, handang sumabak sa pagsagupa sa tadhana.
Masasalat ang gipit na sitwasyon ng paralisadong intelektuwal sa panahon ng gulo’t ligalig. May kakulangan sa balita, sa kabatiran. Ayon kay Ambeth Ocampo, nagkamali si Mabini sa hinuha niyang tutulong ang Amerika sa pagpapalaya sa Cuba. Sa isang liham niya sa mga rebolusyonaryo noong Abril 1987, nang siya ay nakabimbin sa San Juan de Dios Hospital mula Oktubre 1986 hanggang Hunyo 1987, ipinahatid
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niya ang proposisyon na kapag nakitang may malakas at organisadong masa na handang ipagtanggol ang kanyang karangalan at mga batas ng hustisya, mapipilitan silang maghunos-dili at humingi ng mabuting pakikipagpalagayan. inamin ni Ocampo na mas masaklaw ang kaalaman ni Mabini kaysa kay Rizal tungkol sa tendensiyang heopolitikal ng Amerika (isinaad ni Rizal sa akdang “Ang Pilipinas Sa Loob ng Isang Siglo”).
Gayunpaman, hindi nahinto sa kabanatang iyon ang buhay ni Mabini. Nagbago ang pananaw niya pagkaraang masaksihan ang maniobra ng Schurman Commission at mga kakutsaba nito sa Kongreso ng Malolos. At pagkaraang makipagbuno kay Heneral Bell. walang pasubaling nagbabago ang kaisipan alinsunod sa bigat ng daluyong ng mga pangyayari, laluna’t bukas sa diyalektika ng ideolohiya at dinamikong mekanismo ng produksyon na susi sa transpormasyon ng pagsulong ng lipunan. Nasakyan ni Mabini ang masalimuot na problema ng relasyon ng ideolohiya at relasyong panlipunan sa Pilipinas sa gitna ng digmaang Filipino-Amerikano ng 1899-1903.
Salamangkerong Tagapayo?
Nagkaroon ng pagkakataong maisapraktika ni Mabini ang prinsipyong anti-rasismo sa pagtulong sa himagsikang anti-imperyalista. Ano ang problemang hinarap ni Mabini nang siya’y makilahok sa grupo ni Aguinaldo noong tumungo siya sa Kawit, Cavite noong Hunyo 12, 1898? At anong problema ang binuno niya nang mahuli siya ng Amerikanong sumakop sa Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija, noong Disyembre 10, 1899? At, sa wakas, ano ang magagamit sa mapanuring repleksiyon niya tungkol sa karanasan ng pakikilahok sa rebolusyon?
Hindi na kaila sa palaaral ang masilakbong kontradiksiyon ng mga uri sa Cavite at sa Malolos. Bunga iyon ng mga pangyayaring naglunsad sa gobyernong inugitan ng grupo ni Aguinaldo na hango sa prinsipalya’t maykayang uri. Bagamat hindi kasapi sa uring propitaryo, pinili siya ni Aguinaldo dahil sa dunong sa batas at pagtutol sa kolonyalismong espanyol. At dahil din sa katanyagang umakit ng paghanga mula sa mga palaaral na insurekto. Ang pagsapi niya sa rebolusyon ay nagbuhat sa talino, karanasan, at makatwirang kapasiyahan, hindi sa katapatan
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sa pamilya o uring kinasibulan. Kapasiyahang indibidwal batay sa kolektibong sitwasyon ng lahing kinabilangan niya.
Nang kasangkot na sa administrasyon ni Aguinaldo, tumulong si Mabini sa pagsulat ng mga dekreto sa pagbuo ng mga pangasiwaan ng munisipyo’t probinsya noong Hunyo 23, 1898. Bagamat hindi pa tuluyang napapalaya ang buong kapuluan, intensiyon na ng Asambleang Popular na “ipakahulugan sa matapat na paraan ang layuning popular ng masa.” Ang diktadura ni Aguinaldo ay naghunos sa rebolusyonaryong pamahalaan noon Hunyo 23, 1898. Ang programa ng pamahalaan noon, ayon kay Mabini, ay isa lamang pansamantalang paraan habang hindi pa sumusuko ang espanya: kailangang “makibaka upang matamo ang kasarinlan ng Pilipinas na kikilalanin ng lahat ng bansa, at ihanda ang bayan upang maitatag ang Republika.” Kailangang umiral muna ang awtoridad at poder ng katutubong liderato kaakibat sa paglunsad ng mga institusyong kasangkot dito (Tan 2002, 33).
Dahil dito, bilang tagapagtaguyod ng disiplina ng kilusan, salungat si Mabini sa mapusok na asal ni Heneral Antonio Luna sa simula. Sa pagkatapon sa Guam, nagbago ang pagsipat at pagtimbang ni Mabini sa kontribusyon ni Luna sa pakikibaka nang siya’y paslangin. Ayon kay Agoncillo (1998, 216-223), doble-kara si Mabini. Hindi tumpak ang pagtayang ito sapagkat hindi nakalapat sa pasumalang pagsasanga ng landas ng gumaganap sa dula ng kasaysayan.
Nang sulatin ni Mabini ang gunita niya ng rebolusyon, may malawak at matayog na perspektiba na siya mula sa malahatang pagtanaw niya na inihasa sa Guam. Sa pagsusuma, ginamit ni Mabini ang isang diyalektikang metodo upang matimbang ang halaga ng paglilingkod ni Luna sa kabila ng mga kakulangan sa pakikipagkapuwa sa mga sundalo’t opisyal. Sa pakiwari ko, walang daya o pagkukunwari ang pagkilatis ni Mabini sa pagkatao nina Aguinaldo at Luna sa gitna ng kumplikadong sitwasyon nila.
Sang-ayon ang historyador na si Cesar Adib Majul (1960): batid ni Mabini na ang uring pesanteng bumubuo ng rebolusyonaryong tropang pinamumunuan ni Luna ay laban sa oligarkong orden (kinatawan nina Paterno at Buencamino) humihingi ng awtonomiya sa mga Amerikano. Pumanig si Mabina kay Luna sapagkat ang rebolusyon ay pagbawi ng
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soberanya ng masa—sa kataga ni Mabini, “la clase mas numerosa” (Majul 1960, 124)—mula sa kolonyalismong Espanyol (o Amerikano) at kasabwat nitong katutubong oligarko (hacendados).
Himaymayin ang mga Kontradiksiyon
Dalawa ang tangka ng mga dekretong niyari ni Mabini sa panahon ng emerhensiya. Ano ang determinadong paghahanay ng mga puwersang politikal-historikal noon? Bukod sa nais lusawin ang Republikang nadungisan ng Kasunduan sa Biak-na-Bato, hangad ni Aguinaldo na monopolisahin ang kapangyarihan ng lahat ng mga grupong lumalaban sa espanya. isa na rito ang mga tropa ni emilio Jacinto, ang katulong ni Bonifacio sa Katipunan, at ni Paciano Rizal, na hindi pa tuluyang nakipagsunduan sa mga ilustrado.
inanyayahan si Jacinto ni Mabini na umanib na kay Aguinaldo pagkatapos mabuo ang kongreso sa Malolos. Ang pangalawang dahilan, sa puna ni Renato Constantino, ay makauri: ibuod sa personalidad ni Aguinaldo ang magkakahiwalay na lakas sa buong bansa na maaaring magbunsod sa anarkiya (1975, 206). Mungkahi ang hakbang na ito ni Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, hindi ni Mabini. Sumunod ang proklamasyon ng independensiya sa Kawit, Cavite, noong Hunyo 12, 1898. Ngunit pagkatapos ng kunwaring sagupaan, sumuko ang espanya sa Amerika noong Agosto 13, 1898. Babala na ito ng darating na digmaan.
Katibayan na hindi pa mabisa ang pag-angkin ng kasarinlan sa isang proklamasyon. Sa katunayan, nag-uumpisa pa lamang ang proyekto ng pagbuo ng bansa bilang republika. ito ang dahilan kaya hindi siya sumang-ayon sa mga panukala nina Felipe Calderon at Pedro Paterno na ipataw ang Konstitusyong napagkasunduan sa Malolos sa pangulo (Aguinaldo) sapagkat ang binansagang kongreso sa Barasoain ay hindi tunay na kinatawan ng sambayanan. Ang mayorya ay hinirang ni Aguinaldo at hindi tunay na representatibo ng nakararaming mamamayan. ipinahayag ni Mabini na ang naturang kongreso ay magsilbing tagapayo lamang; kailangan ang malakas, matipuno’t makatuturang liderato na, sa panahong iyon, ay taglay ng pangulo (Aguinaldo). Ang pinakaimportante ay ang nagkakaisang hanay laban sa kolonyalismo, pangalawa na lamang ang kasiping na kontradiksiyon ng mga uring bumubuo ng hanay.
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Hindi nasunod ang mungkahi ni Mabini. isinaisantabi ang mga egalitaryang mungkahi niya nina Calderon at mga kasabwat (Karnow 1989, 132). Tumiwalag si Mabini sa pamahalaan bilang Unang Kasangguni noong Agosto 23, 1898. Nagpatuloy siyang sumulat ng mga tudling “na pambuhay ng loob” na nailathala sa La Independencia, ang organo ng rebolusyon (Sevilla 2015). Sa naratibo ng kasaysayan, ang paglusob ng pwersang Amerikano ang nakaputol sa pagpapatuloy ng liderato ni Aguinaldo at mga tagapayong humalili kay Mabini: ang pangkat nina Paterno, Calderon, Buencamino, Legarda, Pardo de Tavera, Araneta, atbp. —mga ilustrado’t oligarkong handang makialyado sa imperyalismong Amerikano.
Tila umaalingawngaw sa lagusan ng kasaysayan ang masaklaw at matalas na babala ni Mabini na binitiwan niya nang pumutok ang sagupaan noong Pebrero 1899: “Hindi tayo makapangingibabaw sa araw na ito, ngayon, subalit maari tayong umasa na matatamo ang tagumpay sa kinabukusan kung kasama’t kaakbay natin ang taumbayan. Kung hindi, tiyak na tayo’y magagapi.” Nangyari nga ang hula, at lalong mangyayari pa hanggang hindi naisasaloob ang aral na, sa huling paghatol, ang masa lamang, hindi mga bayani o liderato, ang siyang tunay na humuhubog ng kasaysayan.
Simbuyo ng Makauring Lakas
Balik-tanawin muli natin ang konteksto ng digmaan. wala pang apat na buwan mula nang iproklama ang Republika sa Barasoian noong Enero 23, 1899, nabuo na ang Schurman Commision ng Estado Unidos na inutusang magmungkahi ng awtonomiya sa rebolusyonaryong gobyerno ni Aguinaldo. walang atubili sina Paterno at pangkat nito na tanggapin ang alok ng Schurman Commission, ang mapang-akit na bitag at pain.
Tahasang umayaw si Mabini. Pinalitan siya ni Aguinaldo; si Paterno ang naging pangulo ng gabinete. Ang bunga’t kinahinatnan ng pagsunggab ng kapangyarihan ng mga oligarko ay paghina ng hukbo’t demoralisasyon sa pagpatay kay Heneral Antonio Luna ng grupo ni Buencamino, na sinang- ayunan ni Aguinaldo. Sa gayon, naulit ang pagtataksil ni Aguinaldo na nag-umpisa sa pagpaslang kina Andres Bonifacio at kapatid pagkatapos ng kombensyon sa Tejeros noong Marso 22, 1897. Naulit ang kataksilan.
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Hinirang si Mabini bilang puno ng Gabinite ni Aguinaldo noong Enero 2, 1899, pagkaraang magkasundo ang Kongreso sa deklarasyon ng Konstitusyon ng Unang Republika. Nilusaw ni Aguinaldo ang gabineteng ginagabayan ni Mabini, pumalit si Padro Paterno bilang premier. Ang mga kasabwat ni Paterno ang pumaibabaw sa liderato: sina Felipe Buencamino (na nagplano sa pagpatay kay Antonio Luna), Severino de las Alas, Mariano Trias, atbp. Nang mabalitaan ni Mabini na nakikipagtawaran na sina Paterno sa Schurman Commission, nainis siya sa mga taong naghahangad na independensiya ngunit ayaw makibaka. Hinulaan niya na ang mga itong nasuya na sa pakikibaka ay walang silbi kung “isabalikat ang singkaw ng pagkaalipin” (Constantino 1975, 221).
Magkatugma ang komentaryo ni Constantino sa analisis ng historyador na si Teodoro Agoncillo sa Filipino Nationalism 1872-1970. Nabihag ng mga kinatawan ng prinsipalya’t mariwasang mestizo si Aguinaldo. Lumagpak ang gabineteng hawak ni Mabini sapagkat matipuno ang paninindigan niyang huwag magpakabulag sa gayuma ng Schurman Commission. Sinagot ni Mabini ang Manifesto nina Schurman, Dewey, Otis, worcester, Denby & Charles McArthur na isinalin ni Agoncillo sa ingles. walang saysay ang Tratado sa Paris sa pagitan ng U.S. at espanya sapagkat lumipas na ang administrasyon ng espanya sa buong kapuluan. Ngunit di binigyan ng tinig ang mga delegado ng Pilipinas batay sa rason at batas pang-internasyonal. Pakutyang hagod ni Mabini:
What a spectacle it is to see that at the end of the century called enlightened and civilized, a people who know how to love their sovereignty and proud of their sense of justice now would use their accumulated force to wrest from a weak people the very rights which in their case they believe to be inherent in natural law!...Let us fight to our last breath in order to defend our sovereignty, our independence. ....if we lay down our arms our children will be in bondage and will not be able to recover; they will inherit from us nothing but misery and struggle which they will be forced to suffer if we do not continue the present war. If you wallow in poverty, chained to slavery, and then you come to think of what your children will be, do you now think it is sweeter to die? This abject suicide will be the fate of anyone who will allow himself to be duped by the poisonous promises of the North Americans (Agoncillo 1974, 231-32)
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Kung maiging titimbangin, mas malalim at matalas ang kabatiran ni Mabini sa ideolohiya ng rasismo. iyon ay nakakubli sa mga kabulaanang itinambad ng mga dayuhan tungkol sa demokrasya’t kaunlaran ng sibilisadong Kanluran. Ang rasismong gawi, prehuwisyong mapang-uyam sa katutubo, ang natarok ni Mabini na umuugit sa mabangis na dahas ng Amerika. itong sipat ni Mabini ang pinakamakatuturing persepsiyon niya sa katangian ng mananakop batay sa kanyang malawak na kaalaman sa historya ng estados Unidos, partikular ang negosyo sa mga busabos na bihag mula sa Aprika, at pagmasaker sa mga tribung katutubo, mga taal na nananahan sa kontinente. Dahil dito, maitatanghal kong si Mabini ay siyang walang-kapantay na propetikong dalubhasa ng rebolusyonaryong tradisyon ng lahi. Dinggin ang talakay niya:
...For wherever we turn we are being pursued by race prejudice, which is deep, cruel, and implacable in the North American Anglo Saxon.... Annexations, whatever form it may take, will result in our eternal slavery by a people so different from us in manners and customs, a people who do not want to see a brown people beside them, and a people from whom we cannot separate without resorting to armed conflict (Agoncillo 1974, 233-34)
Sandatang Utak ng Katawan
Sa arkibo ng mga pagkukuro’t interpretasyon hinggil sa kontribusyon ni Mabini sa pagsulong ng masa, ang pinakatagilid at mapanghamak ay iyong tuligsa ni Nick Joaquin sa dalawang kabanata ng A Question of Heroes tungkol sa bayani. Ang argumento ni Joaquin ay maibubuod sa isang pangungusap: Dahil si Mabini ay “Eminence Grise” sa likod ng Pangulo at siyang responsable sa mga dekreto ni Aguinaldo at mga hakbang nito sa pakikipagkapwa sa mga uring prinsipalya, creole at iba pang mariwasang ilustrado, hindi si Aguinaldo o Paterno ang sanhi ng pagkabulusok ng rebolusyon kundi si Mabini mismo. Ang pagkakawatak- watak ng mga pwersang tumututol sa barbarismong Yangki ay kagagawan ni Mabini, hindi ng mga katunggali o kakompitensiya sa larangan ng politika.
Maraming maling desisyon at akto ni Mabini ang sinisi ni Joaquin. Si Mabini raw ang hindi pumayag sa pagpapalaya sa mga bilanggong Kastila, kaya hindi nirespeto ng ibang bansa ang Republika. Si Mabini ang
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may kasalanan: hindi niya isinali sa tropa ng rebolusyon ang mga Kastilang sundalong nabihag. Sa huling paghuhukom, ang bukal ng mga kasalanan at pagkabigo ni Mabini ay isa: egotismo, pagkamakasarili, walang modo, lisyang taktika, walang kaparaanan. Sa maikling salita, lumaki ang ulo ni Mabini, na umastang isang Napoleon Bonaparte.
Akusasyon din ni Joaquin na walang prinsipyo si Mabini kundi sariling kapakanan. wala siyang tiwala sa mga manggagawa o magsasaka, wala rin siyang paggalang sa mga kapwa ilustrado. Para kay Joaquin, si Mabini ay isang oportunistang walang interes sa estratehiya ng digmaan, sa mithiin ng mga maralita, o sa pangarap ng mga Creole, prinsipalya’t relihiyoso (bagamat itinaguyod niya sina Gregorio Aglipay at mga kapanalig, mga tagapagmana ng sekularistang kilusan). Mabigat na mga paratang ito—paratang na walang ebidensiya o matinong lohika upang seryosong isaalang-alang.
Sa masinop na pagsisiyasat, ang anti-rasismong kritika ni Mabini ay sumupling sa modernidad ng anti-kolonyalismong proyekto. Hindi lamang katwiran at batas ng kalikasan ang timbulan ng pakikibaka, na inihabi mula sa iskolastikong pilosopiya ni Santo Tomas Aquina at mga klasikong Stoikong pantas ng imperyong Romano. ito ang laging tinatalakay ng mga iskolar (halimbawa, Reyno 1964). Tanggap na nabahiran ang kaisipan niya ng mga ideya nina Cicero, Althusius, Grotius, Spinoza, Hobbes at Locke (Sabine 1937). Maari ring may impluwensiya si Hooker at kilusang masoneria kay Mabini. Ngunit sa aking palagay, mas tumagos ang mga ideya nina Rizal, Del Pilar at mga kapanalig sa Solidaridad. Mahihinuha rin na ang partikularidad ng sirkumstansya ni Mabini ang higit na mabisa sa pag-linang at pag-unlad ng pangangatwiran at pagpapasiya.
Mapagbagong Praktika
inisyatiba sa organisasyon ang idiniin ni Mabini. Nang pansumandaling nakahimpil si Mabini sa Rosales, Pangasinan, noong Oktubre 22, 1899, nagproklama siya ng isang manipestong humihikayat sa mga paring katutubo na magbuo ng isang simbahang pambansa. ito ang naging inspirasyon kina Gregorio Aglipay at isabelo Reyes sa pagtatag ng Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Agoncillo & Alfonso 1967, 279- 281). Natupad ang mga pagsisikap nina Burgos, Gomez at Zamora na
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isabansa ang relihiyong hiniram sa mga misionero. Ang mga pari ay mamamayang kaagapay ng mga pesante, manggagawa, at karaniwang taumbayan na sinikil at binusabos ng mga prayle. Hindi tutol si Mabini sa pananampalataya, kundi sa abuso’t paglapastangang sinanay ng mga espanyol sa Simbahan sa inihaing likod ng mga paganong bininyagan.
Ang tema o diskurso ng transisyon tungo sa kasarinlang pambansa ay sumasaklaw sa mga institusyong minana sa mga dayuhang umangkin ng katutubong espasyo. iyon ay mga aparato ng ideolohiya, makina sa manipulasyon ng utak at puso, isip at damdamin. Kaya kailangang mabawi ang pagpapalakad ng mga institusyon mula sa kamay ng mga dayuhang mapagsamantala. Nagunita ni Mabini (nakintal sa kabanata tungkol kina Burgos, Gomez at Zamora sa La Revolucion Filipina) ang lakas ng kolektibong damdamin ng pakikiramay nang bitayin ang tatlong martir noong 1872.
Pagtuunan ng pansin ang tema ng politika ng kalumbayan at pakikiramay na inilarawan ni Mabini. Ang hapdi at pagkahabag, ang pighati’t pagsusumakit sa kahirapan ng mga nasawi, ang siyang pumukaw sa madla at bumigkis dito:
Lumikha ng mirakulo ang hapis; sa kauna-unahang pagkakataon nagkamalay ang Filipino sa kanyang kondisyon. Nagkamalay sa sakit, at samakatwid gumising sa katotohanan ng buhay, itinanong nila kung anong klase ng pamumuhay ang dinaranas nila. Ang pagkamulat ay masakit, at nagsusumikap manatiling buhay, lalong sumidhi ang kirot, subalit kailangang mabuhay. Paano? Hindi nila alam, at ang paghahangad na malaman kung paano, ang pagkabalisa sa pagtuklas ng kasagutan, ay siyang sumaklot sa kaluluwa ng mga kabataan sa atin. Ang kurtinan ng ignoransiya na inihabi ng ilang siglo ay biglang napunit sa wakas. Fiat lux, batiin ang liwanag, hindi na ito magtatagal, ang bukang-liwayway ng bagong panahon ay sumapit na (1969, 23; tingnan si Ileto 1998, 13-14).
Totoong nalugmok sa pighati ang nakiramay, nasindak at tuloy nag-isip. Umaahon na tayo sa larangan ng maramdaming pagpapasiya ni Rousseau at nasa bingit ng anarkistang haka-haka nina Nietzsche at Bakunin. Salungat sa haka-haka ng mga subalternistang historyador, bagamat maramdamin ang taumbayan, hindi sila napatangay sa sinumang panatikong mesiyas, kaya hindi naging terorista tulad ng mga Rusong
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pumaslang sa mga tsar noong siglo 1800. Bakit? Dahil may kolektibong kamalayan, hindi makasarili, taglay ang disiplina ng pesanteng umaangkop sa daloy ng panahon, klima, hangin, ulan. ekolohikal ang etika ng rebolusyong ibinalangkas ni Mabini sa isip at gawa.
Sanay siya sa pagmamasid sa takbo ng kapaligiran, sa masalimuot na daluyong ng mga pangyayari. Nagpamalas si Mabini ng pagkamaramdaming pagbubulay-bulay noon pa mang pinangasiwaan niya ang Cuerpo de Compromisarios noong Oktubre 1893 hanggang kalagitnaan ng 1894. Naramdaman niyang hindi na uubra ang mapayapang iskema ng Solidaridad. Kailangan nang lumukso sa yugto ng Katipunan. Pagdaramdam lang ba ito? O masusi’t matiyagang analisis at pagtatasa ng mga kilos, salita, tono, ritmo at iba pang senyas ng katawan ng kapanlig (mga 50 miyembro ng kapisanan) sa lansangan, sa pagpupulong, sa karaniwang pakikipagkapuwa? Nahinuha ni Mabini noon: “Hindi karaniwan ang mga araw ngayon, bagamat hindi makasisiguro kung ang lagay ngayon ay hudyat ng isang kagimbal-gimbal na lindol o isang simpleng pagbabago sa kapanatagan ng atmospera” (sinipi sa Mojares 2006, 464). Binalasa niya ang aksidente at katiyakan, sinubok kung saan makasisingit ang interbensiyon ng masa sa pagsasakatuparan ng programa ng himagsikan.
Managot Tayo sa Katotohanan
Totoong naging abogado si Mabini sa kanyang sariling pagsisikap, tiyaga at angking talino. Ngunit ang ipangalandakan na nabuyo’t nahumaling lamang sa legalidad ang kamalayan ni Mabini ay isang kalabisang sakdal. iyon ang haka-haka ng mga kritiko.
Hindi porma o istruktura ng pangyayari ang inasikaso kundi ang laman at sigla nito. Bago natapos ni Mabini ang kurso sa batas sa Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas noong 1894, maigting na ang kanyang pagkasangkot sa kilusang mapagpalaya. Sa unang pagkakataon, kasapi siya sa Liga Filipina na inilunsad ni Rizal noong gabi ng Hulyo 3, 1892. Humalili siya kay Deodato Arellano sa pagka-sekretaryo ng Liga. Nang unti-unting maglaho ang Liga sa pagkatapon kay Rizal sa Dapitan, napalitan ito ng Cuerpo de Compromisarios upang ipagpatuloy ang pagtulong sa Solidaridad. Kalahok pa rin si Mabini sa gawaing iyon.
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Nabuo ang sekretong organisasyon ng Katipunan nina Bonifacio at iba pang dating kasapi sa Liga. Dapat idiin na hindi itinakwil ni Mabini ang Katipunan na dagling nagpatuloy sa malikhaing transpormasyon ng mga simulain ng Liga, laluna ang pag-isahin ang lahat ng mga tao sa buong sangkapuluan, ang masang kinabibilangan ng pesante o magbubukid at trabahador, ang nakararaming sinisikil. Dagdag sa adhikain iyon ang dalawa pang prinsipyo: pasiglahin ang kolektibong pagtutulungan at maiging ipagtanggol ang lahat laban sa karahasan at inhustisya. Ang Katipunan ang siyang unang samahang nagbuklod sa nakararaming uri sa isang nagkakaisang hanay laban sa kolonyalismong espanyol at mga institusyong piyudal at teokratikong kasanib nito. iyon ang kanyang tunay na edukasyon, ang pagkatuto sa metamorposis ng realidad.
Nang mabunyag ang lihim na kilusan ng Katipunan, nabilanggo si Mabini at mga kasapi sa Liga noong Oktubre 11, 1896. Kabilang ang abogadong Numeriano Adriano na pinagsilbihan ni Mabini bilang katulong, at naging matalik na kaibigan. ibinitay ng espanya sina Adriano, Domingo Franco, Moises Salvador, at iba pang subersibong nadamay sa Katipunan. Dahil lumpo si Mabini (nagkasakit noong 1896 dalawang taon pagkatamo ng titulo sa abogasya), inilipat siya sa San Juan de Dios Ospital; at nang mapalaya, nanirahan siya sa Los Banos at sa Bay, Laguna. Kapiling muli ang taumbayan.
Muling Pagsilang
Ano ang pahiwatig ng unang yugtong ito sa buhay ng “dakilang lumpo”?
Mahihinuha na bagamat traumatiko kay Mabini ang nangyari sa mga martir ng Liga’t Katipunan, kailanma’y hindi itinakwil ni Mabini ang mithiing nagtulak sa maraming kababayan na sumama sa Katipunan at ialay ang buhay sa ikaliligtas ng dangal at dignidad ng mga kapwa o kanayong pinagsasamantalahan. Nailagom ang buod ng mithiing iyon sa kanyang Dekalogo na naggigiit na “hindi natin makakamit ang kalayaan ng ating bayan nang hindi tayo nagsasakripisyo ng ating sariling kalayaan (para sa kabutihan ng lahat) sa pagtahak sa landas ng karangalan at birtud.” Ang identidad ay nakukuyom sa puso ng mga kapwa api.
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Bawat sakuna ay naging aralin. Nang makulong si Mabini noong Disyembre 10, 1899 at mapalaya noong Setyembre 23, 1900, isang yugto ng karanasan iyon na nagpatibay sa ideya niya tungkol sa barbarismong Anglo-Saxon. Hindi sumumpa si Mabini na tanggapin ang soberanya ng U.S. Di naglaon, binira niya ang patakarang pandigmaan ni Heneral Arthur MacArthur, gobernador militar ng bayan. inilathala ang pagtuligsa niyang may pamagat na “El Simul de Alejandro” sa El Liberal noong enero 5, 1901. Dali-dali siyang pinadakip at ipinatapon sa Guam, kasama ang makabayang Pablo Ocampo (tungkol sa komentaryo ni Mabini sa pandaraya ng mga Amerikano, konsultahin ang ulat ni Lilia Laurel [1989]).
Dalawang taon siyang naghirap, kimkim ang pananalig na maipagpapatuloy ang panatang tumupad ng makabayang tungkulin. Hindi naman siya bulag o matigas ang ulo. Sa kalaunan, batid na ang mga dating alagad ng Republika ay pumailalim na sa kapangyarihan ng mananakop—hindi ito legalidad kundi realidad—napilitang sumumpa ni Mabini noong Pebrero 26, 1903. Wala pang tatlong buwan ang nakalipas nang siya’y maigupo ng kolera noong Mayo 13, 1903.
Lagda ng Kalikasan
Maipapanukala na sa buong panahon ng pakikisangkot ni Mabini, hindi legalidad ang gumabay sa kanya. Manapa’y komitment o paninindigan sa batas natural na itinuro ng mga humanitikong pilosopo ng Kaliwanagan at Rebolusyong Pranses—sina voltaire, Rousseau, Montesqieu, atbp.—at ginamit nina Balagtas, Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Bonifacio at Jacinto sa kanilang pedagohiya’t propaganda.
Stoikong pilosopiya ang nakataya rito. Hindi ito formalistikong legalidad kundi teorya’t praktika ng dignidad at karapatan ng bawa’t tao sa santinakpan na hugot di lamang sa kabihasnang Griyego’t Romano kundi mula sa pilosopiya’t kaalamang sekular ng India at Tsina. Mapipisil ang buod ng humanistikong pangitain ni Mabini sa Dekalogo kung saan ang sariling puri, karangalan at pagkamakatwiran ng budhi ang kaakibat sa pagsamba sa Bathala. Bukod dito, ang pangalawang sentro ng turo ni Mabini ay pag-ibig sa republikang niyayari, laluna sa proseso ng pagyari.
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Makitid at mali ang paratang ni Joaquin na naulol si Mabini sa pagsamba sa legalidad ng bawat bagay. Matalas ang kamalayan niya tungkol sa karakter at sikolohiya ng mga tao sa kanyang paligid. Marunong siyang makipagkapwa at maglapat ng alintunin sa iba’t ibang okasyon. Alam niya na may mga sangkap ng kalikasan ng tao’t lipunan na di saklaw ng regulasyong tradisyonal. Batid niya na may mga pagbabagong nagaganap bunga ng bagong karanasan; sa gayon, sumusulong ang kasaysayan at buhay, naiiba rin ang panuntunan o sistema ng mga alituntuning kailangan upang lutasin ang mga bagong suliranin.
Patunay sa angking galing at dunong ni Mabini ang pagtitiwala sa kanya ng guro niyang si Fr. valerio Malabanan, at nina Melchor very (sa paaralan ni very naglinkod si Mabini) at Numeriano Adriano, Kawaning taga-sulat si Mabini sa upisina ni Adriano habang siya’y nag-aaral sa UST. Napagtiwalaan din siya ng mga kasapi sa Liga. Lubos na sumangguni si Aguinaldo sa kanya—hanggang sa manaig ang kasike’t oligarkong oryentasyon ni Aguinaldo batay sa tuso’t oportunistikong estilo ng mga kasike’t negosyante, na siyang mikrobyo ng kapitalismong sakit na ipapataw ng imperyalismong Kano sa buong kapuluan.
Bagamat produkto si Mabini ng institusyong tradisyonal (San Juan de Letran; UST), tulad nina Rizal at iba pang antikolonyalista, sumabak si Mabini sa pagsasapraktika ng pilosopiya ng Griyego-Romanong hurisprudensiya. Nakasalig iyon sa doktrina ng batas natural na hango naman sa turo nina Socrates, Aristotel at mga pilosopong Stoiko hanggang kina Spinoza, Leibniz at Descartes.
Siyentipiko’t humanistikong pangitain ang natutunan ni Mabini sa pag-aaral niya ng hurisprudensiya. Umaayon iyon sa maligoy na agos ng karanasan at kasaysayan. Kaya kung pagninilaying masinop, ang prinsipyong pumatnubay kay Mabini sa panahong aktibo siya sa pamunuan ni Aguinaldo ay hindi legalidad kundi isang diwa’t puntodebista ng pagkakapantay-pantay. Naisaloob niya ang etika ng pakikiramay sa diwa’t damdamin, karanasan at pangarap at pangangailangan, ng nakararaming taong hindi maisakatuparan dahil walang kalayaan at kasarinlan ang lipunan. Kasudlong ito ng gawi ng magbubukid na nagtutulungan, ng
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mga mangingisda’t mangangaso—ang modo ng produksiyong umiiral habang karamihan ay nasa poder ng Simbahang may hawak ng lupain. Sa pusod ng agrikulturang pamamayan sumungaw ang kasike’t negosyante ng mga produkto ng maralitang taga-nayon.
Diyalektika ng Pakikipagsapalaran
Sa malas, ang ambag ni Mabini sa ating estratehiya ng pagbaklas sa imperyalismong global ay matatas at matining. Nakapaloob ito sa kanyang paniniwala sa kapangyarihan ng pinagsamang lakas ng taumbayan. Nabanggit na niya sa La Revolucion Filipina ang metamorposis ng kilusan. Napansin niya na sa simula, binuhos ni Bonifacio ang panahon at sikap sa paglaki ng miyembro ng Liga ni Rizal simula pa sa pagtatag nito noong 1892. Sa kalaunan, natuklasan ni Bonifacio na wala nang kapakinabangan ang mapayapang hakbang.
Ang isa’y nagiging dalawa, tatlo; nag-iiba ang mundo. Sa isang antas ng padalumat sa takbo ng mga pangyayari, ulat ni Mabini, naliwanagan ang mga namumuno ng Liga na ang masa, na sa tingin ng mga espanyol ay hangal at walang muwang, ay nagkaroon na ng inisyatiba. Nahati ang Liga sa Cuerpo de Compromisarios at alagad ng Katipunan (Mabini 1931, 297-299). Nagbabago ang sitwasyon, nagbabago rin ang pagtingin o sensibilidad ng tao at kanyang gawi, ugali, saloobin.
Maipaglilirip na ang paghahati sa dalawa at marami pang saray ng dalumat ay bugso ng diyalektika ng lipunan noon. Mahigpit na kaugnay ito sa kahulugan ng libertad o kalayaan. Sa turing ni Mabini, ang kalayaan ay hindi pagkilos nang walang balakid o sagka, anuman ang gustong gawin. Ang kalayaan ay laging nakaangkla sa rason, sa makandiling konsiyensiya, sa makatarungang budhi. wika niya: “Ang kalayaan ay pagsunod sa taong inaakala nating may kakayahang mamatnugot; sa gayon, sumusunod lamang tayo sa ating rason... Ang isang pulutong ng mga mamamayan ay hindi makagagawa ng anuman kung walang kaisahan sa pagkilos at adhika” (sinipi sa De la Costa 1965, 243). Saan nagmumula ang kaisahan ng kamalayan at gawa, ang praktika at mentalidad? Sa bayanihan, sa pakikiramay, sa kolektibong paraan ng pamumuhay sa kanayunan.
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Bukal iyon sa pagkakawing ng panloob at panlabas na transpormasyon. ipinahiwatig niya ito sa pagsisiyasat sa kalamnan at mithiin ng rebolusyon. Tagubilin niya: “Kung nais nating itayo muli ang ating lipunan sa isang matipunong saligan, dapat nating itaguyod ang isang repormang radikal hindi lamang sa ating mga institusyon kundi sa ating ugali sa kaisipan at gawain. Hindi lamang panlabas kundi panloob din ang ating rebolusyon” (sipi ni De la Costa 1965, 243). Magkasabay ang transpormasyong panloob at panlabas, edukasyon ng edukador ang nasasaksihan, sapagkat magkasuklob ang damdamin at kaisipan kapag kumikilos ang masa sa mapagpalayang pagsulong.
Masinop na tinalakay ni Cesar Majul ang batayang simulain ng pilosopiyang pampulitika ni Mabini sa kanyang diskurso. Magkatalik ang rebolusyong panloob at pagbabagong panlabas upang makabuo ng komunidad pambansa na nakasalig sa likas na rason o katuwiran ng mamamayan. iyon ang lohika ng rebolusyon. Ang kalayaan ay nagmumula sa ating pagsunod sa ating likas na rason o katuwiran, na siyang saligan ng disiplina’t katarungan sa larangang sekular. Masidhing isapuso ang pinakamabigat na makasaysayang pahiwatig ni Mabini hinggil sa rebolusyon natin. itinuring niya itong isang kilusan na “taglay ang natatangi’t pinakamalalim na layon na panatilihing buhay at dakila ang sulo ng kalayaan sa Oceania, upang tanglawan ang gabi kung saan ang lahing Malay ay inalipusta’t dinuhagi, upang sa gayon mahikayat ito sa landas ng kasarinlang panlipunan” (Majul 1960, 275).
Kinakailangan ang pagbabago ng kalooban, ng saloobing ayos ng pagkatao, katugma sa pangangailangan ng realidad. ito tila ang mabagsik na payo at turo ni Mabini. Dapat pawiin natin ang minanang ugali, gawi, balangkas ng ating pamumuhay, na isiningkaw ng kolonyalismong espanyol. Kung hindi, mapapariwara ang buong bayan sa giyera sibil at awayan, na maski na ang dugong ibinubo ng ating mga bayani ay hindi makapagliligtas sa atin sa kamatayan.
Tumayo’t Lumakad, Humakbang
Para kanino ang katuturan ng buhay mo? Tinutukoy ni Mabini ang kamatayan ng katawang pampolitika. Alalalong baga, kung walang kaisahan ng adhikain, patakaran, simulain, na siyang sagisag at katibayan
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ng humanidad ng bansa, malayong maisakatuparan ang layon ng rebolusyon. Malayo nga sa harap ng indibidwalismong konsumerismo, kompetisyo, makahayup na pagtatagisan upang magkamal ng salapi, titulo, pabuya, aliw, pansumandaling yabang, atbp.
PAGLALAGOM (CONCLUSION)
Sa pagsusuma, matatarok ang nakapatnubay na prinsipyo ng diwa ni Mabini sa dedikasyon ng La Rebolucion Filipina sa kanyang ina. iyon ay pag-aalaga sa komunikasyon sa isang minamahal, sa isang taong kinilala niyang bukal ng kanyang puso’t kaluluwa. Nais ng ina niyang maging pari ang anak. Ngunit dahil sa kasalatan, hindi naging pari si Mabini. Namatay ang ina sa hirap ng trabahong nakapagtawid sa pamilya. Bagamat hindi naging pari, kumpisal ni Mabini sa ina niyang siyang umaktong nakikinig—na tila sikologong dulot ang gamot sa birtud ng salitaan o komunikasyon—ang tunay na ministro ng Diyos ay yaong nagpapatalastas ng kanyang kadakilaan sa pamamagitan ng kawanggawa, ng paglilingkod sa nakararaming nilalang (alingawngaw ni Bentham at utilitaryang pilosopo tula ni John Stuart Mill). isinumpa ni Mabini na siya ay mananatiling tapat sa kagustuhan ng ina habang may sigla.
Anong maihahandog ng pulubing anak, ng paralisadong katawan? Natutong sumulat, natutong magsalita. Hindi dasal kundi kumbersasyon, balitaan, pakikipagtalastasan. Sa piling ng mga kapwa nilalang, hindi panginoon o bathala. Kaya iniaalay ni Mabini ang kanyang panitik sa memorya ng ina, isang bagay na hindi katumbas ng pagkatao ng ina, ngunit isang bagay na hinabi ng taos-pusong pagsisikap ng kanyang anak. Sa bulong ng anak sa ina, at sa pagdugtong sa dalawang mundong iyon, sa komunidad ng nag-alaga at inalagaan, nakatambad ang ulirang halimbawa ni Mabini, ang konsiyensiya ng kanyang lahi. Ang sakripisyo sa pakikibaka ang siyang matibay na pundasyon ng maunlad at nagsasariling bansa na nagkakaintindihan at nagkakaunawaan.
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SANGGUNIAN (REFERENCES)
Agoncillo, Teodoro A. 1974. Filipino Nationalism 1972-1970. Quezon City: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co.
_________. 1998. Bahaghari’t Bulalakaw. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Agoncillo, Teodoro and Alfonso, Oscar. 1967. History of the Filipino People. Quezon City: Malaya Books
Alvarez, Santiago V. 1992. The Katipunan ang the Revolution. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Constantino, Renato. 1975. The Philippines: A Past Revisited. Quezon City: Tala Publishing Services.
Corpuz, O.D. 2002. Saga and Triumph: The Filipino Revolution Against Spain. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
de la Costa, Horacio. 1965. Readings in Philippine History. Manila: Bookmark. Forbes, W. Cameron. 1945. The Philippine Islands. Revised ed. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: international Publishers.
Ileto, Reynaldo C. 1998. Filipinos and their Revolution. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Joaquin, Nick. 1977. A Question of Heroes. Makati: Ayala Museum. Karnow, Stanley. 1989. In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines.
New York: Random House.
Kramer, Paul. 2006. The Blood of Government. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Laurel, Lilia H. 1989. “The Legacy of Apolinario Mabini.” Midweek (August 16): 11-13.
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Mabini, Apolinario. 1931. La revolucion filipina, con otros documentos de la epoca. (2 vols. Manila: Bureau of Printing).
_________. 1969. The Philippine Revolution. Tr. by Leon Maria Guerrero. Manila: National Historical Commission.
Majul, Cesar Adib. 1960. Mabini and the Philippine Revolution. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
_________. 1973. “The Relevance of Mabini’s Social Ideas to Our Times.”Asian Studies xi.1 (April): 28-36.
Miller, Stuart Creighton Miller. 1982. “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903.” New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Ocampo, Ambeth R. 1998. The Centennial Countdown. Manila: Anvil Publishing Co.
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-47783544960017150552022-08-09T14:13:00.001-07:002022-08-09T14:13:06.050-07:00Review of MAELSTROM OVER THE KILLING FIELDS by Joel Wendland-Liu, published in PEOPLE'S WORLDhttps://www.peoplesworld.org/article/maelstrom-over-the-killing-fields-dire-underdevelopment-and-the-filipino-national-idea/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-51080218301629657002022-07-26T12:25:00.003-07:002022-07-26T12:27:13.119-07:00now available from ROWMAN AND LITTLEFIELD, amazon.com,barnes and noble, and other Websites: PEIRCE'S PRAGMATICISM<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgbmGY_wXeQqQlvltgeEg6Y-ghKFphtWG-i6xuI41wny2vMa3pvmmdLCUqJPgBhfCCefTqicB30xuDcI5ec31BQCxBfhswh0DN1PmO8o_UG2syzA2E_xABKqhdbnqL8aUtgBWb5MIXPWFKSAKaj-yqBl8ozk0oreXRrYtJygAMaj97pCYXUo/s1996/Peirces%20Pragmaticism%20Cover%20Proof%20Final.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1387" data-original-width="1996" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgbmGY_wXeQqQlvltgeEg6Y-ghKFphtWG-i6xuI41wny2vMa3pvmmdLCUqJPgBhfCCefTqicB30xuDcI5ec31BQCxBfhswh0DN1PmO8o_UG2syzA2E_xABKqhdbnqL8aUtgBWb5MIXPWFKSAKaj-yqBl8ozk0oreXRrYtJygAMaj97pCYXUo/s400/Peirces%20Pragmaticism%20Cover%20Proof%20Final.jpg"/></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-83024758347014220612022-07-06T05:40:00.007-07:002022-07-12T20:14:31.326-07:00KONTRA-MODERNIDAD<b>KONTRA-MODERNIDAD:
PAKIKIPAGSAPALARAN SA PAGTUKLAS NG SARILI NATING MAPAGPALAYANG KABIHASNAN</b>
Kung ang katotohanan ay matatagpuan sa pagtutugma ng katuwiran at karanasan, ang kabutihan ay matatamo sa pagtutugma ng teorya at praktika.
--APOLINARIO MABINI, La Revolucion Filipina
ni E. SAN JUAN, Jr.
Bakit naging problema ang modernidad ng Pilipinas? Kasi 12 milyong OFWs ang kumalat sa buong mundo? Di tulad ng maunlad na bansa sa Europa, Hapon, atbp? Nangangahulugang di pa tayo umabot sa modernidad ng mga industriyalisadong bansang siyang modelong halimbawa ng modernidad? Kaya nga naging laboratoryo tayo ng mga dalubhasa sa programang modernization tatak U.S. noong dekada 1960 batay sa paradigm nina Talcott Parsons, W.W. Rostow, atbp.
Ayon sa teoryang modernisasyon, walang “structural differentiation” sa lipunan natin. Teknolohiya ang humuhubog sa halagahan (values), ang iskema ng paniniwala, saloobin, diwa ng karamihan. Ang tipong pampersonal ay naisillid sa de-kahong “smooth interpersonal relations” (SIR) ni Fr. Frank Lynch, habang ang karakter pambansa ay nakakategorya sa kuwadrong oryentasyong Amerikano. Sa pagsusuma ng mga eksperstong sina Frederick Wernstedt at Joseph Spencer sa kanilang teksbuk, The Philippine Island World (1967): ang Pilipinas “is a unique country, of the ancient Orient, but more wholly integrated into the world of the Occident than is any other Asian country? (1967, 135).
Pinuri nito ang pagpasok ng Ingles bilang “lingua franca,” na tahasang kumulong sa kultura sa ilalim ng Amerikanisasyon. Bagamat umunlad raw ang ekonomya base sa tradisyong Malay na sadyang Hispanicized at Americanized, inamin ng mga geographers na nagpatingkad ito ng “internal pressures in such problem zones as agrarian tenancy, capital control, political structure, and social custom” (1967, 297)—ibig sabihin, tumindi’t lumala ang pagtatagisan ng mga uri sa lipunan, ng grupong makapangyarihan at mariwasa laban sa maraming pulubing pinagsasamantalahan. Samakatuwid, litaw ang “structural differentiation” sa posisyon at ginaganap na papel ng mga pangkatin sa lipunan, pati ideolohiyang kinakasangpan nila.
Sinkretikong Akda
Pinaghalong balat at inalupan, o buto’t laman? Lumilitaw na ang sukatan ng modernidad ay hango sa Kanluran, sa hegemonya ng burgesyang namumuno sa industriyalisadong lipunan. Sa pagtagumpay ng uring kapitalista, nalusaw ang ordeng piyudal at Kristyanong ideolohiyang kaakibat nito. Ito ang base materyal ng modernidad, na naging imperyalistang sandatang “modernisasyon” noong panahon ng Cold War. Laganap ang krisis ng lumang daigdig, saklot ng pragmentasyon at introbersiyon sanhi sa dominasyon ng indibidwalistikong interes. Bukod sa sopistikadong teknolohiyang nasaksihan sa WW1, ang produksyong pangmasa (assembly line), namayani’t sumidhi sa larangang publiko o sosyedad sibil ang mga teorya ng relativity (Einstein), seksuwalid & “unconscious” (Freud), kritika nina Marx & Engels, sampu ng pagdiin ni Nietzsche sa drama ng kamalayang artista na lumilikha ng realidad tiwali sa matandang realismo noong epoka ni Reyna Victoria—sining ang siyang lumilikha ng buhay, ang realisasyon ng sarili—naging pinakaimportanteng katangian ito ng modernidad bilang pluralisasyon ng pangitain-sa-mundo, ng Weltanschaung.
Nailunsad na ito ng mga Propagandista—Rizal, del Pilar, Jaena—hanggang kina Mabini, Isabelo de los Reyes, Lope K. Santos, atbp.—ang pangangailangang mabuwag ang monolitikong orden ng kolonyalismong Espanyol. Isinakatawan ito sa Katipunan at rebolusyong armado laban sa Estados Unidos hanggang binitay si Hen. Macario Sakay (1906) at rebelyon ng Moro noong 1913. Ngunit napatda, naputol ang kilusang yumari ng katutubong modernidad. Humalili ang Amerikanisasyong ng kolonya. Nugnit hindi ito pagkakataong historikal na tunay na magbabago ng relasyon ng mga tao at personalidad. Ito’y tugon sa problema kung paano pangangasiwaan ang isang kolonyang puno ng taong-may-kulay, hindi puti o Europeo, sa gayon mababang uri, hindi sibilisado, kailangang pasunurin at sanayin.
Paano pamamahalaan at kokontrolin ang katutubong populasyon? Sa halip na todong paghahari ng liberal o utilitaryang gawi, saloobin at halaga, nalimitado ito sa edukadong minorya na dinisiplina upang magsilbi sa burokrasya at institusyon ng adminitratibong kolonyal. Sinanay ang ilang pensionado, guro, abogado’t teknikal na katulong upang patakbuhin ang aparato ng gobyerno, militar, pulisya, korte, bangko, komunikasyon, transportasyon, atbp. Pinatili ang sistemang piyudal, ang pribadong pag-aari ng asyenda’t plantasyon ng asukal, niyog, abaka, at iba pang produktong pang-eksport. Kaya nang ipatupad ang Jones Law noong 1916, nahirang sa lehislatura ang mga miyembro ng mga dinastiyang siyang ugat ng kasalukuyang naghaharing oligarkiya.
Ugat at Usbong ng Pagbabanyuhay
Sa nabuong balangkas ng sosyedad buhat 1898 hanggang 1935 Komonwelt at pagsuko ng Bataan at Corregidor noong 1942, anong klase ng modernidad ang matatagpuan? Banggitin dito ang estilong modernista sa kultura: punksyonalismo sa arkitektura, musikang atonal, manerismo o abstraksyon sa sining biswal, stream of consciousness sa nobela, vers libre, sopistikadong paggamit ng teknikal na metodo, introbersiyon o matinding pagdududa’t pagtatanong sa sarili salungat sa romantisismong barokong masisilip sa El Filibusterismo o sa Spoliarium ni Juan Luna, na bunga ng ideya’t sentimyentong nasagap nila sa Europa noong panahon ng mga anarkista’t simbolistang makata.
Sa pangkalahatan, hindi tayo dumaan sa landas ng mga bansang Europa. O maski sa bansang Hapon ng isinabalikat nito ang modernisasyon simula 1873. Bakit wala itong masilakbong suhetibismo sa atin? Bakit mahinang pitlag ng reflexibidad lamang ang masasalat sa mga unang pagsubok nina Jose Garcia Villa at Galo Ocampo? Bakit iba o nagsasarili ang kilatis ng “modernidad” na bumulas sa panahong nagsusumikap makalaya ang sambayanan sa pamatok ng kolonyalismong Amerikano at mga kakutsabang subalterno nito? Retorikal na tanong ito; simpleng sagot ay iba ang daloy ng kolonisadong lipunan batay sa paghahati’t tunggalian ng mga ibat ibang uri, sektor, pangkat at sa magkahalo’t di-singkronisadong moda ng produksyon at reproduksiyon. Hihimayin natin ang masalimuot na habi ng kulturang ito.
Interbensiyon ng mga Dinusta
Sandaling unawain natin ang mapanuring optik sa modernidad ng Latino Amerika sa personahe ni Enrique Dussel. Ang konsepto ng modernidad bilang pangangasiwa ng Planetang Sentralidad, binubuo ng nasa gitna (core) at yaong nasa gilid (peripheral), ay lumipat mula sa pagtuon sa Amerindia (sa ilalim ng Espanya) tungo sa Anglo-Alemanya/Europa. Dahil mas importante dito ang quantum (bilang) kaysa sa qualitas (kalidad), sapilitang pinaging payak ang masalimuot: "This simplification of complexity encompassed the totality of the "life world" (Lebenswelt), the relationship with nature (a new technological and ecological position, which is no longer teleological) subjectivity itself (a new self-understanding of subjectivity), and community (a new intersubjective and political relation; as a synthesis, a new economic attitude would establish itself (capital's practical-productive position)" (2013, 34). Argumento ni Dussel na ang Eurosentrikong modernidad ay sumapit lamang dahil sa kanilang pagyurak, pagsakop, pang-aalipin, at pandarambong sa katutubong Indyo sa kontinente ng Amerika (Timog & Hilaga). Sa extrapolasyon, ang modernidad ng Pilipinas ay nailuwal sa paggapi sa rebolusyonaryong bansang supling ng 1896 rebolusyon, na bunga naman ng piling kaisipang makabago na hinango o minana sa kolonyalistang Espanya. At itong ahensiya/subhetong umalsa, sakmal ngayon ng krisis ng EuroAmerikanong uri ng modernidad, ay pumipiglas upang makabuo ng kanyang sariling identidad batay sa kanyang kakayahan at pangangailangan. Samakatwid, nakasalang pa sa pandayan ng kasaysayan ang anyo, hugis, kulay at buod ng kontemporaryong kabihasnan ng Filipinas.
Paghimay sa Buhol ng Panahon/Lugar
Sinumang mangagahas mag-ulat tungkol sa sitwasyon ng mabilis na pagbabago sa ating lipunan ay sadyang nakikipagsapalaran. Nakatindig siya sa gitna ng agos ng mga pangyayaring dumarating habang nagsisikap ilarawan ang kanyang nakaraan. Produkto ng panahon at lunan, ang kamalayan niya’y nakasalalay sa sapin-saping dagsa ng mga aksyon, diskurso, tunggalian ng iba’t ibang lakas. Kaya anumang bunga ng pagmamasid, pagkukuro’t paghuhusga, ay pang-sumandali’t bukas sa pag-iiba’t pagbabago. Sa gayon, ang kaisipan hinggil sa modernidad ng ating bansa ay nakasalang sa masalimuot na naratibo ng ating kasaysayan bilang bansang namumukod sa ibang bansa, taglay ang sariling katangiang katutubo’t sariling tadhana.
Ngunit mayroon na ba tayong napagkasunduang naratibo ng ating pagsasarili? Mayroon ba tayong sariling pagtaya’t gahum tungkol sa uri ng ating kolektibong karanasan ngayon, noong nakalipas na mga siglo, at pangitain ng kinabukasan? Hiram lang ba sa Kanluran—sa Espanya at Estados Unidos—ang ating pananaw o sensibilidad tungkol sa ating pagkatao bilang bayang may natatanging nakalipas at natatanging paroroonan? Sa tingin ko, ang kulturang modernidad ng Pilipinas ay hindi isang paralisadong ideya kundi isang proseso, isang nililikhang gawain na nakaangkla sa nakalipas na karanasan na siyang ugat at binhi ng niyayaring istruktura ng bagong mapagpalayang kaayusan. Hindi utopya kundi relasyong panlipunang kung saan ang kaganapan ng isang indibidwal ay nakasalig sa kasaganaan at kalayaan ng lahat.
Mahihinuha na ang tema ng modernidad ay sadyang istorikal at may oryentasyong pangmadla. Salungat sa indibidwalistikong saloobing umuugit sa ordeng liberal/neoliberal ng kapitalismong global, ang modernidad ng isang bayang nagsisikap makahulagpos sa minanang kolonisadong mentalidad at praktika ay katambal ng proyektong liberasyong pambansa, ng nasyonalista’t demokratikong pag-aalsa laban sa kolonyalismo’t imperyalismong negasyon ng ating sariling pagkatao’t dignidad.
Maisasaloob na dalawang pagsipat sa panahon ang naisusog ng mga bayani. Isa, sa “Kung Anong Dapat Mabatid” ni Andres Bonifacio. Ipinagunit niya na sa kagandahang-loob ng mga katutubo, pinakain at kinalinga ang mga kongkistador hanggang umabuso’t sinamsam ang ating kayamanan, at hindi na nakuhang magpasalamat at suklian ang pagkamapagbigay ng ating mga ninuno. Samakatwid, himagsikan ang makapagdudulot ng katuturan sa agwat ng panahong nakalipas at ngayon. Kilos at gawa ng mga anak-ng-bayan ang makahihilom sa kakulangan ng naratibo, ang mga puwang o siwang na hindi pagkilala ng pakikitungo natin sa dayuhan. Sa panig ni Rizal, sa kanyang anotasyon sa historya ni Morga at dalawang akda tungkol sa indolensiya ng mga Pilipino at paghula sa lagay ng bayan makaraan ang isang siglo, hinagap ni Rizal na sa balikatang pagsisikap maibabalik ang mala-utopikong lipunan bago dumating ang Espanya (Agoncillo 1974). Samakatwid, sa kolektibong proyekto madudulutan ng kahulugan ang kawing ng mga pangyayari, at maibabalik ang pagtutugma ng sarili at mundo.
Kapwa nakatuon sina Bonifacio at Rizal sa karanasan ngayon, sa buhay ngayon, hindi noong nakaraan. Kapwa natuto sa mga turo ng pilosopiya ng Kaliwanagan (Enlightenment) at rebolusyong Pranses, ang importante ay kamalayang humaharap sa kasaysayan, ang pakikisangkot ng karakter sa nangyayari, at pagsusuri kung lihis o lapat ang dalumat sa kalikasan ng mga nagaganap. Ang retorika ng modernidad nila ay dinamikong pagtitimbang sa halaga ng kostumbre’t tradisyon ngunit hindi konserbatibong kumakapit doon bilang transendental na katotohanang dapat laging sundin. Bagkus lumilingon doon upang mahugot ang binhi ng kinabukasan, pinipiga’t ginagamit ang salik noon upang buuin ang makabagong yugto ng kasaysayan. Sumisira upang lumikha—ito ang buod ng rebolusyong ipinanukala. Nakalubog sa kamalayang indibidwal ngunit hindi narisistikong obsesyon ang dumurog sa lahat, tulad ng mga nihilistang ideolohiya na binabalewala ang materyales na nakapaligid upang isuob iyon sa absolutong mithi. Taglay ng modernistang kritika ng ating rebolusyon ang maingat na pagkilatis sa tradisyon upang mapili ang mabuti sa salubungan ng mga kontradiksiyon at maiangat ang katayuan ng lahat sa mas masagana at mabisang antas ng kabuhayan.
Matris ng Mga Kontradiksyon
Pangunahing suliranin ang hinarap ng intelihensiyang katutubo ng masugpo ang armi ng Republika sa pagsuko ni Hen. Aguinaldo. Paano maipagpapatuloy ang rebolusyonaryong adhikain nina Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini at Sakay sa panahon ng okupasyon/pasipikasyon? Paano maimumulat at maimomobilisa ang sambayanan upang maigupo ang dayuhang sumakop at itindig ang isang nagsasariling gobyerno, demokratikong ekonomya at humanistikong kultura? Paano malilikha ang hegemonya ng isang diwa’t kamalayang mapagpalaya sa gitna ng piyudal at kumprador-indibidwalistikong pundasyon?
Tatlong lapit sa pagtugon sa palaisipang ang mailalahad dito, sa panimula: Una, ang alegorikong pagtatanghal sa sitwasyon ng bayan. Pangalawa, ang realistiko’t didaktikong paraan, sampu ng paggamit sa kulturang pabigkas, o pistang pangkultura ng balagtasan. Pangatlo, ang diskursong pedagohikal-agitprop ng United Front ng Philippine Writers League, at sosyalistang pagsubok ni Amado V. Hernandez. Kalakip dito ang paglulunsad na malalimang diskurso hinggil sa layon ng sining, ang etiko-politikong prinsipyo ng mapagpalayang estetika, na sinimulan ni Salvador P. Lopez sa kanyang librong Literature and Society at ipinagyaman ni Carlos Bulosan sa kanyang mga sanaysay at katha. Sa lohikang mahihinuha sa ibat ibang paraan ng paglutas sa krisis ng bansa, mailalarawan natin ang buod ng singular na mapagpalayang modernidad na may tatak Filipino.
Paano maimumulat at maimomobilisa ang bayan sa gitna na pagsuko ng Republikang pinamunuan ni Hen. Aguinaldo? Paano makayayari ng panibagong hegemonya o gahum, ibig sabihin, ang lideratong moral at intelektuwal ng masang produktibo (manggagawa’t magsasaka) sa isang nagkakaisang hanay?
Ipinatapon sa Guam ang mga ilustradong irreconcilables na sina Mabini,Artemio Ricarte, Pablo Ocampo, atbp, Dahil sa mabagsik na Anti-Sedition Law ng Nob. 4, 1901, at Brigandage Act ng Nob. 12, 1902, na ipinataw laban sa mga gerilya ni Hen. Macario Sakay na pinaratangang “tulisan,” samakawid walang makatwirang rason upang tumutol sa soberanyang Amerikano (Agoncillo & Guerrero 1970, 284-95). Sa istriktong sensura, napilitang ipasok sa alegoryang paraan ang publikong protesta ng mga mandudulang sina Juan Abad, Aurelio Tolentino, Juan Matapang Cruz, atbp. Nabilanggo’t pinagmulta sina Abad at Tolentino, gayundin ang may-ari’t editor ng El Renacimiento. Pinakatanyag ang dulang Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas.
Malinaw ang impluwensiya ng sensibilidad pangkasaysayan ni Rizal sa sarsuwelang ito, na nilapatan ng mga eksenang may pagbabalat-kayo’t panaginip na hiram sa aparatong teknikal ng sainete, opera, bodabil, moro-moro, atbp. Tulad ng paglilihim ng tunay na identidad ni Simoun sa El Filibusterismo’t mahiwagang pagbababalik ng kaluluwa ng mga biktimang pinaslang ng kolonyalismo, ginamit ni Tolentino di-tuwirang pagbabangon ng sambayanan, sa pamumuno ni Taga-ilog upang maligtas ang Ynang Bayan sa huli. Natulak si Malaynatin, ang kasalukuyan, na sumang-ayon sa hiling ng madlang kaluluwang bumangon sa kanyang panaginip, pati na si Haring Kamatayan, upang tigilan ang paglalaban ng madla upang mapalaya ang Ynang Bayan sa mananakop (Medina 1972, 211-16).
Sa alegoriya, ang tunay na problemang inasinta ay ang tunggalian ng mga nasyonalistang puwersa laban sa mga ilustradong umayon sa kapangyarihan ng Estados Unidos: sina Pardo de Tavera, Pedro Paterno, Felipe Buencamino, Benito Legarda, at iba pang dating kasapi sa Republikang Malolos. Walang kolektibong pagpapasiya kung hati ang intelihensiya at ipinag-aaway-away ng Amerika ang mga katutubo. Lubhang masahol na kasalanan ang pagtataksil, ang pagkatraydor, na tila masisinag sa ginawang linlang ni Dr. Dominador Gomez sa kampon ni Sakay, kahalintulad nina Paterno’t Buencamino.
Puna ni Doreen Fernandez na ang teknik, pamaraan at estilo ng mga dula ay hango sa kumbensyonal na gawi sa teatro noon. Ngunit ang modernista ay nakalakip sa "their concern--national in dimension, political in character, with persuasion and action as goals. Unlike indigenous drama, they were not limited to regional or community boundaries" (1996, 102) dahil ang pakay nila ay magpasiklab ng damdamin/diwang humihingi ng kalayaan at kasarinlan. Nadulutan ng perspektibong makabago ang sensibilidad ng Filipino hinggil sa espasyo/lunan at panahon ng kapamuhayan na lihis sa kinagisnan. Sa paghahalu-halong ito ng iba't ibang tipo o genre, masisilip ang isang tanda ng modernismo.
Sa sarsuwelang Bagong Kristo matagumpay na naisusog ni Tolentino ang proletaryong prinsipyo ng pag-aklas sa kapitalistang mananakop, bagamat alegoriyang hango sa pasyon, senakulo’t pagbasa ng nakalipas na siglo. Masalimuot ang pahiwatig ng alegoriya, kung isasaisip ang paunawa ni Walter Benjamin na siyang metodo ng paglalahad sa isang mundong tinggagalan ng kahulugan, inalisan ng espirit at wagas na kanbuhayang makatao (Jameson 1971, 70-71). Sapilitang sekularisasyon ang mahihinuha sa pag-iral ng alegoriyang estilo. Kung sa bagay, ang modang ito kaakibat ng didaktiko’y mapanturong moda’y laganap na sa gawaing ebanghelyo ng mga misyonaryong Dominikano, Francisco, Hesuwita, atbp. Laganap ang pangangaral sa sermon at edukasyong umiiral mula pa dumating sina Fr. Urdaneta kasama nina Legaspi’t Martin de Goiti. Gayunpaman, mamamalas sa Bagong Kristo na dumudulog na ang awtor sa pag-alsa’t paglago ng proletaryong uri.
Ang “drama socialista” ni Tolentino noong 1907 ay maituturing na bugtong- anak ng Banaag at Sikat ni Lope K. Santos. Pakinggan ang tila talumpating politikal ni Jesus Gatbiaya sa wakas ng dula:
Mabuhay ang mga obrero sa sanglibutan!….
Ang araw na ito, unang araw ng Mayo, ay araw na pinipintakasi ng lahat ng obrero sa sanglibutan. Sa mga sandaling ito hindi tayo lamang ang nagsasaya. Akalain ninyong nagsasaya ngayon ang lahat ng mahirap sa balat ng lupa. At ano ang ipinagsasaya? Walang iba kundi ang pagkakaisang-loob, at pagkakaisang-layon ng lahat ng obrero sa sangsinukuban….Huwag tayong magpahuli, tayo’y umanib at sumabay sa kanila upang tayo’y lumusog at maging katawan din ng nasabing sangkataohang hari…..
Katotohanan, katotohanang sinasabi ko sa inyo, na ang alin mang bayan, kapag nagkadalawang balak, na ang isa’y pawang mga poon, at ang isa nama’y pawang mga alila, ang bayang iyan ay maasahang patay na, bangkay na mistula at wala nang ibang mahihintay kung di na lamang ang mapanglaw na araw ng libing. (1975, 218).
Binalangkas ng Kathambuhay
Sanhi sa pagsikil sa teatro at iba pang palabas, nawalan ng awdiyens at tagapanood ang dulang akmang-agitprop. Maselan ang mga pagpupulong sa sperong pampubliko hanggang tuluyang pagkadakip at pagbitay kina Hen. Sakay at kapanalig. Ang 1907 batas sa pagbabawal ng pagladlad ng bandilang Katipuna ay hindi binawi hanggang 1919. Sa buong unang dekada hanggang pagtatag ng Asamblea noong Oktubre 16, 1907, ang mga lathalain ang humalili sa tulang pabigkas o pasalita, at dulang itinatanghal bilang instrumento ng kamalayang mapagpalaya. Bagamat may paghihigpit, kumalat ang mga peryodiko’t magasin na kinagiliwan—pagsambulat ng pagnanasang maibulalas ang tinitimping damdamin, sentimyento’t pagnanasang makapagsalita’t makipagbalitaa’t makipagtalastasan sa kapwa tungkol sa matinding pagdurusa’t paghangad ng ginahawa’t ligayang ipinagkait ng mga Kastila sa mahigit tatlong dantaong pananakop at pagpapahirap sa buong sambayanan.
Maipagninilay na ang pamumulaklak ng nobela mula sa halimbawa ng Noli & Fili ay utang sa ilang hakbang ng kaunlaran. Bukod sa pagrami ng palimbagan at libreria ng mg librong inangkat mula sa Europa at ibang bansa, nawala na ang sensura ng gobyernong teokratiko. Nahikayat din ang mga manunulat, sa tangkilik ng Republika, na ibuhos ang kanilang imahinasyon at dalumat sa pagsusuri’y paglalarawan ng mabilis na mga pangyayari sa kapaligiran na tiwalag sa romantikong daigdig ng corrido, pasyon, duplo. Lumabas ang mga unang nobela Tagalog nina Gabriel Beato Francisco, Lope K. Santos, at Valeriano Hernandez Pena sa lingguhang Ang Kapatid ng Bayan noong 1899-1901, at iba pang lathalain. Sabay ring bumulas ang mga nobela sa ibang wika (Pampango, Ilokano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon). Nakatulong na mahigit ang libreng edukasyong pampubliko na lumago mula 177,000 estudyante noong 1897 hanggang 530,000 noong 1913; nagdoble ang mga taong marunong bumasa sa pagitan ng taong 1903 hanggang 1918.
Nagsilbing laboratoryong eksperimental sa pagbuo ng makabansang gahum ang nobelang Banaag at Sikat (1904) ni Lope K. Santos at Pinaglahuan (1907) ni Faustino Aguilar. Makulay ang buhay at gawa ni Santos: naging unang pangulo ng Union del Trabajo de Filipinas UTF) at patnugot ng peryodikong Muling Pagsilang na naglathala ng maraming akda tungkol sa unyonismo mula sa Europa. Bagamat napaghinalaang nasulsulan siya American Federation of Labor, si Santos ay sinuporta nina Isabelo de los Reyes at Dominador Gomez. Kasapi si Santos sa rebolusyonaryong tropa sa Laguna at Batangas—hindi ilustradong nagbabad sa Espanya—at nangasiwa (katulong ang beteranong Hermenegildo Cruz) ng isang “Paaralan ng Sosyalism” (itinuro roon ang mga aralin nina Marx, Zola, Reclus, Gorki, pati na si Karl Kautsky) noong unang dekada.
Itinampok ni Santos sa nobela ang mga ideyang inani sa mga nabanggit na awtor sa pakikipagtalastasan nina Delfin, peryodistang makasosyalista, at Felipe, isang anarkista. Kapwa nakasilid at nakasadlak ang dalawa sa masalimuot na usaping palasintahan, na siyang pain o panghalina sa madlang mambabasang nahirati sa mga romantikong pakikipagsapalarang hilig. Sila ang mga “bayani ng katubusan,” ng pagbabagong-buhay. Ngunit hindi ito tahasang nailarawan sapagkat ang tiyakang hinimay at sinuri ay ang patriyarkong ugali at pamantayan ng pamilya at ang kostumbre sa pagmamana ng ari-arian, sa panig ng mayamang Meni at amang Don Ramon. Tumpak ang puna ni Jim Richardson na kahawig ng isip ni De Los Reyes, ang sosyalismo ay walang iba kundi ang prinsipyong ligal ng pagkakapantay-pantay, sa pangitain ng liberalismong moralidad ng Kaliwanagan (2011, 22). Kaya sa palagay ni Delfin, ang Konstitusyon ng Estados Unidos ay umaapaw sa mga sosyalistang mithiin,” at ang gobyernong Amerikano ay tuwirang nakasalig sa mga prinsipyong sosyalista” na higit pa sa bansang nagpapanggap na sosyalista. Ito ang isang dahilan na halos walang matipunong kritika sa manaakop ang nobela.
Diyalektika ng Indibiduwal at Madla
Napatunayang mabisa ang Banaag at Sikat sa pagkalat ng mga kaisipang anti-kapitalista—3,000 kopya ang nabili sa ilang linggo lamang pagkalabas ng nobela. Marahil, mas makahulugan ang pagmuniin na ang sirkulo ng mga peryodista, manunulat, impresores, at unyonista’y kabilang sina Crisanto Evangelista, Domingo Ponce at Cirilo Bognot, mga tagapagtatag ng Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas noong sumunod na dalawang dekada (Saulo 1990, 6-9). Bago pa man dumating sina Tan Malaka at James Allen (Sol Auerbach), malusog at mayaman na ang kaalamang mapagpalaya ng uring mangagawa’t artisano sa kalunsuran ng Pilipinas sa yugtong ito ng kasayayan.
Ang makatuturang naitanghal ni Santos sa nobela yaong wala roon o naipahiwatig lamang: ang pagkakalapat ng teorya at praktika. Ano ang nararapat pag-ukulan ng matamang pagkukuro sa mabuting pagkakatugma ng kamalayan at kapaligiran, ng simulain at pagkilos? Sa kabanatang “Dilim at Kaliwanagan,” nasaling ang pagkakaiba ng rebolusyong sosyal sa rebolusyong pampulitika sa diskusyon ng magkaibigan. Sambit ni Felipe, “panahon na ngayon ng ating Rebolusyong sosyal, sapagkat sa akala ko’y puno na sa pagtitiis ang ating ma maralita.” Sagot ni Delfin: ‘Hindi pa marahil , sapagkat hindi pa nagsisikilos nang kusa; hindi pa sumsigaw sa kanila ring bibig. Nangangailan pa ng mga taong hirang, ng mga bayaning tagaakay, tagasulsol at uliranin.” Samakatwid, wala pang integral na dalumat upang palayain ang sarili.
Maingat si Delfin sa pagtaya sa antas ng mobilisasyon ng masa; tinitimbang niya kung may saloobin o pagnanais na magbago ng buhay ang masa kaagapay ng kanilang dinaramdam. Kailangan pa ang edukasyon, disiplina, kabatiran sa transpormasyon ng pamumuhay. Sa panig ni Felipe, kailangang buwagin ang anumang poder o “kapangyarihang makagagambala sa pagkaganap ng tunay at katutubong kalayaan ng tao,” alalaong baga’y ibalik ang likas na pakikipamuhay ng walang estado o institusyong mamumuno o mangangasiwa. Alisin man ang pribagong pag-aari, nariyan pa rin ang kapangyarihan “ng iba sa iba/“ Sa anarkistang pag-iisip ni Felipe, “Ang sarili lamang ang dapat makapangyari sa sarili….” Sumasang-ayon si Delfin sa ultimong adhika ni Felipe, ngunit hindi pa napapanahon, sa tingin niya, at isinaad ang isang tanawing kasintunog ng ebolusyonaryong iskema ni Auguste Comte o ng mga alagad nina Herbert Spencer at mga ebolusyonaryong repormista :
…hindi pa araw ito ng ganap na Rebolusyon. Ang buhay ng mga lahi, ang lakad ng mga bayan, ay nagdaraan sa tatlong baitang ng panahon: una, ang panahong lahat ay iniaasa at iniuukol ng tao sa Maylikha.” Pangalawa, ang epoka ng mga bayani, at pangatlo, ang lahat ay galing sa lahat at mauuwi sa lahat—epoka ng komunismo. Payo ni Delfin: “Iangkap mo sa ating lahi at bayan ang tatlong baitan na iyan, at makikita mong iisa pa ang ating nalalampasan. Kasalukuyan pa tayong nagtutungtong sa pangalawa ng iisang paa, habang di pa naaangat ang isa sa una (1960, 538-39).
Ang naturol na baitang-baitang na pagsulong ay halaw sa linyadong pagsukat ng kasaysayan ng kahayupan nagmula sa mga imbestigasyon ni Charles Darwin. Subalit hindi angkop ito sa kasaysayan ng lipunan na batay sa kontradiksyon ng mga uri buhay maihiwalay ang nagmamay-ari ng mga gamit sa prodyksyon at ang mga walang-pag-aaring mangagawa. Kailangan ang isang diyalektikag paraan ng pagsusuri upang maiitindihan ang problema ng modernidad sa atin. Sa puntong ito, ang ambag ng nobelang Pinaglahuan ni Aguilar ay natatangi.
Maidadagdag na parikalang interpretasyon ang mahuhugot kung isasaisip na ang anarkista’t sindikalistang ideolohiyang pinag-uusapan ng dalawang magkaibigan ay kapwa lihis o salungat sa alitan ng magulang at anak, at lumulutang sa itaas o ibaba ng kalakarang palasintahan. Balighong pagbubuhol ng dalawang hibla ng naratibo kundi babasahin na sinadyang pag-aayos ito. Ibig ipahatid na malaki ang agwat ng mga kaisipan nina Delfin at Felipe sa kapaligiran, sa daloy ng kalakaran.
Kasukdulan, Tapos Kakalasan?
Kakaiba ang lapit ni Aguilar sa suliraning kontra-egemonya. Bagamat tinalakay pa rin sa banghay ng nobela ang hidwaan ng magulang at anak, tumambad ang tandisang tema ng makabagong nobela ni tinurol ni Lukacs: ang problema ng indibiduwal sa mundong walang tiyak na kahulugan o halagang pumapatnubay sa lahat, walang bathala o diyos o anumang batayan nagdudulot katwiran o katuturan sa lahat. Kung sa alegoriya ng mga sarsuwelang rebelde nagkawatak-watak ang mga nadaramang bagay at kahulugan nito, sa nobela naligaw ang tao sa isang mundong kakatwa’t banyaga, hindi mahulo kung saan nanggaling at saan patutungo.
Sinikap ng nobelistang makatugon sa krisis ng lipunang naitulak sa makabagong panahon. Ang problema ng bayaning nangungulila’t giniyagis ng pagkabahala’t pag-aalanganin, ay masisilip sa katayuan ng protagonistang mayamang si Rojalde. Litaw na kinasangkapan din ang pag-iibigan nina Danding, ang mayamang kasintahan, at Luis Gat-buhay, ang pulubing organisador ng unyon sa isang kalakal na pag-aari ng isang Amerikano, at inilarawang maigi ang maalab na sintahan ng dalawa, binigyan ni Aguilar ng malaking puwang ang realistiko’t sikolohikong analisis sa malikot at mapusok na damdamin ng kumprador-usurerong Rojalde na, bagamat matagumpay sa pagsuyo sa mga magulang ni Danding, ay bigo naman sa pagtamo ng kaganapan: ang anak ni Danding ay anak nila ni Luis, ang nabilanggo’t namatay na katipan.
Masinop ang pagtatagni-tagni ng mga pangyayari, dramatiko’t kapana-panabik ang pagsunud-sunod ng mga tagpo sa dalawang banghay ng pag-iibigan nina Danding at Luis, kaalinsabay ng maniobra ng tusong Rojalde upang masagkaan ni Rojalde ang kanilang pag-iisang-dibdib. Kasakiman at patriyarkong kalupitan ang sumugpo sa marangal at busilak na pagmamahalan ng dalawang biktima ng sistemang sumusuob sa salapi’t makahayup na pagmamalabis. Mala-Kristo ang pagkasawi ni Luis, himatong na sakripisyo lamang ang mga bayani ng kaligtasan ng uring inaalipin ng dayuhang kapitalista. Sa malas, wala pang kolektibong kapasiyahan at lakas ang mga bisig na yumayari ng produktong nagpapayaman sa kapitalista-kolonisador, bagamat inaangkin pa rin nila ang katapangan, katatagan, at makataong paninindigan na siyang tutubos sa dinuhaging lipunan sa kinabukasan.
Senyal na dalisay na pagnanais ng kalayaan ang anak ni Danding at Luis, sagisag ng minimithing pagbabago. Nang manalo ang Partido Nacionalista (PN) nina Quezon at Osmena, sa bisa ng islogang “kagyat, ganap at buong kasarinlan,” patunay na matindi’t malaganap pa rin, mula 1907 hanggang 1922, ang nasyonalistikong simbuyo ng masa. Isang paraan ito upang malinlang ang sambayanan. Ang Asambleyang Pilipino na pinamunuan ng mga NP politiko, ang bagong prinsipalya na nagsilbing instrumento sa madaling pangongolekta ng buwis upang mapondohan ang administrasyon kolonyal. Patuloy na namayani ang uring panginoong maylupa. malaking burgesiyang komprador, at burokrata-kapitalistang pangkat nina Quezon, Osmena at Roxas hanggang sumabog ang Pangalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig.
Namulaklak ang nobela sa kabila ng mga batas kontra-Sedisyon at Bandolerismo, at kasong nagparusa sa pabliser at editor ng El Renacimiento noong 1908. Naging komersiyalisado ang sarsuwela’t humina na rin ang pamimili ng nobela. Ang Filipinisasyong inilunsad ni Taft ay humantong sa pagdami ng mga Filipino sa burokrasya (laluna sa administrasyon ni Francis Burton Harrison, 1913-21).Nang ipasa ang Jones Law ng 1916, nagkaroon ng limitadong awtonomiya—palsipikado, sa tingin ng iba, sapagkat sa bisa ng “malayang kalakalang” ipinataw ng Payne-Aldrich Act noong 1909, sinagip ang bulok na sistemang agrikulturang piyudal na pumigil sa anumang industriyalisasyon, ugat ng katayuang dependienteng lipunan hanggang ngayon.
Sintomas marahil ng mga ilusyon hinggil sa pagkahuwaran ng U.S. bilang demokrasya ang “Ang Beterano” ni Lazaro Francisco. Paniwala ang ilang awtor sa ideyang kung makikilala lamang ang katapangan at kadakilaan ng Pilipinong marunong magsakripisyo para sa uliraning halimbawa ng Estados Unidos, bibigyan ng kasarinlan ang Pilipinas. Tandisang indibiduwalismo ito: ang usaping panlipunan ay malulutas sa panloob na moralidad ng bawat indibiduwal, laluna kung matalino’t taglay ang dugong maharlika sa panig ng Amerikanang si Bertha Carvel, at pagkamasunurin sa Punong Puti ni Arcadio Pulintan. Tugon ng binibini: “Ibibigay ko ang buo kung buhay sa ikapagiging dapat ko sa mga dakila ninyong pagtuturing” (1998, 156).
Bago naitatag ang Komonwelt noong 1935, madugong pakikibaka ang yumanig sa buong bansa. Nagpakita ang mga manggagawa sa Maynila at mga magsasaka sa Gitnang Luzon, Timog Luzon, Bisaya at Mindanaw ng espontanyong karahasan, kaalinsabay ng rebelyon ng mga Colorum sa Mindanao at sa Pangasinan noong 1923-24, 1931; sa mga pabrika ng asukal sa Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, at Iloilo. Noong Mayo 2-3, pumutok ang insureksyon ng mga Sakdalista sa Laguna, Rizal, Kabite, Tayabas at Bulacan, na kasangkot ang maraming pesante, magsasaka’t trabahador. Dito lumantad ang isang tipo ng pagkakawing ng sining at pulitika sa katauhan ni Benigno Ramos, tagapundar ng Partido Sakdalista.
Pananagutan ng Sining
Kung babalik-tanawin, ang arte poetikang sinusunod ng henerasyon nina Lope K. Santos, Inigo Ed. Regalado at mga kapanahon. ay hango sa tradisyong inilatag ng mga Griyego’t Romonang pantas. Ayon kay Julian Cruz Balmaseda, “Ang tula ay isang kaisipang naglalarawan ng kagandahan, ng kariktan, ng kadakilaan,” na kailangang magtipon-tipon sa isang kaisipan (2013, 58). Abstraksyong walang laman ito kung hindi isasakonteksto sa isang tiyak na panahon/lugar. Sa pagtalakay sa paksa ng anong uri ng modernidad mayroon tayo, naimungkahi ko na ito’y isang dulo ng kontradiksiyon, kasanib sa naratibo ng imperyalismo/monopolyo kapitalismo. Walang modernidad o kamalayan-sa-sarili ang kolonisadong lipunan kundi yaong hiram o dulot ng Kanlurang sibilisasyon. Samaktuwid, ang mapagpalayang kilusang lilikha sa modernidad ng mga taong sinakop ay magtataglay ng dalawang katangiang bubuo sa pangkasalukuyang kultura: realistiko’t popular.
Madaling matarok ang dimensiyong pagka-popular: naiintindihan ng masa, ginagamit ang anyo ng kanilang komunikasyon, ipinahahayag ang buod ng kanilang paninindigan. Sa dimensiyong reaistiko, madaling mawatasan ang aspeto ng pagka-realistiko: kongkreto sa kalawakan ng detalyeng nailarawan, ibinubunyag ang sanhi ng mga pangyayari, ipinapakita ang dominanteng pagtingin na angkin ng mga naghahari. Nasipat natin itong naibadya ng mga nobelang natukoy sa una. Ang mga kaibuturang katangian ng radikal na sining ay hindi pa ganap na naisisiwalat sa nobela nina Santos o Aguilar, at utopikong pahiwatig pa lamang sa mga alegorikong dulang nabanggit.
Bukod sa paglagom sa aktuwalidad,kailangan kapain din ang potensiyalidad sa hinaharap. Ang mga elementong kailangan pang linangin ay: pagsusuri sa punto-de-bista ng uring taglay ang pinakamasaklaw na kalutasan sa mga masidhing suliraning humahamon sa bayan, ipagdiinan ang dinamikong pagsulong ng lipunan, pagpupunyaging igiit ang pinakaprogresibong paninindigan upang makamit nito ang pamunuan, iangkop ang tradisyon sa kasalukuyan na maiintindihan ng lahat, paglipat ng mga naisakatuparang kagalingan sa mga pangkat na nakikibakang makagabay sa buong bansa—sa madaling salita, ilipat ang liderato ng lipunan sa uring proletaryo/manggagawang siyang susi sa kaunlaran at tunay na kasarinlan (Brecht 1975). Paano naisagawa ito nina Jose Corazon de Jesus, tawag nating “Batute” rito (1896-1932), at Benigno Ramos (1892-1945)?
Puso’t Kaluluwang Nagsandata
Pinakatanyag sa timpalak-balagtasan (circa 1924) noon, si Batute ay abogado’t peryodista na kadalasa’y lumahok sa mainit na usaping pampulitika sa tuwiran o paambil. Nakalubog din siya sa kapitalistang milyu ng kalunsuran.
Sa panahon ng mass produksyon ng anumang maipagbibiling bagay, gumaya rin si Batute sa pagsasalisi ng talata, parirala, hulagway, na may magkamukhang tabas. Naging pabrika ng palasak na berso ang mga upisina ng Taliba (dalawang makina sa pagtabas ng taludturan ang umaandar doon: "Buhay Maynila" at "Mga Lagot na Bagting ng Kudyapi), Liwayway, Ang Mithi, Bagong Lipang Kalabaw, at Sampagita. Naging negosyante ang makata, salamat sa modernong teknolohiya ng imprenta at distribusyon ng peryodiko't lingguhan, polyeto't libro. Naging pansumandaling libangan ang pagbabasa ng tula, o pakikinig sa balagtasan na nagdulot-aliw sa madlang dumadalo sa mga pista.
Mapanganib ang lagay ng manunulat na medyo nakaangat sa mga karaniwang obrero sa imprenta ngunit madaling maalis sa trabaho. Minsan, sinuportahan si Batute ng pabliser sa isang sakdal ng Amerikanong guro; sa pangalawang kaso, tinanggal na siya nang hindi siya tumigil sa pagsulsol sa mga estudyante sa Manila North High School sa pagtutol sa panlalait ng mga Amerikano (San Juan 2015, 178). Bago pa rito, naisakdal at pinagmulta si Batute dahil sa pagtuligsa niya kay Mrs. J.F. Oliver, isang guro noong Marso 2, 1921. Sa tulang “Black and White,” at maraming tulang itinipon ni Monico Atienza (1995), masasalat ang popular at realistikong aspeto na nailahat ko. Tunghayan ang ilang taludtod mula sa “Dugo” at ‘Pakikidigma,” lathala noong 1929, halimbawa: “Ikaw’y makidigma sa laot ng buhay / At walang bayaning nasindak sa laban; / Kung saan ka lalong mayroong kahinaan, doon mo dukutin ang iyong tagumpay” (Lumbera & Lumbera 1982, 215-217). Mas mapusok at mapangahas ang himig ng boses sa “Malikmata,” kung saan ang tema ng dinamiko’t kongkretong kapaligiran ang paksa: “Hali-halili lang ang anyo ng bagay / At hali-halili ang tingkad ng kulay; / Kay rami ng ating inapi’t utusang / Sa paghihiganti—bukas, sila naman” (hinggil sa paksang-diwa ng mga sinipi, konsultahin si Atienza 2006).
Lubos na bantog si Batute sa kanyang tulang “Ang Bayan Ko” (1928), nilapatan ng musika ni Constancio de Guzman, at idinagdag sa tanyag na sarsuwelang “Walang Sugat” (1902) ni Severino Reyes. Kalayaan ay birtud ng kalikasan: “Ibon mang may layang lumipad /Kulungin mo at umiiyak /Bayan pa kayang sakdal dilag /Ang di magnasang makaalpas..” (kalakip sa Cruz & Reyes 1984, 142). Hindi lamang makata ng palasintahang paksain si Batute, kundi manlilikhang masaklaw ang dalumat pangkasaysayan, litaw sa epikong tulang Sa Dakong Silangan (1928). Dalawang taon bago pumanaw si Batute noong 1932, naisulat ni Amado V. Hernandez ang kanyang “Kung Tuyo na ang Luha Mo, Aking Bayan” (Cruz & Reyes 146-47), na siyang naging pampasiglang sigaw ng mga demonstrador ng “First Quarter Storm” sa bisperas ng batas-militar ng diktadurang Marcos. Sinamantalang sumakay sina Batute at Hernandez sa namamayaning hilig sa sining-pabigkas hanggang hindi pa ito pinapalis ng pagkagumon sa bodabil, radyo at pelikula sa panahong bago pasinayaan ang Komonwelt.
Paglilitis ng Tadhana
Isang pagwawasto sa ginagawiang haka-haka ang dapat isingit dito. Hindi si Batute o Hernandez ang kumatawan ng kontra-gahum na pakikibaka noong dekada ika-1930-40, kundi si Benigno Ramos. Lumahok si Ramos sa balagtasan noong 1926 sa kanyang “Balagtasan ng Kalayaan” (Zafra 2006, 274). Bago pa naging empleyado sa Senado bilang tagaslin noong 1917, naisulat na niya ang Pancho Villa: Maikling Kasaysayan ng Bantog at Kilabot na Taong Ito sa Mehiko. Taglay na ni Ramos ang istoriko-materyalistang pananaw na masisinag sa mga akda niya sa peryodikong Ang Bayang Filipino noong 1913 hanggang 1917. Pagkatapos magbitiw sa burokrasya noong 1930 sa kanyang pagtutol kay Presidente Quezon sa usapin ng Amerikanong pamamahala at karapatan ng mga Filipinong estudyante sa Manila High School, ibinuhos ni Ramos ang kalooban sa lingguhang pahayagang Sakdal na matapang na taliba ng sambayanan laban sa oligarkiya at kolonyalismong Amerikano.
Noong Oktubre 1933, itinatag niya ang Lapiang Sakdalista na sumalungat sa panukala ng naghaharing Partido Nacionalista hinggil sa usapin ng pambansang kasarinlan at katarungang panlipunan. Nang sila’y sikilin at pigilin, naglunsad ng armadong aklasan ang masa noong Mayo 2-3, 1935 sa labing-apat na bayan ng Gitnang Luzon. Bagamat naging maka-Hapon o kolaboraytor si Ramos pagkaraang mabilanggo noong Disyembre 1939, hindi mapapasubalian ang kanyang pananalig sa nasyonalistikong demokrasya para sa nakararaming anak-pawis (Tolentino 1998).
Bukod sa matalinong pagkukuro sa pagbabago ng anyo ng sining sa mga unang tula niya, si Ramos ay likas na mapanghimagsik at mapagsubok sa pagtatambal ng kamalayan at kapaligiran. Pinagpugayan siyang “poeta revolucionario” dahil sa eksperimentasyon at pagkamakabago. Matayog at mabisang nakapupukaw ang mga tulang “Gumising Ka, Aking Bayan,” “Panulat,” “Asyenda,” “Katas-Diwa,” at iba pa, makikilates sa “Mga Agam-Agam” (inilathala sa El Renacimiento, 28 Abril 1911) ang katangiang realistiko’t popular na sangkap sa paghikayat sa masang magkuro, sumuri, at maghinuha ng kinakailangang kilos sa pagsira ng di-rasyonal na institusyon at pagtutugma ng katwiran at ayos ng relasyong panlipunan. Ang aral o turo na naibigkis dito ay kasingkaw ng imahen o kakintalang maramdamin:
Ang taong kumita sa tulo ng pawis,
sa mga paggawa at banat ng bisig
ay taong marapat sa mga pag-ibig
at sa pagkilala ng bawa’t may isip.
Ang mga mahirap ang pinanggalingan
ng salaping hari ng nangabubuhay,
sa kanilang palad ito namuhatan
at sa tuyong bulsa’y siyang nagpayaman.
Ang bawat may milay ay nagmula muna
sa buhay-hikahos ngayong nakikita.
Humigit-kumulang ay nangagtamasa
ng sa mahihirap na taglay na dusa.
Ang bawa’t hangingging ng mga pagbulyaw
sa mga mahirap ay isa rin namang
hukay na sa ganid na paglilibinga’t
sasaksi sa kanyang waka na mapanglaw.
Ang palad ay walang palagiang banig
ni isang uupang sukat na makamit.
Pagkagiring pula! Siya’t magtitindig
ng api’t mamamatay sa mga malupit.
Hindi nasisilip agad ang ligaya
kung hindi magwagi sa pakikibaka.
Ang mga mahirap na nananandata
kung api ma’y busog sa mga pag-asa.
Tubig na malinis ang nakakatulad
ng pusong bayani ng isang mahirap,
kahi’t tampisawin ng paang may burak
ay hindi malabo: di mapapaglusak.
Ang pigil ng sama’y nasa dakong huli,
at kung sa gayon ma’y laging nagwawagi
asahan at bukas nama’y mga api
ang magtatagumpay at hindi ang imbi. (Ramos 1998, 13-14)
Dalawampung taon pa ang magdaraan bago pumutok ang masigabong martsa ng bayan sa Kaarawan ng Paggawa na idinakila ni Ramos sa kanyang tula. Binuo at pinamunuan ng Partido Komunista ang aksyon, na winasak ng papet na konstabularya ni Quezon sa utos ng imperyalistang Amerikano. Maraming inaresto’t ibinalanggo. Ulat ni Amado Guerrero: “Ang Partido ay ipinagbawal ng papet na Korte Suprema at ang mga lider ay sinintensiyahang mabilanggo [noong 1932]. Gayunman, sa kabila ng pagbabawal sa Partido, sumiklab ang mga espontanyong pagbabangon ng mga magsasaka tulad ng naganap sa Tayug, Pangasinan, noong 1931 at ng ibinunsod ng mga Sakdal” (1970, 52-53) noong 1935, na naibadya na sa unahan.
Aklasan: Pagsalungat sa Kapalaran
Inihudyat ng mga pagbabalikwas ng nakararaming mamamayan na nakahulagpos na sa antas ng rebolusyong Pranses ang modernong kabihasnan at humhangos na sa yugto Komunidad sa Paris ng 1871. Magkatalik na ang uring magbubukid, manggagawa’t intelektuwal sa kalunsuran sa nagkakaisang pagsalakay sa kapangyarihang piyudal, kumprador at kolonyalistang dayuhan. Unti-unting nayayari ang lideratong moral-intelektuwal ng makabayang pangkat. Masasalamin ito sa imahen ng aklasan. Mabalasik na naihatid ito sa tulang “Aklasan” ni Hernandez, na kasama sa kanyang librong Kayumanggi (1940). Nakalutang sa isang argumento na kung hindi napapalitan ang mali o masamang pamamalakad, iigpaw ang udyok ng himagsikan. Narito ang huling talugtod ng pagbabanta’t pagbabala:
Ngunit habang may pasunod
na ang tao’y parang hayop
samantalang may pasahod
na anaki’y isang limos….
at may batas na baluktot
na sa ila’y tagakupkop,
ang aklasan ay sisipot
at magsasabog ng poot,
ang aklasa’y walang lagot,
unos, apoy, kidlat, kulog,
mag-uusig, manghahamok
na parang talim ng gulok,
hihingi ng pagtutuos
hanggang lubusang matampok,
kilalani’t mabantayog
ang katwirang inaapop,
hanggang ganap na matubos
ang Paggawang bagong Hesus
na ipinako sa kurus. (Medina 1972, 345)
Pansinin na ang harayang Hesukristo ang ikinabit sa “Paggawa” ay nagpapagunita sa atin ng imahen sa huling tagpo sa nobelang Pinaglahuan, wari bagang ang sakripisyo ng sambayanan ay nagpapangako ng di-mahahadlangang katubusan sa wakas. Maaaring hinagapin na sagisag ito ng nakaugat na tradisyong milenaryo ng mga Colorum, sektaryang pangkat tulad ng Cofradia ni Hermano Pule, atbp. Sa kabilang dako, isinaalang-alang ng makata’t nobelista ang gawi, ugali, hilig ng madla na inilubog sa Kristiyanong ritwal ng cenaculo at pagbasa sa Pasyon.
Montage: Sintomas ng Kinabukasan
Ang aklasan ay nailarawan naman sa mas realistikong paraan sa kuwento ni Brigido Batungbakal, “Aklasan.” Maantig at maudyok ang ritmo ng mga pangungusap sa naratibo, katugma ng daloy ng pagbabalita sa radyo, isang teknolohiyang lumaganap na noong Komonwelt. Mas makapangyarihan ang impluwensiya ng pelikulang may tinig noong dekada 1930 (Lumbera 1998, 397-98), kung saan ang metodo ng montage ang kontra-egemonyang lakas na dumurog sa katahimikan, sa kunwaring-rasyonalidad ng kapaligiran. Maihahalimbawa na ang maikli’t putol-putol
na taludtod sa unang bahagi ng “Aklasan” ni Hernandez. Sindak sa sigalot ang hiwatig ng puta-putaking detalye sa “snapshots.” Sa kuwento, hindi lang maramdaming paglalarawan ang kinasangkapan ng nag-uulat na reporter, kundi ang pagtatagning parataktika ng eksena ang mabisang representasyon ng gulo, paglalaban ng hinagap at kalakaran—sa malao’t madali, ang sindak ng krisis sa montage ang nakasiwalat ng katotohanang binaluktot ng inilimbag na ulat ng pahayagang Katarungan. Subaybayan ang indayog ng mga pariralang nakapaloob sa talatang ito:
Muling nagsalita si Andres Santos sa kanyang mga kasamahan. Sinabi niyang ingatan ang pagsakit sa mga taong hindi kasang-ayon ng kanilang simulain. Umugong ang hiyawan. Tumututol ang marami sa kanyang ibig mangyari. Hindi maaari ang ganyan. Kailangang patayin ang sinomang mag-eskirol. Walang itatangi. Isang babae ang tumindig. Nagsalita. Kailangang ipagtanggol ang karapatan ng mga nagsisi-aklas. Kailangang ipagtagumpay ang simulain natin sa kabuhayan. Umugong ang sigawan ng mga sumang-ayon. Pamaya-maya, isang trak ang huminto. Saka naghiyawan ng Mabuhay. Makikiramay sa atin ang mga taga-La Insular. Hindi tayo pababayaan ng mga taga-La Yebana. Tigas ng loob laman ang kailangan natin upang tayo’y magtagumpay (1982, 227-28).
Kung aalagatain ang mabagal at mabigat na paglalatag ng mga pangyayari upang makabuo ng kapanabikan sa sinaunang kuwento nina Cirio Panganiban, “Bunga ng Kasalanan,” o ni Deogracias Rosario sa “Walang Panginoon,” malaki ang kaibahan ng paraan ng pagsasalaysay (Abadilla, Sebastian & Mariano 1954, 84-112). Pwedeng banggitin din ang sopistikadong pagsasalaysay ni Narciso Reyes sa “Lupang Tinubuan,” na pinagsusudlong ng pagtuklas ng nasyonalistikong saloobin sa pagkilala sa gunitang nagbubuklod sa salinlahi sa isang angkan sa isang tiyak na lugar. Dugo at lupa ang batayan ng pag-ibig sa bansa, hindi ang pakikibaka para sa kasarinlan at kalayaan ng mamamayan. Namumukod ang “Aklasan.”
Walang pasubaling kinagiliwan ang mga kuwentong nabanggit, naging popular; ngunit nakatuon ang pagmamasid ng naratibo sa inbididuwalistikong sikolohiya ng mga tauhan. Nalulutas ang tensiyon at suliranin sa moralistiko’t sikolohiyang pagkakalas ng mga komplikasyon. Sa akda ni Batungbakal, ang pag-inog ng mga pangyayari ay nagmumula sa igting ng relasyong sosyal, popular at realistiko sapagkat idinidiin ang dinamikong sagupaan at salpukan ng makabuluhang lakas sa lipunan at ibinubunyag ang pagkakaugnay ng mga puwersang siyang nagpapagalaw sa bawat sulong ng mga pangyayari sa kasaysayan. Ito’y ambag sa kabatiran ng masa at sagot sa kung paano mababago ang buhay sa kolektibong pagtutulungan.
Naitulak na naman tayo sa asignaturang ipinukol sa atin ng pilosopong Enrique Dussel nang isinakdal niya ang kapalaluan ng tinaguriang modernidad ng kapitalistang "world-system." Ipinagtanggol niya ang etika ng liberasyon sa panahon ng krisis ng makapangyarihang kabihasnan ng Kanluran, ng kapitalismong global. Ipinataw at ipinilit sa atin ito. Ang mapanghamong tanong: tatanggapin ba natin ito? babaguhin ba, o tuwirang itatapon kung pwede? Sa kabilang banda, posible bang magsimula sa wala? Posible bang lumikha ng talagang bago, burahin ang nakasulat sa borador at mag-umpisa sa blangkong papel?
Paglalakbay sa Sangandaan ng mga Barikada
Paano nakaabot sa antas na ito ang mga manlilikha? Paano naisiyasat at naikintal sa mabalasik na artikulasyon ang pag-uugnay ng nag-iisang kamalayan/isip at ang masalimuot na pakikisalamuha sa obhetibong realidad?
Nagbago ang klima ng opinyon sa larangan ng komunikasyon at diskusyon pampubliko noong dekada ika-1930 hanggang 1942. Sumidhi ang digmaan ng mga uring panlipunan. Bukod sa pagkayanig sa status quo ng insureksiyon ng Sakdalista, at mabulas na demonstrasyon ng mga alagad ng Partido Komunista ni Crisanto Evangelista at Partido Socialista ni Pedro Abad Santos, na humantong sa pagkakasanib ng dalawang kilusang ito, naitatag ang Philippine Writers Leaguenoong 1939. Pinamunuan nina Federico Mangahas, Teodoro Agoncillo, Salvador Lopez, Manuel Arguilla, Arturo Rotor, at iba pang intelektuwal, nagkaroon ng kolektibong kamalayan at plataporma ang nakakaraming manunulat.
Ibinuod ang pagtugon ng mga manlilikha sa maselang problema ng bansa sa analitikong sanaysay ni Lopez sa librong Panitikan at Lipunan (1940). Maituturing na si Lopez ang pangunahing kritiko-intelektuwal ng modernidad bilang pag-uugnay ng pandaigdigang bisyon ng sosyalismo at kulturang katutubo. Subalit sa usapin ng wika, hindi pa rin nakahulagpos ang League sa pagdakila sa wikang Ingles: walang nobela sa Tagalog ang nagkamit ng primera premyo sa timpalak nila noong 1940. Depende pa rin sila sa "benevolent rule" ng Estados Unidos (Mojares 1983, 306-08).
Naigiit ko na sa bungad ang dalawang katangiang pagkapopular at pagkarealistiko na kailangan upang makabuo ng hegemonya ng uring manggagawa. Nakasalalay ito sa pamumunong moral/espiritwal ng mga organikong intelektuwal ng masa. Utang sa pananalig ng uring manggagawa’t magbubukid, sa kanilang pagtutol at pagkilos laban sa pang-aapi ng imperyalismo’t kakutsaba nito, namulaklak ang damdaming mapagpalaya sa kaisipang nailahad ni Lopez sa kanyang akda. Nahati ang pangkat ng mga manunulat sa dalawang bahagi: una, ang mga aesthete na naniniwala sa primaryang aksyoma ng sining-para-sa-kapakanan ng sining” at, pangalawa, ang naniniwala na ang pinaimportanteng layon nila ang “pagpapaunlad ng kagayan ng tao at sa pagtatanggol sa kanyang karapatan.” Nag-panukala na “makikilala lamang ng tao ang kanyang sarili sa pamamagitan ng pagkilala sa iba,” masinop na nilagom ni Lopez ang sitwasyon ng alagad-ng-sining sa katanungang ito: “Tutugtog ba sila ng biyolin habang nagliliyab ang Roma? …O nang hindi nakakalimutan na ang sining ay dapat manawagan sa tao sa pamamagitan ng ganda’t kapangyarihan, gagampanan ba nila ang kanilang tungkulin sa daigdig ng mga tao, hihingahin ba ang hanging hinihinga natin, pag-iisipan ba ang mga problemang lumilito sa atin, ipapahiram ba ang pananaw at pagkahenyong ipinagkaloob sa kanila upang ganap na malutas ang mga ito?” (1984, 255).
Nasambit ang tugtog ng biyolin habang naglalagablab ang lunsod. Walang puwang rito upang dumulog nang maigi sa masagana't masinop na pag-aaral ni Teresita Gimenez Maceda, Mga Tinig mula Sa Ibaba (1996). Sa Kabanata 3 ng kanyang libro, sinikap ni Maceda na talakayin ang pagsasanib ng tradisyong katutubo at radikalismo ng Partido Sosialista ni Pedro Abad Santos. Ang tendensiyang popular ng magbubukid, ang damdamin at hinagap na nilalaman ng mga awit, ay binihisan ng nasyonalistikong porma sa halimbawa ng Sakdalista ni Benigno Ramos (Maceda 1996, 61). Ang nasyonalistikong anyo ay nasidlan ng simulaing unibersal ng sosyalistang plataporma, nakasentro sa hangarin ng proletaryong uri na matamo ang katubusan ng buong sangkatauhan sa pagpapalaya niya mula sa tirano ng kapital. Sumalupa ang utopikong panaginip, nagkatawang-lupa ang pangarap at pag-asam sa maluwalhating kinabukasan. Patunay na ang metodong diyalektikal ay siyang tahasang bumalangkas at umugit sa mga likhang-sining na taglay ang makabago't siyentipikong kamalayan sa pagkakaposisyon ng bayan sa ekonomiyang pampulitika ng kapitalismong global, sa daluyan ng monopolyo-kapitalismo o imperyalismo.
Isang Nagbunga ng Dalawang May Pangatlo
Sa matalas na komprontasyon ng dalawang ideolohiyang natukoy, ang isa nakaugat sa burgesya/kapitalismong orden, at ang kasalungat na nakaugat sa uring pinagsasamantalahan, sumipot ang malinaw na kontradiksiyong hinaharap ng sambayanan. Ito ang kontradiksiyon ng mga gumagawa o yumayari ng kayamanang panlipunan, at ang mga makapanyarihang sumasamsam sa kayamanang iyon at nagpapalaganap ng kahirapan at kasamaan. Hustisya sosyal ang programa ni pangulong Quezon upang malutas ang kontradiksiyon.
Samantala, sa panig ng mga organikong intelektuwal ng sambayanan, ang tugon sa krisis ng demokrasyang liberal na nakasalig sa kapitalismo ay rebolusyong sosyal at pulitikal—ang pag-alis ng pribadong pag-aari ng gamit sa produksiyon, pati lupaing sinasaka, kasabay ng pagtaboy sa mananakop, sa kolonyalismong Estados Unidos. Ang modernidad ng Kanlurang sibilisasyon ay barbarismo, samantalang ang modernidad na sumisibol at lumalago sa Pilipinas ay nagmumula sa kawalan o kabiguang nasa pusod ng Kanlurang sibilisasyon: ang kalayaan at kasarinlan ng inaalipin, inaapi, pinagsasamantalahan.
Sa mga akda ni Carlos Bulosan, ang manunulat na tumungo sa U.S. noong 1930 upang makipagsapalaran kasama ang ilang libong Filipinong kinontrata ng mga pabrika’t plantasyon doon, natugunan ang hinihinging pakikipagbalitak ni Lopez at mga kapanalig sa Philippine Writers League. Naging kaibigan niya si Amado Hernandez at tumulong sa pagpapalathala ng Born of the People, talambuhay ni Luis Taruc. Nakilala rin niya sina Mangahas, Lopez, Rotor, at iba pang kababayang nakilahok sa kilusang makakaliwa (San Juan 1995). Noong 1946 lumabas ang kanyang tala ng mga karanasan niya at madlang kalahi: America Is in the Heart. Tumulong nang matagal sa pag-organisa ng mga unyon at pagtaliba ng mga simulain ng kilusang progresibo’t sosyalista, naitanghal ni Bulosan ang pagsasanib ng digmaan laban sa kapitalismo sa U.S. at ang anti-imperyalistang pakikibaka ng masang Filipino sa kanyang nobelang The Cry and the Dedication.
Ang modernidad ng bansang bumabalikwas, nagsisikap tumakas sa pagkaduhagi, nagtataguyod ng mapagpalayang diwa’t damdamin, ay makikita sa mga akda ni Bulosan. Isang testimonyo nito ang tulang “If You Want to Know What We Are,” na kalakip sa Literature Under the Commonwealth, na pinamatnugutan nina Manuel Arguilla atbp. Sinisipi ko ang bahaging sumasaksi sa panahon ng pagkamakabago na katambal ng mapanlikhang bayanihan ng mga anak-pawis bilang pangwakas sa aking diskurso:
Kami ang mga nagpapakasakit na nagdurusa para sa likas na pagmamahal
ng tao sa kapwa, na gumugunita sa pagkatao
ng bawat nilalang; kami ang mga manggagawang nagpapagod
upang ang tigang na sangkapulua’y maging isang pook ng kasaganaan,
na nagpapabagong-anyo sa kasaganaan upang maging halimuyak na walang kamatayan.
Kami ang pita ng mga di-kilalang tao kahit saan,
na nagpupunla ng yaman sa kaningningan ng malawak na daigdig
kami ang bagong diwa
at ang bagong saligan, ang bagong pagsasaluntian ng kaisipan;
kami ang bagong pag-asa bagong kagalakan kahit saan.
Kami ang pangarap at ang bituin, ang nagpapahupa ng dusa;
kami ang hangganan ng pagsisiyasat, ang simula
ng bagong kilusan; kami ang lihim ng landas
ng pagdurusa; kami ang mithiin ng kadakilaan;
kami ang buhay ng katibayan ng isang sumisibol na lipi.
Kung nais ninyong mabatid kung sino kami—
KAMI ANG REBOLUSYON!
SANGGUNIAN
Abadilla, A.G., F. B. Sebastian and A.D.G. Mariano. 1954. Ang Maikling Kathang Tagalog. Quezon City: Bede’s Publishing House Inc.
Agoncillo, Teodoro 1974. Filipino Nationalism: 1872-1970. Manila: R. P. Garcia Publishing Co.
——-& Milagros Guerrero. 1970. History of the Filipino People. Manila: R.P. Garcia.
Atienza, Monico. 2006. “Mg Tula ng Pulitika at Pakikisangkot ni Jose Corazon de Jesus.” Nasa sa Kilates. Ed. Rosario Torres-Yu. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Balmaseda, Julian Cruz. 2013 (1938). “Ang Tatlong Panahon ng Tulang Tagalog.” Mga Lektura sa Kasaysayan ng Panitikan. Ed. Galileo Zafra. MetroManila: Aklat ng Bayan.
Batungbakal, Brigido. 1982 (1935). “Aklasan.” Nasa sa Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology. Eds. Bienvenido Lumbera and Cynthia Nograles-Lumbera. Manila: National Book Store.
Brecht, Bertolt. 1975. "The Popular and the Realistic." Nasa sa Marxists on Literature: An Anthology. Ed. David Craig. Baltimore: Penguin Books.
Bulosan, Carlos. 1984 (1940). “Kung Nais Ninyong Mabatid Kung Sino Kami.” Salin mula sa Ingles nina Lilia Antonio, H. Beltran Jr., at Richie Valencia. Nasa sa Ang Ating Panitikan. Eds. Isagani Cruz & Soledad Reyes. Manila: Goodwill Trading Co.
Cruz, Isagani & Soledad Reyes. 1984. Ang Ating Panitikan. Manila: Goodwill Trading Co.
Dussel, Enrique. 2013. Ethics of Liberation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Fernandez, Doreen G. 1996. Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Francisco, Lazaro. 1998. “Ang Beterano.” 50 Kuwentong Ginto ng 50 Batikang Kwentista. Ed. Pedrito Reyes. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Guerrero, Amado. 1971. Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino. Maynila: Lathalaang Pulang Tala.
Jameson, Fredric. 1971. Marxism and Form. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lopez, Salvador. 1984 (1940). “Panitikan at Lipunan.” Nasa sa Ang Ating Panitikan. Eds. Isagani Cruz & Soledad Reyes. Manila: Goodwill Trading Co.
Lukacs, Georg. 1971 (1920). The Theory of the Novel. Tr. Anna Bostok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lumbera, Bienvenio & Cynthis Nograles Lumbera, eds. 1982. Philippine Literature: A History & Anthology. Manila: National Bookstore.
Maceda, Teresita Gimenez. 1996. Mga Tinig Mula Sa Ibaba. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Medina, Ben S. 1972. Tatlong Panahon ng Panitikan. Manila: National Book Store.
Mojares, Resil B. 1983. Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Ramos, Benigno. 1998. Gumising Ka, Aking Bayan. Ed. Delfin Tolentino, Jr.. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Reyes, Soledad. 1982. Nobelang Tagalog 1905-1975. Quezon City: Ateneo University Press.
Richardson, Jim. 2011. Komunista. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
San Juan, E. 1995. On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Santos, Lope K. 1960 (1906). Banaag at Sikat. Quezon City: Manlapaz Publishing Co.
Saulo, Alfredo B. 1990. Communism in the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Tolentino, Aurelio. 1975. Selected Writings. Ed. Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Library.
Tolentino, Delfin Jr. 1998. “Paunang Salita.” Nasa sa Gumising Ka, Aking Bayan: Mga Piling Tula ni Benigno Ramos. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Wernsted, Frederick L. & Joseph Spencer. 1967. The Philippine Island World. Berkeley: U of California Press.
Zafra, Galileo. 2006. “Ang Dalumat ng Katwiran sa Balagtasan Bilang Salik ni Estetikang Pampanitikan.” Nasa sa Kilates. Ed. Rosario Torres-Yu. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
PAGE 22
San Juan / Kontra-modernidad
ABSTRACT:
Unlike or antithetical to Western modernity, the alternative modernity of the Philippines coincides with its struggle for national democracy and independence. One singular strand of this trend derives from the national-popular energies distilled in vernacular literature. This talk sketches the trajectory of the national-popular imagination from oppositional writing in Tagalog in the first three decades of American rule up to the works of Jose Corazon de Jesus, Benigno Ramos, Amado Hernandez, and Carlos Bulosan. A Filipino counter-modernity emerged from the dialectic of peasant utopian activism and proletarian realism: an insurrectionary “noise” of the victims of imperial conquest syncopating what Jacques Attali calls the “sacrificial” with the “representational” stage of commodity-fetishism and the “repetition” of the postmodern era.—##Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-36923870512422544662022-06-29T18:33:00.001-07:002022-06-29T18:33:23.091-07:00FRAUDULENT "DEMOCRACY" LAUNCHED BY BONGBONG MARCOS AND DUTERTE'S FASCIST VIOLENCE<b>
The Final Report of the Philippine Election 2022 International Observers Mission was released on June 28, 2022, and presented at two online media events the same day. Access the report here.
Massive Fraud Observed in Philippine ElectionsMassive Fraud Observed in Philippine Elections
Press Release
June 28, 2022
The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has completed its independent monitoring and assessment of the Philippine elections that took place on May 9, 2022. The main finding is that the election was not free, honest, or fair by international standards. It was a classic ‘guns, goons, and gold’ contest and marked by a successful massive social media campaign to rebrand the kleptocratic Marcos family’s brutal dictatorship as the golden age of Philippine politics. The return of the disgraced Marcos family to center stage in the Philippines is consistent with the feudal dynastic system that is the centerpiece of political life in the country.
Evidence Gathered by the International Observers Mission
The Philippine Election 2022 International Observer Mission (IOM) was established as a response to Investigate PH’s independent international investigation into human rights violations in the Philippines. The IOM has had over 60 observers from 11 countries on the ground since April 1, who have meticulously documented the campaign, the vote, and the aftermath in various areas including Central Luzon, National Capital Region, Southern Tagalog, Southern Luzon, Central Visayas, Western Visayas, Eastern Visayas, and Mindanao. IOM observers included members of national parliaments, lawyers, trade unionists, church people, youth and students, educators, scientists, and human rights advocates. At various times, the IOM observers themselves were subjected to harassment and red-tagging by the police and military.
“The observers reported that the May elections showed a higher level of failure of the electronic voting system than ever before, along with a higher level of blatant vote-buying, a disturbing level of red-tagging of candidates and parties, as well as a number of incidents of deadly violence. A large number of voters did not get to cast their vote, and many had to trust that election officials would later put their marked ballot paper through a Vote Counting Machine, thus undermining the secrecy of the vote,” said Lee Rhiannon, former Australian Senator and Commissioner of the IOM.
Massive Fraud and Failure of The Democratic Process
The main conclusion of the IOM is that the recent Philippine national elections were a failure of the democratic process. The elections took place in the most repressive context seen since the time of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Military and state officials openly campaigned against the opposition by red-tagging the Leni Robredo campaign, as well as other candidates for Senate and partylist groups. “Throughout the election campaign, the Duterte government continued its orchestrated campaign of state terror. As part of its war on dissent, the government marshalled the entire machinery of government, including the judiciary, the military and police; and government departments of education, social services, and local governments,” said Danilo Arao of the anti-election fraud organization Kontra Daya. The IOM observed soldiers in Eastern Visayas up to the election day intimidating people not to vote for Bayan Muna and other progressive party lists.
The May 9 election did not meet the standard of “free, honest, and fair” because of these prevailing conditions. It robbed voters of access to reliable information, access to voting places without intimidation, and a credible vote counting system. The IOM has reported election-related violations of human rights since early March in the form of political killings, shootings, abductions, death threats, political arrests, harassment and surveillance of candidates and supporters, large-scale red tagging, widespread vote-buying, media manipulation and repression, fake news, and harassment of journalists by the Marcos campaign. IOM researchers identified that the 2022 election results were the first time in five presidential elections in the Philippines that the number of votes garnered by an Automated Electronic System (AES) president is higher than the number one AES elected senator, suggesting massive fraud.
Rule of Political Dynasties
“The tendency towards a one-party state evident under the Duterte regime was omnipresent in the results of the May vote. In essence it was an exercise in para-military democracy fused with a system of feudal dynastic rule,” said Chris Ferguson, IOM Commissioner and former General Secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. While there remain many political parties, most pay fealty to the Marcos-Duterte bloc. The opposition was all but wiped out in the Senate, with only one of the 12 candidates elected not allied with the Marcos-Duterte bloc in one way or another, and 3 political dynasties now controlling a quarter of the Senate seats. Similarly, the partylist system has been corrupted by dynastic politics to the point where only a shrinking sliver of the successful groups represent disadvantaged or marginalized sectors in Philippine society. “The partylist system should return to its intended purpose because now it is yet another failed attempt to democratize the Philippine political process,” continued Ferguson.
Democratic Reforms Needed within the Philippine Political System
The results of the May election are the latest in a series of chronic failures of the Philippine political system to offer the economic and social reforms required to advance social rights and speaks to the need for major reform. These political reforms required to democratize the Philippine polity include removing the feudal family dynasties from politics, reviewing the efficacy of the AES and renewing the partylist system to give a greater voice to the marginalized and dispossessed sectors.
“For the international community and proponents of human rights, the results of the election represent a worst-case scenario. ICHRP’s concern is that the new Marcos-Duterte government will continue to provide legal and legislative cover for past and future human rights violations and crimes against humanity,” said Rev. Michael Yoshii, Commissioner of the IOM and member of the ICHRP Global Council.
Yoshii continued, “the return of a Marcos to the presidency and the virtual elimination of legislative opposition represents a huge challenge for the international community. There must be a renewed effort to strengthen civil society and the organizations representing the popular sectors. A renewal of the democratic foundations of Philippine society will be essential to combating the pervasive authoritarian tendencies in Philippine society.” This ultimately means elimination of oppressive institutions such as the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and reducing the role of the military in public affairs, both of which played such a strong anti-democratic role in the electoral process.
Monitoring and Reporting of the International Community
“Looking forward, there needs to be an intensified international focus on the new Marcos-Duterte government and their ongoing human rights record. The international community needs to strengthen the capacity of internal and external human rights organizations to monitor and report on the situation in the Philippines,” said Peter Murphy, Chairperson of the ICHRP Global Council.
“At the same time, the international community should continue to hold the outgoing Duterte team accountable for its abysmal human rights record. This work is underway at the International Criminal Court, and in the United Nations Human Rights Council processes, and can be pursued in national jurisdictions with Magnitsky-style laws. There should be no hint of a green light for continued human rights violations under the incoming Marcos-Duterte administration,” Murphy concluded.
Further comment: Peter Murphy +61 418 312 301
###
The Commission of the International Observers Mission is:
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation
Canon Barry Naylor, CHRP UK
Séverine de Laveleye, Ecolo/Groen Deputy, Belgium Parliament
Lee Rhiannon, Former Australian Senator
Rev. Michael Yoshii, ICHRP Global Council, US
Rev. Chris Ferguson, Former Secretary General, World Communion of Reformed Churche
Xavier Cotillas Romero, President, Catalan Association for Peace
<b><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xjekHlX4FGI3mE5JkcgT-FTc7b4LXqEnQoOKjC38DO6GAL7iC4J-ligPNm1E9-2dsblrvOcWG8ejQAdQr5D_BxO0OFrNbBPq3grq2MQLtbt7fiplN77qQr9hhP77xQJXKNeP1iCuTD9rJFycpWlaNo68Ihyd4TB5d5RWZ6k8WME6ZKCvhzw/s410/angel%20sword.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xjekHlX4FGI3mE5JkcgT-FTc7b4LXqEnQoOKjC38DO6GAL7iC4J-ligPNm1E9-2dsblrvOcWG8ejQAdQr5D_BxO0OFrNbBPq3grq2MQLtbt7fiplN77qQr9hhP77xQJXKNeP1iCuTD9rJFycpWlaNo68Ihyd4TB5d5RWZ6k8WME6ZKCvhzw/s320/angel%20sword.jpg"/></a></div></b></b></b>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-9689718835910357852022-05-30T14:58:00.003-07:002022-05-30T14:58:36.633-07:00APOLINARIO MABINI, BAYANI NG LAHI<p> <embed height="100%" name="plugin" src="https://apps.pup.edu.ph/ojs/assets/issue/attachment/1f5abf233da08169684b8cbb2be6bb6ed806bcab.pdf" style="background-color: grey;" type="application/pdf" width="100%"></embed></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32488186.post-15320059902816642202022-05-21T14:07:00.008-07:002022-05-25T09:56:39.400-07:00July release of PEIRCE'S PRAGMATICISM (Lexington Books) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfz1zYNPIG-SAR3cH2QwLglvNtM4e0ib7QvO4nHzECB8CkfLq4kIvK1JKVlweFujUWQhuCqe4MEpz8SyC518OXmA-89DUz2ZHWXhsN918xNDe9Hbwh1MQAC0WoI4FFwS3sEgnMdya91c7V2EMjbHNah8vx1G7dIbzxQzozM-3kaS_JX9E9WR8/s499/%5BEIRCE:MARX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="313" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfz1zYNPIG-SAR3cH2QwLglvNtM4e0ib7QvO4nHzECB8CkfLq4kIvK1JKVlweFujUWQhuCqe4MEpz8SyC518OXmA-89DUz2ZHWXhsN918xNDe9Hbwh1MQAC0WoI4FFwS3sEgnMdya91c7V2EMjbHNah8vx1G7dIbzxQzozM-3kaS_JX9E9WR8/w330-h320/%5BEIRCE:MARX.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><br /><p><br /> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-urNwUG44G4SkaQOIAfGT3v6r1l59JS10DtdZcxizXtV-AySgS5RmTprxsUiy3xEYGtZ6RDbNJ0PWx0aBhMehS25xLr98Y8pM7gNoDZstYHBK_oNX-hGMnRHcpArPbF70DihwqLLMzovMeXZ4BP5BSZZ8KGK07ja7-Wg_-uQb2hzcyC_ospI/s1996/Peirces%20Pragmaticism%20Cover%20Proof%20Final.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1387" data-original-width="1996" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-urNwUG44G4SkaQOIAfGT3v6r1l59JS10DtdZcxizXtV-AySgS5RmTprxsUiy3xEYGtZ6RDbNJ0PWx0aBhMehS25xLr98Y8pM7gNoDZstYHBK_oNX-hGMnRHcpArPbF70DihwqLLMzovMeXZ4BP5BSZZ8KGK07ja7-Wg_-uQb2hzcyC_ospI/w678-h381/Peirces%20Pragmaticism%20Cover%20Proof%20Final.png" width="678" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0