The last time I posted something in this blogsite was more than a month ago. I was too busy finishing my book, and doing some other things. In addition, I just took up a new career as a part-time aerobics instructor in my neighborhood gym. It's something that I have taken up to make my life more exciting. At 48, I want to prove something. I am not just an academic. I am not going to stand by and let the years of my life pass as a routine. I don't want to be bored by what is expected and the usual.
Besides, if Mommy D. a.k.a. Dionesia Pacquiao can dream of becoming a recording star, I told myself that I have every right to become a fitness guru.
That is exactly the point that makes me crazy--when people who have no right come up and claim something that they don't deserve, or have no talent or capacity to become. This is why I decided to teach aerobics, albeit on a part-time basis, as a way of resisting the politics of boldness of these people who simply lay claim to an image just because they can get away with it.
Mommy D. became a celebrity by virtue of Manny P. Without him, she would never be taken seriously. I told myself that my becoming a fitness instructor is someting that I worked hard for, spending time learning the trick, losing pounds by lifting pounds, and spending at least two hours six times a week in the gym. I do not have to rely on the fame and fortune of someone else to make my 151 pounds turn into 137.
If Mommy D. can have the audacity to sing, and be bold enough to even see the products of such as fit to be sold in record bars, then I, in my humble opinion, have more right to lead those who desire to be fit as they sweat it out in the gym. She may have Manny and his money to be used as a fulcrum to make her and others believe her make-believe. I have nothing to offer except my health, both in body and mind, and yes, my authenticity, to my aerobics students.
Mommy D. as singer; Tonton C. as aerobics teacher. The former is a mystery of wealth defying the laws of sanity; the latter is a work of health transcending the challenges of age.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Tale of Two Universities: A Case of Two Contrasting Everyday Forms of University Politics
In the Philippines, there is tendency for a shorter-term modality for appointing University administrators but with unlimited reappointment to also co-exist with the corporate modality of choosing administrators, thereby further entrenching a very top-down and centralized mode of university governance. On the other hand, a longer but fixed-term modality with limited reappointment has been also associated with universities that have more constituency-driven types of selecting their administrators, thereby further enabling a more participatory and decentralized mode of governance. The first ensures predictability and control by limiting spaces for constituency representation and articulations while the latter privileges voices or representation but also open the floodgates to more open contestations. This is not to say that there are no contestations in the first mode, but such are not expressed more openly, and usually take the form of faceless subversions and behind the back maneuvers in which people anonymously attack colleagues to whom they are actually otherwise cordial in face to face encounters. While open conflicts and contentious narratives may predominate a university with more participatory modes of governance, and thereby give the impression of an overt and visibly destructive politics, everyday forms of resistance—from preponderance of gossips and rumors, a high prevalence of anonymous poison letters, and latent undermining of people—tend to be more pervasive in a university that has more centralized forms of control. This effectively transforms the university into one that possesses a silent yet just differently but may be equally disenabling form of everyday politics. Universities that tend to have more manifest conflict have also provided more spaces for contesting authority and asserting organized and individual resistance. While politics here is less predictable, its architecture of power enable hierarchies to be more responsive since they are easily engaged and confronted by an academic politics that is more openly expressed. On the other hand, those who tend to be more controlled also tend to have more latent conflict, have less spaces for contestations, are more regimented and predictable, even as its everyday forms of academic politics are more insidious and invisible, effectively hiding in the niceness of their façade and the relative regularity of their rituals.
Concrete examples abound to show this. In one university that is noted for its liberal and participatory academic culture, faculty voices are very much openly expressed not only in the selection of administrators, but also in taking them to task and holding them up accountable for their actions. In this culture, open confrontation and direct engagement of concerned parties, whether among colleagues or with superiors, are more frequent, and aggrieved parties are less constrained to personally confront their antagonists and are willing to author or sign their names in a formal complaint or petition. Here, collegial decision making bodies exist at the university and college levels composed of faculty members that enable direct faculty representation not only on academic matters such as curriculum and student graduation, but also in organizational matters. This relatively open space for contestations is enabled by an academic culture that allows the proliferation not only of power centers, but also of individual expression of resistance against such power. This is ensured by a less rigid management regime in which while rules of conduct exist, these are not in fact totally and absolutely enforced, and if so, there is plenty of room for negotiability. Faculty members are allowed greater latitude not only in their academic endeavors, but more importantly in their own personal lives and how they express their own lifestyle preferences. There is less micromanagement of faculty behavior, in terms of strict monitoring of attendance or having dress code requirements. However, the relatively open space for contestations often lead to cases of severe factionalism manifested at all levels, from departments and units, up to the whole university. Some faculty meetings become virtual war zones, with faculty enmity openly expressed. This situation tends to undermine not only the operations of some units, but also even the careers of individual faculty members, some of whom are forced to leave the university for places that do not only offer better working conditions and salary packages, but also less political intramurals.
On the other side is the case of a leading private university in which the academic culture is more corporate, and where faculty representation is more tiered and less open, where the venues by which constituency interests are expressed are enabled only by a cascading hierarchy of Deans and Chairs representing their constituencies in specific bodies at the university and college Levels, This, however, does not fully insure authentic interest representation of the constituents by their Chairs or Deans, considering that the latter are appointed on a one-year term basis, thereby making them vulnerable and prevents them from truly going against top down imperatives. Such role is shifted to the faculty club which operates like a labor union, but takes more an identity of a company union that is still under the control and direction of management. The only direct participation of all faculty members exists at the department level during departmental Meetings. In this university, the constrained space for direct faculty participation is also matched by a relatively regimented academic culture, in which faculty members are monitored not only for their compliance of dress code policies, but also on their classroom attendance.
There is also a controlled atmosphere of contestations, in which dissenting voices tend to be less publicly expressed, thereby giving the impression of a less contentious academic culture. However, this is replaced by a more invisible domain of expressing resistance, seen in what I earlier referred to as the deployment of weapons of the weak, such as gossip and rumor, anonymous attacks, and the presence of informal corridors of power in which influence is exerted by subordinates to bypass their immediate superiors. In this academic culture, faculty members are more predisposed not to directly engage their colleagues with whom they have grievances, but instead go directly to their immediate supervisors, or if the conflict is with their immediate supervisors, they circumvent the line of command and directly go to higher administrative levels, even as they are also not willing to put their names and faces to a formal complaint. There have been many instances in which faculty members, Chairs or Deans are summoned by their immediate supervisors on the strengths of a complaint of an unnamed colleague or subordinate. This modality has the benefit of insulating the faculty ranks from vicious confrontations, but at the same time it also tends to institutionalize a system in which people are bold to talk on others without owning up to the responsibility of standing up for their grievances and accusations. It should be pointed out, however, that there are also faculty members who are much bolder and openly contest and challenge colleagues and superiors. However, one interesting pattern is that the likelihood of this behavior is significantly higher for those faculty members who have experienced teaching in and/or are graduates of the other university cited above.
The architecture of power in a university may also be reinforced by the actual physical spaces within which the campus is designed, particularly its classrooms and faculty offices. There are universities in which the faculty members have the luxury of having their own spaces. On the other hand, there are also those in which limited space only allows faculty cubicles in an otherwise common work space. This spatial configuration may have some implications on everyday politics, as it is easy to associate units with individual offices to a culture that may be prone to a less communitarian atmosphere, in which faculty members have their own private spaces where they can isolate themselves apart from others. In these private spaces, they are relatively insulated from peer gaze, and where, as one faculty member from a university with this type of space allocation pointed out, individual faculty members can easily plot against their colleagues, and where opposing camps can meet secretly to plan how to wage open war with each other.
A more communal working space, on the other hand, may foster a stronger sense of community and civility. Forced to share a workspace with colleagues, faculty members learn to adapt and have a more tolerant attitude towards others, even as the absence of “walls” enable a more shared sense of collective identity. However, common workspaces may also be more restrictive, and may in fact be more disenabling for the exercise of individual freedom, as it is easier to deploy control and regulation and to monitor faculty behavior. This is also seen when classrooms are designed to have glass windows on doors, where it is easier for administrators to monitor the attendance of faculty members. This type of physical architecture where faculty members’ share a common workspace may also foster a false sense of community, in which people are engaged only in superficial forms of camaraderie to maintain an air of civility, but such may not necessarily be sincere and deeply embedded.
In the final analysis, it is a choice between two different architectures of power, one that celebrates the liberating freedom of individuals to engage in an open discourse, or one that offers the security of controlled predictability of a community; a politically contentious and divided place but where you know who your enemies are, or a place with a strong sense of community but where your enemies could easily wear a smile as they plot against you. It is also a choice between a culture wherein contestations are more open but may lead to disenabling conflict that can visibly destabilize the institution, or one in which conflict is pushed to hide below what appears to be a calm institutional façade but may in fact work, like termites, to weaken its foundations. In the end, these are just two different manifestations of everyday university politics.
Concrete examples abound to show this. In one university that is noted for its liberal and participatory academic culture, faculty voices are very much openly expressed not only in the selection of administrators, but also in taking them to task and holding them up accountable for their actions. In this culture, open confrontation and direct engagement of concerned parties, whether among colleagues or with superiors, are more frequent, and aggrieved parties are less constrained to personally confront their antagonists and are willing to author or sign their names in a formal complaint or petition. Here, collegial decision making bodies exist at the university and college levels composed of faculty members that enable direct faculty representation not only on academic matters such as curriculum and student graduation, but also in organizational matters. This relatively open space for contestations is enabled by an academic culture that allows the proliferation not only of power centers, but also of individual expression of resistance against such power. This is ensured by a less rigid management regime in which while rules of conduct exist, these are not in fact totally and absolutely enforced, and if so, there is plenty of room for negotiability. Faculty members are allowed greater latitude not only in their academic endeavors, but more importantly in their own personal lives and how they express their own lifestyle preferences. There is less micromanagement of faculty behavior, in terms of strict monitoring of attendance or having dress code requirements. However, the relatively open space for contestations often lead to cases of severe factionalism manifested at all levels, from departments and units, up to the whole university. Some faculty meetings become virtual war zones, with faculty enmity openly expressed. This situation tends to undermine not only the operations of some units, but also even the careers of individual faculty members, some of whom are forced to leave the university for places that do not only offer better working conditions and salary packages, but also less political intramurals.
On the other side is the case of a leading private university in which the academic culture is more corporate, and where faculty representation is more tiered and less open, where the venues by which constituency interests are expressed are enabled only by a cascading hierarchy of Deans and Chairs representing their constituencies in specific bodies at the university and college Levels, This, however, does not fully insure authentic interest representation of the constituents by their Chairs or Deans, considering that the latter are appointed on a one-year term basis, thereby making them vulnerable and prevents them from truly going against top down imperatives. Such role is shifted to the faculty club which operates like a labor union, but takes more an identity of a company union that is still under the control and direction of management. The only direct participation of all faculty members exists at the department level during departmental Meetings. In this university, the constrained space for direct faculty participation is also matched by a relatively regimented academic culture, in which faculty members are monitored not only for their compliance of dress code policies, but also on their classroom attendance.
There is also a controlled atmosphere of contestations, in which dissenting voices tend to be less publicly expressed, thereby giving the impression of a less contentious academic culture. However, this is replaced by a more invisible domain of expressing resistance, seen in what I earlier referred to as the deployment of weapons of the weak, such as gossip and rumor, anonymous attacks, and the presence of informal corridors of power in which influence is exerted by subordinates to bypass their immediate superiors. In this academic culture, faculty members are more predisposed not to directly engage their colleagues with whom they have grievances, but instead go directly to their immediate supervisors, or if the conflict is with their immediate supervisors, they circumvent the line of command and directly go to higher administrative levels, even as they are also not willing to put their names and faces to a formal complaint. There have been many instances in which faculty members, Chairs or Deans are summoned by their immediate supervisors on the strengths of a complaint of an unnamed colleague or subordinate. This modality has the benefit of insulating the faculty ranks from vicious confrontations, but at the same time it also tends to institutionalize a system in which people are bold to talk on others without owning up to the responsibility of standing up for their grievances and accusations. It should be pointed out, however, that there are also faculty members who are much bolder and openly contest and challenge colleagues and superiors. However, one interesting pattern is that the likelihood of this behavior is significantly higher for those faculty members who have experienced teaching in and/or are graduates of the other university cited above.
The architecture of power in a university may also be reinforced by the actual physical spaces within which the campus is designed, particularly its classrooms and faculty offices. There are universities in which the faculty members have the luxury of having their own spaces. On the other hand, there are also those in which limited space only allows faculty cubicles in an otherwise common work space. This spatial configuration may have some implications on everyday politics, as it is easy to associate units with individual offices to a culture that may be prone to a less communitarian atmosphere, in which faculty members have their own private spaces where they can isolate themselves apart from others. In these private spaces, they are relatively insulated from peer gaze, and where, as one faculty member from a university with this type of space allocation pointed out, individual faculty members can easily plot against their colleagues, and where opposing camps can meet secretly to plan how to wage open war with each other.
A more communal working space, on the other hand, may foster a stronger sense of community and civility. Forced to share a workspace with colleagues, faculty members learn to adapt and have a more tolerant attitude towards others, even as the absence of “walls” enable a more shared sense of collective identity. However, common workspaces may also be more restrictive, and may in fact be more disenabling for the exercise of individual freedom, as it is easier to deploy control and regulation and to monitor faculty behavior. This is also seen when classrooms are designed to have glass windows on doors, where it is easier for administrators to monitor the attendance of faculty members. This type of physical architecture where faculty members’ share a common workspace may also foster a false sense of community, in which people are engaged only in superficial forms of camaraderie to maintain an air of civility, but such may not necessarily be sincere and deeply embedded.
In the final analysis, it is a choice between two different architectures of power, one that celebrates the liberating freedom of individuals to engage in an open discourse, or one that offers the security of controlled predictability of a community; a politically contentious and divided place but where you know who your enemies are, or a place with a strong sense of community but where your enemies could easily wear a smile as they plot against you. It is also a choice between a culture wherein contestations are more open but may lead to disenabling conflict that can visibly destabilize the institution, or one in which conflict is pushed to hide below what appears to be a calm institutional façade but may in fact work, like termites, to weaken its foundations. In the end, these are just two different manifestations of everyday university politics.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Writing about the ordinary and everyday as epiphany and political redemption
I started this book by making reference to my ordinary and everyday journeys, not only in physical terms as I travel a distance from my home to the university where I teach, but as an existential expedition into a constrained space for finding academic and scholarly meaning. While the theoretical and conceptual challenges may have appeared insurmountable, I derive pleasure in being able to craft my own narrative that on its own has become not just a scholarly endeavor, but has also acquired a form that is also personally and deeply political. The materials that I used in stitching what may appear to some as diverse bodies of texts are all based on my personal encounters, either as actual physical experiences, or as virtual immersions.
Being a TV fan, I considered media spaces as a natural home from where I can launch my inquiries. In the end, not only that I was able to draw empirical data from my sources, I was also able to establish kinship with my respondents, from TV journalists to celebrities to reality game show contestants. It is also in writing this book that I became a netizen. In my attempt to enter the world of cyberspace as merely a methodological strategy from where to craft my inquiries, I eventually became an active participant in the online discussions in Pinoyexchange as a “PEXer,” an avid member of the Facebook community, and a blogger managing my own site.
The human body also became a space of interest to me, being someone who has been mystified by the centrality of the body in our discourses, even as we try harder to cover and hide it. It is here where I was able to engage the pleasures of having my body re-worked in a gym and rejuvenated by alternative medicine that started just as efforts to put some methodological rigor and adopt participant observation techniques in my research to ensure a more immersed form of inquiry, but has become rituals that I have come to associate with a lifestyle that made my body sexy and healthy not only for my private satisfaction, but for the pleasure of being the object of public admiration. While I could be accused of succumbing to the power of the dominant body narratives, this made me realize the complexity of human choices that could not simply be limited to submission and defiance, that one can still be empowered by refusing to be beholden to this simplistic dichotomy. It made me realize that repression is not just about submitting to dominant narratives, but also comes when you un-problematically submit to constructs that fix your position as one that is supposed to be repressed. It is also in this regard that while my inquiry into the public narratives of the body enabled me to learn about the private pains of commercial sex workers, it also unsettled what I thought was a stable ground for my theorizing that fixed the identity of prostituted women as always disempowered and without choices. That single encounter with a sexual worker in Calamba City has seriously confronted my own academic biases and has motivated me to think outside the box of theoretical politics drawn from long years of having feminists as friends, into a more nuanced appreciation of how different, and how powerful and theoretically sophisticated the ordinary reflections from marginalized identities and objectified bodies are.
The university is an easy place for me to inquire into. It is my natural roaming ground. It is also where I encountered most of my pains, even as it is also a place where I asserted my own political identity. The inspiration that led me to write this book is in fact drawn less from my theoretical readings of the French cultural theorists, or of Foucault. While they provided the templates from where I crafted my narratives, as they also provided me what may have appeared as my ideological framework for engaging my own political projects, what actually inspired me more to write this book was how I experienced institutionalized disempowerment in a university setting, and was further cemented when I still felt this even at a time when I already occupied a position of administrative leadership. It really made me realize how fluid, and how contentious ordinary and everyday power relations are, how inadequate the meta-narratives of the dead white men of political theory could be, and how limited our dominant tools of political inquiry have become.
Writing a book about the politics of ordinary and everyday experiences may be too theoretically avant garde, and I may court accusations of lacking performativity, or usefulness. This may be the “truth” for others, but it is far from my own truth. This book has an extremely performative value, not only as it was able to exorcise my personal pains, but more importantly, it is a concrete step in providing a compelling story to tell against the dominance of statist political science. It is my own stake in a discipline to which I migrated from a totally different field in the natural sciences, but within which I also found myself lost. This book is a narrative of how I recovered my own ground.
This book touched on the logic of cultural production as a domain of contestations, and posited that the dynamics by which these are institutionalized through our narratives is a complex game of those who assert their power to dominate and those who challenge them by engaging in a complex array of acts of resistance, from open contestations to the deployment of hidden and everyday weapons of the weak. This book is at the heart of this dynamics. I showed that a book could also be a narrative of resistance, in as much as it can also be a political project. This book is an artifact invested in how I assert my own performativity, narratives and templates as my way of speaking loudly to the power or truth and desire, as a body of knowledge the production of which has brought me much pleasure. It is also a vehicle by which I was able to recuperate the authenticity of my political identity, even as I proposed modalities by which others can recuperate theirs. Finally, its redemptive power lies in how I was able to build its politics around a sense of community with those whom I am writing it for, the ordinary peoples as they negotiate the challenges of their everyday lives, even if I must share the guilt of having presented this in a form which many of them may not be able to access or understand.
The most political moment, however, is when the validation of this book will rest on those whose flaws and imperfections it may have implicated in its texts. I may have to admit that some of the most biting critiques I have launched were directed at those practices which “had” us, and will continue to “have” us. One of the most enlightening epiphany of reflexive scholarship, experienced both in writing and reading texts, is when one realizes that much as we want to search for the enemy in the spaces, narratives and bodies of others, that in fact it lies deeply embodied in our own spaces, narratives and bodies. Realizing such is, however, the moment when redemption begins, and proceeds further as we also discover that our liberation rests not on the permission of others, or on account of the meta-narratives found in the grand ideologies, methodologies and canons of our disciplines, but on the power of our own local, ordinary and everyday small stories, and of those stories that are told about us. This is the whole point of this book. It makes our politics personal, and places our liberation in our own hands. It is about the political that lies in the ordinary and the everyday, not in unfamiliar spaces where narratives of domination and resistance emerge and are contested by others, but in familiar grounds, found here, now, in us.
Being a TV fan, I considered media spaces as a natural home from where I can launch my inquiries. In the end, not only that I was able to draw empirical data from my sources, I was also able to establish kinship with my respondents, from TV journalists to celebrities to reality game show contestants. It is also in writing this book that I became a netizen. In my attempt to enter the world of cyberspace as merely a methodological strategy from where to craft my inquiries, I eventually became an active participant in the online discussions in Pinoyexchange as a “PEXer,” an avid member of the Facebook community, and a blogger managing my own site.
The human body also became a space of interest to me, being someone who has been mystified by the centrality of the body in our discourses, even as we try harder to cover and hide it. It is here where I was able to engage the pleasures of having my body re-worked in a gym and rejuvenated by alternative medicine that started just as efforts to put some methodological rigor and adopt participant observation techniques in my research to ensure a more immersed form of inquiry, but has become rituals that I have come to associate with a lifestyle that made my body sexy and healthy not only for my private satisfaction, but for the pleasure of being the object of public admiration. While I could be accused of succumbing to the power of the dominant body narratives, this made me realize the complexity of human choices that could not simply be limited to submission and defiance, that one can still be empowered by refusing to be beholden to this simplistic dichotomy. It made me realize that repression is not just about submitting to dominant narratives, but also comes when you un-problematically submit to constructs that fix your position as one that is supposed to be repressed. It is also in this regard that while my inquiry into the public narratives of the body enabled me to learn about the private pains of commercial sex workers, it also unsettled what I thought was a stable ground for my theorizing that fixed the identity of prostituted women as always disempowered and without choices. That single encounter with a sexual worker in Calamba City has seriously confronted my own academic biases and has motivated me to think outside the box of theoretical politics drawn from long years of having feminists as friends, into a more nuanced appreciation of how different, and how powerful and theoretically sophisticated the ordinary reflections from marginalized identities and objectified bodies are.
The university is an easy place for me to inquire into. It is my natural roaming ground. It is also where I encountered most of my pains, even as it is also a place where I asserted my own political identity. The inspiration that led me to write this book is in fact drawn less from my theoretical readings of the French cultural theorists, or of Foucault. While they provided the templates from where I crafted my narratives, as they also provided me what may have appeared as my ideological framework for engaging my own political projects, what actually inspired me more to write this book was how I experienced institutionalized disempowerment in a university setting, and was further cemented when I still felt this even at a time when I already occupied a position of administrative leadership. It really made me realize how fluid, and how contentious ordinary and everyday power relations are, how inadequate the meta-narratives of the dead white men of political theory could be, and how limited our dominant tools of political inquiry have become.
Writing a book about the politics of ordinary and everyday experiences may be too theoretically avant garde, and I may court accusations of lacking performativity, or usefulness. This may be the “truth” for others, but it is far from my own truth. This book has an extremely performative value, not only as it was able to exorcise my personal pains, but more importantly, it is a concrete step in providing a compelling story to tell against the dominance of statist political science. It is my own stake in a discipline to which I migrated from a totally different field in the natural sciences, but within which I also found myself lost. This book is a narrative of how I recovered my own ground.
This book touched on the logic of cultural production as a domain of contestations, and posited that the dynamics by which these are institutionalized through our narratives is a complex game of those who assert their power to dominate and those who challenge them by engaging in a complex array of acts of resistance, from open contestations to the deployment of hidden and everyday weapons of the weak. This book is at the heart of this dynamics. I showed that a book could also be a narrative of resistance, in as much as it can also be a political project. This book is an artifact invested in how I assert my own performativity, narratives and templates as my way of speaking loudly to the power or truth and desire, as a body of knowledge the production of which has brought me much pleasure. It is also a vehicle by which I was able to recuperate the authenticity of my political identity, even as I proposed modalities by which others can recuperate theirs. Finally, its redemptive power lies in how I was able to build its politics around a sense of community with those whom I am writing it for, the ordinary peoples as they negotiate the challenges of their everyday lives, even if I must share the guilt of having presented this in a form which many of them may not be able to access or understand.
The most political moment, however, is when the validation of this book will rest on those whose flaws and imperfections it may have implicated in its texts. I may have to admit that some of the most biting critiques I have launched were directed at those practices which “had” us, and will continue to “have” us. One of the most enlightening epiphany of reflexive scholarship, experienced both in writing and reading texts, is when one realizes that much as we want to search for the enemy in the spaces, narratives and bodies of others, that in fact it lies deeply embodied in our own spaces, narratives and bodies. Realizing such is, however, the moment when redemption begins, and proceeds further as we also discover that our liberation rests not on the permission of others, or on account of the meta-narratives found in the grand ideologies, methodologies and canons of our disciplines, but on the power of our own local, ordinary and everyday small stories, and of those stories that are told about us. This is the whole point of this book. It makes our politics personal, and places our liberation in our own hands. It is about the political that lies in the ordinary and the everyday, not in unfamiliar spaces where narratives of domination and resistance emerge and are contested by others, but in familiar grounds, found here, now, in us.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Alternative Healing, Jolina, Kiko and Bebe Gandanghari
It is evident that the option for healthy and sexy bodies, from enrolling in the gym, to buying diet pills and whitening creams, or getting a liposuction, or patronizing the new generation of food supplements and health drinks, is a luxury which is available only for those who can afford. However, it is also true that if one looks at the bodies of those who work on manual labor, the farmers, mechanics, stevedores, and baggage handlers, we can see toned and muscular bodies matched with flat abs and bulging biceps and triceps. For them, there is probably no need to go to the gym and spend time on the treadmill or in lifting weights, considering that their everyday working lives is already one big gym. They also would probably don’t have to diet, considering that their meager income could only afford them to have simple and low calorie meals, perhaps even too low to a point that many of them end up critically malnourished. This is why while they may have the external appearance of having “bodies to die for,” it is their health that are seriously at risk. This is their tragedy, one that is caused by the lethal articulation between an increasingly toxic environment brought about by natural and anthropogenic alterations of our planet, and an increasingly expensive cost of Western medical health care, coupled with the deployment of unhealthy Western lifestyles, from fast and junk foods to unhealthy vices.
However, relying on Western medical interventions may not even be providing us a cure to the ailments of modernity. Aside from their prohibitive costs, there is also an increasing discomfort with the ferocity by which new drugs and other chemical-based medical interventions are now being pushed by pharmaceutical companies and the medical practitioners who subscribe to them. It is in this domain that the flaws of Western medicine is confronted and engaged by the emergence of alternative medicine which is more herbal, organic and oriental, and in some cases, may be more affordable. The popularity of traditional Chinese medicine, for example, has reappeared even in modern cities like Manila. These herbal-based medical practices that consider disease less of a chemical malfunctioning of the body and more as a result of an internal imbalance within, offer an interesting counter-narrative to the more intrusive, chemical-dependent, and expensive Western medical practices.
On a different note, and based from my own personal encounter with this alternative form of healing, the delivery of treatment and care takes on a different spatial configuration compared to a Western medical facility like a clinic or a hospital. The Chinese doctor I regularly visit in Chinatown is both a doctor and a source of humor, and the space where he works is not just a clinic but an inclusive community. While Western clinical practice subsists on the privacy of doctor-patient encounters, and its associated confidentiality of diagnosis, the clinic in Chinatown offers a public viewing of such encounter. The room where the doctor works is a small one, and his diagnoses of his patients, made in broken Tagalog, are orally delivered not as a confidential reading of what is wrong with the internal balance of the body of the patient, but as a recitation within the hearing distance of those in the room at the time. While those reared in Western medical practice may frown on this as highly unprofessional, it has demystifying effects, even as it makes the whole process a participatory and inclusive exercise of a group in community with each other. Those who know how to speak Chinese in the room automatically become translators both to the Doctor and to the patient; old-timers help those who are new in explaining not only the rules in the clinic, but also provide their testimonials to clear up doubts, or simply to give advise; people who are first in line help facilitate the queue. These are rituals of community that may not necessarily heal the sick, but are definitely composite of a social capital that is enabled as a group of people negotiate the space through which they seek their own healing.
This alternative form of healing, in addition to other indigenous ways, which include the native Filipino art of healing, confronts a dominant narrative in which the focus on the body, its appearance and vitality, is now in the context no longer just of capitalist production, but also of consumption and pleasure in a political economy of images, in which the body becomes now a commodity to be bought and “consumed”, and not just a resource for capitalist production. In this domain, a dominant narrative specifies not only the “look” and the “body” that is to be desired but also how these can be achieved. There is a deployment of dominant templates not only for fashion and diet, but also even on internal wellness and external appearances. These are then institutionalized in a complex array of discourses and narratives that are produced in society through the operation of certain kinds of truth and knowledge as embodied in templates as diverse as fashion rules, appearance norms, and appropriate lifestyles drawing their logic from professions like Western medicine and effectively deployed by efficient marketing.
However, there are those who refuse to go with the flow, as they create their own embodiments. Jolina Magdangal, a movie personality, is well known for creating her own sense of unconventional fashion which transgressed the established norms of color combinations and accessory matching to the consternation of established fashion gurus. In fact, the word “jologs” which refer to crass and of the hoi polloi was coined based on her name. Nevertheless, Jolina was able to impose her sense of alternative fashion to a point that she is now considered a fashion icon herself. Raymund Francis Rustia is a walking conversation piece with his dreadlocks and elaborate adornments that is uncharacteristically out of the ordinary. His appearance in the first season of “Survivor Philippines,” particularly his ethical playing of the game catapulted him to fame. Kiko, as he is popularly called, transgressed the norm provided by society, and instead of ending up being called weird, now appears in mainstream TV as host to an environmentally-oriented show in one of the TV networks. Bebe Gandanghari is another person who breached the norms provided by society with regards to the human body. Formerly a male matinee idol in the name of Rustom Padilla, he came out and admitted his true sexual orientation in one of the most explosive moment of the reality game show “Pinoy Big Brother,” went abroad, and came back totally transformed into a woman figure. Far from being considered a “freak”, Bebe is now accepted less as an anomaly, and more as a transformed body that carry a sense of personal power by deploying a kind of truth that may not be comfortable to the established norms, but nevertheless speaks loudly as a physical counter-narrative to the constrained identities that imprison those who remain in their closets.
Jolina, Kiko and Bebe, as celebrities with bodies who transgressed social forms of control provided powerful images that find meaning among a citizenry that derive their templates from popular culture. Their transgressions offered a counter-narrative to the dominant images that are displayed in the same venues where they exist—the showbiz media, TV and the entertainment industry. In their iconic presence, they are just three of the many more who are not celebrity figures, but who in their ordinary ways have tried to transgress, resist, and confront the disempowering politics by which their bodies are expected to conform to the ideal shape, size and configuration as dictated by the dominant political economy that images the body not only as a project to be produced but also as a resource to be consumed.
However, relying on Western medical interventions may not even be providing us a cure to the ailments of modernity. Aside from their prohibitive costs, there is also an increasing discomfort with the ferocity by which new drugs and other chemical-based medical interventions are now being pushed by pharmaceutical companies and the medical practitioners who subscribe to them. It is in this domain that the flaws of Western medicine is confronted and engaged by the emergence of alternative medicine which is more herbal, organic and oriental, and in some cases, may be more affordable. The popularity of traditional Chinese medicine, for example, has reappeared even in modern cities like Manila. These herbal-based medical practices that consider disease less of a chemical malfunctioning of the body and more as a result of an internal imbalance within, offer an interesting counter-narrative to the more intrusive, chemical-dependent, and expensive Western medical practices.
On a different note, and based from my own personal encounter with this alternative form of healing, the delivery of treatment and care takes on a different spatial configuration compared to a Western medical facility like a clinic or a hospital. The Chinese doctor I regularly visit in Chinatown is both a doctor and a source of humor, and the space where he works is not just a clinic but an inclusive community. While Western clinical practice subsists on the privacy of doctor-patient encounters, and its associated confidentiality of diagnosis, the clinic in Chinatown offers a public viewing of such encounter. The room where the doctor works is a small one, and his diagnoses of his patients, made in broken Tagalog, are orally delivered not as a confidential reading of what is wrong with the internal balance of the body of the patient, but as a recitation within the hearing distance of those in the room at the time. While those reared in Western medical practice may frown on this as highly unprofessional, it has demystifying effects, even as it makes the whole process a participatory and inclusive exercise of a group in community with each other. Those who know how to speak Chinese in the room automatically become translators both to the Doctor and to the patient; old-timers help those who are new in explaining not only the rules in the clinic, but also provide their testimonials to clear up doubts, or simply to give advise; people who are first in line help facilitate the queue. These are rituals of community that may not necessarily heal the sick, but are definitely composite of a social capital that is enabled as a group of people negotiate the space through which they seek their own healing.
This alternative form of healing, in addition to other indigenous ways, which include the native Filipino art of healing, confronts a dominant narrative in which the focus on the body, its appearance and vitality, is now in the context no longer just of capitalist production, but also of consumption and pleasure in a political economy of images, in which the body becomes now a commodity to be bought and “consumed”, and not just a resource for capitalist production. In this domain, a dominant narrative specifies not only the “look” and the “body” that is to be desired but also how these can be achieved. There is a deployment of dominant templates not only for fashion and diet, but also even on internal wellness and external appearances. These are then institutionalized in a complex array of discourses and narratives that are produced in society through the operation of certain kinds of truth and knowledge as embodied in templates as diverse as fashion rules, appearance norms, and appropriate lifestyles drawing their logic from professions like Western medicine and effectively deployed by efficient marketing.
However, there are those who refuse to go with the flow, as they create their own embodiments. Jolina Magdangal, a movie personality, is well known for creating her own sense of unconventional fashion which transgressed the established norms of color combinations and accessory matching to the consternation of established fashion gurus. In fact, the word “jologs” which refer to crass and of the hoi polloi was coined based on her name. Nevertheless, Jolina was able to impose her sense of alternative fashion to a point that she is now considered a fashion icon herself. Raymund Francis Rustia is a walking conversation piece with his dreadlocks and elaborate adornments that is uncharacteristically out of the ordinary. His appearance in the first season of “Survivor Philippines,” particularly his ethical playing of the game catapulted him to fame. Kiko, as he is popularly called, transgressed the norm provided by society, and instead of ending up being called weird, now appears in mainstream TV as host to an environmentally-oriented show in one of the TV networks. Bebe Gandanghari is another person who breached the norms provided by society with regards to the human body. Formerly a male matinee idol in the name of Rustom Padilla, he came out and admitted his true sexual orientation in one of the most explosive moment of the reality game show “Pinoy Big Brother,” went abroad, and came back totally transformed into a woman figure. Far from being considered a “freak”, Bebe is now accepted less as an anomaly, and more as a transformed body that carry a sense of personal power by deploying a kind of truth that may not be comfortable to the established norms, but nevertheless speaks loudly as a physical counter-narrative to the constrained identities that imprison those who remain in their closets.
Jolina, Kiko and Bebe, as celebrities with bodies who transgressed social forms of control provided powerful images that find meaning among a citizenry that derive their templates from popular culture. Their transgressions offered a counter-narrative to the dominant images that are displayed in the same venues where they exist—the showbiz media, TV and the entertainment industry. In their iconic presence, they are just three of the many more who are not celebrity figures, but who in their ordinary ways have tried to transgress, resist, and confront the disempowering politics by which their bodies are expected to conform to the ideal shape, size and configuration as dictated by the dominant political economy that images the body not only as a project to be produced but also as a resource to be consumed.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Gym Politics
One of the epicenters of the modern body as a project to be reformed and reconstructed is the gym. While barber shops and beauty salons have earlier become places where looks are changed, they are merely alterations of external body appendages like hair and nails, of which changes may create an illusion of a different look. However, it is in the gym where the body becomes an object of a more radical alteration without surgical operation, in which muscles are pumped to make them bigger, or toned to make them firmer and tighter. The modern gym is no longer a place where the young, mostly men, learn the rudiments of masculinity as they study and engage in physical exercise in their naked glory. In fact, the word “gymnasium” is rooted in Greek, where it originally meant as a place where one can be naked. It is now a place where they celebrate the body as an architectural work for both masculinity and femininity, with gyms now catering to both men and women, straight and gay.
A day in the modern gym is like paying homage to vanity manifested in body flaunting by those who have the perfect physique, and of body envy by those who are trying to acquire such perfect physique. The gym is turned into a place for another kind of learning no longer conducted by master teachers in the Greek tradition on young men as they learn not only the rewards of truth and knowledge but also the pleasures of desire. The modern gym becomes a place where you come in with a sense of inadequacy and an urge to overcome it by learning from the templates that you see in the images created in the media about the perfect butt and the washboard abs, and as re-presented in the bodies that you see parading right before your very eyes. The gym is almost like a sorting place of images of people coming in as veterans, as showed by the badges embodied in their biceps, triceps and deltoids, and as neophytes seen in people with fat bellies, or undeveloped muscles, people who look nerdish, the geeks and the dorks. The latter undertakes the rituals of bench pressing, crunching and lifting, and has to endure both initial shame and lots of pain, looking forward to the day that their hats as beginners will be replaced by the crowning glory of buffed bodies ready to be exhibited to the new batch of nerds, geeks and dorks. The gym, in this regard, becomes a space for an institutionalized fraternity of sorts, with neophytes and masters interacting in the context of a symbolic brotherhood based on sweat and muscles.
In the Greek tradition, the gym is a place where truth and knowledge articulate with pleasure and desire. In its modern incarnation, such truth is no longer residing in the wisdom of philosophy and the arts, but in the simulated images of a body which modern capitalism has produced as commodity to be sold in the media, through the images of half-naked models and actors parading their physiques to create a demand for these, and then reproduced in the body rituals which the gym now offers to its clients for a fee. Thus, the media images of a perfect body is a commodity consumed by those who desire to have it, even as a sculpted body comes out of gyms and other fitness establishments as a reproduction of such images, where they now join the array of representations that further reproduce the commodified perfect body to the eyes of those who feel inadequate about theirs. While there may be no words that attend the sculpted, reformed and remade body, in that it is pure image, its physicality becomes an embodiment of a silent yet potent narrative about the power of a new political economy of human appearances. The desire for a god-like body and the pleasures for having it become a powerful driver of this narrative.
It is easy to associate the politics of the gym with male domination, considering the relatively stronger presence of the male image compared to the female one. In fact, in most gyms and fitness centers, aerobic dancing sessions, which many consider as feminine, are more patronized by women, even as the weight training sessions are very much male-dominated. However, the creeping presence of vanity-induced consumerism, and the simulacra of ideal appearances now deploying not only images of women as reality, but the reality of male beauty as image, have infected even men to create a demand among them not only for aerobics lessons, but even for beauty enhancement treatments. This led to some gyms establishing saunas, spas and salons in their own premises, even as men’s consumption of these services in places other than the gym has increased. However, a more political form of resistance, which De Certeau (1984) have theorized about, that tend to undermine the dominant masculinity prevailing in a typical gym was the preponderance of gay bath houses presenting themselves as fitness centers cum gyms, mainly starting in US cities such as San Francisco and New York but has since spread to other gay-dominated sectors of major cities in the world. In these places, the overall strategies associated with straight body envy and the rituals of heterosexual physicality found in gyms are subverted by a gay sub-culture that effectively deployed tactics that converted these spaces into places where gay men express their lifestyles. Exclusive gay bath houses are now already present in Manila, even as anecdotal evidence suggests that a gay sub-culture here is silently trangressing and implanting itself in the shower and steam rooms even in mainstream gyms and fitness centers. In the end, the gym which used to be a haven for straight male power, have in fact become a potent cruising venue, if not a playground for gays in search of pleasure as they consummate the truth of their own sexualities.
I remember a comment I heard once which said that the single place with the highest density of gays, next to a beauty salon, is the gym. This is not to be taken as an insult, but as a celebration of a successful form of gay politics.
A day in the modern gym is like paying homage to vanity manifested in body flaunting by those who have the perfect physique, and of body envy by those who are trying to acquire such perfect physique. The gym is turned into a place for another kind of learning no longer conducted by master teachers in the Greek tradition on young men as they learn not only the rewards of truth and knowledge but also the pleasures of desire. The modern gym becomes a place where you come in with a sense of inadequacy and an urge to overcome it by learning from the templates that you see in the images created in the media about the perfect butt and the washboard abs, and as re-presented in the bodies that you see parading right before your very eyes. The gym is almost like a sorting place of images of people coming in as veterans, as showed by the badges embodied in their biceps, triceps and deltoids, and as neophytes seen in people with fat bellies, or undeveloped muscles, people who look nerdish, the geeks and the dorks. The latter undertakes the rituals of bench pressing, crunching and lifting, and has to endure both initial shame and lots of pain, looking forward to the day that their hats as beginners will be replaced by the crowning glory of buffed bodies ready to be exhibited to the new batch of nerds, geeks and dorks. The gym, in this regard, becomes a space for an institutionalized fraternity of sorts, with neophytes and masters interacting in the context of a symbolic brotherhood based on sweat and muscles.
In the Greek tradition, the gym is a place where truth and knowledge articulate with pleasure and desire. In its modern incarnation, such truth is no longer residing in the wisdom of philosophy and the arts, but in the simulated images of a body which modern capitalism has produced as commodity to be sold in the media, through the images of half-naked models and actors parading their physiques to create a demand for these, and then reproduced in the body rituals which the gym now offers to its clients for a fee. Thus, the media images of a perfect body is a commodity consumed by those who desire to have it, even as a sculpted body comes out of gyms and other fitness establishments as a reproduction of such images, where they now join the array of representations that further reproduce the commodified perfect body to the eyes of those who feel inadequate about theirs. While there may be no words that attend the sculpted, reformed and remade body, in that it is pure image, its physicality becomes an embodiment of a silent yet potent narrative about the power of a new political economy of human appearances. The desire for a god-like body and the pleasures for having it become a powerful driver of this narrative.
It is easy to associate the politics of the gym with male domination, considering the relatively stronger presence of the male image compared to the female one. In fact, in most gyms and fitness centers, aerobic dancing sessions, which many consider as feminine, are more patronized by women, even as the weight training sessions are very much male-dominated. However, the creeping presence of vanity-induced consumerism, and the simulacra of ideal appearances now deploying not only images of women as reality, but the reality of male beauty as image, have infected even men to create a demand among them not only for aerobics lessons, but even for beauty enhancement treatments. This led to some gyms establishing saunas, spas and salons in their own premises, even as men’s consumption of these services in places other than the gym has increased. However, a more political form of resistance, which De Certeau (1984) have theorized about, that tend to undermine the dominant masculinity prevailing in a typical gym was the preponderance of gay bath houses presenting themselves as fitness centers cum gyms, mainly starting in US cities such as San Francisco and New York but has since spread to other gay-dominated sectors of major cities in the world. In these places, the overall strategies associated with straight body envy and the rituals of heterosexual physicality found in gyms are subverted by a gay sub-culture that effectively deployed tactics that converted these spaces into places where gay men express their lifestyles. Exclusive gay bath houses are now already present in Manila, even as anecdotal evidence suggests that a gay sub-culture here is silently trangressing and implanting itself in the shower and steam rooms even in mainstream gyms and fitness centers. In the end, the gym which used to be a haven for straight male power, have in fact become a potent cruising venue, if not a playground for gays in search of pleasure as they consummate the truth of their own sexualities.
I remember a comment I heard once which said that the single place with the highest density of gays, next to a beauty salon, is the gym. This is not to be taken as an insult, but as a celebration of a successful form of gay politics.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Politics as a Party
Now that elections are less than eight months away, I am tempted to again ready my party shoes, my pop corn, and my drinks and be prepared for one big party event.
There is one thing that Filipinos are noted for—it is our talent to entertain. Our fiestas are much awaited not only for the food we serve, but also for the dances and songs that we perform. Other people, including even Americans, which are perceived to be natural party animals, are amazed at the way we Filipinos are able to orchestrate the transformation of a seemingly dull moment to an explosion of fun, food, and frolic, not to mention booze. To us, however, this is our natural. After all, we are the same people who converted EDSA I into a big party, a grand political festival, where we easily transformed a tense conflict situation into a venue for community gathering and celebration.
It is in this context, therefore, that we should not be surprised if Filipinos see a “political party” not as the boring institution of loyalty, ideology, and platforms that textbooks in political science depict. Instead, it is seen as a “party”—a fun-filled political event, where anyone can dance with abandon in a political game where the norms are not the principles that one have but the camaraderie and personalities that one can enjoy.
We are indeed natural party animals. We have deconstructed a technical political term and turned it on its head to reveal another meaning. This is the only explanation I can think of, if only to make sense of this explosion of political partying by many of our politicians. Indeed, they turn politics into a party, where the talk is not about issues but about appearances; where the spoiler is the one serious and boring, and the star is the one who comes with a glittering dress or a perfumed look or a plastic smile talking an empty talk. There, the likes of Winnie Monsod become a spoiler while Miriam Santiago is party queen.
Politics became a party in past elections, when someone like Eddie Gil appeared as a serious option for citizens who have lost their faith in the electoral process. Politics became a party when a candidate like the late Raul Roco, who had the reputation for explosive temper, suddenly turned into a flower lover, later joined by Lito Atienza. Politics became a party when Ping Lacson, allegedly feared for reasons only Mon Tulfo knows, began to smile, and even shed tears on camera, although lately he has caused Erap Estrada, his erstwhile friend, to frown a lot.
Politics become a party when being a simple newsreader, as Noli de Castro was and still is, considered as equivalent to good public service; or when cute people like Pia Cayetano suddenly came out of nowhere to claim the senate seat of her late father, as if it is an inheritance. Politics became a party when Brother Eddie descends into the arena like a messiah, allegedly sent by God, and joyfully announced by an MTV VJ in the person of Donita Rose herself. Politics became a party when Jamby, Lito and Bong became Senators of the Republic.
Politics became a party when former enemies Miriam and Gloria became friends, and when Imee and Bongbong have only good things to say about Noynoy, for indeed parties are occasions when rivals kiss and make up, even if only for show. Of course, the greatest party of all explodes in its most feverish frenzy when Gloria threw a big one in New York, raking up bills that could rival the ones made by the greatest party animal of them all—Imelda Marcos, whose reinvention of herself through the power of popular culture is a rare political feat, to a point that the CCP has even honored her.
This is how we practice politics—as a party. In this party scene, rules of the game designed by the great minds in political science are thrown out. In fact, we Filipinos have created our own categories that go beyond the imagination of any bookish political science major. The absence of strong political parties, and here I refer to groups that aggregate political interests and compete during elections, is not the only peculiar contribution we have to the annals of political theory. We should be reminded that we are the only country where Senators from the opposition parties (again, I refer to the political group) become chairpersons of committees.
However, and lest we become cocky and declare our uniqueness as our monopoly, let us be humbled by the fact that there are other countries where political parties (again, I refer to the group) are as weak as ours. There are also countries where politicians easily change their political parties (again, I refer to the political group). There are also countries where crazy and weird characters brave whatever sanity impediments to join the political party (here, I now refer to the event, and not the political group) and enjoy the fun.
African countries have also weak, if not weaker, political party systems. Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos have strong dominant parties, but weak opposition parties. China, the sleeping economic giant, has only one political party. The United States is supposed to have two strong political parties, but their system was not effective enough to stop a George W. Bush from inflicting himself on all of us, until Barack reinvented himself to redeem the Democratic Party from being the party of losers.
Thailand, the emerging tiger of Southeast Asia, was once dominated by a party, the Thai Rak Thai, whose ranks grew from the migration of politicians from the other established parties. Speaking of Thai Rak Thai, its name simply translates to “Thai loves Thai.” How is that for a name? Not even Imelda could have had such creativity to name a party “Pinoy Mahal ang Pinoy.” However, Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was able to get away with it, and Thai Rak Thai was poised to build an even stronger majority in the Thai Parliament, until financial scandal and corruption charges, and a simmering Muslim secession movement in the south, spoiled Thaksin’s party (here, I refer to both meanings of the word) and caused him to live in exile.
As for colorful characters, I do not have to remind you of the California elections some years back that Arnie won, which had a fun-filled cast of characters that included a midget and a porn star—indeed a perfect party! And what about the eunuch that ran in India? Or those mynah birds and holy cows used as campaign materials there? Apparently, in India, when they throw a political party and invite party animals, they also make it a point to include the real ones.
There is one thing that Filipinos are noted for—it is our talent to entertain. Our fiestas are much awaited not only for the food we serve, but also for the dances and songs that we perform. Other people, including even Americans, which are perceived to be natural party animals, are amazed at the way we Filipinos are able to orchestrate the transformation of a seemingly dull moment to an explosion of fun, food, and frolic, not to mention booze. To us, however, this is our natural. After all, we are the same people who converted EDSA I into a big party, a grand political festival, where we easily transformed a tense conflict situation into a venue for community gathering and celebration.
It is in this context, therefore, that we should not be surprised if Filipinos see a “political party” not as the boring institution of loyalty, ideology, and platforms that textbooks in political science depict. Instead, it is seen as a “party”—a fun-filled political event, where anyone can dance with abandon in a political game where the norms are not the principles that one have but the camaraderie and personalities that one can enjoy.
We are indeed natural party animals. We have deconstructed a technical political term and turned it on its head to reveal another meaning. This is the only explanation I can think of, if only to make sense of this explosion of political partying by many of our politicians. Indeed, they turn politics into a party, where the talk is not about issues but about appearances; where the spoiler is the one serious and boring, and the star is the one who comes with a glittering dress or a perfumed look or a plastic smile talking an empty talk. There, the likes of Winnie Monsod become a spoiler while Miriam Santiago is party queen.
Politics became a party in past elections, when someone like Eddie Gil appeared as a serious option for citizens who have lost their faith in the electoral process. Politics became a party when a candidate like the late Raul Roco, who had the reputation for explosive temper, suddenly turned into a flower lover, later joined by Lito Atienza. Politics became a party when Ping Lacson, allegedly feared for reasons only Mon Tulfo knows, began to smile, and even shed tears on camera, although lately he has caused Erap Estrada, his erstwhile friend, to frown a lot.
Politics become a party when being a simple newsreader, as Noli de Castro was and still is, considered as equivalent to good public service; or when cute people like Pia Cayetano suddenly came out of nowhere to claim the senate seat of her late father, as if it is an inheritance. Politics became a party when Brother Eddie descends into the arena like a messiah, allegedly sent by God, and joyfully announced by an MTV VJ in the person of Donita Rose herself. Politics became a party when Jamby, Lito and Bong became Senators of the Republic.
Politics became a party when former enemies Miriam and Gloria became friends, and when Imee and Bongbong have only good things to say about Noynoy, for indeed parties are occasions when rivals kiss and make up, even if only for show. Of course, the greatest party of all explodes in its most feverish frenzy when Gloria threw a big one in New York, raking up bills that could rival the ones made by the greatest party animal of them all—Imelda Marcos, whose reinvention of herself through the power of popular culture is a rare political feat, to a point that the CCP has even honored her.
This is how we practice politics—as a party. In this party scene, rules of the game designed by the great minds in political science are thrown out. In fact, we Filipinos have created our own categories that go beyond the imagination of any bookish political science major. The absence of strong political parties, and here I refer to groups that aggregate political interests and compete during elections, is not the only peculiar contribution we have to the annals of political theory. We should be reminded that we are the only country where Senators from the opposition parties (again, I refer to the political group) become chairpersons of committees.
However, and lest we become cocky and declare our uniqueness as our monopoly, let us be humbled by the fact that there are other countries where political parties (again, I refer to the group) are as weak as ours. There are also countries where politicians easily change their political parties (again, I refer to the political group). There are also countries where crazy and weird characters brave whatever sanity impediments to join the political party (here, I now refer to the event, and not the political group) and enjoy the fun.
African countries have also weak, if not weaker, political party systems. Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos have strong dominant parties, but weak opposition parties. China, the sleeping economic giant, has only one political party. The United States is supposed to have two strong political parties, but their system was not effective enough to stop a George W. Bush from inflicting himself on all of us, until Barack reinvented himself to redeem the Democratic Party from being the party of losers.
Thailand, the emerging tiger of Southeast Asia, was once dominated by a party, the Thai Rak Thai, whose ranks grew from the migration of politicians from the other established parties. Speaking of Thai Rak Thai, its name simply translates to “Thai loves Thai.” How is that for a name? Not even Imelda could have had such creativity to name a party “Pinoy Mahal ang Pinoy.” However, Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was able to get away with it, and Thai Rak Thai was poised to build an even stronger majority in the Thai Parliament, until financial scandal and corruption charges, and a simmering Muslim secession movement in the south, spoiled Thaksin’s party (here, I refer to both meanings of the word) and caused him to live in exile.
As for colorful characters, I do not have to remind you of the California elections some years back that Arnie won, which had a fun-filled cast of characters that included a midget and a porn star—indeed a perfect party! And what about the eunuch that ran in India? Or those mynah birds and holy cows used as campaign materials there? Apparently, in India, when they throw a political party and invite party animals, they also make it a point to include the real ones.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
On Simplifying Politics as a Morality Play Between Good and Evil
The surge of Noynoy Aquino's popularity, based from the latest polls, albeit only on limited but significant areas in Luzon (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20090914-225115/Aquino-tops-Luzon-poll) is very tempting for someone to toot the horn and celebrate the impending victory of the good versus the evil, or at the very least, that the good is winning over the evil.
While I am partial towards Noynoy, I would caution anyone against simplifying politics and life as a battle between good and evil. It is not, at least to the ordinary citizen.
Conrad de Quiros, in his column which appeared today, September 14, in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, criticized those who problematize the "good versus evil" narrative. I am one of those. In the column, he called us too theoretical, too confined in a tiny box, and too out of touch with the reality of politics and how the ordinary Filipino citizen thinks. (http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090914-225096/It-is-Good-vs-Evil)
I have high respects for Conrad, and have agreed with him almost 99 percent of the time. This is one of the rare one percent that I would strongly disagree with my fellow Bikolano.
The narrative of good versus evil, in fact, is a convenient template for those in power and those who challenge them to mobilize and rally their supporters. It is easy. And it is too simple. All you have to do is to reduce the complexity of people's choices into a dualism between the good (which is always whoever you support), and the evil (of course, the one you don't support). Thus, it is in fact less of a reality that people experience, but more of an image that one conjures and simulates. Using plain language, it is an advertising campaign, an image building strategy. And our experiences with ads and image make-overs is that they create a hype to manipulate people's search for completeness in the face of a flawed existence--buy this product to make yourself whole, so to speak.
It is the same in political discourse. We speak of an incomplete national experience, a flawed national narrative brought about by evil forces now incarnated through a short woman with a mole who loves expensive food. We want to sell an alternative, our "product" who embodies the "good." No matter how strongly one can agree with the demonification of Gloria, this should not cloud our judgment in being honest with ourselves. It is all but campaign hype. But to offer it as biblical truth is, if I may use the metaphor of boxes, not even thinking in a tiny box, but thinking in a very large but nevertheless very imaginary box.
The opposition between good and evil is a convenient tool of those at the top of the overt national narrative, the elites, and power strugglers and their apologists. It is never the discourse of the ordinary. To assume that ordinary citizens could easily fall in this trap is assuming too much of the elite's power to beguile and too less of the ordinary citizen's ability to discern.
To the ordinary citizen, the issues that matter most are survival, authenticity and how to cope and make best of what they have. In a situation in which uncertainty, complexity and the multiplicity of possibilities predominate your decision landscape, it is going to be suicidal and inauthentic to simplify your choices between a good and an evil. Ordinary peoples negotiate the complex pathways of their everyday lives by their willingness to compromise and suspend moral judgments to survive the cacophony of obstacles thrown their way and to retain their bearings. This is why there is a white lie told even by those who go to mass everyday to make their children secure and safe; of a traffc transgression occassionally done by a conscientious tax payer and efficient manager if only to be on time to a meeting; of a human rights advocate technically living in sin with somebody without the benefit of a marriage, or with somebody of the same sex, if only to satisfy his or her own right to happiness; or of a farmer tenant pilfering from his landlord's share of the harvest by not reporting the correct volume; or of the many who are forced into prostitution just to support their families. The list could go on and on.
And in the above examples, the acts of the people mentioned are not cases of pure evil. And the choices that they make are not simply choosing one over the other.
No, it is not us who theorize about the complexity of ordinary life that are out of touch with reality.
On the contrary, I value the experience of the ordinary too much that I am not about to be stampeded by an ideological desire to justify the candidacy of somebody, no matter how I like him, by calling the choices that people make as unreal and fictitious.
History may have been written as an opposition between good and evil, and great transformations have been painted to be triumphs of the good over the evil. But I have said this before, and I am going to say this again--the history that we know is always written by the winners, and not by the losers. There is much to be teased out from the silences that are not articulated there. It is in these spaces that life becomes a complex terrain of everyday struggle, seen in ordinary people's own personal histories of negotiating the pathways outside the simplifying templates of an ideal good and a demonized evil driving the choices that they make. In fact, a careful check even of grand events, or of actions of kings, presidents, revolutionaries and great intellectuals will reveal that these are not purely manifestations of moral decisions in the context of a good-evil moment.
Furthermore, while Barack Obama and Cory Aquino may have been children of this Manichean opposition between good and evil, as Conrad points out in his column, so was Adolf Hitler when he demonized the Jews and painted the great Aryan race as the vessel from which the good in the human race could be realized. Many historical goods have come out of the narratives of good fighting evil. But in the same manner, many evil deeds have also been legitimized by it. Besides, what is "good" and what is "evil" is relative to the one who speaks. In an elitist narrative, those who have been given the right to write history would naturally have the upperhand.
And the last time I checked, Imelda Marcos is still at it whenever she talks about the true, the good and the beautiful. And she was just recently honored by the CCP.
I would say this: let those who write and speak emotionally and with conviction on behalf of the candidates they are committed to support no matter what speak the language of good and evil. They are just doing their jobs. That is their box, their very large but nevetheless very imaginary box.
While I am partial towards Noynoy, I would caution anyone against simplifying politics and life as a battle between good and evil. It is not, at least to the ordinary citizen.
Conrad de Quiros, in his column which appeared today, September 14, in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, criticized those who problematize the "good versus evil" narrative. I am one of those. In the column, he called us too theoretical, too confined in a tiny box, and too out of touch with the reality of politics and how the ordinary Filipino citizen thinks. (http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090914-225096/It-is-Good-vs-Evil)
I have high respects for Conrad, and have agreed with him almost 99 percent of the time. This is one of the rare one percent that I would strongly disagree with my fellow Bikolano.
The narrative of good versus evil, in fact, is a convenient template for those in power and those who challenge them to mobilize and rally their supporters. It is easy. And it is too simple. All you have to do is to reduce the complexity of people's choices into a dualism between the good (which is always whoever you support), and the evil (of course, the one you don't support). Thus, it is in fact less of a reality that people experience, but more of an image that one conjures and simulates. Using plain language, it is an advertising campaign, an image building strategy. And our experiences with ads and image make-overs is that they create a hype to manipulate people's search for completeness in the face of a flawed existence--buy this product to make yourself whole, so to speak.
It is the same in political discourse. We speak of an incomplete national experience, a flawed national narrative brought about by evil forces now incarnated through a short woman with a mole who loves expensive food. We want to sell an alternative, our "product" who embodies the "good." No matter how strongly one can agree with the demonification of Gloria, this should not cloud our judgment in being honest with ourselves. It is all but campaign hype. But to offer it as biblical truth is, if I may use the metaphor of boxes, not even thinking in a tiny box, but thinking in a very large but nevertheless very imaginary box.
The opposition between good and evil is a convenient tool of those at the top of the overt national narrative, the elites, and power strugglers and their apologists. It is never the discourse of the ordinary. To assume that ordinary citizens could easily fall in this trap is assuming too much of the elite's power to beguile and too less of the ordinary citizen's ability to discern.
To the ordinary citizen, the issues that matter most are survival, authenticity and how to cope and make best of what they have. In a situation in which uncertainty, complexity and the multiplicity of possibilities predominate your decision landscape, it is going to be suicidal and inauthentic to simplify your choices between a good and an evil. Ordinary peoples negotiate the complex pathways of their everyday lives by their willingness to compromise and suspend moral judgments to survive the cacophony of obstacles thrown their way and to retain their bearings. This is why there is a white lie told even by those who go to mass everyday to make their children secure and safe; of a traffc transgression occassionally done by a conscientious tax payer and efficient manager if only to be on time to a meeting; of a human rights advocate technically living in sin with somebody without the benefit of a marriage, or with somebody of the same sex, if only to satisfy his or her own right to happiness; or of a farmer tenant pilfering from his landlord's share of the harvest by not reporting the correct volume; or of the many who are forced into prostitution just to support their families. The list could go on and on.
And in the above examples, the acts of the people mentioned are not cases of pure evil. And the choices that they make are not simply choosing one over the other.
No, it is not us who theorize about the complexity of ordinary life that are out of touch with reality.
On the contrary, I value the experience of the ordinary too much that I am not about to be stampeded by an ideological desire to justify the candidacy of somebody, no matter how I like him, by calling the choices that people make as unreal and fictitious.
History may have been written as an opposition between good and evil, and great transformations have been painted to be triumphs of the good over the evil. But I have said this before, and I am going to say this again--the history that we know is always written by the winners, and not by the losers. There is much to be teased out from the silences that are not articulated there. It is in these spaces that life becomes a complex terrain of everyday struggle, seen in ordinary people's own personal histories of negotiating the pathways outside the simplifying templates of an ideal good and a demonized evil driving the choices that they make. In fact, a careful check even of grand events, or of actions of kings, presidents, revolutionaries and great intellectuals will reveal that these are not purely manifestations of moral decisions in the context of a good-evil moment.
Furthermore, while Barack Obama and Cory Aquino may have been children of this Manichean opposition between good and evil, as Conrad points out in his column, so was Adolf Hitler when he demonized the Jews and painted the great Aryan race as the vessel from which the good in the human race could be realized. Many historical goods have come out of the narratives of good fighting evil. But in the same manner, many evil deeds have also been legitimized by it. Besides, what is "good" and what is "evil" is relative to the one who speaks. In an elitist narrative, those who have been given the right to write history would naturally have the upperhand.
And the last time I checked, Imelda Marcos is still at it whenever she talks about the true, the good and the beautiful. And she was just recently honored by the CCP.
I would say this: let those who write and speak emotionally and with conviction on behalf of the candidates they are committed to support no matter what speak the language of good and evil. They are just doing their jobs. That is their box, their very large but nevetheless very imaginary box.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Agonizing About Noynoy
In the past several Presidential elections, I have always voted for a loser, to a point that some friends joked about the fact that I am not a very good political scientist, considering that I should know better whom to vote for using my own "objective" assessment of the political landscape.
My defense was that I am not an ordinary political scientist, considering that I study the ordinary and the everyday, and not the grand political processes associated with the state. My expertise lies in discerning the political out of Darna and Survivor Philippines, and not in divining political futures from grand scripts and discourses. And even if I could, I would never vote for someone just because she or he is going to win. The exercise of suffrage is too sacred for me to use to mortgage my principles in exchange for the feeling of having been on the winning side. I derive comfort from the fact that what most of recent history have told us is that the winning side is oftentimes also the wrong side.
This time, however, my losing streak may just end with the eventual vote I may cast with Noynoy.
But things have to be brought to careful attention, things that lead me into an agonizing self-reflection. The operative word here is "may," implying that I am not yet 100 percent certain, not only of my vote for him, but also of his chances of winning.
One source of my personal agony is the nagging thought that despite the fact that I may eventually be on the winning side, then why is it that I am not that ecstatic of the possibility? I am bothered by the fact that I still have doubts.
A friend recently told me that Noynoy is the best choice to lead the country into a moral recovery, considering that moral uprightness is in his genes. This is exactly what makes me uncomfortable, for indeed while there is no doubt to the moral force that characterized the union of Ninoy and Cory, and the dominant presence of faith in the worldview of the latter, buying the genetic argument poses a serious risk when one looks at what happened to Kris.
Seriously, however, I am very much uncomfortable putting my hope for the country's recovery in the hands of a family name just because of its political pedigree. This is tantamount to an act of legitimizing a fated form of dynasty, where one clan is almost bestowed the divine right to rule. What would be next? That any Aquino is good, and that all Marcoses are bad? Well, aside from Kris, there was the dancing queen Teresa Aquino-Oreta who sided with Erap with her notorious dance moves in the impeachment hearings in the Senate to prove that the genetic argument is extremely flawed. Kidding aside, what if it turns out that the elements of Kris and Tessie running in the blood of Noynoy might just show up?
Doubts like these emerge simply because we really don't know Noynoy as himself that much. Before the death of his mother, he was just an average performing legislator who simply capitalized on his surname to win a seat in the House and later in the Senate. Noynoy has to really try harder to project himself now as not just the son of Ninoy and Cory, and begin to chart for himself a political narrative which is different from, even as equally if not more promising and compelling than, his parents'. And here, it seems he is not doing very well, considering that his trajectory is in the same manner as her mother's. A death catapulted him to take on a presidential bearing like his mother; he evinces reluctance in the same way Cory was reluctant before; he went to the South on a retreat to reflect like what Cory did. In this process of retracing the path which his mother took, whether deliberately or not, he began to acquire an umbra of religiousity the public has never seen him to have. This may be good to some, but for me it simply betrays the lack of originality and authenticity. Personally, I have always been suspicious of candidates who appropriate religion in building their images and increasing their political stocks. This is why I will never vote for Fr. Ed Panlilio, Bro. Eddie and Bro. Mike.
I have a feeling that this coming elections will be fought not in the domain of memories, but in the landscape of the future. May 2010 may not be that far in time from now, but in a political campaign, a week could be a century. Many things could happen. As the Cory magic wanes, Noynoy will begin to be scrutinized not for what his bloodline would imply, or what his parents have bequeathed him at the time of his birth and at the times of their deaths. He will, by his own terms and record, now be deconstructed, evaluated, weighed, rated, scored, attacked, interrogated, and engaged by an increasingly critical and discerning public, and by competitors who will undoubtedly deploy all tactics, from fair to dirty, at and against him. Among others, he will be put to task regarding his position on agrarian reform. He could not even use the C5 controversy against Villar for the simple reason that he is part of the Senate that allowed such insertions when the budget was first deliberated.
As for me, I will continue to hope that he will do his best. I hope he can begin to be his own person. I hope he can escape from his elitist image and penetrate the CDE crowd to compete with Villar, Erap and Noli. I hope that while using his pedigree and his parents' moral force as an inspiration, that he will now chart a forward looking course of not capitalizing on their deaths and what they could have done, but on embarking on a journey about our future lives, his plans and what could be accomplished, as a way to wing it through the youth vote for which he will compete against Villar and Chiz
I am hoping he will do this so that when the last ballot has been scanned in May 2010, hopefully in the cleanest election we will ever have, that I could finally say that at last, I have voted for the winner, and after six years, I can also proudly say that my winning side was also the right side of our history.
My defense was that I am not an ordinary political scientist, considering that I study the ordinary and the everyday, and not the grand political processes associated with the state. My expertise lies in discerning the political out of Darna and Survivor Philippines, and not in divining political futures from grand scripts and discourses. And even if I could, I would never vote for someone just because she or he is going to win. The exercise of suffrage is too sacred for me to use to mortgage my principles in exchange for the feeling of having been on the winning side. I derive comfort from the fact that what most of recent history have told us is that the winning side is oftentimes also the wrong side.
This time, however, my losing streak may just end with the eventual vote I may cast with Noynoy.
But things have to be brought to careful attention, things that lead me into an agonizing self-reflection. The operative word here is "may," implying that I am not yet 100 percent certain, not only of my vote for him, but also of his chances of winning.
One source of my personal agony is the nagging thought that despite the fact that I may eventually be on the winning side, then why is it that I am not that ecstatic of the possibility? I am bothered by the fact that I still have doubts.
A friend recently told me that Noynoy is the best choice to lead the country into a moral recovery, considering that moral uprightness is in his genes. This is exactly what makes me uncomfortable, for indeed while there is no doubt to the moral force that characterized the union of Ninoy and Cory, and the dominant presence of faith in the worldview of the latter, buying the genetic argument poses a serious risk when one looks at what happened to Kris.
Seriously, however, I am very much uncomfortable putting my hope for the country's recovery in the hands of a family name just because of its political pedigree. This is tantamount to an act of legitimizing a fated form of dynasty, where one clan is almost bestowed the divine right to rule. What would be next? That any Aquino is good, and that all Marcoses are bad? Well, aside from Kris, there was the dancing queen Teresa Aquino-Oreta who sided with Erap with her notorious dance moves in the impeachment hearings in the Senate to prove that the genetic argument is extremely flawed. Kidding aside, what if it turns out that the elements of Kris and Tessie running in the blood of Noynoy might just show up?
Doubts like these emerge simply because we really don't know Noynoy as himself that much. Before the death of his mother, he was just an average performing legislator who simply capitalized on his surname to win a seat in the House and later in the Senate. Noynoy has to really try harder to project himself now as not just the son of Ninoy and Cory, and begin to chart for himself a political narrative which is different from, even as equally if not more promising and compelling than, his parents'. And here, it seems he is not doing very well, considering that his trajectory is in the same manner as her mother's. A death catapulted him to take on a presidential bearing like his mother; he evinces reluctance in the same way Cory was reluctant before; he went to the South on a retreat to reflect like what Cory did. In this process of retracing the path which his mother took, whether deliberately or not, he began to acquire an umbra of religiousity the public has never seen him to have. This may be good to some, but for me it simply betrays the lack of originality and authenticity. Personally, I have always been suspicious of candidates who appropriate religion in building their images and increasing their political stocks. This is why I will never vote for Fr. Ed Panlilio, Bro. Eddie and Bro. Mike.
I have a feeling that this coming elections will be fought not in the domain of memories, but in the landscape of the future. May 2010 may not be that far in time from now, but in a political campaign, a week could be a century. Many things could happen. As the Cory magic wanes, Noynoy will begin to be scrutinized not for what his bloodline would imply, or what his parents have bequeathed him at the time of his birth and at the times of their deaths. He will, by his own terms and record, now be deconstructed, evaluated, weighed, rated, scored, attacked, interrogated, and engaged by an increasingly critical and discerning public, and by competitors who will undoubtedly deploy all tactics, from fair to dirty, at and against him. Among others, he will be put to task regarding his position on agrarian reform. He could not even use the C5 controversy against Villar for the simple reason that he is part of the Senate that allowed such insertions when the budget was first deliberated.
As for me, I will continue to hope that he will do his best. I hope he can begin to be his own person. I hope he can escape from his elitist image and penetrate the CDE crowd to compete with Villar, Erap and Noli. I hope that while using his pedigree and his parents' moral force as an inspiration, that he will now chart a forward looking course of not capitalizing on their deaths and what they could have done, but on embarking on a journey about our future lives, his plans and what could be accomplished, as a way to wing it through the youth vote for which he will compete against Villar and Chiz
I am hoping he will do this so that when the last ballot has been scanned in May 2010, hopefully in the cleanest election we will ever have, that I could finally say that at last, I have voted for the winner, and after six years, I can also proudly say that my winning side was also the right side of our history.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Of Awards and Recognitions
It took me a while before I could muster enough courage to say this.
Now is the time.
I am sick and tired of awards and recognitions. Particularly if they come as a price you have to pay for acting unnatural just to please. Or when the recognition is tantamount to being knighted as part of an elite group. And most particularly if they come in exchange for some kowtowing and ass licking (pardon my French).
And this is not coming from someone who is just sour griping. I have won awards and recognitions on my own, and would not even dare list these just to prove my point. Those who know me would testify that I am not lying.
But what really gets me are the kinds of awards and recognitions in which what you become is a person recognized for what you are not, and for what others would like you to be.
There is this prestigious award given to young scientists, for example, but I know of many who have been awarded this recognition not out of exemplary work, but of extraordinary interpersonal skills. I know of a place, I am not going to name where but for those in the know would probably be able to guess, in which a quick way to win the award would be to be nice to a select elite group. I remember being approached by someone who I presumed cared enough to advise me that if I want to become an outstanding young scientist, that I should know who I should be and should not be associating with. Of course, it is but natural for this select group to take care of their own (and conversely, to make it difficult for those who do not belong in their group), to a point that the older members use their clout in the science community to facilitate the recognition of their younger cohorts--provided that they behave. Indeed, they even have a very efficient reservation system and a pecking order in which one young member already is reserved for a given year when to receive the award.
Naturally, the principled person which my parents taught me to become shuddered at the thought of playing politics and kissing asses of senior scientists if only to win a medal I could not even be proud of.
And then there is this award for outstanding alumni, in which people nominated me to receive, but I flatly refused for the simple reason that I have to produce my own evidences and supporting documents. I was just too proud, perhaps, to believe that all my work are public in nature, and therefore those who feel I truly deserve the award must find the time to look for these themselves, instead of me carting off boxes of publications, medals and recognitions. This is in the same league as that pesky international who's who that offers you to have a place in an alleged book of outstanding individuals, if only you pay a fee.
But the cake is reserved to one group organized to be supposedly composed of scholars par excellence but whose elitism and exclusiveness are taken by some of its members to medieval heights , in which people who are nominated to become one of them are subjected to scrutiny far beyond their academic reputations, but would include their personal life. And here, we are not even talking about immorality, but the very trivial quirks of somebody being denied membership for the simple reason that he is perceived to be quarrelsome, or somebody in the group doesn't like another nominee's style of written communication. One time, I almost fell on the floor when I was told that one reason why somebody was denied membership was that she was a single mother (as if all single mothers are of dubious moral character), or that one male nominee who is obviously gay is said to be having an affair with another man (and what did they expect from him, to have an affair with a woman? For crying out loud, this is why he is gay!), when in the same breath you have currently sitting members who are also as gay as you can get, but perhaps are just too good in hiding their affairs.
Here, my deepest sense of moral outrage was ignited by what I find as ridiculous and hypocritical acts of misplaced moral uprightness. I guess, I am just offended by a group anointing itself as guardians of morality. Reminds me of the Pharisees, or of moral McCarthyism. In the name of guarding their precious values, they forgot what one morally upright outcast of His society in His time once said: let those without sin cast the first stone.
Awards and recognitions come and go, and could be one or the other. The National Artists controversy, if only to give an example, is a shining testament to how political power can easily poison the process, even as one could also reveal an exclusionary elitism masquerading as due process and embedded in the vetting of nominees. Carlo Caparas may not necessarily be 100 percent wrong when he said that hell was raised against him because of the kind of art he practiced. It is too bad Gloria made it worse for him. What can I say? The lady simply pollutes anything she touches of late, including expensive dinners. I am going to bet that had Carlo received the award from Cory, many in the progressive art group would find ways to justify this as a form of democratizing the process.
I may still value awards and recognitions from peers in the form of academic journals publishing my work; or of being promoted using a very rigorous, fair and objective process such as the one we have at DLSU; or of getting grants or fellowships from competitions which have fairly established protocols. This is why I am proud of my publications, my promotions, and my recent Fulbright grant.
But what makes me even proudest is when I go home to a family that loves me the way I am, bare and devoid of all medals and accolades but simply being me--a husband, father, son and brother. My family is my most priceless medal--pure, unadulterated gold, silver and bronze rolled into one with some accents of timeless diamonds.
So, to those who think I am unlucky and miserable just because I am not an outstanding young scientist, or have not been invited to join this elitist group, or have not been recognized as an outstanding alumni of my school (from elementary to college), pardon my French--but I can tell you this: get all your medals and plaques, and shove them up as high as Mt. Everest for all I care!
Now is the time.
I am sick and tired of awards and recognitions. Particularly if they come as a price you have to pay for acting unnatural just to please. Or when the recognition is tantamount to being knighted as part of an elite group. And most particularly if they come in exchange for some kowtowing and ass licking (pardon my French).
And this is not coming from someone who is just sour griping. I have won awards and recognitions on my own, and would not even dare list these just to prove my point. Those who know me would testify that I am not lying.
But what really gets me are the kinds of awards and recognitions in which what you become is a person recognized for what you are not, and for what others would like you to be.
There is this prestigious award given to young scientists, for example, but I know of many who have been awarded this recognition not out of exemplary work, but of extraordinary interpersonal skills. I know of a place, I am not going to name where but for those in the know would probably be able to guess, in which a quick way to win the award would be to be nice to a select elite group. I remember being approached by someone who I presumed cared enough to advise me that if I want to become an outstanding young scientist, that I should know who I should be and should not be associating with. Of course, it is but natural for this select group to take care of their own (and conversely, to make it difficult for those who do not belong in their group), to a point that the older members use their clout in the science community to facilitate the recognition of their younger cohorts--provided that they behave. Indeed, they even have a very efficient reservation system and a pecking order in which one young member already is reserved for a given year when to receive the award.
Naturally, the principled person which my parents taught me to become shuddered at the thought of playing politics and kissing asses of senior scientists if only to win a medal I could not even be proud of.
And then there is this award for outstanding alumni, in which people nominated me to receive, but I flatly refused for the simple reason that I have to produce my own evidences and supporting documents. I was just too proud, perhaps, to believe that all my work are public in nature, and therefore those who feel I truly deserve the award must find the time to look for these themselves, instead of me carting off boxes of publications, medals and recognitions. This is in the same league as that pesky international who's who that offers you to have a place in an alleged book of outstanding individuals, if only you pay a fee.
But the cake is reserved to one group organized to be supposedly composed of scholars par excellence but whose elitism and exclusiveness are taken by some of its members to medieval heights , in which people who are nominated to become one of them are subjected to scrutiny far beyond their academic reputations, but would include their personal life. And here, we are not even talking about immorality, but the very trivial quirks of somebody being denied membership for the simple reason that he is perceived to be quarrelsome, or somebody in the group doesn't like another nominee's style of written communication. One time, I almost fell on the floor when I was told that one reason why somebody was denied membership was that she was a single mother (as if all single mothers are of dubious moral character), or that one male nominee who is obviously gay is said to be having an affair with another man (and what did they expect from him, to have an affair with a woman? For crying out loud, this is why he is gay!), when in the same breath you have currently sitting members who are also as gay as you can get, but perhaps are just too good in hiding their affairs.
Here, my deepest sense of moral outrage was ignited by what I find as ridiculous and hypocritical acts of misplaced moral uprightness. I guess, I am just offended by a group anointing itself as guardians of morality. Reminds me of the Pharisees, or of moral McCarthyism. In the name of guarding their precious values, they forgot what one morally upright outcast of His society in His time once said: let those without sin cast the first stone.
Awards and recognitions come and go, and could be one or the other. The National Artists controversy, if only to give an example, is a shining testament to how political power can easily poison the process, even as one could also reveal an exclusionary elitism masquerading as due process and embedded in the vetting of nominees. Carlo Caparas may not necessarily be 100 percent wrong when he said that hell was raised against him because of the kind of art he practiced. It is too bad Gloria made it worse for him. What can I say? The lady simply pollutes anything she touches of late, including expensive dinners. I am going to bet that had Carlo received the award from Cory, many in the progressive art group would find ways to justify this as a form of democratizing the process.
I may still value awards and recognitions from peers in the form of academic journals publishing my work; or of being promoted using a very rigorous, fair and objective process such as the one we have at DLSU; or of getting grants or fellowships from competitions which have fairly established protocols. This is why I am proud of my publications, my promotions, and my recent Fulbright grant.
But what makes me even proudest is when I go home to a family that loves me the way I am, bare and devoid of all medals and accolades but simply being me--a husband, father, son and brother. My family is my most priceless medal--pure, unadulterated gold, silver and bronze rolled into one with some accents of timeless diamonds.
So, to those who think I am unlucky and miserable just because I am not an outstanding young scientist, or have not been invited to join this elitist group, or have not been recognized as an outstanding alumni of my school (from elementary to college), pardon my French--but I can tell you this: get all your medals and plaques, and shove them up as high as Mt. Everest for all I care!
Friday, August 21, 2009
Of Bananas and Careless Whispers
A few monthhs back, during the acquaintance party of my two daughters at school (they both attend a Christian School, although we are Roman Catholics), an incident happened which made me chuckle. It was around that time that the Katrina-Hayden sex video scandal erupted, and the song "Careless Whisper" took on another meaning apart from its seemingly innocent lyrics about somebody vowing not to dance again after being broken hearted (For those who don't know the song, here is a link to the melody and its lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqmoBYkQfc). Well, indeed, for Katrina, the song was really a reminder not to dance again with Hayden.
But going back to the story of my daughters' acquaintance party, the DJ matter-of-factly played the song and the high school students were beginning to dance to it when suddenly the music stopped. As it turned out, one of their more prudish teachers told the DJ to stop the song, apparently out of what was perceived to be its offensive and inappropriate implications that threatened the young minds who at the time filled the schools' covered court converted into a ballroom, to think that they are in the premises of a school ran by the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).
I like "Careless Whisper." And I am pissed off that Katrina and Hayden used it as a background to their careless dance, and for such act of carelessness, they forever tainted a song that I have loved since I first heard it.
Comes now, a similar thing happened, but this time, to my favorite fruit--the banana.
The banana is a practical, convenient and useful fruit. It is rich in potassium, and is good for people working out and on the go. It is not messy to eat, and you don't need elaborate preparation to enjoy it. You don't even have to wash your hands for you to eat it, and you can have it even when your fingers are dirty.
Yet, for a long time, the banana, together with other phallic shaped fruits and vegetables, like the eggplant, have been seriously maligned when people have associated it with what they perceive as dirty things like sex.
Recently, my favorite fruit has again taken the center-stage in a controversy when the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) moved collectively to pressure radio stations and record bars to stop playing/selling casetted discs of a song about the banana performed by the group "Blank Tape". Here is a link to the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ugTosqYL0&feature=related and its lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/blanktape/banana.html.
I am really piqued. Initially, I blamed Katrina and Hayden for polluting the message of "Careless Whisper," and for Blank Tape for demeaning, once again, the banana, which we can actually call the "fruit for all seasons."
But after examing the lyrics of the song "Banana," it occurred to me that the problem really lies not in the song, but on those who are scandalized by the seemingly plain message of a vendor selling his banana and describing its attributes. We are blaming the song and the fruit for our overly sexualized, yet overly repressed minds. This is what comes out when hypocrisy prevails over innocent fun.
It is even worse in the case of "Careless Whisper." There is nothing immoral or offensive about this song. For it to be taken as an affront to the innocence of my daughters about to dance to its melody just because it has been associated with a salacious and questionable act of two consenting adults performing a somewhat lewd dance is simply again barking at the wrong tree. It is an admission of our own weaknesses. We fault the song because we have a weak hold of our moral faculties.
The guardians of our morality, including the Bishops, teachers and parents, indeed have a responsibility to moralize and protect the young minds. But the moment we begin moving to ban songs not for the inherent messages they have based on their texts, but on the conjured danger that they bring based on their association with allegedly immoral and improper messages is tantamount to an unwarranted censorship of the art based on our own failures in our mission to provide our young, and even us adults, the proper conviction to distinguish art from trash.
I have said it before. I am going to say it again.
The best weapon against immorality is a mind capable of discerning the right from the wrong, the bad from the good when you encounter these. You cannot teach the mind to know the immoral and unethical if the only devise you can deploy is one of denying it the capability to see, feel, hear and experience and then judge. You cannot teach people how to distinguish art from pornography by denying them the right to see and judge for themselves.
When the CBCP moved to ban the song "Banana," a sense of discomfort stirred in me. I examined its lyrics, and a mature, thinking person will know that it is a fun song, and not about sex. With all due respect to the Bishops, only people with dirty minds would find the song sexually suggestive and offensive. In pushing for its banning, are they admitting that they have failed in their mission to moralize, thereby leading to a pervasiveness of dirty minds among their flock?
Of course, they can always say they are doing this for the young children. But children can be taught to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, if only we can be honest with them and begin treating sex not as a cursed thing that should not be talked about.
And children, with all their innocence, can also teach us a thing or two about prudence.
I asked my daughters how they felt when the plug was pulled on "Careless Whisper" while they were dancing. They said they got offended--not by the song, of which they fairly discerned as independent of the Katrina-Hayden scandal, but by the rude act of interrupting their dance without any explanation at all (They only found out about the reason later).
This is the tragedy. In our desire to protect morality, we in turn commit acts that reveal our insecurity about our capacity to be moral agents, to a point that we become rude, or irrational, or both. We then commit careless acts, including reinforcing the irrational logic of associating bananas with sex, and transforming an innocent song like "Careless Whisper" into an offensive piece.
What can I say. Foucault said it before and I am going to say it again. We want to stop talk about sex by silencing and demonizing it, and banishing it from the "said," "heard" and "seen" realm--things we hope to achieve when we rudely interrupt a dance by pulling the plug on a song we think is offensive, or when we move to ban another song from being aired. But far from being successful, we only end up providing a new avenue to talk about sex, and end up sexualizing non-sexual songs like "Careless Whisper" and fruits like the banana.
The irony could never be lost on us.
But going back to the story of my daughters' acquaintance party, the DJ matter-of-factly played the song and the high school students were beginning to dance to it when suddenly the music stopped. As it turned out, one of their more prudish teachers told the DJ to stop the song, apparently out of what was perceived to be its offensive and inappropriate implications that threatened the young minds who at the time filled the schools' covered court converted into a ballroom, to think that they are in the premises of a school ran by the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).
I like "Careless Whisper." And I am pissed off that Katrina and Hayden used it as a background to their careless dance, and for such act of carelessness, they forever tainted a song that I have loved since I first heard it.
Comes now, a similar thing happened, but this time, to my favorite fruit--the banana.
The banana is a practical, convenient and useful fruit. It is rich in potassium, and is good for people working out and on the go. It is not messy to eat, and you don't need elaborate preparation to enjoy it. You don't even have to wash your hands for you to eat it, and you can have it even when your fingers are dirty.
Yet, for a long time, the banana, together with other phallic shaped fruits and vegetables, like the eggplant, have been seriously maligned when people have associated it with what they perceive as dirty things like sex.
Recently, my favorite fruit has again taken the center-stage in a controversy when the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) moved collectively to pressure radio stations and record bars to stop playing/selling casetted discs of a song about the banana performed by the group "Blank Tape". Here is a link to the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ugTosqYL0&feature=related and its lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/blanktape/banana.html.
I am really piqued. Initially, I blamed Katrina and Hayden for polluting the message of "Careless Whisper," and for Blank Tape for demeaning, once again, the banana, which we can actually call the "fruit for all seasons."
But after examing the lyrics of the song "Banana," it occurred to me that the problem really lies not in the song, but on those who are scandalized by the seemingly plain message of a vendor selling his banana and describing its attributes. We are blaming the song and the fruit for our overly sexualized, yet overly repressed minds. This is what comes out when hypocrisy prevails over innocent fun.
It is even worse in the case of "Careless Whisper." There is nothing immoral or offensive about this song. For it to be taken as an affront to the innocence of my daughters about to dance to its melody just because it has been associated with a salacious and questionable act of two consenting adults performing a somewhat lewd dance is simply again barking at the wrong tree. It is an admission of our own weaknesses. We fault the song because we have a weak hold of our moral faculties.
The guardians of our morality, including the Bishops, teachers and parents, indeed have a responsibility to moralize and protect the young minds. But the moment we begin moving to ban songs not for the inherent messages they have based on their texts, but on the conjured danger that they bring based on their association with allegedly immoral and improper messages is tantamount to an unwarranted censorship of the art based on our own failures in our mission to provide our young, and even us adults, the proper conviction to distinguish art from trash.
I have said it before. I am going to say it again.
The best weapon against immorality is a mind capable of discerning the right from the wrong, the bad from the good when you encounter these. You cannot teach the mind to know the immoral and unethical if the only devise you can deploy is one of denying it the capability to see, feel, hear and experience and then judge. You cannot teach people how to distinguish art from pornography by denying them the right to see and judge for themselves.
When the CBCP moved to ban the song "Banana," a sense of discomfort stirred in me. I examined its lyrics, and a mature, thinking person will know that it is a fun song, and not about sex. With all due respect to the Bishops, only people with dirty minds would find the song sexually suggestive and offensive. In pushing for its banning, are they admitting that they have failed in their mission to moralize, thereby leading to a pervasiveness of dirty minds among their flock?
Of course, they can always say they are doing this for the young children. But children can be taught to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, if only we can be honest with them and begin treating sex not as a cursed thing that should not be talked about.
And children, with all their innocence, can also teach us a thing or two about prudence.
I asked my daughters how they felt when the plug was pulled on "Careless Whisper" while they were dancing. They said they got offended--not by the song, of which they fairly discerned as independent of the Katrina-Hayden scandal, but by the rude act of interrupting their dance without any explanation at all (They only found out about the reason later).
This is the tragedy. In our desire to protect morality, we in turn commit acts that reveal our insecurity about our capacity to be moral agents, to a point that we become rude, or irrational, or both. We then commit careless acts, including reinforcing the irrational logic of associating bananas with sex, and transforming an innocent song like "Careless Whisper" into an offensive piece.
What can I say. Foucault said it before and I am going to say it again. We want to stop talk about sex by silencing and demonizing it, and banishing it from the "said," "heard" and "seen" realm--things we hope to achieve when we rudely interrupt a dance by pulling the plug on a song we think is offensive, or when we move to ban another song from being aired. But far from being successful, we only end up providing a new avenue to talk about sex, and end up sexualizing non-sexual songs like "Careless Whisper" and fruits like the banana.
The irony could never be lost on us.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Filipinos Are Worth Dining For
The nerve of this woman, this Gloria!
And the nerve of those who keep on defending her and her expensive meals abroad.
But seriously, sometimes I kick myself for expecting her to be more than what she can deliver. I should know better. This woman will not behave. She will continue to out-do herself even more. There seems to be no limit to the preposterous, outrageous or simply nasty things she can afford to inflict on us. It is almost as if it is her natural gift to give pain.
She made mockery of the arts before she left for the US, when she had the gall to appoint Carlo, Pitoy and the former Ninoy activist, Cecile to join the pantheons of national artists in violation of the process of vetting for nominees.
Around the same time, she attempted to make a mockery of the Judiciary by trying to undermine the work of the Judicial and Bar Council.
And when she was in the US, finally realizing her dream of meeting Barack Obama who rewarded her school girl excitement with an appointment of being the guardian of US interests in the ASEAN, she made mockery of decency when she partook of an expensive meal not only once, but four times, at a time when people are suffering from an economic crisis (never mind her proclamations that the Filipinos are doing a lot better when others are encountering the worst) and are in the midst of mourning for the death of Cory.
It is not enough that Gloria corrupted the political memory of Ninoy by transforming one of his supporters, Cecile Alvarez, into a caricature of her old political activism to now embrace a Marcosian politics reborn in the person of her new patroness in Malacanang. Gloria had to figuratively spit on the bereavement of our collective loss of Ninoy's wife Cory by dining on caviar and lobster in the same breath that she urged all of us to join her on a period of national mourning.
Let me get this straight. There is nothing wrong in splurging on expensive food, particularly if you use your own money.
But there is nothing right in wining and dining, even if it's at your own expense, while people are grieving and starving.
As I have said before, I will say it again. Ninoy thought that Filipinos are worth dying for.
Gloria, on the other hand, thinks that we are worth dining for.
What can I say, she has cannibalized our system of politics in so many ways. But fortunately for us, things appear to be not as easy as Representatives Suarez and Romualdez could produce $15,000 and $20,000 respectively.
The artist community has now gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the appointment of Carlo, Cecile and Pitoy, the same Supreme Court that was spared from Gloria's poison when the JBC stood ground and refused to submit new names to fill its vacant positions.
The press has exposed the extravagance of her meals.
And Cory, and indirectly Ninoy, had their symbolic revenge, of making it impossible for her to come home triumphantly from her trip. Even in death, Cory taught Gloria a lesson. For a woman so full of herself, being denied the spotlight is like being denied a meal in an expensive restaurant.
And of course, there is always the possibility that the toxin embedded in the lobster, the mercury hiding in the fish and seafood, and the carcinogenic effects of Angus beef may someday find their homing target in the visceral recesses of her body and those of the crowd that were with her when they feasted while we mourned.
For a woman with fatty liver, she may just be on her way there if she is not careful and keeps on dining for the Filipinos the way she did in New York and Washington.
Sometimes, when you dine for the people, you are also in fact dying for them. Only time can tell.
And the nerve of those who keep on defending her and her expensive meals abroad.
But seriously, sometimes I kick myself for expecting her to be more than what she can deliver. I should know better. This woman will not behave. She will continue to out-do herself even more. There seems to be no limit to the preposterous, outrageous or simply nasty things she can afford to inflict on us. It is almost as if it is her natural gift to give pain.
She made mockery of the arts before she left for the US, when she had the gall to appoint Carlo, Pitoy and the former Ninoy activist, Cecile to join the pantheons of national artists in violation of the process of vetting for nominees.
Around the same time, she attempted to make a mockery of the Judiciary by trying to undermine the work of the Judicial and Bar Council.
And when she was in the US, finally realizing her dream of meeting Barack Obama who rewarded her school girl excitement with an appointment of being the guardian of US interests in the ASEAN, she made mockery of decency when she partook of an expensive meal not only once, but four times, at a time when people are suffering from an economic crisis (never mind her proclamations that the Filipinos are doing a lot better when others are encountering the worst) and are in the midst of mourning for the death of Cory.
It is not enough that Gloria corrupted the political memory of Ninoy by transforming one of his supporters, Cecile Alvarez, into a caricature of her old political activism to now embrace a Marcosian politics reborn in the person of her new patroness in Malacanang. Gloria had to figuratively spit on the bereavement of our collective loss of Ninoy's wife Cory by dining on caviar and lobster in the same breath that she urged all of us to join her on a period of national mourning.
Let me get this straight. There is nothing wrong in splurging on expensive food, particularly if you use your own money.
But there is nothing right in wining and dining, even if it's at your own expense, while people are grieving and starving.
As I have said before, I will say it again. Ninoy thought that Filipinos are worth dying for.
Gloria, on the other hand, thinks that we are worth dining for.
What can I say, she has cannibalized our system of politics in so many ways. But fortunately for us, things appear to be not as easy as Representatives Suarez and Romualdez could produce $15,000 and $20,000 respectively.
The artist community has now gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the appointment of Carlo, Cecile and Pitoy, the same Supreme Court that was spared from Gloria's poison when the JBC stood ground and refused to submit new names to fill its vacant positions.
The press has exposed the extravagance of her meals.
And Cory, and indirectly Ninoy, had their symbolic revenge, of making it impossible for her to come home triumphantly from her trip. Even in death, Cory taught Gloria a lesson. For a woman so full of herself, being denied the spotlight is like being denied a meal in an expensive restaurant.
And of course, there is always the possibility that the toxin embedded in the lobster, the mercury hiding in the fish and seafood, and the carcinogenic effects of Angus beef may someday find their homing target in the visceral recesses of her body and those of the crowd that were with her when they feasted while we mourned.
For a woman with fatty liver, she may just be on her way there if she is not careful and keeps on dining for the Filipinos the way she did in New York and Washington.
Sometimes, when you dine for the people, you are also in fact dying for them. Only time can tell.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
A Backlash Against Feminism? Nah! It's a Backlash Against Gloria!
What's this? Men finally fighting back at women of power?
But before I even proceed further, and to provide context, please watch first this youtube link of another song which is hitting the airwaves right now entitled "Mga Tambay Lang Kami": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkx2fNrmXNM
Hilarious? Well, I would have laughed all the way until the end of the song, but stopped short of succumbing to the temptation of being totally amused after I was reminded by the discomfort I felt while listening to it. Like the song I featured in my most recent post entitled "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon," I always hear this being played on the radio while I am doing my daily ritual of lifting pounds and burning calories in my neighborhood gym. My initial take was that I found both songs to somewhat have politically-incorrect messages. I had to find a way to resist, if not subvert, the inherent politics of these songs. As I have done in my previous post, I have to likewise find a way to invert, if not appropriate the message of "Mga Tambay Lang Kami," if only to reverse its seemingly problematic message.
Comparing both songs led me to believe that there is an on-going backlash against women innocently masquerading as humor embedded in popular culture. This discourse, albeit hidden in the text but easily visible if one only listens carefully, of men talking about abusive women in "Mas Mahal na Kita Ngayon" and in this case, of men eventually rebelling against women who have broken their hearts and emptied their wallets by choosing to love gays instead.
I have to hurriedly scan the literature on post-feminism to find my bearings, as I search for a theoretical explanation to this everyday form of gender politics. Girl power, "do-me" and "beyond-bitch" (don't fault me for using this word--it is in fact how one type of post-feminism is labeled) feminism seem to have focused on new forms of being a woman, of how the "woman as victim" image has to be debunked, and how strong women have to be seen in the light of being bearers of power that are not to be condemned for their being masculine-like. Well, indeed we have images of women who ooze with raw masculine power tempered with feminine beauty, enabling them to rival and re-cast male forms of power. Lara Croft and the Charlie's Angels come to mind. Post-feminism is a reaction to the essentializing implications of demonizing too much images of masculinity and patriarchy as anathemic to being a woman, and in turn celebrates masculine features in women as a new embodiment of female power, and as a novel deconstruction of male monopoly over strength and masculinity.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may in fact be a child of this type of imagery of women. However, she is not a perfect fit for the simple reason that her power is not in her masculine features, and is in fact compromised by her lack of grace and motherly aura as she governs the nation. Any attempt to imagine her as our Lara Croft, or our Charlie's Angel is blatantly abusive of our sense of sanity. Her false projection of power falls flat simply because of her physical attributes, her smirk, and her character, things which were revealed for all to see, complete with the mechanical applauses from ther unthinking horde of supporters, during her SONA, which to my mind was the worst and most unstatespersonlike SONA in the history of our Republic.
It is perhaps the images of dominant women, of women who employ male strategies as a way of empowering themselves, that led to this silent but not so-hidden transcripts of resistance now found in songs like "Mga Tambay Lang Kami" and "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon." While I would be guilty of stretching too much the political implications of men celebrating, at the sight of their dead female-partner-tormentors, to the point of finally declaring their love for them; or of men deciding to ditch their women partners who only caused them misery and penury, to eventually find love from their gay lovers, I am actually tempted to go beyond the more convenient argument of simply identifying the stereotpyical dominant and intellectual women as the object of this male forms of resistance.
In fact, I am willing to even argue that in the context of the present times, when there is much to be said about the deadly effects of Gloria's nine years of being our nation's "woman," that these two songs are in fact forms of popular resistance aimed at what her brand of masculine power has brought to bear.
I believe that, like hidden codes, these songs may be appropriated as templates from where to launch a resistive reading of the kind of feminism, albeit false, that Gloria has imagined herself to have. It may not have been the intention of their composers, for after all, they may in fact have simply composed and performed them to make fun of women, gays and even themselves. But everytime songs like this invade the public space, they also become public property, and hence, can be used and interpreted in any way people may choose.
And I choose not to read these songs for their obvious politics, but instead appropriate them in my engagement of this particular woman now occupying Malacanang who has caused much violence against the Filipino people, abused us, and emptied our pockets. By June 30, 2010, she will hopefully be lying in her political coffin, and by then, I may be able to say to her that "Mas mahal na kita ngayon," even as on the May elections in 2010 I would even be willing to give my political love and support to, and vote for a gay politician, for it will not matter what his sexual orientation would be, as long as he would be able to truly "love" and understand me back and the nation as well, for like what is said in the song, I am one of those citizens who are now "sawa [na] sa babae, mga babaeng manloloko, pineperahan lang kami."
So, is this a backlash against feminism? Not at all. It is more accurately my expression of resistance against one particular woman whose pretentious self-moralizing of not liking men, gay or otherwise, who say bad words in public is contradicted by her shameless audacity of doing bad acts publicly.
But before I even proceed further, and to provide context, please watch first this youtube link of another song which is hitting the airwaves right now entitled "Mga Tambay Lang Kami": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkx2fNrmXNM
Hilarious? Well, I would have laughed all the way until the end of the song, but stopped short of succumbing to the temptation of being totally amused after I was reminded by the discomfort I felt while listening to it. Like the song I featured in my most recent post entitled "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon," I always hear this being played on the radio while I am doing my daily ritual of lifting pounds and burning calories in my neighborhood gym. My initial take was that I found both songs to somewhat have politically-incorrect messages. I had to find a way to resist, if not subvert, the inherent politics of these songs. As I have done in my previous post, I have to likewise find a way to invert, if not appropriate the message of "Mga Tambay Lang Kami," if only to reverse its seemingly problematic message.
Comparing both songs led me to believe that there is an on-going backlash against women innocently masquerading as humor embedded in popular culture. This discourse, albeit hidden in the text but easily visible if one only listens carefully, of men talking about abusive women in "Mas Mahal na Kita Ngayon" and in this case, of men eventually rebelling against women who have broken their hearts and emptied their wallets by choosing to love gays instead.
I have to hurriedly scan the literature on post-feminism to find my bearings, as I search for a theoretical explanation to this everyday form of gender politics. Girl power, "do-me" and "beyond-bitch" (don't fault me for using this word--it is in fact how one type of post-feminism is labeled) feminism seem to have focused on new forms of being a woman, of how the "woman as victim" image has to be debunked, and how strong women have to be seen in the light of being bearers of power that are not to be condemned for their being masculine-like. Well, indeed we have images of women who ooze with raw masculine power tempered with feminine beauty, enabling them to rival and re-cast male forms of power. Lara Croft and the Charlie's Angels come to mind. Post-feminism is a reaction to the essentializing implications of demonizing too much images of masculinity and patriarchy as anathemic to being a woman, and in turn celebrates masculine features in women as a new embodiment of female power, and as a novel deconstruction of male monopoly over strength and masculinity.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may in fact be a child of this type of imagery of women. However, she is not a perfect fit for the simple reason that her power is not in her masculine features, and is in fact compromised by her lack of grace and motherly aura as she governs the nation. Any attempt to imagine her as our Lara Croft, or our Charlie's Angel is blatantly abusive of our sense of sanity. Her false projection of power falls flat simply because of her physical attributes, her smirk, and her character, things which were revealed for all to see, complete with the mechanical applauses from ther unthinking horde of supporters, during her SONA, which to my mind was the worst and most unstatespersonlike SONA in the history of our Republic.
It is perhaps the images of dominant women, of women who employ male strategies as a way of empowering themselves, that led to this silent but not so-hidden transcripts of resistance now found in songs like "Mga Tambay Lang Kami" and "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon." While I would be guilty of stretching too much the political implications of men celebrating, at the sight of their dead female-partner-tormentors, to the point of finally declaring their love for them; or of men deciding to ditch their women partners who only caused them misery and penury, to eventually find love from their gay lovers, I am actually tempted to go beyond the more convenient argument of simply identifying the stereotpyical dominant and intellectual women as the object of this male forms of resistance.
In fact, I am willing to even argue that in the context of the present times, when there is much to be said about the deadly effects of Gloria's nine years of being our nation's "woman," that these two songs are in fact forms of popular resistance aimed at what her brand of masculine power has brought to bear.
I believe that, like hidden codes, these songs may be appropriated as templates from where to launch a resistive reading of the kind of feminism, albeit false, that Gloria has imagined herself to have. It may not have been the intention of their composers, for after all, they may in fact have simply composed and performed them to make fun of women, gays and even themselves. But everytime songs like this invade the public space, they also become public property, and hence, can be used and interpreted in any way people may choose.
And I choose not to read these songs for their obvious politics, but instead appropriate them in my engagement of this particular woman now occupying Malacanang who has caused much violence against the Filipino people, abused us, and emptied our pockets. By June 30, 2010, she will hopefully be lying in her political coffin, and by then, I may be able to say to her that "Mas mahal na kita ngayon," even as on the May elections in 2010 I would even be willing to give my political love and support to, and vote for a gay politician, for it will not matter what his sexual orientation would be, as long as he would be able to truly "love" and understand me back and the nation as well, for like what is said in the song, I am one of those citizens who are now "sawa [na] sa babae, mga babaeng manloloko, pineperahan lang kami."
So, is this a backlash against feminism? Not at all. It is more accurately my expression of resistance against one particular woman whose pretentious self-moralizing of not liking men, gay or otherwise, who say bad words in public is contradicted by her shameless audacity of doing bad acts publicly.
Friday, July 24, 2009
"Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon"
Since I began hearing a particular song being played on the radio while doing my push ups and crunches, and lifting weights in the neighborhood gym where I regularly go, it has acquired that strange status of being embedded in my subconscious. It keeps playing in my mind.
Here is a link to a video of an earlier version of the song entitled "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon", with its lyrics, as performed by Michael V, its composer and original artist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn06XpqAIVY
Perhaps, what forcibly inserts this song in my subconscious is the curious contradictions that characterize my encounters with it. I usually hear it being played during times when I am trying to cushion up my external masculinity, vigorously lifting weights to pump up my muscles, even as its lyrics talk about a deeply victimized male who apparently suffered an enormous amount of physical and emotional torture from presumably his female partner.
The lyrics are funny, at first. After all, it is composed and was first performed by Michael V, one of the most popular and multi-awarded comedian in the country who is now also well known as Yaya, the other half of the comic duo, with the other half being the precocious Angelina played by the equally talented Ogie Alcasid. But as one absorbs the reality of the lyrics, one realizes that it is a macabre narrative of an inhuman treatment of a man being subjected to unspeakable forms of domestic violence. Think about this: being ridiculed for having a bad haircut, being fed with cat food or food laced with poison, being hit by an iron pipe, being suffocated with a pillow while asleep, being bodily assaulted with razor blades and subjected to mauling including hitting his boils, and being forced to take a bath with boiling water, among others. But what even adds to the blackness of its comedy is the apparent suggestion at the end of the song when the male singer has now felt a deeper love for his lover-tormentor only since the latter is very dead, as he sings: "Ang hapdi at kirot ng sinapit ko noon, di ko na ramdam pagkat mas mahal na kita ngayon. Kahit nasan ka man mas mahal na kita ngayon. Ang cute mo naman bagay ka sa iyong ataul," followed by a hearty "Hay, Salamat!"
Here is a link to a video of an earlier version of the song entitled "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon", with its lyrics, as performed by Michael V, its composer and original artist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn06XpqAIVY
Perhaps, what forcibly inserts this song in my subconscious is the curious contradictions that characterize my encounters with it. I usually hear it being played during times when I am trying to cushion up my external masculinity, vigorously lifting weights to pump up my muscles, even as its lyrics talk about a deeply victimized male who apparently suffered an enormous amount of physical and emotional torture from presumably his female partner.
The lyrics are funny, at first. After all, it is composed and was first performed by Michael V, one of the most popular and multi-awarded comedian in the country who is now also well known as Yaya, the other half of the comic duo, with the other half being the precocious Angelina played by the equally talented Ogie Alcasid. But as one absorbs the reality of the lyrics, one realizes that it is a macabre narrative of an inhuman treatment of a man being subjected to unspeakable forms of domestic violence. Think about this: being ridiculed for having a bad haircut, being fed with cat food or food laced with poison, being hit by an iron pipe, being suffocated with a pillow while asleep, being bodily assaulted with razor blades and subjected to mauling including hitting his boils, and being forced to take a bath with boiling water, among others. But what even adds to the blackness of its comedy is the apparent suggestion at the end of the song when the male singer has now felt a deeper love for his lover-tormentor only since the latter is very dead, as he sings: "Ang hapdi at kirot ng sinapit ko noon, di ko na ramdam pagkat mas mahal na kita ngayon. Kahit nasan ka man mas mahal na kita ngayon. Ang cute mo naman bagay ka sa iyong ataul," followed by a hearty "Hay, Salamat!"
A closer analysis of the textual politics of this song leads to a very disturbing message. And this leads to the other inherent contradiction in this song, even made more dangerous by the manner by which it is delivered for public consumption--as a funny, ordinary, popularized form of cultural artifact played on the radio, heard by ordinary citizens, which may seem innocent. It is this innocence that may render this vicarious, simulated experience of a battered male to be perceived as a usual, real happening by a desensitized, if not uncritical listening public. Lost in the comedy and the popularization is the reality that if one only checks actual statistics on domestic violence, that if there would be a credbile and logical gender who should be singing this song, it should be one with a female voice. While nobody is demeaning the isolated cases in which men are victimized by domestic abuse from women, this song violently inverts reality, one in which for every one male subjected to such abuse that thousands more women are suffering from it all over the world.
I can only surmise Michael V's intention in composing this song. Perhaps, he was just trying to be funny. Maybe, this is a satirical portrait of an emasculated male, a parody that in fact deconstructs the dominant image of male superiority and the patriarchy that sustains it.
But I also have another way of resisting the politics of this song, if only to complete my deconstruction of it. I have finally settled in my mind that indeed, the singer talks about his experience of being the object of domestic violence. But left unsaid in the lyrics, and which I now forcefully appropriate to provide logic to the missing piece, is my own imagination of the character perpetrator of that violence. Indeed, there is no doubt that the male voice in the song was physically and emotionally abused...
...by his male lover.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Lullabyes of Fear, Nursery Rhymes of Silence
It has always bothered me why despite the need for us to challenge the system, that it is easier for people to accept things the way they are. This is not apathy. This is simple resignation and acceptance due to fear--fear of reprisal, fear of the unknown, fear of disturbing the peace, fear of the consequences.
And this is true not only among the less in power and life, but even more true for those who are privileged. In fact, I suspect that courage is even in higher supply among those who have nothing to lose than those who have lots at stake. Even in the University, in which liberal minds are supposed to thrive, I am always warned by friends to be careful not to rock the boat. Indeed, what happened to me in my previous University, which hounded me even when I was already in DLSU, is a living testimony to the consequences of boldness, of being too courageous to speak out during University Council meetings, and of being branded a trouble maker, a young upstart who had the audacity to speak truth to power. Many of my friends told me that what happened to me had a chilling effect even when I was gone from UPLB.
Just recently, I was again advised by friends to just stay away from the limelight when I come back from my Sabbatical, and to just lie below the radar. I have to ask why. They tell me that there is much to be gained by silence. Well, knowing myself, I would probably not heed such call, and still speak out my mind in the most civil manner, respectful of authority, but nevertheless critical when there is a need for it. After all, DLSU prides itself of having a curriculum that instills critical thinking among its students; and the manner by which our DLSU leaders have engaged the current state of politics is inspiring me to practice what we preach not only when we are critical of the flaws of the Arroyo Administration, but hopefully, and more importantly, when we are required to be self-critical of our own flaws as an institution.
But still, I am most uncomfortable with the thought that even professors have to put value more on fear than on courage, and have to justify silence and acceptance with the rewards of having an easier and perhaps more lucrative life. I remember a conversation with a friend in my previous University. He was complaining a lot about policies, and was asking me to raise the issue in the University Council. I had to ask him why don't he raise it himself. He replied tersely that he could not jeopardize his career by being branded as a troublemaker. I had to ask him what about my own career. He simply laughed and told me that at least I already have the reputation of being a critic, and that I have nothing to lose.
This added to my discomfort. It is saddening that many people have deep problems with the system, but would remain silent or would not dare speak up, and would rely on those who have the courage (or stupidity, perhaps, or naivete) to speak on their behalf. No wonder we have very few heroes and martyrs, even as oppressive and corrupt governments and administration flourish with the tacit consent of the many.
Courage is supposed to be a virtue, but people choose to be afraid because fear is more convenient, and even personally rewarding.
But why is it that it is easier to be afraid.
One of the reasons, perhaps, why this is so is found in the narratives of how we are reared when we were still children. Our lullabyes that were supposed to lull us to sleep may seem innocent, but embedded in their texts are two dominant themes: baby, you better sleep or something bad will happen; or, baby, you have to sleep now since something bad has happened. Melancholy in some lullabyes is associated with fear of separation (Ili ili, tulog anay, wala dire, imong nanay, kadto tienda, bakal papay, ili ili, tulog anay). There is even one Bikolano lullabye that is plainly morbid in its message when it avows that the consequence for being a bad child is for the parents to cut off one's head and throw it in the lake, hoping that the parents will later take pity and mercifully take back the decapitated head when they see it floating in the water (Ay Nanay ay Tatay, kun ako maraot, pugutan nin payo, ibuntog sa lawod, kun mahiling nindo na aanod-anod, ay nanay ay tatay, sapuda man tulos).
Even nursery rhymes are also full of scary images of eggs falling from a wall and not being able to be made whole again, or of Jack and Jill falling down a hill. Many fables and fairy tales have a plethora of witches and ogres. And the seemingly innocent rhyme about rings of roses on a pocketful of poses is deeply rooted from the black plague when children really "fall down" after sneezing.
Call me too imaginative. But if we want to instill courage as the more natural choice, and not fear, we have to really change our lullabyes, nursery rhymes and fairy tales.
And this is true not only among the less in power and life, but even more true for those who are privileged. In fact, I suspect that courage is even in higher supply among those who have nothing to lose than those who have lots at stake. Even in the University, in which liberal minds are supposed to thrive, I am always warned by friends to be careful not to rock the boat. Indeed, what happened to me in my previous University, which hounded me even when I was already in DLSU, is a living testimony to the consequences of boldness, of being too courageous to speak out during University Council meetings, and of being branded a trouble maker, a young upstart who had the audacity to speak truth to power. Many of my friends told me that what happened to me had a chilling effect even when I was gone from UPLB.
Just recently, I was again advised by friends to just stay away from the limelight when I come back from my Sabbatical, and to just lie below the radar. I have to ask why. They tell me that there is much to be gained by silence. Well, knowing myself, I would probably not heed such call, and still speak out my mind in the most civil manner, respectful of authority, but nevertheless critical when there is a need for it. After all, DLSU prides itself of having a curriculum that instills critical thinking among its students; and the manner by which our DLSU leaders have engaged the current state of politics is inspiring me to practice what we preach not only when we are critical of the flaws of the Arroyo Administration, but hopefully, and more importantly, when we are required to be self-critical of our own flaws as an institution.
But still, I am most uncomfortable with the thought that even professors have to put value more on fear than on courage, and have to justify silence and acceptance with the rewards of having an easier and perhaps more lucrative life. I remember a conversation with a friend in my previous University. He was complaining a lot about policies, and was asking me to raise the issue in the University Council. I had to ask him why don't he raise it himself. He replied tersely that he could not jeopardize his career by being branded as a troublemaker. I had to ask him what about my own career. He simply laughed and told me that at least I already have the reputation of being a critic, and that I have nothing to lose.
This added to my discomfort. It is saddening that many people have deep problems with the system, but would remain silent or would not dare speak up, and would rely on those who have the courage (or stupidity, perhaps, or naivete) to speak on their behalf. No wonder we have very few heroes and martyrs, even as oppressive and corrupt governments and administration flourish with the tacit consent of the many.
Courage is supposed to be a virtue, but people choose to be afraid because fear is more convenient, and even personally rewarding.
But why is it that it is easier to be afraid.
One of the reasons, perhaps, why this is so is found in the narratives of how we are reared when we were still children. Our lullabyes that were supposed to lull us to sleep may seem innocent, but embedded in their texts are two dominant themes: baby, you better sleep or something bad will happen; or, baby, you have to sleep now since something bad has happened. Melancholy in some lullabyes is associated with fear of separation (Ili ili, tulog anay, wala dire, imong nanay, kadto tienda, bakal papay, ili ili, tulog anay). There is even one Bikolano lullabye that is plainly morbid in its message when it avows that the consequence for being a bad child is for the parents to cut off one's head and throw it in the lake, hoping that the parents will later take pity and mercifully take back the decapitated head when they see it floating in the water (Ay Nanay ay Tatay, kun ako maraot, pugutan nin payo, ibuntog sa lawod, kun mahiling nindo na aanod-anod, ay nanay ay tatay, sapuda man tulos).
Even nursery rhymes are also full of scary images of eggs falling from a wall and not being able to be made whole again, or of Jack and Jill falling down a hill. Many fables and fairy tales have a plethora of witches and ogres. And the seemingly innocent rhyme about rings of roses on a pocketful of poses is deeply rooted from the black plague when children really "fall down" after sneezing.
Call me too imaginative. But if we want to instill courage as the more natural choice, and not fear, we have to really change our lullabyes, nursery rhymes and fairy tales.
Friday, July 3, 2009
A Fellowship in Paradise: Reflections On My Fulbright Experience in Hawai'i
At the twilight of my career, when I will be reflecting on the events that happened in my personal and professional life, I will most definitely consider the five months I spent at the University of Hawai’i Manoa as a Fulbright Visiting Senior Scholar as one of the most significant. The rewards of such experience were not only on its contributions to the advancement of my professional career as scholar of political culture, but also, and equally important, in its personal impacts on me as someone who considers Hawai’i as a second home and as a place which contributed significantly not only to my academic identity but also to my individuality as a person.
When I applied to Fulbright, I was fully aware that there was a tacit discouragement for applicants to visit the same University where they acquired their advanced degrees. Nevertheless, I submitted an application for a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Hawai’i, specifically with its Political Science Department, knowing fully well that I had to provide additional justification for such move. This was not difficult in my case, considering the nature of my proposed research project, which is to study the imaginations of selected Filipino-American students enrolled at the college level regarding the Philippine homeland, and considering that the University of Hawai’i has the highest number of students of Filipino ancestry in the whole United States. Yet, not articulated but was perhaps equally compelling was my desire to reconnect with my Alma Mater, and to give back to the Political Science Department a form of return service that would be a way of paying homage to the very institution that was instrumental in shaping my professional career as a critical scholar in cultural politics. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from UH Manoa in 1991. After almost 18 years, my return to the Political Science Department, now as a Visiting Scholar, was for me a significant way of giving back what I owe, as if to say that here I was, one of its products, coming back to contribute in my own small way to the Department that helped shape me as a scholar.
On hindsight, I really found the experience extremely rewarding. While I could have gained additional and different experience had I ventured to other Universities in the mainland, the emotional and psychic rewards of returning to my Alma Mater were for me more significant. On the logistical side, my familiarity with Honolulu and the University has enabled me to “hit the ground running.” I did not lose time adjusting to and getting familiar with the place. I already had a significant support network not only in the University community, but in the larger community in Hawai’i. These networks enabled me in my scholarly work, even as it also provided me the necessary social support mechanisms. Considering that the Fellowship was only for a short duration of five months, these logistical and social advantages became even more important.
To say the least, my research activity went smoothly, despite some slight delays brought about by a bureaucratic requirement for the University for me to get clearance from the committee on human subjects, a standard operating procedure for social science researchers to ensure that their researches would not violate ethical standards. I did not encounter difficulty in getting my sample of respondents, and neither did I encounter difficulty in the conduct of my interviews. By the end of March 2009, I already have finished my data gathering and was able to write the first draft of my research paper.
Aside from conducting research, and as part of my Fellowship, I also taught a Seminar Course on the Politics of Everyday Life in the Philippines. The experience was also extremely rewarding. I only had eleven students, thereby making the class more intimate. My students were mostly of Filipino ancestry. Beyond the experience of enjoying more advanced technologies in classroom teaching, which UH have provided, what was even more significant to me was the opportunity to share with my students, and to facilitate their re-connection to their homeland. In addition, I also learned a lot from them, particularly on their own perspectives about politics and culture in the Philippines.
What provided me an additional advantage was the relatively close linkage between the course I taught and my research project, thereby enabling me to use my class as a sounding board for the ideas and themes that were gradually forming out of the data I gathered from my research. I was also blessed with the opportunity to give two colloquia presentations, both of which provided me the opportunity not only to share my thoughts and perspectives, but also to draw from peers and the general public significant feedbacks regarding such thoughts and perspectives. The first colloquium which was held on 24 April and was sponsored by the Department of Political Science was on the use of popular culture, specifically on using the reality game show “Survivor Philippines” as template to analyze and theorize about the politics of identity and nation building in the Philippines. The second colloquium was held on 30 April and was co-sponsored by the Filipino and Ilokano Language and Culture Programs of the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literature and the UH Center for Philippine Studies. It is in this second colloquium where I presented the results of my research. Earlier, on 3 - 4 April, I presented both papers in the Philippine Political Science Association Conference held in General Santos City in the Philippines.
There were also other activities that provided me more learning and sharing opportunities. One of these was the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Conference held in Washington DC on 19 - 21 April. I was also able to participate in many cultural events, of which I was able to interact with the community, thereby enabling me to establish new networks and re-kindle old ones. One of these was the Filipino Fiesta sponsored by the Filipino Community Center in Hawai’i on 9 May. I was also invited once to serve as a resource person in another course on Philippine politics, and to serve as judge in the song festival and drama competition sponsored by the Filipino Language and Culture programs for students enrolled in the Filipino language classes.
Needless to say, my stay in Hawai’i was a fruitful one. Beyond the academic aspects, and their significant contributions to my professional growth, I will also treasure the opportunity provided me to re-connect back to my friends and colleagues in Hawai’i, and the new networks that I have found in the process. I enjoyed my sunrise jogs around the campus at UH and my sunset walks along the beaches of Honolulu. It was also most memorable for me to have that single Sunday afternoon picnic at the beach with old friends from my East-West Center days, realizing that indeed only bodies age, but not the spirit and the soul. This somewhat made up for the five months I was away from my family. It is noteworthy that while I am having fun, that I was able to complete my academic pursuits on the side. Truly, my experience in Hawai’i was indeed one that befits a rewarding five months stay in paradise.
When I applied to Fulbright, I was fully aware that there was a tacit discouragement for applicants to visit the same University where they acquired their advanced degrees. Nevertheless, I submitted an application for a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Hawai’i, specifically with its Political Science Department, knowing fully well that I had to provide additional justification for such move. This was not difficult in my case, considering the nature of my proposed research project, which is to study the imaginations of selected Filipino-American students enrolled at the college level regarding the Philippine homeland, and considering that the University of Hawai’i has the highest number of students of Filipino ancestry in the whole United States. Yet, not articulated but was perhaps equally compelling was my desire to reconnect with my Alma Mater, and to give back to the Political Science Department a form of return service that would be a way of paying homage to the very institution that was instrumental in shaping my professional career as a critical scholar in cultural politics. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from UH Manoa in 1991. After almost 18 years, my return to the Political Science Department, now as a Visiting Scholar, was for me a significant way of giving back what I owe, as if to say that here I was, one of its products, coming back to contribute in my own small way to the Department that helped shape me as a scholar.
On hindsight, I really found the experience extremely rewarding. While I could have gained additional and different experience had I ventured to other Universities in the mainland, the emotional and psychic rewards of returning to my Alma Mater were for me more significant. On the logistical side, my familiarity with Honolulu and the University has enabled me to “hit the ground running.” I did not lose time adjusting to and getting familiar with the place. I already had a significant support network not only in the University community, but in the larger community in Hawai’i. These networks enabled me in my scholarly work, even as it also provided me the necessary social support mechanisms. Considering that the Fellowship was only for a short duration of five months, these logistical and social advantages became even more important.
To say the least, my research activity went smoothly, despite some slight delays brought about by a bureaucratic requirement for the University for me to get clearance from the committee on human subjects, a standard operating procedure for social science researchers to ensure that their researches would not violate ethical standards. I did not encounter difficulty in getting my sample of respondents, and neither did I encounter difficulty in the conduct of my interviews. By the end of March 2009, I already have finished my data gathering and was able to write the first draft of my research paper.
Aside from conducting research, and as part of my Fellowship, I also taught a Seminar Course on the Politics of Everyday Life in the Philippines. The experience was also extremely rewarding. I only had eleven students, thereby making the class more intimate. My students were mostly of Filipino ancestry. Beyond the experience of enjoying more advanced technologies in classroom teaching, which UH have provided, what was even more significant to me was the opportunity to share with my students, and to facilitate their re-connection to their homeland. In addition, I also learned a lot from them, particularly on their own perspectives about politics and culture in the Philippines.
What provided me an additional advantage was the relatively close linkage between the course I taught and my research project, thereby enabling me to use my class as a sounding board for the ideas and themes that were gradually forming out of the data I gathered from my research. I was also blessed with the opportunity to give two colloquia presentations, both of which provided me the opportunity not only to share my thoughts and perspectives, but also to draw from peers and the general public significant feedbacks regarding such thoughts and perspectives. The first colloquium which was held on 24 April and was sponsored by the Department of Political Science was on the use of popular culture, specifically on using the reality game show “Survivor Philippines” as template to analyze and theorize about the politics of identity and nation building in the Philippines. The second colloquium was held on 30 April and was co-sponsored by the Filipino and Ilokano Language and Culture Programs of the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literature and the UH Center for Philippine Studies. It is in this second colloquium where I presented the results of my research. Earlier, on 3 - 4 April, I presented both papers in the Philippine Political Science Association Conference held in General Santos City in the Philippines.
There were also other activities that provided me more learning and sharing opportunities. One of these was the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Conference held in Washington DC on 19 - 21 April. I was also able to participate in many cultural events, of which I was able to interact with the community, thereby enabling me to establish new networks and re-kindle old ones. One of these was the Filipino Fiesta sponsored by the Filipino Community Center in Hawai’i on 9 May. I was also invited once to serve as a resource person in another course on Philippine politics, and to serve as judge in the song festival and drama competition sponsored by the Filipino Language and Culture programs for students enrolled in the Filipino language classes.
Needless to say, my stay in Hawai’i was a fruitful one. Beyond the academic aspects, and their significant contributions to my professional growth, I will also treasure the opportunity provided me to re-connect back to my friends and colleagues in Hawai’i, and the new networks that I have found in the process. I enjoyed my sunrise jogs around the campus at UH and my sunset walks along the beaches of Honolulu. It was also most memorable for me to have that single Sunday afternoon picnic at the beach with old friends from my East-West Center days, realizing that indeed only bodies age, but not the spirit and the soul. This somewhat made up for the five months I was away from my family. It is noteworthy that while I am having fun, that I was able to complete my academic pursuits on the side. Truly, my experience in Hawai’i was indeed one that befits a rewarding five months stay in paradise.
The Roots of A Compromised Citizenry
There is a saying that the hands that rock the cradle rule the world. Added to this is the usual mantra about powerful women behind the success of powerful men. Well, this is almost true, for as we see the soaring popularity of one Manny Pacquiao as he demolished all his enemies on the ring, one by one, we just recenlty began to be confronted with the, well, not-s0-silent anymore, power of Aling Dionisia as she amuses us with her dance moves and innate comedian instincts. Now we know where the showbiz side of Manny comes from. Another mother figure comes to mind as well in the person of Annabelle Rama, the patron of stage-mothering herself, ready to spew bile at her children's detractors.
But while we idolize the caring presence of the mother, on the other side lies the marked absence of the father in most narratives, perhaps stemming from the stereotypical paternal image of somebody who has authority but is distant, who has control but is silent. Manny Pacquiao's father is just a sideshow compared to the main event provided by Aling Dionisia, even as Eddie Gutierrez has always been silent whenever Anabelle goes on a rampage defending her son Richard and daughter Ruffa.
The dominant image of a mother is one of protective love, as somebody who will risk limb and life to protect her brood. But deeply embedded in all of these images of nurturing and love is the dangerous implications of an act of disempowerment hiding in the comforting warmth of maternal care.
Someone once told me that the definition of a sweater to a child is something that you wear when your mother feels cold. Indeed, mothers who feel chilly almost always assume that their children must feel cold, and insist that they wear thick clothing, without even bothering to ask. In the name of protective caring, they in turn deny children the right to make a choice. And this is not just about sweaters. It's about the whole array of instances where they make decisions on behalf of their children, from what clothes to wear, to taking ballet, piano and taekwondo lessons. Of course, mothers don't mean harm. They just want what is best for their children. They want them to look the best and enjoy the best in life, but often they forget to ask their children and only base their decisions solely on what they think is best. As they say, mother knows best.
But while we idolize the caring presence of the mother, on the other side lies the marked absence of the father in most narratives, perhaps stemming from the stereotypical paternal image of somebody who has authority but is distant, who has control but is silent. Manny Pacquiao's father is just a sideshow compared to the main event provided by Aling Dionisia, even as Eddie Gutierrez has always been silent whenever Anabelle goes on a rampage defending her son Richard and daughter Ruffa.
The dominant image of a mother is one of protective love, as somebody who will risk limb and life to protect her brood. But deeply embedded in all of these images of nurturing and love is the dangerous implications of an act of disempowerment hiding in the comforting warmth of maternal care.
Someone once told me that the definition of a sweater to a child is something that you wear when your mother feels cold. Indeed, mothers who feel chilly almost always assume that their children must feel cold, and insist that they wear thick clothing, without even bothering to ask. In the name of protective caring, they in turn deny children the right to make a choice. And this is not just about sweaters. It's about the whole array of instances where they make decisions on behalf of their children, from what clothes to wear, to taking ballet, piano and taekwondo lessons. Of course, mothers don't mean harm. They just want what is best for their children. They want them to look the best and enjoy the best in life, but often they forget to ask their children and only base their decisions solely on what they think is best. As they say, mother knows best.
But the political implications of this could be costly. When we grow older, we are now confronted with major decisions to make, some of which go beyond personal interests and may impact on the interest of others and the larger public. Often, parents lament how their grown up children are seemingly unable to make the right decisions in their lives. As conscientious citizens, we often gnash our teeth and wonder how could we make wrong decisions as we keep on voting the wrong kind of politicians into office, even as we withold our support for the right political causes. We wonder why. We blame almost everyone and everything, from the system to our culture to our historical past. But we seem to forget that one of the foundations of a citizenry whose decision-making capacities are compromised lie in the inner sanctums of our homes, in the everyday manner we rear our children. We deny them the capacity to make choices, perhaps as a way to insulate them from suffering the consequences if they make the wrong ones. But it is in these practices of nurturing, of which we mean no harm, that we also jeopardize the emergence of a healthy civic culture of our future citizens.
I don't mean to heap the blame solely on mothers, or aunts, or yayas, all women, even as most of the child-rearing land on their laps. The relative absence of the father also corrodes the attitude of ordinary citizens about power. Paternal authority is one that is usually feared and obeyed, the one that has the last say, the one that is silent but is compelling. Mothers offer the comfort of being there. Fathers, on the other hand, offer the stability and security of silence. It is the image of the father that carries the metaphor of power and authority, and the dominant discourse that is embedded in the psyche of the young is one that exists along the ethic of fear and awe, and not of affection and love. Thus, authority and power are things that are distant, but have to feared. As Machiavelli said it, it is better to be feared than to be loved. While this may refer to how the State and its rulers should project towards the citizen, this is also the dominant construct that shapes paternal presence despite their relative absence. The father is the feared but rarely seen or felt parent.
Thus, we have children denied by their mothers the right to choose in the name of protective love; even as they are provided stability and security by their absent fathers who carry their power and authority as coercive means that demand obedience, and not affection.
In the end, we eventually have citizens who could not make the right decisions, even as they have a distant relationship with the State and its instrumentalities, devoid of affection, dominated by fear, and even resentment for its being a necessary imposition and for having the monopoly for the legitimate use of violence.
We take so much time inquiring into the roots of a compromised citizenry, when in fact it could probably be found whenever mothers who feel chilly insist that their children wear sweaters, and whenever fathers, who are absent or not visible and are not affectionate, insist on their power over the household.
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