The Politics of the Ordinary

As a political scientist, I have always been challenged to consider what is special and distinct about the object of my inquiries. I started simply as somebody who tried to bridge the discipline of forestry and political science, and is now somebody who tries to tease out the political from Annabelle Rama, Aling Dionisia, Survivor Philippines, and from the everyday experiences of ordinary peoples.

Many have wondered whether I may have just strayed too far, if not, have gone too far. Others have demanded from me some accounting as to how relevant my scholarly inquiries are vis-a-vis the needs of a society in need of heroes, or if not, in dire need of solutions to problems of poverty, corruption and social inequality. In fact, others are even bold enough to ask whether there is some "scholarly" element in what I do.

Have I gone too far?

Maybe, I am. But those who demand from me to show evidence of the relevance of my work may be missing the point about the meaning of politics. Those who see politics as a property of the politicians and the state, as a phenomenon that is only visible in the collective functionings of a body politic through its public rituals of governance may be privileged in looking at the temples of power away from the gaze of the ordinary eye. But they would carry such privilege only to the extent that is more of a detached entitlement than as an attribute that would command some awe. It is an empty one, for the substrate for the whole exercise of politics lies not only in the visible and the public, but also in the unarticulated and the hidden manner by which ordinary citizens translate the abstract concepts of power and governance into concrete everyday experiences. They do not see Congress at work except during fiery hearings and dramatic confrontations. They do not have access to the workings of the bureaucracy except as ordinary clients, if not, as ordinary statistics that are embedded into the whole discourse of public "service," and this only happens when they are embroiled in some kind of crisis or disaster, such as the H1N1 scare. Power for them lies not in the halls of visible public power but in the innner depths of their very own personal, if not local, struggles to survive. The ordinary experiences of ordinary peoples are the very core of the body politics. It is from these that the politician and the state exist.

Have I gone too far? Yes, I did. But not far enough to reinstate the ordinary to its rightful place in the study of politics. But the work is already cut out for me. There is now an explosion of simulated experiences that make the exercise of politics via the usual to gradually lose its grip and meaning. Once you see the gallery of political actors, you will undoubtedly look at the faces of Annabelle, Aling Dionisia, Jamby, Loren, Katrina, Hayden, Gloria and Manny, among the many others that would even include the faces of ordinary citizens, all becoming important symbols of how power has now escaped the confines of edifices like Malacanang and Congress to now populate the very domains of our ordinary lives.

The thought that someday the discipline of Political Science will no longer be studied as a domain of government and those who govern, but as a field by which the governed create social meanings is just too inspiring for me to even go too far, far enough to eventually make the science in "political science" disappear, or if not, be deconstructed away as a pretension.