The Radical Potential in Four Essays

The writing of any literature in English or the coloniser’s tongue risks perpetuating the native’s subjugation even as they attempt to assert their own identity. In their essays, four Filipino scholars investigate the ways Philippine literature can and does find its voice amid the tools of oppression, foreign and homegrown.

In their respective essays, Abad and Cruz examine how writing and reading are not only subversive acts but assertive acts as well. In his essay, A Habit of Shores, Abad suggests that the medium a poet uses is not as important as how he “reinvents the language”. Thus, the poet’s use of english should not be seen as a betrayal of the native or an acquiescence to the conqueror. Just as the colonisers scanned vistas on the horizon to claim as their own and upon which to leave their imprints, so must the poet discover and “colonise” language to his own specific ends. For Abad, language is not an embroidered costume the poet dons whether ill-fitting or not, but merely the raw material he uses to weave an original creation. By challenging the ownership of language, Abad makes english fair game for Filipino poets to speak for themselves.

While Abad focuses on the poet’s position in subverting language, Cruz hones in on the critic’s role in liberating Philippine literature from the “prison” of Western paradigms. Suggesting that Western literary theory is stunted due to its limited exposure to (and confidence in) other modes of thought and perceiving the world, Cruz laments the application of a myopic Eurocentric lens to the wild, tricky landscape of Philippine literature, especially by Filipino eyes. For a Filipino critic to see its own creations through Western eyes is not only inappropriate but indicative of a deeply penetrated subjugation which spoils and bankrupts a text. Through his lectures, Cruz warns against being wholly impressed with Western frameworks with the shocking suggestion that the native must think for themselves.

While Abad and Cruz challenge the residue of the American regime, Ramon Ileto in Pasyon and Revolution examines how a tool to encourage submission to Spanish rule instead excited the native to revolution. Informed by folk traditions and cultural values, the natives extracted their own meaning from a religious and colonial apparatus meant to instil subservience. Where the Pasyon commanded them to “sit”, the native found the call to rise and fight. Ileto’s description of the native’s exchange with the Pasyon demonstrates that in fact, although forgotten, the native can think for themselves.

Meanwhile, Legasto looks at how oppression has taken new shape in the form of State imposed notions of identity and nation from Marcos to Ramos who disseminated their own brands of Filipino-ness to bolster support for their administrations. Here, the oppressor is no easily identifiable white face but a compatriot, a native son who usurps the quest for a final defining Filipino identity for his narrow interests. For Legasto though, “there is no homogenous Filipino identity or nation. Instead, Filipino-ness might best be understood through Philippine culture and that by recognising and accepting these differences, a ‘negotiated unity’ might be brokered in the interest of creating a notion of Filipino-hood.” As these differences are articulated in the country’s culture or materials outside of the official line, literature again comes into play as a mode and vehicle of subversion and finding one’s voice. Her contention meantime of the lack of a homogenous Filipino identity or nation upsets attempts of potential tyrants to claim to speak for all Filipinos.

Through their essays, our four scholars show that the native has a mind and a voice, or rather voices, which creatively and radically subvert dominant power structures. From Spanish colonisation to the dilemma of writing in english to the new faces of a familiar oppression, those voices will be heard.