We witnessed in the past few days a rising public indignation against an attempt of this administration in its dying days to extend power by proxy. We witnessed the brazen and sly attempt to pave the way for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to appoint the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
We have an administration adept at operating in the shadows trying to make a midnight appointment. Not content with appointing all but one of the men and women sitting in the High Court, this outgoing President desires nothing less than absolute domination even at the expense of violating our fundamental law.
We condemn this move to have the outgoing President appoint the next Chief Justice that also paves the way for the appointment of his replacement. This yields a Supreme Court of 15 Justices, all of whom were appointed by the same President. It is yet another manifestation of shameless impunity. It is yet another arrogant display of power. It is yet another breach of our trust. We see clearly through this brash yet clumsy attempt to shield the guilty from accountability.
We are appalled to see brilliant minds so servile and to hear spin spewing from glib but forked tongues. They have all been reduced to peddle silly lies that insult their own intelligence.
We do not claim to be legal luminaries but we can all read and understand our fundamental law. The Chief Justice is a member of the Supreme Court. The President can only appoint a Chief Justice from a list of nominees submitted by the Judicial and Bar Council. Midnight appointments are prohibited by the Constitution. This ban stays until June 30. The next President has 45 days from assuming office on June 30 to appoint the next Chief Justice. Our Constitution is not the exclusive domain of lawyers. It is the most fundamental law that binds us all.
We call on anyone with ambition to lead our judicial institutions not to be seduced by power and shun any unconstitutional appointment. There is no honor in empty titles conferred by deceit. There is a price to pay for complicity in criminal acts for those who conspire in this midnight appointment and anyone who benefits from it.
We call on Chief Justice Reynato Puno to rise and meet this defining moment as his judicial career comes to a close. We ask for his strong moral leadership as Chairman of the Judicial and Bar Council and reject calls to transmit to this outgoing President the list of nominees for his replacement. Let not a tarnished and divided Supreme Court be his legacy to our nation.
We admire those who, with the courage of their convictions and in plain and simple words, make their intentions known without equivocation. We are inspired by people who take a stand against the tyranny of guile.
We call on others aspiring to lead our country to likewise condemn in the strongest possible terms the acts of this administration that undermine judicial independence and further erode our democratic institutions. It is their bounden duty to do so. We ask them to also tell our people how they intend to deal with the excesses of this administration when they assume the mantle of leadership.
We find comfort knowing that the abuse will soon come to pass. We vow to work for a better future in the company of people who have the courage to speak truth to power.
We remain committed to work for good governance and the restoration of decency and propriety in public service.
We stand as one in defense of our Constitution and the Rule of Law.
SIGNED:
Sen. Vicente Paterno
Sen. Leticia Ramos Shahani
Tomas Africa
Ariel Aguirre
Rafael Alunan III
Angelito Banayo
Leonor Briones
Victor Gerardo Bulatao
Sostenes Campillo Jr.
Elfren Cruz
Isagani Cruz
Neni Sta. Romana Cruz
Rodel Cruz
Jose Cuisia
Guillermo Cunanan
Karina Constantino David
Edilberto De Jesus Jr.
Ramon Del Rosario Jr.
Teresa Quintos Deles
Carlos Dominguez
Jesus Estanislao
Fiorello Estuar
Fulgencio Factoran Jr.
Ernesto Garilao
Cecilia Garrucho
Milwida Guevarra
Philip Ella Juico
Nixon Kua
Lina Laigo
Ernest Leung
Alberto Lim
Narzalina Lim
Juan Miguel Luz
Gregorio Magdaraog
Jose Molano Jr.
Vitaliano Nañagas
Norberto Nazareno
Imelda Nicolas
Cayetano Paderanga
Guillermo Parayno Jr.
Felicito Payumo
Cesar Purisima
Victor Ramos
Amina Rasul
Walfrido Reyes
Sixto Roxas
Miguel Perez Rubio
Juan Santos
Cesar Sarino
Corazon Juliano Soliman
Hector Soliman
Jaime Galvez Tan
Ricardo Mirasol Tan
Wilfrido Villacorta
(Philippine Star, 8 February 2010, p. 17)
08 February 2010
30 January 2010
Remarks at my book launching
During the launch of a book, just like in awards ceremonies, an author is expected to thank everybody. I will do that by first thanking Dr. David Jonathan Y. Bayot, the Sherlock Holmes to my Watson, because I like posing really difficult questions, and he likes searching for their answers, so we make a good pair. I am notoriously unable to redo what I have already done – been there, written that – and he takes the trouble to hunt down my scholarly articles and put them in some sort of logical order. He has found unity where I intended merely to sow discord. Thank you, David, for this festschrift.
It is really a festschrift in the European sense of the word, a collection of articles by the honoree, just like Emerita Quito’s A Life of Philosophy. David and Karina Bolasco of Anvil Publishing are working on another festschrift, the American kind, to be launched on April 16. Good things always come in pairs. Let me invite you this early to the launching of Inter/Sections. Both The Other Other and Inter/Sections will be relaunched in Los Angeles on April 30, and if you have the time and the money, I invite you to that one, too.
I want to thank Agnes Malcampo, indefatigable and irresistible head of publications here at FEU. She just kept nagging me and nagging me and nagging me until I gave her the manuscript, then she kept nagging me and nagging me and nagging me about everything else that has to be done to a manuscript until it sees print.
I want to thank Dr. Lourdes Montinola, chair of the FEU board, Dr. Lydia Echauz, president, and the management of FEU for giving me an ID so I can enter the campus, for employing me even after I retired from De La Salle University in 2005 with the illusion that I could live on my savings, for giving me a post through which I am able to oversee the continuing education of FEU teachers, for welcoming me as a member of the FEU family. This book is worth not retiring.
I can’t possibly name everybody referred to in the acknowledgements or listed in the index of the book, but I want to thank especially the late Brother Andrew Gonzalez, FSC, who kept at me to keep writing, and Professor Thelma Arambulo of UP Diliman, who babysat the manuscript by proofreading, copyediting, giving comments, even while she was in Canada, presumably to get away from academic work. Unfortunately, as everyone that has ever published a book knows, there are always those awful typographical errors that refuse to go away. I apologize to my readers for those. They’re my fault and no one else’s.
I’m also expected to say something about the book, even if David has already talked about it. I’ve been lucky to have been asked several times to write articles in foreign journals, encyclopedias, and books, and I’ve often wished that Filipinos in the Philippines would have a chance to read those articles. This book puts together many of those articles, not all of them, and I hope these articles challenge readers the way my local articles are meant to do.
I think of this book as my letter to the world, as Emily Dickinson would put it, that has written to me many times, through the publishers, conference convenors, book editors, and foundations that have given me time, space, and often money to write these articles. In particular, together with the Philippine American Educational Foundation and the Fulbright Program of the United States, Wichita State University was very kind to me. Wichita gave me a chance to finish writing the last part of this book, which is made up of critical essays on my literary father, Bienvenido N. Santos. I promised Mang Ben that I would finish my essays on him. This is the fulfilment of that promise, even if it’s only a quarter of a book. I want to thank Tomas Santos, Mang Ben’s son, who came all the way from Colorado to be with us today (just a little lie, because he really came for his sister's birthday tomorrow).
Now, let me talk about myself.
My students know that I am happy when I am with them in the classroom, challenging them to think in ways they never thought before. I am happy when I am surrounded by my students. I thank my students, all of them in the 41 years I have been teaching. It’s my last term of teaching, as I will be too old by my birthday in April to connect with people young enough to be my grandchildren.
My friends and family know that I am happy when I am with them, exchanging stories, experiences, trips, memories, food, affection, love. I am happy when I am surrounded by friends and family. I thank my friends, many of whom are right here in this room. You have taken time off to come to the cleanest place in downtown Manila, perhaps the only clean place. I thank my teachers who have become my friends, especially my best teachers mentioned in the dedication in the book: Mr. Gil Raval (my English teacher in all my four years of high school in Lourdes School), the late Professor Nieves Epistola (we call her Mrs. E., my English teacher in UP who forced me to write a full essay every week), Fr. Joseph Galdon SJ (my English teacher for my MA at the Ateneo, who forced me to be grammatical because he refused to continue reading my assignment once he detected a grammatical error), Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera (the chair of the English Department at the Ateneo during my graduate studies, who took me by the hand and showed me how to be a truly Filipino scholar), and Dr. Marjorie Perloff (before she became president of the Modern Language Association and one of the top three living critics in America today, she was the angry young woman at the University of Maryland who forced me to read in French and introduced me to the rigors of Russian Formalism). I thank my family, especially my most skeptical critic Medy, who has had to share me with my computer.
But they – you – all know that I am happier when I am with Plato, Aristotle, Rizal, Jacques Derrida, and all the philosophers and literary critics I talk with when I am reading their books. I am happier when I am surrounded by books, by their authors, all of them still alive and in my room, debating with me through their books. I am happier when I am in front of my computer, writing to these intellectuals that have changed the way we all think. I thank all the intellectuals, living or dead, listed in the index of the book.
But I am happiest when I give birth to a book, when I am able to hold in my hands a product not just of my own conversations with students, friends, family, and living or dead intellectuals, but also a product of the people in an industry I love so much (publishing, which I love almost as much as education and the theater). Many artists and laborers contribute to creating my books. The Jewish Talmud had it only partly right. It said that, to live a full life, we must have a child, plant a tree, and write a book. Anyone can do those, yes, even write a book. I think that, to live a really full life, we must nurture the child until adulthood (in other words, we should teach), we should care for the tree until it bears fruit, and we should not just write a book but publish it.
A book is more than just another line in my curriculum vitae, more than just another accession number on my library shelf, more than just another memory to enjoy when old age kindly stops for me (since, still following Emily Dickinson, I cannot stop for it). A book represents a chapter in my life. This book represents the life of the scholarly writer that I lived for almost half a century, a life that I intend to leave come April, when I turn 65 and, as the Beatles described that age, I finally lose all my hair. For the sake of food on the table I will still do administrative work in universities and government until my spirit, though willing, will be too weighed down by my flesh, a 65-year-old body that now needs repair more often.
But, my students, my colleagues, my friends, my family, I will spend more quality time with you. I can talk to Plato, Aristotle, Rizal, Derrida, and all the rest of scholarly gang when I meet them in heaven, and that can wait.
Thank you. (Delivered at the launching of The Other Other at Far Eastern University, 29 January 2010)
It is really a festschrift in the European sense of the word, a collection of articles by the honoree, just like Emerita Quito’s A Life of Philosophy. David and Karina Bolasco of Anvil Publishing are working on another festschrift, the American kind, to be launched on April 16. Good things always come in pairs. Let me invite you this early to the launching of Inter/Sections. Both The Other Other and Inter/Sections will be relaunched in Los Angeles on April 30, and if you have the time and the money, I invite you to that one, too.
I want to thank Agnes Malcampo, indefatigable and irresistible head of publications here at FEU. She just kept nagging me and nagging me and nagging me until I gave her the manuscript, then she kept nagging me and nagging me and nagging me about everything else that has to be done to a manuscript until it sees print.
I want to thank Dr. Lourdes Montinola, chair of the FEU board, Dr. Lydia Echauz, president, and the management of FEU for giving me an ID so I can enter the campus, for employing me even after I retired from De La Salle University in 2005 with the illusion that I could live on my savings, for giving me a post through which I am able to oversee the continuing education of FEU teachers, for welcoming me as a member of the FEU family. This book is worth not retiring.
I can’t possibly name everybody referred to in the acknowledgements or listed in the index of the book, but I want to thank especially the late Brother Andrew Gonzalez, FSC, who kept at me to keep writing, and Professor Thelma Arambulo of UP Diliman, who babysat the manuscript by proofreading, copyediting, giving comments, even while she was in Canada, presumably to get away from academic work. Unfortunately, as everyone that has ever published a book knows, there are always those awful typographical errors that refuse to go away. I apologize to my readers for those. They’re my fault and no one else’s.
I’m also expected to say something about the book, even if David has already talked about it. I’ve been lucky to have been asked several times to write articles in foreign journals, encyclopedias, and books, and I’ve often wished that Filipinos in the Philippines would have a chance to read those articles. This book puts together many of those articles, not all of them, and I hope these articles challenge readers the way my local articles are meant to do.
I think of this book as my letter to the world, as Emily Dickinson would put it, that has written to me many times, through the publishers, conference convenors, book editors, and foundations that have given me time, space, and often money to write these articles. In particular, together with the Philippine American Educational Foundation and the Fulbright Program of the United States, Wichita State University was very kind to me. Wichita gave me a chance to finish writing the last part of this book, which is made up of critical essays on my literary father, Bienvenido N. Santos. I promised Mang Ben that I would finish my essays on him. This is the fulfilment of that promise, even if it’s only a quarter of a book. I want to thank Tomas Santos, Mang Ben’s son, who came all the way from Colorado to be with us today (just a little lie, because he really came for his sister's birthday tomorrow).
Now, let me talk about myself.
My students know that I am happy when I am with them in the classroom, challenging them to think in ways they never thought before. I am happy when I am surrounded by my students. I thank my students, all of them in the 41 years I have been teaching. It’s my last term of teaching, as I will be too old by my birthday in April to connect with people young enough to be my grandchildren.
My friends and family know that I am happy when I am with them, exchanging stories, experiences, trips, memories, food, affection, love. I am happy when I am surrounded by friends and family. I thank my friends, many of whom are right here in this room. You have taken time off to come to the cleanest place in downtown Manila, perhaps the only clean place. I thank my teachers who have become my friends, especially my best teachers mentioned in the dedication in the book: Mr. Gil Raval (my English teacher in all my four years of high school in Lourdes School), the late Professor Nieves Epistola (we call her Mrs. E., my English teacher in UP who forced me to write a full essay every week), Fr. Joseph Galdon SJ (my English teacher for my MA at the Ateneo, who forced me to be grammatical because he refused to continue reading my assignment once he detected a grammatical error), Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera (the chair of the English Department at the Ateneo during my graduate studies, who took me by the hand and showed me how to be a truly Filipino scholar), and Dr. Marjorie Perloff (before she became president of the Modern Language Association and one of the top three living critics in America today, she was the angry young woman at the University of Maryland who forced me to read in French and introduced me to the rigors of Russian Formalism). I thank my family, especially my most skeptical critic Medy, who has had to share me with my computer.
But they – you – all know that I am happier when I am with Plato, Aristotle, Rizal, Jacques Derrida, and all the philosophers and literary critics I talk with when I am reading their books. I am happier when I am surrounded by books, by their authors, all of them still alive and in my room, debating with me through their books. I am happier when I am in front of my computer, writing to these intellectuals that have changed the way we all think. I thank all the intellectuals, living or dead, listed in the index of the book.
But I am happiest when I give birth to a book, when I am able to hold in my hands a product not just of my own conversations with students, friends, family, and living or dead intellectuals, but also a product of the people in an industry I love so much (publishing, which I love almost as much as education and the theater). Many artists and laborers contribute to creating my books. The Jewish Talmud had it only partly right. It said that, to live a full life, we must have a child, plant a tree, and write a book. Anyone can do those, yes, even write a book. I think that, to live a really full life, we must nurture the child until adulthood (in other words, we should teach), we should care for the tree until it bears fruit, and we should not just write a book but publish it.
A book is more than just another line in my curriculum vitae, more than just another accession number on my library shelf, more than just another memory to enjoy when old age kindly stops for me (since, still following Emily Dickinson, I cannot stop for it). A book represents a chapter in my life. This book represents the life of the scholarly writer that I lived for almost half a century, a life that I intend to leave come April, when I turn 65 and, as the Beatles described that age, I finally lose all my hair. For the sake of food on the table I will still do administrative work in universities and government until my spirit, though willing, will be too weighed down by my flesh, a 65-year-old body that now needs repair more often.
But, my students, my colleagues, my friends, my family, I will spend more quality time with you. I can talk to Plato, Aristotle, Rizal, Derrida, and all the rest of scholarly gang when I meet them in heaven, and that can wait.
Thank you. (Delivered at the launching of The Other Other at Far Eastern University, 29 January 2010)
17 January 2010
Not the third-largest English-speaking country
I posted this on my other blog (LOL Literatures in Other Languages):
The ranking of the Philippines in the list of English-speaking countries varies widely from Number 18 in Nationmaster to Number 5 in Wikipedia. Only Filipinos who have never been to India, the USA, Nigeria, UK, and China claim that the Philippines is up there with the biggies. Don't ask me why it should be a source of pride to speak English. Ethnologue says that English is only the third most-spoken language in the world, trailing Chinese and Spanish. (For Philippine languages: Filipino is Number 37, Tagalog 39, Cebuano 57, Ilocano 98, Hiligaynon 115, Bikol 130.)
The ranking of the Philippines in the list of English-speaking countries varies widely from Number 18 in Nationmaster to Number 5 in Wikipedia. Only Filipinos who have never been to India, the USA, Nigeria, UK, and China claim that the Philippines is up there with the biggies. Don't ask me why it should be a source of pride to speak English. Ethnologue says that English is only the third most-spoken language in the world, trailing Chinese and Spanish. (For Philippine languages: Filipino is Number 37, Tagalog 39, Cebuano 57, Ilocano 98, Hiligaynon 115, Bikol 130.)
15 January 2010
The Other Other
THE OTHER OTHER
Isagani R. Cruz
Edited by David Jonathan Y. Bayot
Far Eastern University Publications
Manila
2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Isagani R. Cruz, the Critical-in-Difference, and the Other Other, by David Jonathan Y. Bayot
The Critical S/subjects as the Other Other
Imperialism
The Other Other: Towards a Postcolonial Poetics
Edith L. Tiempo as a Literary Critic
Demythologizing Postcolonial Otherness, or Why Anti-Imperialism Does Not Imperil Imperialism
Resisting the New Cultural Imperialism: Against Postcolonial Theories of Literature
Deeuropeanizing Theory
Philippine Literary Criticism Today
A Philippine Ontology: Facets and Phrases
The Philippines
A Nation Searching for a Language Finds a Language Searching for a Name
One Thousand Years of Filitude
The Discourse of People Power
What’s the Word on the Bases, and Why are They Saying Such Terrible Things about Them?
Faces of the Subjects with/in the Other Other
The Beginnings of Philippine Literature: The Epic Tradition
Malay Consciousness in Philippine Literature
The Southeast Asian Writer’s Non-ASEAN Roots
Philippine Literature in the Age of Ninoy
Images of Japan in Contemporary Philippine Literature
White Snow, Brown Earth: Philippine-American Cultural Relations
Emersonian Values in Philippine Literature
Deconstructing America: America through the Eyes of Filipino Writers
English and Tagalog in Philippine Literature: A Study of Literary Bilingualism
Philippine Fiction from English
Introducing the Man: F. Sionil Jose in Literary and Historical Context
The Future of Philippine Literature in English
Philippines
Literary Magazines
Poetry
Publishing
Short Fiction
Translation
Southeast Asian Novel: Philippines
Face-to-Face with the Other Other
A Deconstructive Meditation on the Writer and Society
Bienvenido N. Santos
Bienvenido, Our Brother: The Man Behind the Author
Villa Bienvenido: The Poetic Universe
The Man Who (Thought He) Was Santos: The Narrator in the Short Stories
Introduction to the Second Edition of The Day the Dancers Came
The Volcano Erupts: The First Novels
Bienvenido N. Santos on Bienvenido N. Santos
Ben Santos in Wichita / Wichita in Ben Santos
Works Cited
Index of Names
Isagani R. Cruz
Edited by David Jonathan Y. Bayot
Far Eastern University Publications
Manila
2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Isagani R. Cruz, the Critical-in-Difference, and the Other Other, by David Jonathan Y. Bayot
The Critical S/subjects as the Other Other
Imperialism
The Other Other: Towards a Postcolonial Poetics
Edith L. Tiempo as a Literary Critic
Demythologizing Postcolonial Otherness, or Why Anti-Imperialism Does Not Imperil Imperialism
Resisting the New Cultural Imperialism: Against Postcolonial Theories of Literature
Deeuropeanizing Theory
Philippine Literary Criticism Today
A Philippine Ontology: Facets and Phrases
The Philippines
A Nation Searching for a Language Finds a Language Searching for a Name
One Thousand Years of Filitude
The Discourse of People Power
What’s the Word on the Bases, and Why are They Saying Such Terrible Things about Them?
Faces of the Subjects with/in the Other Other
The Beginnings of Philippine Literature: The Epic Tradition
Malay Consciousness in Philippine Literature
The Southeast Asian Writer’s Non-ASEAN Roots
Philippine Literature in the Age of Ninoy
Images of Japan in Contemporary Philippine Literature
White Snow, Brown Earth: Philippine-American Cultural Relations
Emersonian Values in Philippine Literature
Deconstructing America: America through the Eyes of Filipino Writers
English and Tagalog in Philippine Literature: A Study of Literary Bilingualism
Philippine Fiction from English
Introducing the Man: F. Sionil Jose in Literary and Historical Context
The Future of Philippine Literature in English
Philippines
Literary Magazines
Poetry
Publishing
Short Fiction
Translation
Southeast Asian Novel: Philippines
Face-to-Face with the Other Other
A Deconstructive Meditation on the Writer and Society
Bienvenido N. Santos
Bienvenido, Our Brother: The Man Behind the Author
Villa Bienvenido: The Poetic Universe
The Man Who (Thought He) Was Santos: The Narrator in the Short Stories
Introduction to the Second Edition of The Day the Dancers Came
The Volcano Erupts: The First Novels
Bienvenido N. Santos on Bienvenido N. Santos
Ben Santos in Wichita / Wichita in Ben Santos
Works Cited
Index of Names
08 January 2010
ERF: Fidel Ramos
During the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, I chanced upon former president Fidel V. Ramos in the lobby of a hotel in Ortigas Center. I was alone, waiting for my driver to come around with my car. He was alone (at least, he was standing alone, although I suppose he had bodyguards standing inconspicuously somewhere near), also waiting for his driver to come around with his car.
I greeted him, "Mister President, you were the best president we have had."
He answered without hesitation, "That's because everyone who followed me was so bad!"
His car came and whisked him away before he could explain to me why Erap Estrada and Gloria Arroyo were very bad presidents, but I guess the reasons are obvious. Erap was convicted and Gloria pardoned him. Erap was proven to be corrupt. Gloria is reputed to be corrupt. Erap was successfully removed from office by the people themselves. The people (at least 75% of the entire population, according to an SWS survey) have been trying to remove Gloria from office, but unsuccessfully. Yes, Ramos (apparently not exactly an angel) looks like a saint compared to his two successors.
I greeted him, "Mister President, you were the best president we have had."
He answered without hesitation, "That's because everyone who followed me was so bad!"
His car came and whisked him away before he could explain to me why Erap Estrada and Gloria Arroyo were very bad presidents, but I guess the reasons are obvious. Erap was convicted and Gloria pardoned him. Erap was proven to be corrupt. Gloria is reputed to be corrupt. Erap was successfully removed from office by the people themselves. The people (at least 75% of the entire population, according to an SWS survey) have been trying to remove Gloria from office, but unsuccessfully. Yes, Ramos (apparently not exactly an angel) looks like a saint compared to his two successors.
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