National Book Awards for 2005 Books

The 25th National Book Awards, for books published in 2005, will be announced by the Manila Critics Circle at the Manila International Book Fair on Aug. 31, Thursday, at 4 p.m., at the World Trade Center. All finalists, as well as former winners of the awards, are invited to attend the awarding ceremonies. This year’s awards are sponsored by the National Book Development Board and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

Esther Pacheco will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, only the second one given by the Circle. The first was given to Gloria Rodriguez in 1992.

Citations will be given to four sets of books: Angono, Rizal, by Ligaya G. Tiamson-Rubin (UST Publishing House); Kultura Mangyan, edited by Antoon Postma (Mangyan Heritage Center); Makata sa Cellphone, by Frank G. Rivera (UST Publishing House); Ubod series (National Commission for Culture & the Arts).

Here is the list of finalists:

ANTHOLOGY: Philippine Speculative Fiction, edited by Dean Francis Alfar.

ALFONSO T. ONGPIN AWARD FOR BEST BOOK ON ART: Anita Magsaysay-Ho, by Alfredo Roces; Tanaw, edited by Ramon E. S. Lerma.

AUTO/BIOGRAPHY: Bababa Ba? … Bababa, by Jose Abeto Zaide; Don’t Ever Tell Me You Can’t, by Celia Ruiz Tomlinson; John F. Hurley S.J., edited by Jose S. Arcilla, S.J.; The Last Full Moon, by Gilda Cordero Fernando; Light a Fire, by Eduardo B. Olaguer.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS: The Bangko Sentral & the Philippine Economy, edited by Vicente B. Valdepeñas Jr.; Making Your Money Work: Pera Mo, Palaguin Mo! 2, by Francisco J. Colayco; Pwede Na!, by Efren Ll. Cruz; Setting Frameworks, by Elfren Cruz; The Way We Work, edited by Ma. Regina M. Hechanova and Edna P. Franco.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: Baha!, by Eugene Y. Evasco; Elias and His Trees / Mga Puno ni Elias, by Augie Rivera and Mike Rivera; The Yellow Paper Clip with Bright Purple Spots, by Nikki Dy-Liacco.

COMIC BOOKS: Mars Ravelo’s Lastikman, by Gerry Alanguilan, Arnold Arre and Edgar Tadeo; Siglo: Passion, edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Vincent Simbulan.

COOKBOOKS AND FOOD: Gabay sa Pagkain ng Gulay-Dagat, by Paciente A. Cordero Jr.; Slow Food, edited by Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio and Felice Prudente Sta. Maria.

DRAMA: 10x10x10, edited by Rody Vera and Alfonso I. Dacanay; Mga Piling Dulang Pambata, edited by Arthur P. Casanova.

EDITING: Tandoz and Other Stories, by Delfin Fresnosa, edited by Teresita E. Erestain.

EDUCATION: Edukasyong Pampubliko, by Emmanuel Franco Calairo; University Traditions, edited by Ramon C. Sunico.

ESSAY: The Cardinal’s Sins, The General’s Cross, The Martyr’s Testimony and Other Affirmations, by Gregorio C. Brillantes; The True and the Plain, by Kerima Polotan.

SHORT FICTION: Calvary Road, by Abdon M. Balde Jr.; Jungle Planet and Other Stories, by Lakambini A. Sitoy; Selected Stories, by Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.; White Elephants, by Angelo Lacuesta.

JUAN C. LAYA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL IN A PHILIPPINE LANGUAGE: May Tibok ang Puso ng Lupa, by Bienvenido A. Ramos.

JUAN C. LAYA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: Banana Heart Summer, by Merlinda Bobis; Out of Doors, by Ernesto Superal Yee.

FILM: Making Documentaries in the Philippines, by Isabel Enriquez Kenny.

FOLKLORE: Literature of Voice, edited by Nicole Revel; Myth, Mimesis and Magic in the Music of the T’boli, Philippines, by Manolete Mora; Tales from the Land of Salt, by Emmanuel S. Sison.

HISTORY: Davao, by Macario D. Tiu; Malacañan Palace, by Manuel L. Quezon III, Paulo Alcazaren, and Jeremy Burns; Patterns of Continuity and Change, by Helen Yu-Rivera; To Love and to Suffer, by Luciano Santiago; Tsinoy, edited by Teresita Ang See, Go Bon Juan, Doreen Go Yu, and Yvonne Chua; Under Three Flags, by Benedict Anderson.

LINGUISTICS: Sawikaan 2004, edited by Galileo S. Zafra and Romulo P. Baquiran Jr.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH: The Truth about Coconut Oil, by Conrado S. Dayrit.

MUSIC: Tunugan, by Ramon Pagayon Santos.

PERSONAL ANTHOLOGY: Jose Rizal, by Frank G. Rivera, edited by Arthur P. Casanova; Sakit ng Kalingkingan, by Rolando B. Tolentino.

POETRY: Dark Hours, by Conchitina Cruz; Days of Grace, by R. Torres Pandan; Misterios and Other Poems, by J. Neil C. Garcia; Pana-panahon, by Aida F. Santos; Saulado, by Rebecca T. Añonuevo.

REFERENCE: 100 Questions Filipino Kids Ask, by Liwliwa Malabed and Emylou Infante.

SOCIAL SCIENCES: Authentic though not Exotic, by Fernando Nakpil Zialcita; Kapwa, by Katrin de Guia; The Making of the Igorot, by Gerald A. Finin; The Star-Entangled Banner, by Sharon Delmendo; State and Society in the Philippines, by Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso.

SPECIAL INTEREST: Huling Ptyk, by Pandy Aviado, Sylvia Mayuga, and Dario Marcelo; Ngalang Pinoy, edited by Neni Sta. Romana-Cruz; Mga Panibagong Kulam sa Pag-ibig, by Tony Perez, edited by Susie Baclagon-Borrero.

THEOLOGY & RELIGION: Pagsubok sa Ilang, by Tony Perez; A Pilgrim’s Notes, by Fausto B. Gomez, O.P.; The Prayer Our Lord Taught Us, by Jose M. de Mesa.

TRANSLATION: Fr. Francisco Coronel’s Arte y Reglas, Kapampangan Grammar and Rules, circa 1621, translated by Edilberto V. Santos.

TRAVEL: Ciudad Murada, by Jose Victor Z. Torres; A Pilgrim’s Diary, by Angela Blardony Ureta.

BEST DESIGN: Huling Ptyk, by Pandy Aviado, Sylvia Mayuga, and Dario Marcelo, designed by Pandy Aviado and Carminnie Doromal; The Last Full Moon, by Gilda Cordero Fernando, designed by M. G. Chaves; A Pilgrim’s Diary, by Angela Blardony Ureta, designed by Ige Ramos.

A Thousand Years of Filitude

In 1000 there was no Filipinas, but there were Filipinos.

There was no Filipinas, if by the term we mean the geographical colony imagined by Spanish imperialists – thinking locally but acting globally, dreaming of lives of ease among Asian beasts – more than half a millennium into the future or the independent nation imagined by Indio expatriates – still students but already writers, living in the belly of the Spanish beast – almost a millennium later.

But there were Filipinos, if by the term we mean flesh-and-blood beings as human as we now are, endowed with exactly the same minds, hearts, souls, rights, freedoms, dreams, and challenges that we ourselves now enjoy. These Filipinos, unbeknownst to themselves, were building the nation chanced upon by the Spanish imperialists and put into words by the Indio expatriates, the same nation called or to be called – at various times and by various peoples – Ophir, Maniolas, Mo-yi, Ma-yi, Sansu, San-Tao, Lu-sung, Islas del Poniente, Islas del Oriente, Islas de Luzones, Archipelago de Magallanes, Archipelago de Celebes, and of course, Filipinas.

These Filipinos lived in a global community. With their hands, they built boats, and in their dreams, they built empires. They traveled routinely to alien places such as Malacca and set up houses and shops there, even – rumors had it – slave centers. They traded commodities with the mighty Chinese and the mysterious Indians. They traded myths, fears, and rumors about the exotic Europeans, the white peoples that, in the folklore of the Tinguians and other islanders, were their very own ancestors that had gone out to see the world and soon enough – to be more precise, half a millennium later – would inevitably return to the parentland.

What kind of art did these Filipinos have? What artistic efforts have they exerted since then? In this essay, let us sketch a history of Filipino achievement in the arts from 1000 to 2000.

First, let us look at the world around Filipinas then. In 1000, Murasaki Shikibu was writing the world’s very first novel Tale of Genji, Islam was popularizing arabesque, Guido d’Arezzo was inventing the musical staff, and the Djennes were perfecting figurative terra-cottas. Just around the time corner were the great wall of Zimbabwe, the Byzantine revisionist portrait of Christ as a stern judge, the Kandariya Mahadeva temple in India, the tolling of the bells for Gregorian chant, the Sung dynasty’s greatest landscape painter Fan K’uan, the French minstrel guilds, and German manuscript illumination at Reichenau Monastery.

What did the Filipinos have that could match these paradigm shifters?

At first glance, not as much. We must remember, however, that we had already built the rice terraces in what eventually would be known as a mountain/ous province; admittedly, though, those had been around for at least – some say more than – two thousand years, mute but eloquent witnesses to the advanced engineering skills of ancient Filipinos. We might already have had primitive, though not necessarily unsophisticated early versions of songs (should we call them Ur-songs?) still sung today by playful children at home or homesick adults overseas – traditional songs such as Atin Cu Pung Singsing, Bahay Kubo, Dandansoy, Ili-ili Tulog Anay, Leron Leron Sinta, Lulay, Magtanim ay di Biro, Manang Biday, Matud Nila, Pamulinawen, Paruparong Bukid, Si Pilemon si Pilemon, Sitsiritsit, and Ti Ayat ti Maysa nga Ubing, songs later to be adapted to the rhythms and tastes of European invaders or perhaps transmogrified from memories of days of rice wine and white roses before colonization. We definitely already had what today we call the Manunggul Jar, almost two thousand years old even then, though whether the Manunggul Cave in Lipuun Point in Palawan was open to living visitors viewing the remains of their dead remained, even by then, a dead issue.

We certainly did not have illuminated manuscripts or even painting on paper. Our Chinese trading partners that had invented printing by 1000 brought only noodles but not woodblocks to our islands, and we had to wait for European plagiarists to introduce the notion of The Book as Object for our artists to come up with, say, the Augustinian Cantoral of 1659 as illuminated by Marcelo de San Agustin, or a bit later, the anonymous Anales Eclesiasticos de Filipinas in 1770, precursors of the letras y figures of the 1840s. Even the earlier Boxer Codex, not completely our own creation, was done only six hundred years after the turn of the millennium, around 1590.

But the first five or so hundred years of the last thousand were not exactly the Dark Ages for Filipinos, though they looked pretty dark to the seafaring and blind coiners of the Spanish word Filipinas. Filipinos did have a huge amount of both written and oral literature by the end of the first millennium. To cite only one example of written imaginative lore, we had the pre-Islamic Darangen of the Maranaos, so lengthy and so complex that it almost took forever in the twentieth century for Mindanao State University, the Toyota Foundation, and Ma. Delia Coronel to print heavily abridged and edited versions of it, versions that have not exactly been welcomed ecstatically by a largely Christocentric, tempocentric, and static public.

The literature printed or signified only in the mind – texts that modern postmodernists would not welcome for reversing the hard-earned poststructuralist hegemony of writing over speech – loomed large during those first five or six hundred years. Today, at least thirty or so oral epic families have survived, each family having any number of songs ranging from short episodes to what in other countries would already be hailed as full epics. Epic families considered canonical are – aside from the Maranao Darangen – the Arakan-Arumanen Agyu, the Suban-on Guman and Keg Sumba neg Sandayo and Ag Tobig nog Keboklagan, the Sulod Hinilawod, the Ifugao Hudhud, the Kinaray-a Humadapnon, the Palawan Kudaman, the Tausug Parang Sabil, the Manobo Tuwaang, the Livunganen-Arumanen Ulahingan, and the Kalinga Ullalim. We could add to the list those created much later, such as the Ilokano Biag ni Lam-ang or even the English Trilogy of Saint Lazarus by Cirilo F. Bautista, the two latter, of course, having been written and published, belonging to Ferdinand de Saussure’s right-hand or Jacques Derrida’s left-hand term.

The oral epics had one thing in common, what protostructuralist Vladimir Propp would have hailed as a triumph of his unwittingly universal grammar or morphology of all extended narratives. Everything else being equal, the Filipino epic hero – male or female – tended to leave home, to acquire the use of a magical agent, to be transferred to the whereabouts of an object of search, to start a battle, to fight for a long time, to be stopped from fighting by a female or male god, to realize that the enemy is an unsuspected blood relation, to die, to resurrect, to return home, and to get married. Filipinos then, as now, knew that no Filipino stands alone; all Filipinos – heroes or villains – receive their sustenance, strength, and salvation from other Filipinos. People Power was not a creation of the late twentieth century, as short-sighted, tempocentric, and megalomaniac come-lately would-be heroes love to announce; it was a characteristic of all Filipino communities even during the first few hundred years of the second millennium and perhaps long before then.

Those first few hundred years, needless to say, were not famous for electronic technology, or in fact, for any kind of technology – appropriate or inappropriate – that would permit ideas to cross oceans fast and pure. Scholastic philosophy, schisms, and the crusades were changing European ideology in the 11^th century; the Khmers were building Angkor Wat in the 12^th; Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, the Inquisition, Marco Polo, and Kamikaze were changing history in the 13^th; Timbuktu was starting to become a cultural center and the Italian Renaissance was beginning in the 14^th; the Germans were commercializing printing and other Europeans were starting to sail away from what they thought was the Old World in the 15^th – but in what would soon enough be called Filipinas, there was only peace and prosperity, there was only an Eden that the great nineteenth-century novelist Jose Rizal would so aptly call lost, there was only the highest form of civilization available only to the purest of heart.

Twenty-one of our contemporaries have identified certain key events from the coming of homo sapiens in 50,000 BC to AD 1000 as shaping pre-first millennium Filipinas (Asico). Among these, so they claim, were the development of pottery (3,000 BC), writing (200 BC), weaving (AD 200), woodcarving (200), and indigenous music (500). Clearly crucial to the development of Filipinos as artists were the various foreign influences brought physically by the boat trade – the Indonesians and Indochinese (1,000 BC), the Chinese (AD 222), and the Arabs (9^th century). In the period we are studying, the key events are the coming of Islam missionaries in the 1240s, of Magellan in 1521 and of Legazpi in 1565, of the Dutch in the 17^th century, of the British in 1762, and of everyone else in the 1780s, including the Danish, the Swedes, and United States people (we dare not use the politically incorrect term Americans to denote US residents while marginalizing Canadians, Latin Americans, and non-Latin South Americans). Clearly, it was impossible for Filipinos to remain parochial in their everyday life and in their everyday art; from the very beginning, almost as an inherent quality, Filipino art has always been global.

Speaking strictly of art as a formal discipline, we might probably identify as the most important event in the whole millennium the opening of the first art school in the islands in 1823, the Academia de Dibujo, built around Damian Domingo, who had established its progenitor in his own house in Tondo in 1821. Domingo died in 1832, and the school closed in 1834. More lasting in influence was its offspring, the second art school, which opened in 1845; that second school had among its alumni Simon Flores, Lorenzo Guerrero, Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo, and Juan Luna Novicio.

But that’s coming very close to the end of the millennium. Let us retrace the thousand years by spotting its highlights. This is the traditional way of doing art history (the other way being what is sometimes inaccurately called “history from below”); let us let masterpieces, not the democratic majority, define our history as artists.

In 1584 was built Intramuros (from a precolonial structure already existing in 1519), our answer to the turn of the millennium Borobodour of the Sailendras and Angkor Wat of the Khmers. For architecture, Intramuros was indeed the be-all and the end-all of everything. It was, of course, global, because Spanish-inspired and built; it was also, of course, local, because it physically manifested the only and still remaining racist strain in Filipino life – the prejudice against people of color, the yellow-skinned Chinese and the brown-skinned Malays, both kept outside the walls. On the other hand, if we take a deconstructive view, Intramuros kept imprisoned within its walls white Spaniards and whitened Malays. Either way, Intramuros was our version of the Great Wall of China, keeping the barbarians at the gates while granting a reassuring though false self-image to the savage nobles within.

Architecture, however, did not hibernate the rest of the millennium. Far from it. Public structures, particularly churches, took up the time and energy of our architects. In 1599 – to give only a handful of examples – was built the Ayuntamiento or City Hall of Manila, in 1600 the Roman Catholic Parish Church of Santo Domingo de Guzman in Cagayan, in 1629 the Puente de España (the first bridge to span the Pasig River), in 1630 the Roman Catholic Parish Church of the Inmaculada Concepcion in Antipolo (by Juan de Salazar and Luciano Oliver), in 1635 the Fuerza de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragosa in Zamboanga City (by Melchor de Vera and Juan de Ciscara), in 1760 the Basilica del Santo Niño in Cebu City (first built in 1566 by Diego de Herrera), in 1788 the Roman Catholic Parish Church of Nuestra Señora de la Consolacion in Argao (by Mateo Perez), in 1796 Malacañang Palace, in 1823 Paco Cemetery, and in 1891 the Roman Catholic Parish Church of San Sebastian in Manila (by Genaro Palacios). To choose only one 20^th century classic – here we use the term “classic” loosely, since classics are traditionally supposed to have existed for at least a hundred years before even being considered for classic status – we had, in 1912, the Manila Hotel by William Parsons. (All artifacts mentioned above and later are those canonized by the CCP Encylopedia as “major works.”)

We could write a volume just on architecture – and the Cultural Center of the Philippines has indeed devoted an entire volume to it in their monumental Encyclopedia – but the simplest way to be convinced that we are a race of architects is to travel around the country and to see, even in the poorest communities, magnificent cathedrals to the great glory of the Spanish Bathala or, in the final years of the millennium, to the greater glory of the homegrown Angel of the East. There is only one God, says Islam, and his name is Allah; we could say that Allah is no one else but Bathala, because the Spanish missionaries preaching the story of Jesus rising from the dead did not introduce anything new to the belief system of Filipinos, even then marveling every night to stories of epic heroes dying and resurrecting routinely. The derivative Iglesia’s original Manalo never claimed to be Allah, nor indeed neither did Muhammad, but the fascination Filipinos had for one prophet or the other cannot be wholly attributed to the fervor of foreign or native missionaries; Filipino epics all define our imagined communities as communities of imagined heroes and gods, leaders all of all our people. No major leap of imagination is required to go from an epic vision to a theological vision; for Filipinos, folklore and theology are one.

The other visual arts – if we use our own way of classifying art, admittedly not the best of all possible ways, since it does not take into account earlier ways of expressing self or society – were not lying inert while architecture was bursting at the seams. In 1734, for instance, we had Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas, better known as the Pedro Murillo Velarde Map of the Philippines, engraved on copper by Nicolas de la Cruz Baggay and Francisco Suarez. In 1800 the Pakil Crucifix, one of thousands of deconstructions of the story of Jesus’s passion and resurrection, emphasized the human passion and downplayed the superhuman resurrection, thus totally misrepresenting the Christian faith and playing to the pagan beliefs of the split-leveled population. In 1830 we had Coleccion de Trajes de Manila y de las Provincias by Damian Domingo, in 1885 El Pacto de Sangre by Juan Luna y Novicio, and in 1890 La Madre España guiando a su hija Filipinas en el camino del progreso also by Luna.

If the visual arts come, can modern literary arts be far behind? No way, Jose Rizal.

In 1593 was published the first book as object, Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Española y Tagala. It was not, strictly speaking, our very first book; that honor belongs to Darangen, which was copied by hand, though not by movable type, from one Maranao family to another. But Doctrina opened the floodgates to what the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC), in the twentieth century, would denounce as the tyranny of print; PLAC would, ironically, as the millennium drew to a close, see itself transforming from revolutionary to reactionary in the onslaught of the visually-oriented World-Wide Web.

After Doctrina, indeed, was the deluge. In 1703 (or 1704) we had Ang Mahal na Passion ni Jesu Christong Panginoon natin na Tola by Gaspar Aquino de Belen. In 1814 we had Casaysayan nang Pasiong Mahal ni Jesucristong Panginoon natin na Sucat Ipag-alab nang Puso nang Sinomang Babasa (Pasyong Genesis or Pasyong Pilapil), in 1831 Comedia Heroica de la Conquistada de Granada o Sea Vida de Don Gonzalo de Cordoba llamado el Gran Capitan by Anselmo Jorge de Fajardo, in 1852 La Teresa: Dialogo cun Pagpolong-polong sa usa ca Familia cun Banay sa Maong Ginicanan, nga Nagatudlo sa Daghanan nga Catungdanan nga Uala Maila sa Daghanan nga mga Bisayang Cristianos by Antonio Ubeda de la Santisima Trinidad, and in 1861 the greatest masterpiece of all Filipino poetry – the metrical romance Pinagdaanang Buhay ni Florante at ni Laura sa Cahariang Albania – Quinuha sa Madlang Cuadro Historico o Pinturang Nagsasabi nang manga Nangyari nang unang Panahon sa Imperio nang Grecia – at Tinula nang isang Matouian sa Versong Tagalog by Francisco Baltazar. Since we are perched on mountain tops, we might as well mention Pagsusulatan ng Dalauang Binibini na si Urbana at ni Feliza na Nagtuturo nang Mabuting Kaugalian (1864) by Modesto de Castro; Ang Suga nga Magandan-ag sa Nagapuyo sa Cangitngitan sa Sala o Ejercicio sulod sa Siam ca Adlao ( 1879) by Blas Cavada de Castro; Ninay: Costumbres Filipinas (1885) by Pedro A. Paterno, published in Madrid; and Si Tandang Basio Macunat (1885) by Miguel Lucio Bustamante. In prose, we had in 1887 Noli me Tangere by Jose Rizal, published in Berlin, undoubtedly The Great Filipino Novel, until its stature was conveniently and comically forgotten by mid-20^th century writers still hoping to write what had already been written. Too late these anti- or non-heroes!

The literary world did not stop though it had reached its climax in the Noli. In 1888 we had Dasalan at Tocsohan by Marcelo H. del Pilar in 1891 Rizal’s less inspired sequel El Filibusterismo, published in Ghent, and Fray Botod by Graciano Lopez Jaena, published in Barcelona. 1896 was a banner year; in that one year alone, we had Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa and Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog by Andres Bonifacio, Liwanag at Dilim by Emilio Jacinto, and Mi Ultimo Adios by Rizal. Later, already stepping into our own century, we had Banaag at Sikat (1905) by Lope K. Santos, Lidia (1907) by Juan Crisostomo Soto, and innumerable others, most of them less remarkable but not all of them not worth remarking. If we had to choose only one set of literary texts to represent the 20^th century, it might arguably – vociferously arguably – be the only prose epic of our time, notwithstanding its alleged lack of (or perhaps because of its outstanding?) literary and political merits, F. Sionil Jose’s Rosales Novels – Poon (1985), Tree (1978), My Brother, My Executioner (1973), The Pretenders (1962), Mass (1984), and perhaps Viajero (1993) – the only sustained modern narrative in novel form, following and keeping alive the ancient epic tradition of heroes unable to achieve heroism without the active help of the community, an achievement that in no small measure owes its success to its continuing the Rizal tradition of romantic realism or realistic romanticism.

Books and literary texts are only a small step away from the performing arts. If poetry aspires to the condition of music, then drama aspires to the condition of theater. Not surprisingly, by 1860 we had La India Elegante y el Negrito Amante by Francisco Baltazar, staged in Udyong (now Orion), Bataan, as well as Orosman at Zafira also by Baltazar, staged in Batangas. In music, we had, in 1879, La Flor de Manila by Dolores Paterno, lyrics by Pedro Paterno. That same year saw the theatrical piece El Consejo de los Dioses by Jose Rizal. A year later we had Junto al Pasig also by Rizal, a zarzuela staged at Ateneo Municipal de Manila. In 1898 was staged the drama simboliko Malaya by Tomas Remigio at Dulaang Luzon in Manila. In 1891 Recuerdos de Capiz by Julio Nakpil was awarded a diploma of honor during the first Exposicion Regional Filipina. In 1896 we had Jocelynang Baliwag; in 1898 Himno Nacional Filipino by Julian Felipe; in 1900 Ing Managpe by Mariano Proceso Pabalan, staged at Teatro Sabina in Bacolor, Pampanga; in 1902 Ang Paghigugma sa Yutang Natawhan by Vicente Sotto, staged at Teatro Junquera (Teatro Oriente) in Cebu City, as well as Walang Sugat by Severino Reyes and Fulgencio Tolentino, staged at Teatro Libertad in Manila; in 1903 Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas by Aurelio Tolentino, staged at Teatro Libertad in Manila; in 1917 Solo entre las Sombras by Claro M. Recto, staged at Manila Grand Opera House. The first film of note came in 1919, Dalagang Bukid by Jose Nepomuceno.

If we had to choose only one musical piece to represent the last century of the millennium, I suppose we would have difficulty choosing between Donde estas, mi Vida (Nasaan ka, Irog?) (1923), by Nicanor Abelardo, lyrics by Narciso Asistio (Spanish) and Jose Corazon de Jesus (Tagalog), and Bayan Ko (1928) by Constancio de Guzman, lyrics by Jose Corazon de Jesus. If we had to choose only one dance event to freeze in a time capsule, we would have to single out Mariang Makiling (1939), a ballet in two acts by Anita Kane, the first dance to use a local legend and original music. If we had to choose just one theater piece, it would have to be, hands down, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1955) by Nick Joaquin, first staged in Intramuros, filmed in 1966 by Lamberto Avellana, and subsequently restaged, translated, retranslated, adapted to music, deconstructed, reconstructed, misconstructed, and so on, not yet ad nauseam and hopefully ad infinitum.

To go through a thousand years of art history is to realize that a thousand years is nothing. Filipinos have always lived sub specie aeternitatis. Filipinos have always lived beyond themselves. The diaspora of the late 20^th century may have a Jewish label with a tinge of siege mentality, but the Weltanschauung of the Filipino has always been much more global and open.

What else can we conclude from our creation myths? Here is a typical creation story, as told by the Agusan Manobo and retold in English by Rosario Cruz Lucero:

In the beginning was Dagau, who set the world atop five iron pillars, one of them at the center. The sky was round and was bounded by the sea. Near the sea’s edge was its navel, a gigantic hole through which the waters rose and fell, causing high and low tides. The world was shaped like a mushroom, underneath which lived Dagau with her pet giant python. (Dalisay 1: 22)

This biologically or superbiologically female god created not just Filipinos, but everyone else, or perhaps more accurately, created only Filipinos, that then dispersed diasporically throughout the earth and became all other peoples.

From this female god (and other female gods, and some male gods as well) to the Filipinos living around 1000 is a small step for Filipinos, but a giant step for humanity. By 1000 we were, as Cecilio G. Salcedo likes to put it, citing F. Landa Jocano, a highly literate race, communicating with each other through a complex system of writing (Dalisay 2: 222). The Laguna copper plate (dated 10^th century, more or less), if nothing else, signals the extraordinary ordinariness of literacy among Filipinos. It is impossible to imagine a race so skilled in engineering that it could construct rice terraces in 1500 or 1000 BC and so literate it had island-hopping communication through writing that was not talented enough to deconstruct or defamiliarize reality or, in other words, to create art.

Clearly, from a purely logical point of view, as well as from the empirical evidence of all the art pieces we have mentioned, we are a proud and artistic race, able to look everyone in the eye and to say, like feminists and postcolonialists used to say, that we had masterpieces as splendid and marvelous as any found elsewhere on earth, but alas, marginalized, trivialized, debased, and otherwise colonized in our own minds and by our own long-lost tribal mates from abroad, we now find ourselves searching for our roots, unaware that from our roots have grown the masterpieces of the entire artistic world. At the end of the day or of the millennium, it has been an exciting thousand years of Filitude.

REFERENCES

Asico, Mary-Ann, ed. 1999. 100 Events that Shaped the Philippines. Quezon City: Adarna Book Services and National Centennial Commission.

Dalisay, Jose Y. Jr., ed. 1998. Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People. 10 vols. Manila: Asia Publishing.

Tiongson, Nicanor G., ed. 1994. CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art. 10 vols. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines.

(Published in Philippine Cultural and Artistic Landmarks of the Past Millennium. Manila: National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2001, pp. 60-70.)

Filipino Identity

Last April 4, at the architectural marvel that is the new Instituto Cervantes beside Casino Español in Ermita, Manila, a round table discussion was held on the issue of “Filipino Identity.” Fernando “Butch” Zialcita, who had just published the book Authentic Though Not Exotic: Essays on Filipino Identity, and bestselling author Jessica Zafra were with me on the panel, ably moderated by Chaco Molina.

I must say at the outset that I thoroughly enjoyed Zialcita’s book. It has to be one of the most significant books published in recent years. Based on solid anthropological research, the book tackles several answers to the question “What is Filipino?” and shows which of them are based on reality and which are not.

My comments on the book had to do not with its merit as a book, but with its unintended lack of appreciation for the long tradition of similar books written in Filipino. I should say this because I do not want to be misunderstood as rejecting the book. In fact, I recommend the book very highly to anyone that wants to know who and what we are.

Here are excerpts from the paper I prepared for the panel:

Since Butch Zialcita’s book does not refer to any of my books in Filipino nor to those of Virgilio Almario or Soledad Reyes, and refers only to the book in English that Bienvenido Lumbera wrote when he was still a student and had not yet fully developed his ideas in his books in Filipino, and since Butch is not only a colleague but a friend – in fact, we have known each other since college days – and therefore has nothing personal against the four of us, I can only assume that he is not that familiar with the parallel efforts being made in the field of literary theory and particularly with that area of it that is written in Filipino. Though as a literary critic I must admit I feel a bit slighted by it, I do not blame him for this oversight, since he himself says that his preference for Filipino as the intellectual language to discuss issues of identity has been stifled by the need to communicate with his colleagues and since no book can be expected anyway to be exhaustive; besides, his book is really an anthology of papers written primarily for social scientists attending conferences or reading journals.

This might be an occasion, therefore, to sketch, even at the risk of oversimplification because we have only a few minutes, how literary theory written in Filipino has approached the question of Filipino identity.

Butch says, “Whenever possible, I prefer to use the vernacular because this forces me to rethink abstract concepts in a clear, concrete way. Also, there is genuine communication.” Almario, Reyes, Lumbera, and I – and others, of course – have been using Filipino in our academic work as literary critics. Although we do not form a school of thought in the sense that we share the same views or even general philosophy, we do build on each other’s research and insights.

Almario has identified what he calls a Filipino Formalism in the practice of writing and reading poetry. He has done this primarily by going back to Tagalog critical texts written during the Spanish period. He became famous because of his early book on what he named Balagtasismo, or the tradition of poetry identified with Francisco Balagtas, the Tagalog poet who wrote Florante at Laura, which is required reading for all Filipino students in secondary school. He has moved considerably away from that book, with his later books going beyond Balagtas into the earlier traditions in Tagalog poetry.

Reyes has widened the scope of literary criticism to include not just poetry, which is the core of literature, but also previously marginalized forms, such as comic books, radio plays, and serialized novels in popular magazines. She became famous for her definition of the Filipino romantic mode, a concept that she has continued to develop in several books. Recently, she has focused on women writers that have been doubly marginalized, once because they are women and second because they wrote in unheralded literary forms.

Lumbera needed to write his doctoral dissertation, which is the book on Tagalog poetry that Butch includes in his references, in order to turn his back on his miseducation. Since then, as a professional scholar rather than as a mere student, Lumbera has moved deeply into literary theory, discovering that there is a concept of nationhood imbedded in various texts, and not only literary but cinematic and other texts.

I have myself, if I may be immodest, advocated what I call the concept of the Other Other, or Bukod na Bukod, as my latest theory book is entitled. Before my retirement from De La Salle University, I spoke at various international conferences, pricking the consciences of so-called postcolonial literary critics by assuming what I suppose is a stand strange to them, namely, that the Philippines is an ancient, first-world, and Western nation.

Obviously, we cannot debate all the issues that literary critics have been debating over the last forty years, with the four of us, if I can again be immodest, at the center of the debates. There are younger literary critics, such as David Jonathan Bayot, Caroline Hau, and Roland Tolentino, that are taking the debates into areas much deeper and more exciting than the four of us elders have explored, and the good news is that they build on what we have spent our lives doing. (The Philippine Star, 20 April 2006)

It is impossible to reconcile many of our views on national identity, but oversimplistically, I could say that we all agree that, first, it is not right to be primitivist (that is, to say that we used to be Filipino but became less so when foreigners invaded our shores); second, that there is something that foreigners did not give us (there is something traceable to our ancient ethnoepics that up to now still animates our literary and popular texts); and third, that we have always been global (even before foreign forms entered the physical boundaries of the country).

Butch can easily see how literary theory in Filipino can bolster many of his arguments.

Although we can understand the dissatisfaction Butch feels when he reads social science texts that marginalize the Philippines, we literary critics feel much more confident than he does, or perhaps than all Philippine social scientists do, because international encyclopedias on literature routinely include Philippine writers. Just look at the Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, the British (now American) traveler’s series on literature, the Fitzroy Dearborn Encyclopedia of the Novel, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and other major references of that kind. Or look at the annual bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, which is the biggest association of literary scholars not just in the United States, but in the world.

Or look at the important role the Philippine Center of International PEN plays in International PEN, which is the world’s biggest and in fact the only international professional association of writers. Until it ran out of funds, the Philippine Center was deep into organizing the annual Congress in Manila. In May, the Philippine Center is, in fact, organizing the 31^st UNESCO-ITI World Congress and Theatre Olympics of the Nations, a clear recognition by the international art community of the sophistication and maturity of Philippine artists.

Of course, we literary critics deal primarily with written texts, though most of us also talk about non-written texts, especially Tolentino, who has a series of books out on skin whiteners, malls, and the like. Most relevant to the book of Butch is Tolentino’s Paghahanap ng Virtual na Identidad (Looking for Virtual Identity). Social scientists like Butch have to deal with reality, as opposed to the virtual world of literary and quasi-literary texts.

Let me cite another literary critic – Gemino Abad. I did not mention him earlier because he writes in English and is more accessible to Butch, although Abad also does not merit mention in the book. Abad says that the world is made up of words. Of course, Abad borrows this insight from the structuralists, who have a lot in common with social scientists, because the linguist Roman Jakobson, heavily influenced by the linguist Ferdinand du Saussure, himself heavily influenced the anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, used by Butch in his book. If the world were indeed made up of words, then it is the literary critic that we should turn to if we want to understand the world. Now, that is surely immodest.

I have to say that I enjoyed the book. It is very well researched. It is not afraid to point out the errors of others, even big names such as O. D. Corpuz, who misreads Sinibaldo de Mas. It uses personal knowledge, though anecdotal, as a counterpoint to the impersonality of much research. It is also well written, which literary critics appreciate.

One passage particularly strikes me. Butch writes, “The eighteenth-century German aristocracy derided German and German literature. They spoke with each other in French. As a result, French words abound in German, often in their original spelling. Though Frederick the Great of Prussia warred against the French king in 1757, he was a Francophile in his readings and in his speech. He confessed that ‘since the days of my youth I have not read a German book and I speak German no better than a coachman.’”

Let’s change the word German to Filipino and French to English and change the setting to the Philippines today. The passage would read: “Today’s Filipino leaders deride the Filipino language and literature in Filipino. They speak with each other in English. As a result, English words abound in Filipino or Taglish, often in their original spelling. Though Filipino political and industry leaders claim to have been independent since 1946, they are Americans in their readings and in their speech. Some, maybe most of them can truly confess that, since the days of their youth they have not read a book in Filipino and they speak Filipino no better than their drivers.”

Since literary theorists like to debunk earlier theories, I love the way Butch debunks these ideas: that Americans introduced public education, that Filipinos have a bayanihan spirit, that corruption is the main problem with our government, that Marx advocated communal property, that the elite betrayed the Philippine Revolution, that we practice a split-level Christianity, that we suffer from cultural schizophrenia, and that there is such thing as Asia.

To all my readers: get a copy of the book and find out why we are what we are. (The Philippine Star, 27 April 2006)

UNESCO-ITI World Congress

March 27 was World Theater Day. The day has been celebrated all over the world since 1962 by a hundred countries, members of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), an NGO associated with UNESCO.

The Philippines celebrated World Theater Day by staging a sneak preview of the New York-bound sarswela Something to Crow About, by Philippine Star columnist and National Artist Alejandro Roces, featuring the University of Santo Tomas Conservatory of Music and the Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble, at the Emilio Aguinaldo College Auditorium, under the direction of Cecile Guidote Alvarez.

In May, the 31^st UNESCO-ITI World Congress and Theatre Olympics of the Nations will be held in the Philippines, sponsored by several government agencies and private organizations, led by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Philippine Center of International PEN.

UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura leads a roster of distinguished world leaders and international theater artists (which include current and former heads of state, royalty, and Nobel laureates) who are invited to attend the Congress. Some 26 shows (most of them involving foreign performers) are scheduled for the last week of May at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The event includes several components, among them a World Congress, a Leaders Forum, a World Festival of Drama Schools, colloquia or symposia, theatre shows, an indigenous people’s showcase, a cinema fest, committee and project group meetings, and exhibits.

The entire event has for its theme “Ancestral Roots to New Routes of Artistic Expression: Mobilizing Cultural Diversity to Achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.”

Plenary and small group discussions will be held at the Manila Hotel. Shows will be held primarily at the CCP, with various Philippine theater companies staging shows in their own venues for the benefit of the visiting foreign artists and media. Drama schools around the country are hosting foreign performers for workshops and cooperative productions.

This is the first time the ITI event will be held in the Philippines. The performances are open to the public, but since seats are limited, interested parties should buy tickets at the CCP (or from the various theater groups) as soon as possible.

Here is a partial list of professional theater shows scheduled on the last week of May at CCP: Acteal (Mexico), Antigone (Lithuania), Binodini (Bangladesh), Circular Ruins (ITI), The First Man (Romania), Last Night (Lithuania), Last Night (Morocco), Los Maloleñas (RP), No Return (Finland), Panakayon sa Panalublion (RP), Panata sa Kalayaan (RP), Paris and Alexander (Greece, RP), Peregrinasyon (Australia, RP), Pilak (RP), Prison (Greece), Realizing Rama (ASEAN), The Saga of Gudridur (Iceland), The Second Will (Armenia), Shooting the Boys (RP), Tagore (Bangladesh), Taya (RP), Three Sisters in Distress (Burkina Faso), Unicornios (Peru), Unravel Noh (Japan, RP), and The Voyage Project (Hungary, Israel, Poland, Romania, Serbia, USA). (The Philippine Star, 30 March 2006)

On May 25, as part of the UNESCO-ITI Theatre Olympics of the Nations, The Voyage Project will be staged at the CCP. The show features professional performers from Hungary, Israel, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and the United States.

Here is a portion of Peter Goldfarb’s notes on the production:

“The theme of Voyage or Journey is perhaps the most central and abiding of all dramatic and literary motifs; its meanings and definitions myriad, vast, nearly infinite. The theme is embraced by all the seminal works of the Eastern and Western worlds – the Odyssey, the Holy Grail, the Ramayana, the Arabian Nights, and countless others. What these stories have in common is that they all reflect aspects of the human condition and embody aspirations, triumphs, and sufferings that are universally recognized.

"Certainly they have changed and diversified over the centuries as each age has seized on them and restated the themes for their particular time. But whatever the temporal and cultural permutations may have been, the essential metaphor has remained unchanged – that of the journey through life with its confrontations and overcoming of obstacles, its triumphs and its transformations. Thus was born the idea of bringing together a group of young actors, each from a country which has undergone significant political or cultural changes.

"Rooted in their personal life experience and working through songs, stories, poems, and dreams, we would then go in search of the collective and/or individual stories for our time. Geographically our voyage took us first in June of 2001 to the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, Romania. After a month hiatus, we met again in Cividale, the ancient mediaeval town in Northern Italy.

“As the actors recounted the legends and personal stories I had asked them to gather and as the shapes and contours and rhythms of the piece began to emerge, I experienced a powerful confirmation of the intuition that had guided me to undertake The Voyage Project in the first place: that our personal stories contain within them the seeds of transformation both for the teller and the listener and that if, together with the old stories, we can simply learn to listen, then perhaps we will not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again throughout history.

“We met again the following year in Sibiu but, this time, to give our first full performance in an ancient fortress in the hills above the town. In the ensuing time, 9/11 had occurred and a young American actor joined the ensemble to recount his first hand experience of this harrowing event. Due in part to our success in Sibiu, we were subsequently invited to perform in 2003 for the entire period of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. This time the continued escalation of the situation in the Middle East prompted me to add yet another participant, an Israeli who speaks of his experience in the Army during the first Intifada.

“The message carried by the young voices of The Voyage Project has become all the more relevant and all the more poignant. Over the tragic din of conflict, they resonate as youthful testimonies of compassion which, in their intensely unique and personal way, pay homage to the human spirit and shine a beacon of hope on the essential wonder and value of being alive.” (The Philippine Star, 6 April 2006)

On May 26, as part of the Theatre Olympics of the Nations, the Viirus theatre company of Finland will present its highly acclaimed production of No Return, a play loosely based on Kafka. Here are excerpts from a review by Kirsikka Moring of the October 2005 production of the play:

“Viirus’s No Return is a splendid actor’s performance, which trusts in the ability of the spectator to imagine. All are invited – to the stage of death. Viirus’s No Return exploits all aspects of the theatre of death, but the colors are not black, nor does the music follow the score of a funerary procession. The Lithuanian composer Martynas Bialobzekis has created a musical world to the show which revels in light and joy! What an ecstatic happiness the train passengers radiate, as they travel through the pink side-scene. After all, they do not know their terminus, as we in the stands do. The performers bring to mind the dramatic troupes of the concentration camps and Stalin’s prison camps. As long as you perform you survive. And they just continue, continue.

“The Lithuanian director Cezaris has chosen themes from Amerika and Kafka’s short story A Fratricide. During the rehearsal process the final dramatization has been born out of the improvisations of the performers, resulting in a drama which repeats and alters the themes. On an empty stage, with an upliftingly light and expressively rich pantomime they tell the story of the actors. The divine music of the angelic bassoons beckons higher and higher, and for the sake of being an artist they run up the spiral staircase to the heights, always running and running. Hurrying to the train. The fine ensemble of Viirus – Robert Enckell, Dick Idman, Marika Parkkomäki, Jerry Wahlfors, Joanna Wingren and Tobias Zilliacus – exploit their journey to the full. They attune us to an intense game of theatre, in which imagining takes central stage. By the dramaturgy they repeat each other’s phrases as their own, inspired by a common experience; and as true actors they compete audaciously for the attention of the public.

“The theatre is locked. We have all been confined into a common room to experience the same. The troupe captures us, their spectators, into an experience in which the transcendental drama of bliss and joy is transformed into ultimate horror, increasing by the moment. The second act of the performance makes death tangible. With an increasing pace the murder of the clerk Wese is told, as the circumstances are described and the details of the event are disputed. The actors argue, experiment, run to their stations in different emotions. Time and time again they repeat the events to assure the correct description of them, to stay alive.” (The Philippine Star, 13 April 2006)

On May 23, as part of the Theatre Olympics of the Nations at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Armenia will present The Second Will. Here is the description of the play sent by the director:

“Here are two sisters, two illogically opposite characters. One of them has given herself to men and pleasure, and the other is forever isolated.

“Ten years have passed since the day they separated, when the elder sister left the motherland, swearing never to be back. She did not even go to their mother’s funeral. Their mother died in silence, without saying a word about the elder sister’s spiritual dereliction and indifference. The mother was sure that her younger daughter would just organize the funeral and nothing more, with no feelings.

“Suddenly, seven years after her death, the mother’s second will appears. It changes everything, and even for a very short time and with some mystery, it makes the elder sister return to her motherland.

“The memories are unavoidable. The sisters relive their story, turning their lives into a living hell. Only the mother’s second will makes them reconsider their past and future.” (The Philippine Star, 27 April 2006)

Critical Practice in the Language Classroom

This is my keynote speech at the 35^th Bi-annual Conference of the Ateneo Center for English Language Teaching (ACELT) on 11 February 2006:

Sometime in the second half of the last century, critical theory came and went, was born and died, flourished and became passé, all within a generation. Hardly anyone teaching the English language in the Philippines noticed. Had theory been nothing else but a passing fancy, we would not be the worse for not noticing. Unfortunately for English teachers, theory rocked the very foundation of language teaching. We proceed with teaching English in our own century at great risk, if we do not step back a couple of decades and check out what exactly critical theory, sometimes called critical practice, had to say about the language that we teach.

Today, allow me to provoke you into thinking about certain aspects of the English language itself and of the way we teach the English language that have become extremely problematic – that’s the critical theorist’s way of saying that we have a problem.

Let us begin with former Ateneo professor Bienvenido Lumbera’s advocacy of vernacular languages against the English language. Lumbera is the leading critical theorist of the last half of the last century. He taught practically every other critical theorist of any importance in our country. Basically, Lumbera, taking his cue from Renato Constantino, preached (I use the past tense because we are talking of the last century) that the English language was an instrument of American colonial oppression, rammed down our throats by the American invaders at the turn of the last century in order to make us, first, forget that we are Filipinos, and second, dream of becoming Americans. To counteract what African critics would later call the colonization of the mind, Lumbera proposed that we focus our research efforts on writings done in various vernacular languages, those spoken by more than 99% of our population, and ignore, if not forever then at least temporarily, those written in the English language.

After the death of theory and the birth of what critics call “internal brain drain,” referring to the phenomenon of our best students prostituting their minds and their tongues in call centers, we are less emotional than Lumbera about the English language, but we still should not forget the harm that the English language can actually do to us. If we use only English as the language of the classroom, for example, our elementary-grade children will forget that there are different types of rice (since English has only one word for rice, while any Philippine language has at least a dozen), the real nature of the rice terraces (which has a word in Cordillera languages), and the way we should relate to our brothers and sisters (since English calls everybody simply brother or sister or sibling, unlike our vernacular languages, which take the borrowed Chinese words for such relationships very, very seriously).

I shall, after mentioning each critical idea, immediately turn to the classroom to see if we can put our teaching tools where our minds are.

In the case of our miseducation due to the use of English in the classroom, we need not abandon the language while we are in the English period or subject (although, as many of you know, I have championed and will continue to champion the abandonment of English in non-English subjects). While teaching English, however, we should try very hard not to store cultural baggage in the minds of our students. How do we do this? Principally by using Philippine English. We have a dictionary of Philippine English, brought out by Anvil Publishing (sorry for the plug). Use this dictionary rather than some American dictionary. By making our children grow up knowing that hundreds of vernacular words are actually included in Standard International English, we will help them dissociate the language from the kind of American English forced on us by our once colonizers and still, at least as long as George Bush remains in power, our current colonizers.

Gemino Abad, now teaching also at the Ateneo, reacting to Lumbera, did not want to abandon English nor to return to his native Cebuano. Abad, however, realizing that Lumbera was right, did not also want merely to use English instead of Cebuano. Abad had a novel idea: using poems written in English by Filipinos, he proved that Filipinos had colonized the English language. He said that our poems were not written in English, but from English. You might recall that both N.V.M. Gonzalez and Bienvenido N. Santos – two of our major novelists last century – said pretty much the same thing. Gonzalez insisted that he wrote, in his own words, “in Tagalog using English words.” Similarly, Santos also insisted that he wrote, in his own words, “in Capampangan and Bicolano using English words.”

Abad’s idea may seem weird, but it is really quite simple. He was merely saying that our poets, who are our best writers in English, did not write the way American poets wrote, but wrote in a distinctly Filipino way. You have to read Abad’s three huge anthologies of poetry to understand exactly what he wanted to say, but we can summarize the idea. Filipinos use the English language in a way different from the way Americans use it. Abad was not talking only of grammar or idioms; he was not a linguist, prescriptive or descriptive. He was talking about the way Filipinos perceive words. Seen by a Filipino poet, the words in an American English dictionary cease to be American, but become Philippine. We have to be poets to grasp Abad’s full meaning, but we can see a little bit what he meant by giving an example he did not give.

Take the word bad. One of the definitions of this word in Merriam-Webster, which is the standard American dictionary, is this: “bad, slang, good.” In the Philippines, we would never use the word bad to mean good. That’s not poetry, but just usage. If the word bad were used in poetry by a Filipino, however, the differences would be even clearer. The word, in an American poem, rhymes with mad but not with squad nor jihad, which use a different a. To a Filipino poet, however, all these words rhyme, not only because we have problems differentiating one a from another, but because madness, the military, and Islamic terrorists are all associated with, that’s right, badness, not goodness. This is a fanciful example, meant only to alert you to the interplay of sound and sense, so important in the teaching of poetry and, by extension, of words.

Foreign critics are less perceptive than Filipino critics when it comes to the nuances of language. The reason is simple: rare is the foreigner that learns more than three languages at birth, but in our country, rare is the Filipino that knows only one language. At the very least, a Filipino knows Tagalog and English. A Filipino living outside the Tagalog region, however, knows a number of languages from childhood: Fookien Chinese and Mandarin Chinese (if she or he has Chinese blood), the language of the region (such as Capampangan or Tausug), the lingua franca of the region (namely, Cebuano, Ilocano, or Tagalog), the national language Filipino, English, and if we are talking of the southern side of Mindanao with its thriving trade with Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia and perhaps even Bahasa Melayu.

Michel Foucault, for instance, who thought only in French, simplistically declared that “language is power.” This is true, if we take a simple example. Let’s say that I go to one of you right now, any one of you, someone I have never met before, and say, “I love you.” What will happen? When that person goes out of this room, everybody will suddenly pay attention to her or him. When I walk out of this room, that person will avoid me, for sure. I have, in other words, merely through the words “I love you,” which of course I do not mean, affected the behavior of one person, and of the rest of you when you meet that person. Language, in itself, divorced from the intentions of the one using the language, is power.

Why is Foucault’s idea important in the classroom? Obviously, because anything we say as teachers can be held against us. We have to be extra careful when we use English, because we are supposed to be the models of language use. Feminism (I mean that second phase of it that focused on what feminists call “man-made language,” that is, language of men that was made by men and for men), called our attention to the way language has disempowered women, one half of the world’s population. If we consistently use male pronouns or nouns to exclude females, we are drumming into our students’ heads that men are more important than women.

Today, we call this “political correctness” or “non-exclusive language”; we used to call it simply “sexist language.” For example, if you say “woman poet,” you imply that poets are supposed to be male, and poets that are female are only exceptions to the rule. If you say chairman, you imply that chairs should be male; changing chairman to chairperson merely calls attention to the change in gender, thereby reinforcing what you mean to downplay. The word chair is sufficient, because it is an old word, used in Congress when someone stands up to say, “May I address the chair?”

Foucault’s contemporary Jacques Derrida has been unjustly ridiculed by linguists for his infamous statement that “writing precedes speech.” Like all forms of ridicule, this one is based on a complete misunderstanding. Derrida did not mean that babies learn to write before they speak; that would be stupid, and while he was clearly crazy, Derrida was far from stupid. Of course, babies speak before they write, if only because their fingers develop later than their tongues, but the language that babies speak is not considered language unless it is written down. Try writing down the sound that all newborn babies utter when they get slapped by the doctor or midwife: waaaahhhh. That is not a word, but what does the doctor or midwife say about what happens: “The baby cried.” The words the, baby, and cried are in the dictionary, printed, written down. Language, said Derrida, is what you find in a dictionary, which is writing. Outside the dictionary, there is nothing.

Was there ever a time in history when people spoke but did not write? If there was, we certainly will never be able to prove it. This is a variant of the classic question: if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Philosophers have written volumes about this question, but the answer is very simple: who cares? We certainly don’t care because we are not in those woods. The tree doesn’t care. The woods don’t care. In fact, as Albert Einstein so cleverly showed at the beginning of the last century, we should not even care if the earth were standing still or running at incredible speed, because the laws of physics would all still hold. Derrida’s point was simple: if we base our conclusions only on what we know, not on, as O. D. Corpuz likes to say, the facts that we invent (he says, “these are the conclusions upon which I base my facts”), all we have of language are written examples of it, etchings on stone or bamboo, not to mention the testimony of the Old Testament, a written document.

We don’t have a problem with Derrida’s insight in the Philippines, because Filipinos speak the way they write. This is a feature of Philippine English identified by Andrew Gonzalez. For example, we would never answer the question “How are you?” the way an American would, that is, with “I’m good.” We would say, “I’m fine, thank you,” because we would never ungrammatically use an adjective where an adverb should be. On second thought, we do have a problem with this, because anywhere else in the world, nobody speaks the way they write. Nobody says things like, “The president lies, cheats, and steals,” not only because their presidents most likely do not lie, cheat, nor steal, but because oral English is not so grammatical. At most, Winston Churchill said, “blood, sweat, and tears,” but he said that so that he would be quoted by all the newspapers of the time; every politician knows what is meant by the phrase “sound bite,” spelled either b-i-t-e or b-y-t-e.

We might have a problem with Derrida’s other great insight, which is that all language is self-contradictory. Every word or phrase, said Derrida, appears to mean something but actually means something else, most likely the opposite. The manifest meaning of a sentence hides its latent meaning. We must, he said, realize that a sentence is merely constructed and therefore, can be deconstructed.

Take the simple word English as in “English language.” English is defined simply as “the speech of England.” That seems simple enough, until we look back at the time the term was invented by Alfred the Great as a catch-all term for the different languages of the Germanic invaders, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. At that time, he called it Englisc, with a c instead of an h, and pronounced en rather than in. Here we see immediately what Derrida meant: the English language does not really exist by itself, but is a mere label for languages existing before it. It is a classification, a group, rather than one thing. It is like labelling as Bisayan any and all the languages of the Visayas, such as Cebuano, Ilonggo, Kinaray-a, and so on. We can already see a contradiction: if English is merely a conglomeration of distinct languages, how can English have its own identity? How can it impose its own rules?

The manifest meaning of the word English, in other words, is that it is a distinct language. Its hidden meaning, found through etymology, is that it is only a convenient label for a group of languages. There is a contradiction there that cannot be explained away, especially when, in the classroom, the teacher is faced with the need to correct the grammar of a student.

We can imagine a similar situation when the Philippines becomes federal. How can there be a Philippines if Bangsa Moro will use Arabic as its medium of instruction, the Diliman Republic will declare as persona non grata anyone defending Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Cebu will ban the use of Cebuano in all its schools? How can English teachers impose any kind of grammatical uniformity if each student will say, with reason, that the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, not to mention Americans, British, Australians, Singaporeans, and of course Filipinos, have their own ways of using the English language and, therefore, that there is not and cannot be one correct way of using the language?

In literary theory, there is a similar misreading of hermeneutics or reader-response theory. Some teachers, intimidated by the dropping of Western names (and I mean droppings in its pigeon sense), give in to students that claim that any interpretation of a poem is as valid as any other interpretation because, after all, all readers are created equal. Deconstruction, as Abad once admitted, makes agnostics of us all; to regain our faith, we must deconstruct our own deconstructions.

We could deconstruct the word English in another way, if we are fans of pool or, as we say in Philippine English, billiards. One meaning of the word in any standard dictionary since 1860 is “spin imparted to a ball.” This meaning comes from the French word anglé, meaning “angled” or, as we say every day we see a pronouncement from Malacañang, “spin.” The word English carries within itself the latent meaning of “lying, cheating, and stealing,” which is the Philippine English way of saying spin. We can see all kinds of implications in the insistence by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that we use English as our sole medium of instruction in all our public schools.

How does this translate into everyday practice in the classroom? Very simply, we as teachers must constantly be aware that we are living contradictions. I mean that positively, although it sounds negative. In reality, if we were to adopt Derrida’s theories, we would find no difference between positives and negatives, which are mere interchangeable poles on a binary stick. Let me cite just a few of the contradictions we display inside our classrooms.

We ask them to write all kinds of paragraphs that we ourselves would not be able to write. We ask our students to write a term paper, but we do not write a term paper with them. We ask our students to do book reports, but how many new books have we actually read in the past term? We ask students to pronounce English properly, but can we pass a test at a call center? We ask students to write a poem or a short story, but can we write one in the time we allow them? I have said again and again, ad nauseam, that we cannot give what we do not have, we cannot ask our students to do what we ourselves cannot do. If there is one thing you will get out of this keynote speech, I hope it is this: that all of you, without exception, will not ask any student to write anything that you yourself cannot or will not write. If you ask them to write a term paper, for heaven’s sake, please write a term paper yourself. If you ask your students to read a new novel every term, please read a new novel yourself every term. In fact, if you are a real English teacher, you should be reading a new novel every week. And please, please, do not ask your students to write poems or short stories if you cannot write a poem or a short story yourself. There is one classroom practice that I strongly suggest you do, and it derives from Derrida’s deconstructive theory: at the end of a class session where you ask students to write, say, a haiku, read to them the haiku that you wrote while waiting for them to finish.

Let’s return to Lumbera, Abad, Foucault, and Derrida. There is a way to put together all of their ideas into one word: english, spelled not with a capital E but with a small initial letter e.

Lumbera was one of the first, if not the first, critics in the whole world to do what today is known as Postcolonial Theory. Lumbera did not know at the time he did his now classic speeches (theorists like to call them “interventions,” if you want to use a bigger word) that he was a postcolonial theorist; in fact, at that time, which was the late 1960s, the word “postcolonial” was not yet fashionable. It even referred to the end of the series “pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial,” meaning the last or most recent of developments in time. Postcolonial now refers to the first taste of colonization; in our case, we became postcolonial in 1521. Postcoloniality is, thus, the condition of being under a colonial master, whether in cannon or stone in the sense that we found ourselves on the wrong end of the barrel of a Spanish rifle. Lumbera said pretty much the same thing as the foreign idols of the end of the last century when he said that our literature either accepted or rejected colonial influences.

The postcolonial theorists of Australia eventually caught up with Lumbera and started to call the English language english (with the small letter e), to foreground (foreground is the word theorists use to mean call attention to) the undeniable reality that, first, the English language is the world’s lingua franca or international medium of communication, and second, that every country has a different way of using the language. Linguists like to call this phenomenon Englishes, or less concisely, varieties of English. Theorists liked to use the small letter to distinguish the language that Australians and other postcolonials use from that used in Britain.

We can immediately see that Abad’s “poetry from English” runs along the same idea: the English as used by Filipino poets is different from the English as used by Hong Kong poets, Nigerian poets, South African poets, Native American poets, and so on, not to mention British or American poets. Foucault’s implied advocacy that users of language should use the language of the oppressors itself to subvert the power of colonizers, men, politicians, and the like finds practical application in the way the small letter e was harnessed as a weapon by postcolonial critics to ensure, as the Australians put it, plagiarizing from Salman Rushdie, that “the Empire writes back.” Derrida’s demand that writing precede speech is clearly satisfied by uncapitalizing the letter e. In order to understand what the postcolonial critics were talking about, we have to read the word english [uncapitalized], not just listen to it. Writing clearly takes precedence over speech.

What are we teaching in the classroom, then, capitalized or non-capitalized E/english? (If you read my speech, you will see that I spell that word capital E slash small letter e. The slash was the favorite punctuation mark of theorists, because it is unpronounceable.) What should we teach? The answer should by now be obvious: we should be teaching [uncapitalized] english. We should be teaching the language as it is used by Filipinos, not as it is used by Americans or Brits or Australians or whoever else. Do we have the tools to teach our english and not those of others? Yes, we do. And to show you that, now that I am a senior citizen, I am claiming the right not to be modest anymore, I shall recommend to you my own book, which I did with the leading authority on Philippine English, Maria Lourdes Bautista; the book was published by Anvil, is available at all National Bookstores, and is entitled A Dictionary of Philippine English. In that book, which by the way is a joke book, the word yes is defined as “maybe,” and word maybe is defined as “no.”

The moment of critical theory has gone, and we are the better for it, but to deny that there once was a Camelot of critical theory is to return to the dark ages before we were forced to reexamine our assumptions, our practices, our lives. Exactly as Socrates predicted, the unexamined life is not worth living. The uncritical class is not worth teaching. The untheoretical teacher is not worth hiring. It is one thing to say that we should no longer be teaching theory; it is quite another thing to say that we should teach language as though there had never been theory.

Let me give an analogy. Some of us, maybe many of us, have had a love affair that went sour. To say now, after the traumatic event, that we never loved the person anyway is to deny ourselves the pleasure of memory that Alfred Lord Tennyson, plagiarizing from St. Augustine, immortalized in the lines “’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” We loved theory when it was around, but now that theory has left us, we should not deny the intensity of our love. We were mesmerized by the words theory invented to capture our minds, the convoluted sentences that gave us – after we deciphered them – the joy of discovery that Aristotle already identified, the names we dropped to make our students open their mouths in awe. Let us not deny that critical theory has outlived its usefulness, but it was useful. It made us realize that, both in our taste as readers and our behavior as teachers, we were sleepwalking, unaware of the damage we were doing to our students because of our inability to see ourselves for what we really were, and perhaps still are.

The conference today will focus on critical practices in the language classroom, on teaching students to think. You will have a chance to study the power relations in a classroom, the issues of class and gender as they relate to various texts, the practice itself of criticism, the hidden assumptions of arguments, and several other topics that relate critical theory to classroom practice. Do not lose sight of the woods because of the trees. We may not have snowy evenings in the Philippines, but we do stop to watch the trees fill up if not with snow then with rain.

It is much too easy to do two things: first, to get so enamored of critical theory that we start teaching theory rather than literary or linguistic texts themselves, pretty much like going to a museum and reading only the labels and signs or the tourist guidebook, but not looking at the artifacts; second, to get so annoyed by critical theory that we start teaching as though theory never mattered, which it did, or that it does not matter now, which it does. Students do know how to think, as Socrates knew a long time ago; it is only a matter of helping them think. But we teachers cannot help our students to think if we do not think first. We exist because we think. (serialized in The Philippine Star, 16 February - 23 March 2006)