Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

machismo according to Malacanang

this comes a wee bit late in the day — as i write this the early morning shows are talking about what can happen today to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. and i’m with you when you think: karma’s a bitch ain’t it.

stuartsantiago‘s got us all covered on the whys and wherefores and gone wrongs in the unfolding of GMA’s arrest. but lest no one else points it out, there is something tragic in the undercurrent of kamachohan, of good ol’ Pinoy machismo, that’s in the soundbites that came from Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda with regards Atty. Ferdinand Topacio swearing on his balls that the Arroyos would return if they are allowed to leave.

i mean Topacio living off of soundbites is expected, that the mababaw-ang-kaligayahan media will lap it up even more so. but for the Presidential Spokesperson to fall into the same trap? for someone like Lacierda to even justify what Topacio swears on, even talking about his wife! and her needs, is not just irresponsible, it also reeks of how petty kamachohan lives in the halls of Malacanang.

and it comes to a head at that press briefing on November 18, where after a good 27 minutes or so of Sec. de Lima seriously talking about the warrant of arrest for GMA, and about where PNoy stood on the matter, Lacierda goes up to the podium only to say:

“I think the decision of the Pasay RTC will allow Atty. Topacio to keep his family jewels.”

and walks off to the tune of male laughter — male laughter! — which ends the press con. it is beyond me why Lacierda even thought it correct to throw in that punchline, at a press briefing that’s so serious, no jokes or puns or soundbites no matter how difficult to ignore, should’ve been on anyone’s mind.

good job Lacierda. you’ve just revealed that in the halls of Malacanang shallow petty macho thinking lives. i hope you know a sense of humor doesn’t mean any more balls than the next Pinoy man.

i wonder what jokes are being said about the RH Bill.

komentaryo

on “pseudo-history” & the end of discourse

let’s begin with the fact that this video/docu was well done, shall we? it’s 15 minutes, with more information than we get out of a regular TV documentary, had no voice over, had short effective copy, great animation, a clear narrative line. and the best questions: who are the Cojuangcos, why have they gotten away with murder — literal and figuratively — in this country?

that it has gone viral, which is to say its hits are at 337,048 as we speak, is no surprise. the form allows for it, the content even more so. there is no way to measure how many of those hits actually mean people changing their minds about the Cojuangcos or how many brush it off, how many believe it and how many look for sources and say, ah, these are all lies.

the point being that in this age of texts made for online dissemination, in this age of social media, while much might be said about putting our names on everything we write, there is also the fact that sometimes it matters very little because what’s being said is more important, the discussions it forces on us are bigger than who said what and why. and isn’t it that in the end the parts that are factual, the story that is hacienda luisita, the fact of oligarchies and feudalism, the fact of government’s inability to deal with both, aren’t these parts of that video that are more relevant than the parts that have yet to be proven?

granted, this was a telling of history that was slanted. but whose history telling isn’t? we disproved objectivity a long long time ago and in the end we deal with the subjectivities that are intrinsic in texts we encounter, historical and otherwise. in the age of online media and viral videos, every text requires us to be responsible and discerning. we must deal with questions of why we share what we do, and how we respond to something that’s being watched by more people — the youth, especially — than we have readers.

now with regards the latter, and i say this with all due respect, it seems unproductive for xiao chua to riddle his response to the video with: i’ve written about this before and this is nothing new. that information exists doesn’t necessarily mean it will be read, and in the end, when we are up against a well-done fast-paced video, the notions of leaving things up to the courts, or asserting that there are two sides to a story, will just go over the heads of those who were already drawn into the narrative. we fail to engage them in a better discussion on history in general, and the Cojuangco question in particular. it also ends what should be the beginning of a discussion on history and propaganda, fact and fiction, and where those lines need to be drawn, if at all.

but more problematic might be the noise that followed this video’s going viral, at least in so far as noise has to do with the self-proclaimed guards of online media and twitter- and FB-kind.

randomsalt asked momblogger: is blogwatch now in the business of spreading pseudo-history? after the latter posted the video on the site. to which momblogger replied that she was in the business of spreading both sides which is why she got xiao chua to respond to the video and posted that response, too. (click here for the rest of the exchange.)  what interests me about this exchange though is the fact that momblogger herself proves that she cannot see her own biases, the slant that she takes, when she introduces the video with:

Thou shalt not be ignorant. Infamous facts about the Aquino-Cojuangco family. I found this video from the PinoyMonkeyPride youtube channel. He writes the following disclaimer below. You might be also interested to read Philippine historian Xiao Chua’s initial Comments and Anton Dulce‘PinoyMonkeyPride’, ‘Yellow Magic’, at ang Magkabilang Panig ng Parehong Pisoafter watching the video.

this video, whether psuedo-history or not, should not be equated with making us all less ignorant. in fact, as unsigned online video, it is everything and dangerous to say that these are “infamous facts about” something. to say “you might also be interested” versus “do watch” all responses to this video, is also momblogger’s subjectivity working against her insistence that she was being responsible when she put that video up.

the only thing worse than momblogger’s denial of her own biases, is the manner in which she handled the questions from randomsalt:

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it is beyond me how inaccurate information can ever be balanced, nor how an anonymous video such as this one can be seen to come from just one side which makes another side identifiable. here, what momblogger proves is that when faced with a video that goes viral, she will go the way of the very simplistic, ultimately uncritical assessment of the text, while at the same time thinking that she is objectively disseminating facts, even as her own subjectivities are there for all the world to see. and she will take offense at being questioned, even as we all know this is the price you pay for making a career out of online media.

meanwhile, these questions remain given a video with historical fact and inaccuracy, but issues that remain relevant, gone viral: what is our responsibility here? what is it that we end up doing by the act of sharing? how do we respond? what do we do when someone argues with us about what we said or did?

momblogger did the most juvenile thing: she blocked randomsalt.

komentaryo

notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth spreading?

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Roby Alampay on freedom is our competitive advantage

the thing with saying that the Philippines’ advantage is our freedom is that the only idea it gets across is a romance with the freedom of expression we enjoy (as exemplified apparently by having the TEDx talk to begin with, Alampay says), which of course also means limning over the fact of activists being jailed and disappeared, cultural worker Ericson Acosta still being in jail, and really begs the question: what freedom?

Alampay’s 18++ minutes (yes he was allowed) was spent talking about freedom being our competitive advantage because it can mean making the country the center not just of civil society which feeds off of freedom, but also the center of academic freedom (“Kaya namin ‘yon!” he says). both will mean generating jobs and contributing to the economy, creating an industry out of our freedom.

for Alampay, freedom is the card we can play, because, and i quote: 

freedom is the one thing we do better than anybody else.

do we? really do freedom well I mean? Alampay uses the example of CCP’s closure of the Kulo exhibit (without mentioning it of course), without realizing that in fact in fact more than proving that the gov’t can just take away our freedom, that incident also proved that when we are questioned about our freedom, we have no idea how to defend ourselves. we mess it up completely: our artists, curators, cultural workers. we do not know how to defend ourselves, we do not know how to talk to media, to the people who don’t care for our art but will care about religion, and we mess it up. that is us messing up even as we are free. that is proof that we don’t do freedom well.

even more false? the idea that there’s academic freedom where we are. i’ve lived off of two universities in this country, and when you’re immersed in that manner you also know that in fact your freedoms are false in these institutions, they are limited to what is the intellectual parochialism that’s there, they are limited by the people who have been in the academe all these years.

most importantly, academic freedom, artistic freedom, freedom of expression are all highly questionable when you come from here and know | feel | see that freedom is also overrated when it cannot will not put food on people’s tables and more and more people are falling below the poverty line.

and if you live in the Philippines, you must also know — and must admit — that most of the time we are delusional about our freedom because we are middle class educated English-speaking TEDx speakers. or, as Alampay says, he’s an economy of one, dreaming.

dreams are good. but as ungrounded and unfulfilled, as romanticized and sophomoric as this? not at all worthy of a TEDx talk. but it sure sounds like something the PNoy government would love to hear.

komentaryo

poverty ain’t a blessing

The Church and reproductive health
by Juan Miguel Luz

When RH is portrayed as a great evil and when women and men who choose to pursue RH measures, notably contraception, are deemed to be sinners by Church leaders, this is neither fair nor informed.

The greater sin would be to bring any number of children into a world of poverty.When parents do so with no means to provide adequately for them nor provide them a chance at a decent quality of life, they do themselves and their children a great wrong by placing the family at great risk. (I consider poverty a great risk and not a blessing despite what the Church might think.)

A government that does not provide the means by which families of any income group (but especially the poor) can help plan family size and expectations would thus be an irresponsible one.

Read the rest of it here!

komentaryo

Luisa Mallari-Hall, teacher

in April 2000, Prof. Luisa Mallari-Hall died in a plane crash, along with her husband and two children. she was a wonderful woman/teacher/friend/human being whose teaching continues to resonate with me, 15 years since she was first my teacher in 1996. these two essays were written soon after she died, the first one for a SEA newsletter, the second one i read at the tribute put together by the DECL in U.P.

in 2010, i give birth and lose a child. i named her Luisa.

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Homage to Luisa

It is said that teaching is the most important profession of all – doctor or lawyer, engineer or businessman, even the teacher, is shaped by teachers. But teaching, beyond being a profession is also, ultimately, about being an example to those one teaches. Whether in a private catholic school or a liberal state university, teachers are inevitably icons of the subjects they teach and the institutions they serve. They are, whether they like it or not, models against which students will measure themselves.

This makes teaching a taller order than one thinks. For one does not only need to have the knowledge to impart and the ability to get this across, a teacher also needs to live what he or she teaches. The classroom is only a venue for teaching. Outside the classroom, teachers are testament to what they teach. A teacher who does not practice what he or she preaches debunks the very things he or she says are important inside the classroom. This to me is the line drawn between professional teachers and real teachers. The former teach for a living, the latter live what they teach.

Prof. Luisa Mallari-Hall was the epitome of the latter. More important than what I learned from her inside the classroom was what I learned from her outside. Unlike any of the other teachers in U.P.’s Department of English and Comparative Literature, Ma’am Mallari decided to learn Bahasa-Malay instead of French, German, or some other Western language. And she didn’t learn it out of a need to – that would have only meant taking the 12 units the University could offer her of a foreign language – she learned it because she wanted to. Because it would only be through learning the language that she would live up to her own standards of comparing literatures in Asia. That is, comparative literature not in translation, but in the original. Because, as she would always tell me, there is just no other right way of doing it.

And really, no other way of studying Asian literature and culture. While it is true that the English literatures in Asia are a valid area of study, to celebrate these literatures invariably leads to the marginalization of cultural texts in the Asian national languages, at the same time that it encourages the study of Asian texts in translation. For why waste time and energy in studying another language, when there is English to fall back on? Ma’am Mallari, by choosing to study Bahasa-Malay, taught me that beyond expertise in a certain area of study is the more important question of relevance. What is gained for Asia by the study of the literatures in English it has produced? What, other than the possibility of winning international writing contests and getting published in the West? What, other than removing oneself from the region you are part of by focusing and using a language that continues to be spoken by a few in it? Further, to study Asian literature in translation is to do an injustice to the original texts and to scholarship on Asia in general. While admittedly, we Asians come together through and with the use of the English language, Ma’am Mallari’s choice of Bahasa-Malay tells us that the use of English should only be a phase in the kind of scholarship we should be doing on Asia. To rely on what is written in and translated into English of Asian literature is, ultimately, to take the easy way out in our study of Asian culture. It is settling for second best.

Ma’am Mallari didn’t settle, and she taught me not to, regardless of the probability of marginalization or marked difference. In this country, to seriously take Asia as an area of study (i.e., to study Asia in an Asian national language) is a liability – for how would one get grants from the U.S. or Europe if one is studying a region that is not considered important? A region that doesn’t see itself as such, the countries within it being so diversified by colonization that they find more affinity with the West than with the East that they are part of? And why would one get a European or American grant, when one insists on writing in a foreign Asian language? Ma’am Mallari’s answer was that one does not get those grants – one does not need them. She took pride in not having traveled outside of Asia other than to her husband’s Australia. She was even more proud that she did not find the need to go, nor dreamt of ever going, beyond Asia. When she made the choice to study Bahasa-Malay, she did so because she felt that it was the only way she could do justice to the literature of Malaysia and, in effect, to scholarship on Asia. That this would limit her to the region, even to Southeast Asia only, meant nil to her.

This, however, meant more to me than she ever knew. For she did not only teach me not to settle for second best in any endeavor, she also taught me not to settle for anything less than what is due me – both as a Filipino and as an Asian. And she showed me that what is due me is only about as much as I am willing to give of myself to this country and to Asia. In the end, Ma’am Mallari did not only personify the kind of comparativist she wanted to be, but also proved herself to be the rarest of Asian scholars, particularly in the land of neo-colonial Philippines. To me, she proved to be the rarest ever of real teachers, who lived to teach, and who lived what she taught.

Before Ma’am Mallari died, she was happy and high from a recent trip to Malaysia that she thought was to be a standard affair on Asian culture but turned out to be a surprise tribute to her. She was the guest of honor, with a streamer welcoming her and her picture in the program (if she had known, she would have sent a nicer picture daw). Her dissertation, written in Bahasa-Malay, was also posthumously published by her university in Malaysia – a moment she had been looking forward to, and an achievement that we should all be proud of, unparalleled as it is by any other scholar in this country.

We encounter too many teachers in our lifetimes, but few become our teachers for life. Prof. Luisa Mallari-Hall, beyond her lifetime, will always be mine.

2
Thanking Luisa

Last week, a friend from the Collegian asked if he could interview me about Ma’am Mallari. I said maybe later, it was too soon, I wasn’t ready just yet, I couldn’t do justice to her memory, anything I’d come up with would be insufficient.

Writing this now (as there was no saying no to Mayo) I am swamped by snippets of memories, slices of life shared with her. Like, how scary she was in that first class I took under her, and how difficult it was. She was the classic “terror” teacher – she’d enter the classroom and the class would throb with intense fear. She expected brilliant students, and given otherwise, would resort to the most difficult exams, pushing us to measure up.

Later, when she ended up being my adviser, and I was comfortable enough with her to say that she was the scariest and the most difficult teacher I had ever had, she said that she was conscious of it and loved being such. Her own teachers were worse, she said, and she had found that she learned more from those who instilled a certain amount of fear in her.

I couldn’t see myself taking a class under her again. But while she was on her long maternity leave, I realized that I missed her kind of teaching. That I worked harder in her class because I feared her, and that ultimately her strictness was always all about teaching her students the value of disciplined scholarship. The kind which doesn’t bark up the wrong trees or just pounce on issues because they are popular. The kind which didn’t compromise – which could take a stand, be clear about its assumptions, and, even, double-guess itself.

When she came back, I took three of her classes — another literature class and two of her Bahasa language classes. She insisted that, like her, I should learn an Asian language, because it would give me an edge. I saw her everyday that semester at 7 am for Bahasa class which she held in her office. After class, I’d usually stay and chat while she finished her first cigarette of the day. She’d lend me books, we’d talk about all sorts of things, from the latest gossip to alternative medical therapies, to the literature class I had with her the day before — the syllabi of which had Mao Tse Tung, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, and Zeus Salazar all at the same time. She’d talk about the projects she was working on, how she needed to come out with her own book, and how she hadn’t written anything in such a long time, she was not even sure she could come up with anything substantial.

When she found out that two literature majors, Mayo Martin and I, had won a two-week travel grant in Thailand, besting social science majors, she was thrilled for us. These were venues, she said, that didn’t usually consider or welcome literature majors, and this was where we could assert ourselves and prove our worth.

On her birthday last year, she treated our Bahasa class to breakfast in Katipunan, and we talked about U2 and MTV Asia. Since then, I had kidded her a couple of times about how she seemed to have mellowed. She admitted that she had been wondering about it herself, and wasn’t sure why.

Thinking back now, she was also the happiest I had seen her. Blissfully content with her family, enjoying her work in Seasrep and Public Policy, excited about teaching and putting together new reading lists, and all sorts of projects she had lined up

I had been looking forward to working with her and continuing to learn from her.

Unconsciously, I realize now, I was planning my life based on what she had done with hers, just because she was not only the kind of teacher I want to be, she was also the kind of woman and friend I want to be.

My one regret is, I never got to thank her, I never got to tell her how special she was to me. Hopefully, now I have. ***