It is uncomfortable, to say the least, that I have been made part of this list of people doing tributes for Sir Edel today. I cannot claim to have known him personally, nor to have had long conversations with him about his work, or mine, or about life in general. But I said yes because his death has left a gaping hole that even I am surprised by. I said yes because soon after Sir Edel died, my college friend Raia messaged me and said she’d wait for this tribute, that I must write it for both of us. I said yes because in the midst of this crisis, that we are unfortunate enough to experience with the most incompetent and violent of governments, we are also in the throes of a propaganda war like no other, even as we can only battle with our own demons and emotional turmoil, and for some reason Sir Edel’s is one of many voices that resonate for me in times like this one.
But unlike many tributes, this thing I’m fashioning will not have fond memories, or funny anecdotes. Neither will it wax romantic about Sir Edel’s value to our intellectual landscape, or his influence on the younger generation of activists and writers. I am in no position to do that.
What I can do instead, is tell a story.
In 1997, two girls entered a class of mostly comparative literature majors. It was an emergent literature classroom where they expected some handholding—it was the first semester of major subjects, and that comes with the standard nerves and excitement. Of course handholding is not something you’ll get in an Edel Garcellano classroom, at least if what that means to you is to be eased gently into a syllabus of authors you’ve never heard of, or be given long-drawn out lectures that allow you your delusions of discovery and learning.
In lieu of that, and on any day, this teacher was either a punch in the gut, or an ice cold bucket of water over the head. The two girls braced themselves for class, even as they made sure to buy all the books in that syllabus, and read as voraciously as they were trained to: Ruth Firmeza’s Gera, Alice Guillermo’s Mao Tse Tung Thought Lives, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, plus a bunch of other books and readings and theorists that they didn’t have the headspace or maturity for at that point. But it barely mattered in that classroom. Because never were they prepared for the questions that came, and half the time it seemed like there were no real answers to the teacher’s questions.
That semester, the teacher had a thing about names: he’d hear a student’s last name, ask about where her parents are from, what they do for a living. Few were spared the quick easy conclusions about the class character of the family, and therefore the student’s: ah, mga absentee landlord kayo! ayan, ‘yung mga aktibista dati tapos nag-born-again; naku, ‘yan mga middle class who work so hard for a pittance! Once or twice he talked about students’ families in relation to how many maids they had in their homes and what that means. Always he’d conclude: names are such a burden, ano? YOUR names are such a burden, kawawa naman kayo. All this said with a chuckle, or a grin. Like an inside joke you were all privy to, but of course the two girls weren’t in on that joke just yet.
Often it would be a diatribe against the state of affairs in the university: the kinds of students it expects, the stuff they were being made to read, the fact that as this bunch of literature majors sat in that classroom for a little less than an hour twice a week, changes were afoot in the university: there was a commercialization plan that was being sold to the community, and with no real massive response to it, plus the oft-mentioned apathy of the studentry, it was bound to happen. The teacher shrugged: ganyan talaga, what can we expect from you kids? And then that grin.
In that classroom, those two girls barely spoke up unless spoken to. They were in over their heads with the readings; out of their depth with the teacher’s discussions. But halfway through that semester, what became clear to them was this path, which led from the Edel Garcellano classroom to the League Of Filipino Students (LFS) tambayan.
Both of them would get involved in the student movement then—one braver than the other and signing up as member, the other refusing the commitment. Regardless, for at least that semester, they learned together very quickly about the state of the nation, the historical injustices that remain in that present, the terrible future we were looking at if we didn’t act on actual change. They became involved in what turned out to be a large and united student protest against the University’s commercialization program. With two others from that class, they formed The Kadrebelles, which only those with a lot of free time, a ton of gay lingo, and a camaraderie borne of the same books and pop culture references would be able to do. They didn’t do much except be friends, laugh, and make up songs, which of course meant having one song that was called Emergent Lit, sung to the tune of “Foolish Heart,” in retrospect a rundown of all that was learned in that Edel Garcellano classroom.
A few times that semester, the two girls thought of telling their teacher what they had done: walking into activism that way, as a reaction to what it was they were learning in his classroom. They’d wait for him by the door, thinking this bit of information was something the teacher needed to know. But they hesitated: there was a very big chance he would laugh at them and ask: why did you do that? OR an even bigger chance that he would throw them a rhetorical question that demanded an answer: so now do you feel any less apathetic? And then a grin.
They ended up not telling him anything. Maybe, too, so as not to risk the possibility of disappointing him? Maybe because he shouldn’t have to take responsibility for the actions of his students given what they learn (or unlearn) in his classroom.
Soon enough those two girls would drift apart, one committing to activism while the other settling for a critical distance; one whose life is changed completely by that time in the emergent literature classroom, and another whose life was to unravel in more expected, class-bound ways. One doing the path less traveled, and another going on that path made available to her by her class origins—the teacher was correct after all, at least about one of them.
I am of course the latter, as Raia is the former. And while I write this for both of us, I do think that Raia’s story is hers to tell.
Mine is to be told here only in so far as this large gaping hole has existed since Sir Edel’s death—a surprise because the time I spent with him was only in that classroom in 1997, and I don’t have a lot of reliable memories to tell. And while it seems so little, it also seems enough. Because like Raia, though without the daring to say that Sir Edel’s classroom changed my life, it has in fact been an integral part of how I’ve navigated the spaces I’ve moved in since.
Of how one might read a room and know right away who holds the power and how, is it in terms of language, or the tenor of a voice? all of which is bound to class—or the lack of it. Of how one might deal with the powers-that-be, from the people in Malacañang to the institutions one has no choice but to deal with, how one might compromise, but even more so, how one must not.
Of how to draw that line, the correct one, the most important one, which isn’t so much violent as it is productive, and how sticking to that line need not mean being rabid or rigid, as it does mean being creative. How do we navigate the either-or, the black and white, when the goal is to bring people to our side, without it being too obvious, without shoving it down their throats? How might we play this game, and win it, without losing sight of where we want to go, why it is we play this game at all?
Sir Edel played this game well. And it is that playfulness, intellectual energy, and creativity that one can only aspire for, as it is what informs what one might do, right here, right now. When the world is changing as we speak, when thousands are dying and thousands more are going hungry. When we grasp at straws and rise to the occasion, equally. When we muscle our way through our own nervous breakdowns, because we know—I know—that even refusing to function is an embarrassing privilege to exercise at a time like this one.
As a young girl in that classroom, it seemed to me like Sir Edel was uncompromising and unyielding, and these weren’t positive traits. But growing into my own adulthood as a writer and critic has made me realize that these are not bad things after all. Because knowing to draw that line, clearly and immovably, and then deciding to be on the right side of it, it is the only way to live.
He lived it in that classroom 23 years ago, pushing those two girls in the direction they needed to go, whether he meant to or not. That this is where I’m at, saying thank you to him, alongside many others who can lay claim to his friendship and mentorship more than I ever could, is a testament to his teaching. Sometimes, the least likely allies are the ones who keep a critical distance, the ones who maintain independence, the ones who have the creativity for humor, underhanded praise, dry wit and sarcasm, the ones who grin and chuckle to get you on his side.
Sometimes that could be you. ***
This was written for First Person Plural, the online tribute for Sir Edel Garcellano, May 5 2020.