Nation, Self and Citizenship

An Invitation to Philippine Sociology

Randolf S David

• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• ISBN:
  9786214201952
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The present volume invites the student to learn sociology by looking at her own formation as a human being, growing up and living in a society that time incessantly shapes and organizes in a specific but ultimately predictable way. Instead of talking about society in the abstract, we give it names -- our families, our communities, the Filipino nation, or the vast planet that we must share with the different nations of the world. Instead of talking about just anybody's biography, we refer to one's own life-long project of building and negotiating selfhood as ongoing achievements, subject to the blind imprints of the past, the contingencies of the present, and our individual collective strivings for a better future.

The discourse of nationhood and social responsibility pervades every area of Philippine social science. The Filipino nation is unfinished business, and therefore it is understandable that in public discourse the nation's needs take moral precedence over individual fulfillment. Thus, the book takes up the troubled quest of the modern Filipino for autonomy and meaning in the bosom of his own society, a young nation that is itself aspiring to grown into full modern nationhood in a globalized and, some say, postmodern era.

— From the introduction

PART ONE
NATIONHOOD

Introduction:
The Project of Nationhood

Josephine Dionisio

We can resolve to come together
In the new beginning, start all over
We can break the cycle, we can break the chain
We can start allover in the new beginning
We can learn, we can teach, we can share
The myths, the dream, the prayer, the notion
That we can do better
Change our lives and paths
Create a new world.
–“A New Beginning”
Tracy Chapman, 1994

Achieving the Filipino Nation¹

None of us is born nationalist. As we grow up, our first identification is not with the nation but with our families or our tribal communities. We only come to know about the existence of the nation in concrete terms when we attend school—where we are routinely shown the symbols of our nation and where we are initiated into the ritualistic display of nationalism. We are taught, for instance, to sing the national anthem or to recite a pledge of allegiance to the flag, even before it becomes clear to us what the words in the anthem or in the pledge actually mean. So although the nation is something remote and abstract, its existence is something we take for granted because it refers to a particular type of memory that we are obliged to have because we are all part of the state.

But this “taken-for-granted” reality of a unified Filipino nation within the territorial boundaries of the Philippine state now faces serious challenges. Recent patterns of large-scale migration, for instance, have made traditional territorial boundaries more permeable, and have made it possible for a lot of Filipinos to change their citizenship without necessarily giving up their identity as Filipinos. At the same time, Muslims in Mindanao continue to fight for their right to self-determination as a separate nation. To many Filipinos, the existence of a Filipino nation is not only remote and abstract, it is also being questioned.

These are probably only some of the reasons why most young people today find it hard to confidently answer the question: Who is Filipino? In an attempt to give a definitive answer to this question, many of my freshmen students often cite the constitutional provision on citizenship declaring that Filipinos are those who are citizens of the Philippines. Some disagree and insist that being Filipino cannot simply be defined in terms of citizenship. A debate usually ensues—a classmate shares the story of a cousin or a friend, who are American citizens or have become naturalized Australians but still embody what we may identify as distinguishing characteristics of a Filipino.

In some instances, my students would give a visual representation of the distinguishing characteristics of a Filipino. They would mount on the board a collage of brown skinned men and women wearing barong tagalog and baro’t saya, who in most cases are either in church or in a rice paddy. Words like close family ties, bahala na, pakikisama, crab mentality, or ningas cogon would dominate the collage of descriptions of their values. But when asked to place themselves in this collage of the Filipino, they would soon realize that although they are sure of themselves as Filipinos, they do not resemble any of the images they have chosen to identify the Filipino. The discomfort would become more intense as they realize that not all of them go to a Catholic Church or have seen a rice paddy before; none of them would consider themselves as fatalistic or having a crab mentality. I would then assure my students that their current uncertainty about their national identity should not make them insecure about themselves as individuals and as Filipinos. Instead, this realization should make their generation feel freer to create their own collage of the Filipino nation.

The first part of this book walks us through some of the many possible collages of the Filipino nation. The idea that the nation is neither a destiny nor an end in itself but rather a continuing work of creation for the fulfillment of individual happiness is the dominant theme of this book’s Part One: Nationhood. The articles in Section 1 invite us to situate the Filipino nation by reexamining our nation’s history, assessing its coordinates in a globalized world environment, and, in the context of a postmodern society, revaluing the virtues and meanings that we hold dear. In Section 2, we are asked to reflect on the contingency of our solidarity as a nation, and to accept that there may be other sources of identities. Affinities and identities based on race and ethnicity, gender, or class should be made to flourish in a reconceived Filipino nation, where nationalism is only one among the many respected expressions of social solidarity. That the task of nationhood includes the challenge of reinventing our institutions so as to justify to the current generation the continued existence of the Filipino nation is the organizing theme of the articles in Section 3. Part One of this book is an invitation for us to invent ways of achieving the Filipino nation. It argues that for the current generation, the more exciting adventure is to find out, why Filipino?

Rewriting the Narrative of the Filipino Nation

We have always perceived of ourselves as lacking in a virtuous national character, and have always blamed this perceived weakness as a people for the failure of our institutions. The articles in The Nation and Its Past were selected to highlight the historicity of the Filipino nation’s unfinished business of forging a collective identity. They offer a fresh perspective in reviewing the nation’s journey through successive rounds of colonization, and the challenges that it confronts as an independent nation. They argue that the formidable task of nationhood requires us to first rethink our history from the point of view of the future.

The articles “The Centennial that Was,” and “Why We Remember” dare us to revisit our past as a nation using Nietzsche’s notion of “critical history,” and Renato Constantino’s pragmatic concept of a “usable past.” History from these perspectives is not merely the practice of digging up the hidden truth of the past that will enable us to understand ourselves better. History is seen as a tool with which to write and rewrite a memory for a people who are constantly reflecting on the ways to achieve nationhood.

Nietzsche’s critical review of history allows us to do away with images of our past that make us resentful and desperate. For instance, as our national hero Jose Rizal has pointed out with indignation, the indolence of the Filipino is simply a label pasted on us by our colonizers. We need not think of ourselves nor live our lives as such. Critical history dares us to be brave enough to remember all those painful and shameful episodes in our history with the intention of gaining an understanding of ourselves as individuals and our goals as a nation. It shows us how the act of recounting even the darkest moments in our history can cleanse our spirits and help us see that grieving needs to stop at one point to give way to the act of reclaiming our lives.

The article “Language, Nationalism and Identity,” reminds us that the Filipino nation is in part an invention of European-educated Filipino intellectuals who we know now as our heroes. Inspired by the upheavals in Europe in the 1800s, the ilustrados helped spawn a revolution that catalyzed the emergence of what we now refer to as the Filipino nation.² They started to aspire for an identity other than simply being subjects of Spain or of the Catholic Church. Jose Rizal dared to imagine that the name Filipino may also refer to all those who were born in the Philippines and not exclusively to Spaniards born in the Philippines. “Kalayaan, Vol. I No. I” recounts how print media using the native language as a tool of resistance disseminated the narrative of a people being denied their right to a national identity. The powerful image inspired a people to take up arms to claim the identity that they strongly felt was theirs. Thus, the Filipino nation as an imagined community was born.

However, the narrative of a glorious history of Filipino nationalism has not been compelling enough to sustain acts of heroism for the nation, or spirited citizenship, on a daily basis. Filipino nationalism suddenly comes alive from time to time to rally the people in booting out authoritarianism or incompetence in government. But these brief celebrations of unity and resolve quickly dissolve into apathy as life in these islands proceeds with its daily round of tormenting pettiness, anarchy, and corruption. Obviously, it is not enough that one is able to recite her duties as a citizen to become a dutiful citizen. Spirited citizenship can only be harnessed if one is able to enjoy the rewards, and to understand the significance to nationhood of her small acts of conscientiousness.

That solidarity based on national identity remains weak in the Philippines is probably best articulated by the state’s failure to provide its citizens with an acceptable reason to remain Filipino. The euphoria of people power did not linger long enough to inspire successive government administrations to develop inventive ways of forging the great Filipino nation that our heroes envisioned. Abject poverty pushes countless Filipinos to leave the country hoping that they could secure a more livable future in another country. The unresolved conflict in Mindanao threatens to rip the nation apart. In spite of the fact that the curriculum of public schools in this country requires a heavy load of courses in Philippine history or civics and culture, school children are still ambivalent about retaining a Filipino citizenship.³

Constantino’s pragmatic view of our past, a view that cares to solve the problems of the present, will make us accept the contingencies of our past and our existence as a nation. As mentioned in “Remembering Martial Law,” American pragmatist William James urges us not to treat our description of events as representative of truth and reality. A nation needs to continuously redescribe its historical milestones as it attempts to use history as a guide to the present. The simple act of moving our Independence Day celebrations from July 4 to June 12 “permitted us to cut the psychological umbilical cord that linked our souls to America and enabled us to imagine ourselves as a truly independent nation.” The confidence we gained from this act should be used to assert our interests as a people especially when dealing with our former colonizers.⁴ In “Looking Back At EDSA,” we are reminded that a usable past will “… never leave us disgusted or demoralized about the future,” because it is seen only “….from the clear vantage point of someone who has figured out the road to the future.” Viewing important events in our national history from this angle allows us to reflect on meanings that we need to assign to historical events to make them more instructive of how to pursue our tasks for the future.⁵

By situating the nation in its past in this manner, we will be able to see nationhood not as the search for a destiny, but rather as an attempt to create our own destiny. A nation is an imagined community, says Benedict Anderson, “because the members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives an image of their community” (Anderson, 1991: 6). Mass communication serves as the purveyor of these images that ultimately become the community’s collective memory. From this perspective, nation refers to an emotional attachment to an image borne out of mediated interaction rather than to a legal, rational or even historical commonality. You cannot touch it but you can feel it. Nationalism therefore need not be grounded on primordial ties based on a shared cultural heritage or ethnic origin. One need not look for a true Filipino identity, it is enough to invent one. In this sense, nationalism can be created at will, and its contours are limited only by our imagination rather than by political entities or territorial boundaries.

Our weak sense of nationalism results from our vague sense of a national identity, and a lack of a compelling “national imaginary.” It is not so much because we are unsure of who we are, but more importantly because we are still unsure of who we want to become. Nationhood remains as a valid and urgent agenda for all of us who believe that we deserve and can collectively weave a different narrative for the Filipino nation.

We will struggle on,
No matter how long it takes …
Until we establish a just community
of free men and women in our land,
dancing together, working and striving together, singing and dancing together,
laughing and loving together.
—A Nation for Our Children
Jose W. Diokno

The Nation in a Changing World

Many of my students welcome the advent of globalization, and see it as a catalyst of modernization and diversity. To many of them, the ability to buy imported goods from every comer store, or the possibility of cruising the world from your bedroom through surfing the internet represent everything that is good and desirable about globalization. But the globalized order is not only about the fusion of diverse cultures, or hybridization. Globalization is also about globalism.⁶ It is also about corporations that kill-off competition (and in the process, diversity) by smothering the markets of the world with their goods (and sometimes by actually creating their own competitors) in order to fatten their bottom-line. Indeed, globalization actually limits our choices.

To defend ourselves from the homogenizing and alienating tendencies of globalization, we need a state that is able to exercise creative and effective governance. Governance is not simply the fashioning and execution of laws. More importantly, it involves solving social problems that tend to lessen the quality of our life. The article “Who’s Afraid of Globalization” contends that the state has the responsibility of ensuring that the breakneck pace of globalization will not worsen the already pathetic quality of life of most Filipinos. It needs to harmonize the efforts of government, the business sector, and civil society in ensuring that basic social services are efficiently delivered. It cannot simply wait for the market to do this job.

The first casualty in the globalized regime is one’s unique identity. Thus, one way of framing the urgent task of the nation in a changing world is to assert ourselves as a people against the regimentation of the new global order. We can successfully do this by creating an image of a proud Filipino for our children, and convincing them to choose it as their own identity. The state must then seize the project of nationhood, and offer it as a convincing agenda for the current generation by having a firm grasp of the aspirations and the sensibilities of this generation. This is the only way it will be able to win and deserve their loyalty as citizens as intimated in “Globalization and National Identity.”

But “Globalization Blues” cautions us that a strong sense of nationalism is not inherently or permanently ideal. Nationalism can also breed chauvinism and xenophobia, which can have very violent consequences such as race riots or ethnic cleansing. This dangerous myth of nationalism is expressed in the insistence of many states (and even nationalist movements) that as a nation, they constitute within their territorial boundaries an undivided people with common characteristics such as language, religion, or ethnicity. Such a claim can only be regarded as a myth because, especially in this age of boundless opportunities for migration and mixed marriages, no nation can identify any single characteristic that is common to all its members. In many cases, it is an attempt to justify practices of discrimination against migrant workers who compete for jobs and services that are fast becoming limited. The fear of losing out in a highly competitive market, the basic insecurity over one’s l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Part 2
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Part 3
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Epilogue