Marking a Turn:Thoughts on a Generationof Philippine Scholarship
Professor Resil B. Mojares

I

Conjunctures in Recent Philippine History005

In 1970s Philippines, widespread disillusion with thestate in the context of a deepening economic andpolitical crisis was marked, for instance, by the violent elections of 1969, regarded at the time as themost degraded and corrupt in Philippine history.
Vicente Rafael calls this period “the long 1970s,” bywhich he means the Marcos years, from 1965 to1986.2 The paradox of this period is that, beyond its
political stereotyping as “the dark years of the dictatorship,” it is in fact one of the most intellectually
dynamic periods in Philippine history. One can cite
several reasons for this: that the largely unprecedented experience of martial rule (“the years of living
dangerously,” both in fantasy and reality) was notjust stultifying but mentally fertilizing as well; that
Marcos was our most intellectually-minded president
and that could not but invite an intellectual response;that Marcos authoritarianism was not, after all, thehegemonic kind that existed, for instance, in Central
European states; or that Filipinos are equipped witha large reserve of survival skills, adept at creating
spaces of autonomy under conditions of restriction
and repression.3 However one will explain it, the fact
is that the long 1970s was, in creative terms, truly an“interesting” time.
A great deal has been written on how the Marcoses
sought to exploit the mystifying power of culture andthe arts through patronage, state institutions, andother instrumentalities. But the most important initiatives were undertaken outside state circuits. As
Rafael narrates of his own intellectual formation in
Manila in the late martial-law period, disaffection andrisk-taking fueled a great deal of excitement and creativity in popular music, theater, and cinema, as wellas the informal sites and networks of artistic andintellectual exchange.4 Many of these initiatives werelinked to the anti-Marcos opposition but many

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f there is the sense that Philippine studies is taking
a “turn,” we have to ask where it has been before
asking where it is going. The question of where Filipino scholars have been came to me a few months
ago when I was asked to write the introduction to a
festschrift for the country’s leading theater scholar,
Nicanor Tiongson (Chua et al. forthcoming). This reminded me that we are indeed in a time of commemorations. This started sometime back, with thefestschrifts for William Henry Scott, Doreen Fernandez,
and Fr. John Schumacher, and it has ominously
heightened, with similar tributes to the contributionsof scholars like Soledad Reyes and Isagani Cruz.
And last year, Ateneo de Manila had commemorative
events on the works of Reynaldo Ileto and Vicente
Rafael.1
Thinking about Nic Tiongson reminded me that
Nic and I belong to the same generation (the men
and women who set out to be writers and scholars at
the end of the 1960s), and that it is a generation
coming to a close. And that while we can rightly (ifimmodestly) claim that it has been one of the mostvibrant and productive generations in the country’s
intellectual history, it is not quite clear what its work
has amounted to (I am thinking here of the social
sciences and the humanities although I imagine thisclaim can be extended). What has been gained,
missed, left unclarified or unfulfilled? And what dothese suggest of directions, new or renewed, that
Philippine scholarship can or should take?

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No. 70006(Rafael says) were simply “conjunctural and contingent,” as well as “counter-cultural,” ambivalent intheir relation to authority whether that of the Marcos
government or the Communist Party. In any case,they nurtured and preserved that space of creativity
and autonomy that is largely unacknowledged(because of the focus on the “event” of the Benigno
Aquino assassination) as the cultural groundwork forthe 1986 “People Power” uprising.
By the late 1980s, after “People Power,” the moodbecame less polarized and more pluralist. There wasa great deal of intellectual excitement with the socalled “opening up of democratic space,” and muchinterest in providing the new government of Corazon
Aquino and a newly-self-conscious “civil society”
with the academic and intellectual support for the
post-authoritarian transition to democracy. But thesituation also became more diffuse and fragmented,
with the flourishing of new Western theories and thediversification of scholarship, with the interest (often
sector-bound) in such fields as gender, migration,and in particular foreign aid-driven development
studies.
In the above context, as the sociologists Virginia
Miralao and Cynthia Bautista see it, Philippine studies moved “from polarization to pluralism and convergence.” Greater tolerance and dialogue among
different perspectives tempered the rabid ideologicaland factional partisanships of the 1970s, and there
has been a convergence of methodologies as scholars attempt integrative discourses that cut acrossdisciplines. This assessment is rather generous
since one can point to countervailing facts as well:much scholarship remains discipline- or subjectbound, with little conversation across disciplines;
much empirical research, unenergized by fresh theoretical perspectives, remains dreary and unimaginative; and theoretically-smart studies are frequently
empirically thin (subsisting, like orchids, on air rather
than grown out of the rich loam of local data andknowledge).
Still, it can be said that Filipino scholarship has
truly come into its own. The past half-century in thePhilippines has witnessed the expansion and diversification of academic disciplines, advances in the volume, range, and quality of research and publishing;
the emergence of academic professional societies
and research institutions, and by implication a larger,
more diverse community of scholars and academics.5
One can, for instance, compare two state-of-thefield assessments of Philippine studies, one done in
the 1970s by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
of Northern Illinois University (NIU) in the US and theother in the 1990s by the Philippine Social Science
Council (PSSC).6 Separated by some 20 years, theNIU and PSSC reports are not quite comparable

because of the particular circumstances of their production, yet the differences are nevertheless telling.
The NIU assessments, produced primarily as guidefor American researchers in the field, are almost
entirely written by Americans and mostly cover
English-language works. On the other hand, the
PSSC volumes, addressed primarily to Filipinos inthe self-conscious context of celebrating national
scholarship, are done by Filipinos. The NIU reportsof the 1970s leave the impression of an Americandominated field. In a list, for instance, of 47 “major”
works in Philippine historiography between 1955
and 1976, 23 were authored by Americans, 20 by
Filipinos, 3 Spaniards, and 1 Australian. Of the 20
Filipino works cited, eight were US dissertations. And
31 of the 47 works were published in the US.7 On theother hand, the PSSC reports of the 1990s, simply
by the sheer density of their content, clearly indicatethat the field’s center of gravity has shifted from the
US to the Philippines (assuming that it was ever in
the US in the first place).
Impact on Scholarship
Unlike popular forms like cinema and theater, orsuch types of intellectual work as policy studies,action-oriented research, journalism, or polemical
writings, the impact of much scholarship is rarely
direct and dramatic, and much more difficult to trace
and assess.
In their overview of Philippine studies, Miralao andBautista cite Marxism and the “indigenous movement” as the two major themes of social sciencescholarship in the 1970s and 1980s (and this canwell be said of the humanities as well). 8 These
themes can be viewed as expressions of the muchbroader current of “nationalism”––a word that I use
here as shorthand for what is in fact a variously conceived and contested idea, as well as the heated
context in which it played out in the Philippines. The
paradox is that while nationalism is the engine ofscholarship of “the long ‘70s,” it is also one thatbiased and constrained the scholarship of theperiod.
This was the case with studies in local history
and regional literatures. Stimulated by the populardemocratic sentiments of the 1970s and subsequentefforts at decentralization after 1986, these studies
were driven by the hope of redefining the nation as
one more inclusive, people-centered, and broadly
based.9 These studies, it can be said, helped createa more inclusive awareness of the country’s regionalor subnational units, and an understanding of thenational literature and history geographically wider
and empirically thicker.
But whether “significantly new,” I am not too sure.

While there are exemplary exceptions, much of thework in historical and literary studies has remained
distinctly “local.” There are very few cross-regional,
cross-national, and integrative studies, little direct,
critical engagement with established conceptions of
the “nation” or its constituent units, and a low level oftheorization, such that much work in this area (assome have complained) does not significantly reconfigure the familiar, dominant national narratives.10
Nationalism and Certain Tendencies“Toward a More Expansive Approach”
We have been asked “to think ourselves beyond thenation.” 11 Such thinking need not mean we now
begin to do transnational or post-national studies.
My own proposal is quite modest and proceeds fromwhat has already been accomplished. We can begin
by deepening our appreciation for the “world” withinthe “nation,” by investigating the linkages, connections, and correspondences that extend beyond theterritorial borders of the nation and its localities, byundertaking more comparative and multi-site studies, or by simply making greater use of “world”
scholarship in better understanding the nation andits localities. This crucially includes cultivating greaterinterest in studies on the Philippines done in Japan,
Spain, the United States (unavoidably), and otherplaces, not only for how these studies augment oraffirm what we know about ourselves but, more
importantly, because these studies––with the particular advantages of their location––can do things wecannot do and see what we do not quite see.
As a “home scholar,” I fully appreciate the tremendous constraints in a more expansive approach toPhilippine studies (constraints that include opportunities to do research outside one’s locality, or evensimple access to information resources). That is why
when we speak of accumulating and building intellectual resources, we mean not just the mental but
the material as well––in terms of the infrastructure foreducation and scholarship, like research support
institutions, publishing houses, and a large andactive community of readers, scholars, and writers.
There is a measure of bad faith in urging a country
that has been colonized by foreign powers to “globalize,” since by definition a nation colonized is globalized. Ultimately, the imperative lies in whether it isbeing globalized in ways that people are criticallyaware of, and in terms that they can effectively negotiate with or command.

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One of the tendencies of nationalism is the readinessto take the nation as a given and thus address oneself to simply inscribing into the received narrative
the marginalized and the excluded without criticallyinterrogating or revising the form and logic of thisnarrative (as Reynaldo Ileto has argued). Another isthe tendency to essentialize the nation––whether
strategically or not––in the struggle to define it assomething other than what dominant discourses(whether that of the elite, the authoritarian state, orthe “West”) have claimed it to be. Thus, there is thepredisposition to short-circuit or gloss over internalsocial divisions and disjunctures to claim the authority of what is unitary, organic, and encompassing.
Related to the privileging of the “nation” is theprivileging of the “popular.” While the bias in favor of
the marginal and the excluded was a necessary one,it also occasioned gaps in research, a bias for certain research problems (particularly in history andanthropology) that left subjects of privilege andpower relatively unexamined.
In today’s more open, pluralist environment, howcompelling is the idea of “nation”? To what extent
has this obsession been overtaken by the realities of
the country’s prospects for an economic breakthrough, the pressure of globalizing forces that are
redefining ideas of identity, territoriality, and structures of economic and political power?
Indeed, there is quite nothing like “progress”––withthe confidence and cosmopolitanism it brings––
more conducive to an “internationalizing” scholarship. Yet, the country still finds itself mired in the old,
tenacious realities of poverty and inequality, the ruleof predatory elites, large-scale corruption, andchronic natural and man-made disasters. And if
progress internationalizes, there is quite nothing likepoverty and inequality––with the feelings of oppression, dependence, danger, and vulnerability they foster––more conducive for the appeals of nationalism.
The dilemma is not a case of one or the other. My
own sense is that “nationalizing” and “internationalizing” forces in the intellectual field need not be viewed
as antithetical or a case of pre and post, but as partof a simultaneous process. Instead of dichotomies

of global/local, center/periphery, or inside/outside,
we need to hold both in view at the same time without blurring their distinctness or subordinating one tothe other. If studies of local histories, local literatures,and native mentalities have reached a theoreticalimpasse, it is because such studies––in an intellectual form of “protectionism”––have tended to draw
circles around themselves instead of building outwards. While this can be understood as a necessarymode of concentrating and building up local intellectual resources, it has to be done as well in vital conversation with the rest of the world.

NotesSoutheast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1978);
Philippine Studies: Political Science, Economics, and Linguistics (DeKalb: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1981). These volumes collect papers
presented at the 1973 Association for Asian Studies Conference, the 1977 Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, andthe 1980 First International Conference on the Philippines at
Western Michigan University. See The Philippine Social Sciences in the Life of the Nation, ed. V. A. Miralao (Quezon
City: Philippine Social Science Council, 1999). Conceived in
the Fourth National Social Science Congress in Quezon Cityin 1998, as part of the celebration of the Centennial of Philippine Independence. This is a condensed view of the disciplines surveyed in Philippine Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Quezon City: Philippine Social Science Council,
1993), 5 vols.

This article is adapted from a keynote paper that waspresented at the Philippine Studies Conference inJapan (PSCJ), Center for Southeast Asian Studies,
Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, February 28 – March 1
2014.
1

See Jonathan Chua, ed., Feasts and Feats: Festschrift for
Doreen G. Fernandez (Quezon City: Office of Research andPublications, Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University,
2000); Jesus T. Peralta, ed., Reflections on Philippine Cultureand History: Festschrift in Honor of William Henry Scott (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001); Eduardo
Jose Calasanz et al., eds., Thought the Harder, Heart the
Keener: A Festschrift for Soledad S. Reyes (Quezon City:
Office of Research and Publications, Loyola Schools, Ateneode Manila University, 2008); David Jonathan Bayot, ed.,Inter/Sections: Isagani R. Cruz and Friends (Metro Manila:
Anvil Publishing, 2010); “Festschrift in Honor of Fr. John N.
Schumacher, S. J.,” Philippine Studies, 58: 1–2 (2010);[Symposium on Vicente L. Rafael’s Contracting Colonialism
in celebration of the twenty-fifth year of its publication], Philippine Studies, 61: 4 (2013), 477–520. On February 4, 2013,“Historiography and Nation since Pasyon and Revolution:
Conference in Honor of Prof. Reynaldo Ileto” was held at
Ateneo de Manila University, under the sponsorship ofAteneo’s Philippine Studies and Department of History and
Kyoto University’s Southeast Asian Studies.

2

Vicente L. Rafael, “Contracting Colonialism and the Long
1970s,” Philippine Studies, 61: 4 (2013), 477–94.

3

In 2000–01, the US Social Science Research Council’s Southeast Asia Regional Advisory Panel (of which I was a member) organized roundtables in Bandung and Kuala Lumpur,
in which selected scholars from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines narrated how their involvement in a
revolutionary movement influenced their intellectual careers.
What was striking was the difference between the serious,
tense, and inhibited presentations of the Thai, Malaysian,and (to a lesser extent) Indonesian participants, and thecandid but funny and self-deprecatory narrations of the Filipinos. Not that the Filipinos’ “confessions” were devoid of“deep” emotion or less honest, they were (apart from thecontextual differences in the experiences narrated) simply
more skilled in the arts of distancing and detachment.

4

Rafael (Contracting Colonialism and the Long 1970s) cites fivecharacteristics of the developments in what he calls “thelong 1970s” (1965–1986): they were conjunctural and contingent; “counter-cultural”; “modernizing” (in the sense of
consciously seeking to reinvent traditions); “obsessed withthe collection and archiving of artifacts of all sorts”; andcharacterized by a kind of “cosmopolitan nationalism” aswell as “nationalist cosmopolitanism.”
This is illustrated in the founding of the Philippine Political Science Association (1962), Philippine Economic Society(1962), Psychological Association of the Philippines (1963),
Philippine Sociological Society (1963), Linguistics Society of
the Philippines (1969), and Ugnayang Pang-Agham Tao(Anthropological Association of the Philippines) (1977). In
1968, the Philippine Social Science Council was established
as a coordinating body of the country’s social science
associations.

6

Donn V. Hart, ed., Philippine Studies: Geography, Archaeology,
Psychology and Literature: Present Knowledge and Research
Trends (DeKalb: Center for Southeast Asian Studies,
Norhern Illinois University, 1974); Philippine Studies: History,
Sociology, Mass Media and Bibliography (DeKalb: Center for

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5

7

Bruce Cruikshank, “Philippine Historiography: Accomplishment and Promise, 1955–1976,” Philippine Studies: History,
Sociology, Mass Media and Bibliography, 1–97.

8

Virginia A. Miralao, “The Philippine Social Sciences in the Balance: Reflections at the Close of the Century,” and Cynthia
Rose B. Bautista, “The Social Sciences in the Philippines:
Reflections on Developments and Prospects,” Philippine
Social Sciences in the Life of the Nation, 344–80, 381–409.

9For early statements for what local historical and literarystudies aimed to accomplish, see John A. Larkin, “The
Place of Local History in Philippine Historiography,” Journalof Southeast Asian History, 8: 2 (September 1967), 317, andBienvenido Lumbera, “The Rugged Terrain of Vernacular
Literature,” Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature,
Cinema & Popular Culture (Quezon City: Index, 1984), 103–
115. Lumbera’s essay, an agenda-setting statement onvernacular literary studies, was delivered as a lecture at the
University of San Carlos, Cebu City, in 1976 and first published in 1977. In the case of regional literary studies, see
Resil B. Mojares, “The Rugged Terrain: The State of Literary
Research in the Philippines,” Illumined Terrain: The Sites andDimensions of Philippine Literature, ed. V. N. Sugbo (Manila:
National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 1998), 6–14.

10

Alfred W. McCoy, “Introduction: The Social History of anArchipelago,” Philippine Social History: Global Trade andLocal Transformations, ed. A. W. McCoy and E. C. de Jesus(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1982),
1–18. Looking beyond local history, McCoy calls for comparative work within and beyond Southeast Asia as well as
studies that are nor necessarily tied to the local/national
axis. This has not quite happened.

11

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1996), 158; Umut Ozkarimli, Contemporary Debates on
Nationalism: A Critical Engagement (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005), 195–205.

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