Schedule
Nov. 27, 2024 | 4:00–5:30 PM
Room
Rm 1, North Ballroom
Moderator
Jay Yacat
University of the Philippines Diliman
C1.1
Cautusan, Catuiran, Carapatan: Analyzing the Translation of Legal and Political Concepts for the Foundation of Revolution, Rights, and Freedoms into Tagalog in Apolinario Mabini’s Panukala sa Pagkakana nang Republika nang Pilipinas (1899) and Felipe Calderon’s Ang A. B. C. Nang Mamamayang Filipino (1905)
Christoffer Mitch C. Cerda
Ateneo de Manila University
This presentation will analyze and compare two versions of two legal texts and documents, namely, Apolinario Mabini’s Programa Constitucional de la República Filipina and its Tagalog version Panukala sa Pagkakana nang Republika nang Pilipinas and Felipe G. Calderon’s El A. B. C. del ciudadano Filipino and its Tagalog translation Ang A. B. C. Nang Mamamayang Filipino. Written by two of the leading legal minds involved in the revolution, these two texts in Spanish and Tagalog can show how Filipino intellectuals Filipinized Western legal concepts to adapt it to the aspirations and desires of the Filipinos for independence and freedom. Using computer-aided textual analysis, the concordance of key legal and political concepts in Spanish like “ley/leyes,” “derechos/derechos,” and “libertad/libertades,” to name a few, are translated into Tagalog. By comparing the ways these legal and political concepts are translated into Tagalog, it would be shown how these concepts resonate and differ with Tagalog concepts like “catuiran,” “carapatan,” “cautusan,” “capangyarihan,” and “calayaan,” to name a few. In this way, the difference of the social, cultural, and political tradition of the Philippines would be highlighted and shows how this can contribute in establishing a new understanding of how Filipinos saw their own sense of identity founded on rights and freedoms. Lastly, the different contexts of the writing and translating of the two works by Mabini and Calderon would be commented on, Mabini’s being an alternative constitution to establish a revolutionary government and Calderon’s being a layman’s guide in educating Filipinos of their rights during the establishment of American colonialism in the Philippines. In this way, the differences and similarities of the conceptualization of the two documents of the rights and obligations of Filipinos can be established. The analysis of these two documents and their Tagalog versions would lead to a better understanding of how the Filipino’s aspiration for freedom is not just a simple copy of Western ideals but is also rooted in local and native desires for freedom and equality.
C1.2
The American Colonial Origins of Filipinization
Charlie S. Veric
Ateneo de Manila University
The presentation reconstructs how Filipinization as a colonial policy became the basis of postcolonial identity. I will argue that decolonization started when colonization began. Contrary to conventional wisdom, decolonization did not take place after colonization. Rather, Filipino decolonization evolved with US colonialism. The former appeared as soon as the latter arrived. The story of how Filipinization came to be is, in short, the yet untold story of the strange but successful American experiment with a new form of governmentality: Imperialism without imperialists. Looking at American colonial policies following the successful occupation of the Philippines in 1898, I will reconstruct the twin rise of US colonialism and Filipino decolonization, demonstrating how the colonial condition became the enabling context for the emergence of decolonization. Using historiographical methods in American Studies and Philippine Studies, as well as archival documents and newspaper accounts, I will track the emergence of Filipinization and shed light on its development as a colonial policy and, later, as a political thought. Such development, I hope to show, began as a colonial policy that concerned the bureaucracy of the islands. Out of this bureaucratic imperative later emerged the notion of Filipinization, one that eventually became synonymous with the campaign for national independence and, ultimately, decolonization. As will become clear, Filipinization originated from the desire of the US to manage the restive native population of its new colonial possession. It was an administrative strategy wherein the US enlisted the local elites in the governance of the islands. The same native elites, who would represent local interests for political autonomy, eventually led the campaign for independence from the US. In 1946, such desire was realized, spurring decolonization in its wake.
C1.3
Saling-Pusa sa Amerika: Theorizing the Role of Diasporic Filipinxs in Indigenous Decolonization
Kriya Issa A. Velasco
Michigan State University
Filipinxs in the United States/Turtle Island are both racialized “others” and settlers on Indigenous lands. While many have sought to reclaim their identities amidst continued marginalization, most of these efforts have been driven by discourses of a multicultural, pluralistic US society that disregard Indigenous/Native American/American Indian movements like Land Back and Decolonization. This study sought to answer the following question: What role could Filipinxs play in Indigenous decolonization movements in the Americas, and how could such a role be theorized? To answer this question, I use a case study of an undergraduate student/co-researcher who was part of multiple undergraduate seminars I facilitated between 2017 and 2021 at a university in the US Pacific Northwest. My co-researcher and I employed a relational approach to investigating our role as Filipinxs committed to Decolonization. Through dialogues (emails, text messages, Zoom meetings, face-to-face conversations), and course artifacts, we collaboratively explored our responsibilities, roles, and commitments as Filipinxs on Indigenous lands. I then employed a constructivist, grounded theory approach to develop a theory of the saling-pusa, or “liminal player,” as both ontological and pedagogical tool that involves refusal and desire. Our findings suggest that Filipinxs as saling-pusa on Indigenous lands could lean into liminality as a strength and a place of radical possibilities toward being ourselves, teaching within and outside our communities, and solidarities with Indigenous peoples.
C1.4
A Framework for Steps Towards Decolonization
Caroline M. Schöpf
University of the Philippines Diliman
While there has been an increased move towards decolonization of various disciplines in recent years, there is a lack of a comprehensive guide that integrates the main discussions on knowledge decolonization. Based on a review of the literature, this paper aims to fill this gap. The drivers of decolonization should be marginalized groups, such as workers, farmers, indigenous people, religious minorities, women, queer individuals, and other oppressed groups. Decolonization should center the knowledges of such groups, and the decolonization process should involve them in central roles. Goals of decolonization may include reaching epistemic justice and arriving at bias-free and ideology-free knowledge that precisely describes, theorizes, and explains phenomena in the area of study in the specific region of the world where it is developed. Items to decolonize may include research agenda formulation, research problem selection and research design, concepts, theories, methodologies and methods, and processes and venues of research dissemination. This may include structural issues such as university and journal rankings. Characteristics of a decolonized field may include that it is autonomous, serving the people that the academic community is dedicated to, derives research agendas from these same people, and is written in languages and disseminated in ways that are accessible to these people. Decolonization can draw on various bodies of literature, such as indigenization and decolonization efforts inside the specific country and abroad. The paper closes with a roadmap for decolonization, a process of re-theorization which, drawing on various sources, re-formulates theories that offer a well-fitting and bias-free explanation of the phenomena under study, and discusses how this process could be integrated into graduate school courses.