Manufactured "Traits"
What can we conclude from these specialists' opinions?
Cultural or national "traits" strike
Calhoun as a "vexed" question; are seen
by McCrae and Costa to be "universal structures"; appear to Ashkenazi as
requiring "very careful methodology"; are seen by Mendoza as best considered
from a framework that embraces "a plurality of ethnic identifications"; and are
re- jected by Blum as a theory that "has long been assaulted as nothing but a
set of stereotypes." Her conclusion: if these "traits"
are inapplicable to the
Japanese and the Chinese, who have very powerful national majorities, then this
discredited theory ought to be immensely more inappropriate when applied to the
Philippines, one of the world's most culturally
fragmented countries. In a word, we have been lied
to --- once again.
Does our central government, its
agencies, scholars, researchers, and writers --- do they
realize what they're doing? Are our elite-supported anthropologists,
sociologists, and political scien- tists aware of what they're perpetrating? But
of course. Will they put an end to this falsehood?
I doubt it. They have
become obsessed with
nation-building --- "state-building" to be
precise ---
because, to Benedict Anderson, "it is the cultural
ascendancy of the ruling class that essentially ensures the stability of the
capitalist order." And that is an order that they intend to maintain. Because
most have come to believe their own fabrications, while the rest appear to be
intoxi- cated by an awesome authority: the power to define
us.
But whether impelled by pure mistake or
sheer malevolence, they have usurped and appropri- ated for themselves the right
to tell us who we are, reminiscent of the Spaniard indoctrinating
the
Indio about who he was fated to obey, or the American "educating" the Filipino
about whose culture he was expected to emulate. Our self-appointed "cultural
guardians," by preferring the transient single to the perennial plural, would
deny us the right to define, and thus determine,
our separate selves.
The dark, driving force behind this destructive deception?
Nationalism.
The purpose of [nationalism] then is to
define ethnocultural characteristics that can be gene- ralized to all components
of the society's population, promote their importance in maintaining national
identity and in some cases create similarities in characteristics between
different sec- tors of the population where they may not exist in
reality.
This brazen, disgraceful deceit
will continue to be foisted on us by those who have not hesitated to raid the
cultural riches of our myriad nations in order to manufacture and reinforce
their vi- sion of an allegedly unified, unadulterated "Filipino" identity. As
we've seen, they've already imposed Tagalog as a "basis" for Pilipino/Filipino,
our "national" language. Then they would have all of our nations venerate Rizal
or Bonifacio as our "national" hero: either way, however this debate is
resolved, if at all --- we end up with a Tagalog. Then they
imposed the baro ng Ta-
galog on the Mangyan, the Ibanag, the Manobo, the B'laan, and
the rest of us, as our national
costume. Then they pilfered, among many other
dances, the tinikling from the Waray and
the
singkil from the Maranao and told us that
these were ours as well,
prying loose and cannibal- izing the treasures of our diverse cultures for
useful and exotic identity-building components. Finally, to provide their
manufactured man with distinct and archipelagic "features," they've appropriated
the clannish loyalty of the Ilocano, the dignity of the Tagalog, the
perseverance
of the Cebuano, the hospitality of the Ifugao, the gaiety of the
Hiligaynon, the courage of the Waray, the fortitude of the Bukidnon, the pride
of the Tausúg, and so on, in order to fabricate the charming but counterfeit
rubric of "Filipino values."
