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Bienvenido L Lumbera on Revaluation: The National Stages of Philippine

Literature and its History

Article  in  Ideya · May 2008

DOI: 10.3860/ideya.v8i1.69

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82 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

Bienvenido L. Lumbera
on Revaluation:
The National Stages of
Philippine Literature and
Its History
David Jonathan Y. Bayot

The S/subjects of the Nation as Writing

I
f there is any one subject that has preoccupied the critical
consciousness of Philippine National Artist for Literature
Bienvenido L. Lumbera – since the time Filipino nationalists
constituting the First Quarter Storm took to the streets and moved
the minds and hearts of the Filipino people – it is “nation.” And if
there is anyone to whom this subject matter of the nation and its
signification should be foregrounded, addressed, and subjected to
revaluation – s/he is the “Filipino S/subject.”
Although it took Lumbera about three decades since the First
Quarter Storm in the late sixties to give the core of his critical enterprise
a name, that is, the title of one of his latest critical works, Writing the
Nation/Pag-akda ng Bansa (2000), Lumbera has always held the nation
as a narrative, a construct, a text, or, in another versatile term of both
nominative and verbal capability, a writing. The nation – that is, an
account of it – no matter how it projects itself as a “natural,” has

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 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 83

always been, in the critical act of Lumbera’s “revaluation” – a paradigm

or a horizon that is borne out of and fashioned by innumerable readings
and writings in the various social con-texts of the nation. Thus, the
“natural” of “what is there” in the national category of the Filipino is
always the product of a horizon of thinking, or a “writing” of the
nation. The horizon or, what Lumbera translates as (and entitles
another critical work to be), “abot-tanaw” presents a picturesque space
of circumscription that is far from being an existential/natural given.
It is a space or, in fact, a representation of a space, that defines the
perspectives of the subjects within as to how far they are able and
enabled to see and “en-vision” a Self. And it is the S/subjects’
understanding of – as they simultaneously under-stand in – this space
within which they “know” they are sited and circumscribed, that lays
bare for them their own “condition of situations” within this pre-
supposedly natural inheritance by blood of a national identity: a
subjectivity that “naturally” speaks what Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido calls
“the language of my blood.”
If it is the concept of writing and the subjectivity of the Filipino
that find a special niche in the consciousness of Lumbera as a critical
writer and Filipino, it is “drama” (with its attending act and implication
of “stage,” “staging,” and “stages” in the name of theater) that captures
his imagination and passion. Lumbera is known to many academicians
and scholars of Philippine literature and culture as the critical father
who has influenced the trajectory of Philippine kritika by his
publications and teachings – he being the mentor of critical presences
like Doreen G. Fernandez, Isagani R. Cruz, Nicanor Tiongson, Soledad
S. Reyes, and Rosario Cruz Lucero, among others. But Lumbera’s
presence goes beyond the academic citadels he is affiliated with, namely:
Ateneo de Manila University, the University of the Philippines, and
De La Salle University. One finds his name associated with a genre
nearer to the imagination of the Filipino people than any other – in
memorable theatrical productions like Tales of the Manuvu (1977), Rama,
Hari (1980), Bayani (1985), and Noli Me Tangere, the Musical (1994).
In relation to Lumbera’s critical preoccupation with the nation
and the fate of its S/subject, the genre of drama, historically speaking,

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84 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

played an important role as “dominant function” in the text and con-

text of Philippine history and of national assertion. The theatrical
facet of the genre was a driving force that aligns itself very efficiently
with Lumbera’s nationalist project for the Filipino subjects that is, as
vital and defining catalyst in the process of laboring over the “nativity”
of the Filipino. Drama, in other words, was a key herald in the event
of the renaissance of the Filipino subject at the height of nationalist
protests and activist movements during the late sixties and the early
seventies. And theater as dramatic enactment served, in Lumbera’s
view, as an eloquent instrument of social and political change in this
“wake” of the national subject, even if, as a literary form, “its death
had been proclaimed in the West since the 1960s” (1997: 126).
The following extended passage will provide the “situations” of
theater in the annals of Philippine history and Lumbera’s discourse, as
it, at the same time, exemplifies the discourse and concerns of Lumbera
as a critic and writer (enjoining other critics and writers) of the text
“entitled” Filipino nation:

In the 1960s there was some kind of political dawning

that had its impact on the cultural scene. Held suspect under
the Cold War climate of the previous decade, nationalism
was beginning to re-assert itself in college and university
campuses as a delayed effect of the late Claro M. Recto’s
ideas as a fiscalizer during the administration of Ramon
Magsaysay. Early during the regime of Diosdado Macapagal,
import control as a measure designed to shore up a wobbly
national economy was lifted under the pressure from U. S.
economic interests in the Philippines. The immediate result
was the devaluation of the peso which brought with it hard
times for the masses.
The nationalist movement was well underway by the
mid-60s, and the emergence of youth activism in colleges
and universities served notice that a dynamic sector of the
urban population was no longer content to wait for social
change to come. From the campuses, young people fired by

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 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 85

hopes that they could change society fanned out to

communities to imbue the masses with their ideas for
change.
In the exposure of the ills of society and the exposition of
their ideas for a better society, nationalist youth organizations
made effective use of theater. Troupes of performers were
formed from among the rank and file and members of the
troupes themselves wrote, directed, and acted out the scripts.
These performing groups did not find the absence of theaters,
stage equipment, or even theater training a handicap – they bore
the message of social change and this they took to the people
where the people could be readily found – in the streets, in public
plazas and community playgrounds, market places, wherever
people naturally congregated. (1997: 127)

The above quotation spells out the critical vision and “terms”
for a viable and credible nationalist project: the process towards social
change for the Filipino people through writing and rewriting (meant literally
and in the constitutive sense) in literature and history. Entering
Lumbera’s critical universe with a glimpse of his vision, I do not find
it surprising that drama/theater has such a particular appeal in the
consciousness of Lumbera, for yet another reason. Empirically, as
mentioned earlier, this theatrical form has been evidently and
strategically appropriated for involvement in the process of social
change. And now, figuratively speaking, “theater” holds the metaphor
that embraces many of Lumbera’s critical concerns. Theater provides
the metaphor that is to be the central trope responsible for the turning
of the lights in Lumbera’s critical universe. The metaphor is the “stage,”
and it highlights the image of a literal, physical construct, as it, at the
same time, bears the connotation of “stages” as a chronological entity
highlighting movements and developments defying acts and “plots”
of deus ex machina impositions. The metaphor also foregrounds “staging”
as a political act of signifying the notion of a construct, as it, likewise,
highlights the various social forces of interventions overdetermining
the construct.

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86 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

Stage, stages, and staging; construction, deconstructions, and re-

constructions – these are critical terms of operations in Lumbera’s
critical consciousness, whether or not he acknowledges or terms them
as such. It is with this trope of “stage” and the terms of “turn” (for a
shift in valuations) that the present paper chooses to read Lumbera’s
dis-courses on the critical subject of the nation, as well as on the
trajectory of its many S/subjects. The inquiry seeks to discuss: (1)
Lumbera’s dis-course of history as a text with colonialism as its
inextricable con-text; (2) his deconstruction of the text called
“Literature” in view of the latter’s textuality and constitution in history;
and (3) the deconstructive implications of the notion of stage, stages,
and stagings to the act of defining Philippine literary history, literary
aesthetics, and literary productions (which embrace the texts of
“popular culture”). In the spirit of “revaluation,” a key word in
Lumbera’s nationalist battlecry and the title of his first collection of
critical essays in English (1984, subsequently expanded and republished
as Revaluation 1997), this inquiry likewise seeks to pursue a dis-course
of/from Lumbera in the name of the Philippine national S/subjects.

History as Text and Colonial Con-text

Lumbera’s kritika runs counter to the current of common sense

– characterized by Belsey (1980) as empiricist-idealist/expressive realist
– which naively perceives history and historical writing (or
historiography) as synonymous, thus interchangeable, in the sense that
both are taken to be signifying “the Reality of what happened out
there.” In this paradigm of common sense, if there is any difference at
all between these two terms, history is understood to mean “what
happened” and historiography as, no doubt, a transparent and
unproblematic record of “that which happened.” In other words, this
perspective of common sense subscribes, wittingly or unwittingly, to
the concept of history or historiography as “a real account of what
truly happened in the world out there.” Whether one privileges it like
Plato, who believes that history is more truthful in its account of reality
as it imitates what happens, in contrast to literature, which is an

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 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 87

imitation (a fictive account) of an imitation (that is, of “what happens”

in the world of the Senses); or like Aristotle, who finds history less
important in comparison to literature, since the former mirrors the
particulars of what happens, while literature is an imitation of the
universal essence of what happens in the spirit of psychagogia and
entelechy (thus, exempted from having to be a faithful account of
what happened) – history, in this dominant “realist” paradigm, is a
“background” that is perceived as truthful, objective, inalterable, and
incontrovertible. Contrary to that pre-Saussurean/pre-structuralist
historicist perspective, and long before the emergence of the new
historicism’s notion of wall-to-wall textuality during the eighties,
Lumbera, as early as the mid-seventies already spoke of – as a matter
of it being a given – history as historical writing as, primarily, a text in
the sense of being a product as well as a production in a social formation
– product(ion) that is neither objective nor subjective, but discursive.
In the essay, “Towards a Revised History of Philippine Literature”
(first published in 1976 and included in Lumbera 1984, 1997), Lumbera
draws a blueprint that is to take an embodied form in a later book –
the textbook entitled Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology (co-
edited with Cynthia N. Lumbera, 1982, 1997). In this essay, Lumbera
defines history as a writing, and says:

The history of literature in the Philippines demands

rewriting from time to time. Almost forty years after Teofilo
del Castillo attempted the first comprehensive history of
Philippine Literature (A Brief History of Philippine Literature,
1937), we are today aware of vast changes in our society,
changes that call for revisions in our interpretation of past
and contemporary political events inside and outside the
country, and in our valuation of the impact of these events
on the culture of the Filipinos. (1997: 4)

History, like a literary text, is, in the first place, a text determined
and overdetermined by various socio-political con-texts. The writing
that is history is premised on a paradigm of readings that is produced

September 2006 Vol. 8 No. 1

88 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

within a discursive formation. Citing nationalist vanguards in Philippine

historiography, namely, Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Renato E.
Constantino as advocates and exemplars of what Lumbera envisions
to be the rightful paradigm of reading Philippine history, the critic
writes:

Changes in the way we read political and economic

history during the last fifteen years have resulted in A History
of the Filipino People by Teodoro A. Agoncillo and The
Philippines: A Past Revisited by Renato E. Constantino. In
1960, Agoncillo broke away from established historiography
by interpreting past events in the Philippines from the point
of view of Filipinos who emerged as a people towards the
end of the 19th century. (1997: 3)

While he champions Agoncillo’s paradigm of reading Philippine

history from the point of view of the Filipino as a national category
(in contrast to a universal Subjectivity that is, Lumbera asserts,
colonial), Lumbera believes that a clear understanding of who
constitutes the category “Filipino people” is of utmost importance.
Within the discursive dynamics of the Philippine social formation that,
for Lumbera, is essentially colonial and neo-colonial, the critic knows
that this category of “the Filipino people” can be easily appropriated
to serve the interest of a hegemonic group in a social formation that
is, empirically, by classification of ethnicity or citizenship, “Filipino.”
It is at this critical point of definition that Lumbera moves from
Agoncillo to Constantino, who defines his historiography in contrast
to Agoncillo’s thus, and from which Lumbera quotes:

But beyond writing Philippine history from the point

of view of the Filipino, the task is to advance to the writing
of a truly Filipino history, the history of the Filipino people.
This means that the principal focus must be on the
anonymous masses of individuals and on the social forces
generated by their collective lives and struggles (cited 1997: 3).

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 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 89

When Lumbera mentions history’s “impact . . . on the culture of

the Filipinos” and his adherence to Constantino’s writing “towards a
people’s history,” Lumbera knows that history is not simply a text in
the constative sense of the term. As a text and con-text of the Filipino
people in the performative sense– rehearsed and reinforced powerfully
through the institution of education – history in-forms and positions
the Filipinos’ understanding/under-standing of themselves or their
sense of selves as Subjects.
For Lumbera, a definition of the Filipino Subjectivity as a
discursive production in history should not fail to account for the
dialectics and politics at play in the production and reproduction of
this national Subjectivity in history. This subjectivity is not one among
various subjectivities that are in a state of peaceful co-existence with
the others. The definition of this national Subjectivity, in the Philippine
con-text, is by itself an act of assertion against various impositions of
colonialism in Philippine history on this subject of the Filipino. In
other words, history as a critical factor in the definition, assertion, and
positioning of the Filipino Subjectivity should be, for Lumbera,
strategically mobilized as a text s/cited as one in perpetual agon with
the impositions of colonial con-texts.
With the Filipino’s simultaneous Subjectivity and subjectivity in
mind, as well as the understanding of the critical function of history
in the production of this S/subjectivity, Lumbera foregrounds the
textuality of history as a writing, and thus, the necessity of the activity
of Filipinos as readers and re-writers of that text of a Philippine history,
as inextricable from its colonial con-text. In other words, the paradigm
of viewing history as text and colonial con-text is, for Lumbera, a
liberating premise underlying acts of national assertion.
Since it is history as a narrative and writing that positions the
Filipino S/subjectivity and its understanding of its Self, through the
act of defining a national tradition or culture, “national tradition” or
“national culture” as a historical and discursive product should not be
taken as an unproblematic given. Like history, this text called “national
tradition and culture” is a discursive production. Being a text within
the socio-political dynamics of a social formation, “national tradition

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90 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

and culture” – like history – is an easy target of appropriation by the

dominant culture whose interest lies in the perpetuation of that culture’s
hegemony in the social formation.
Within this con-text of understanding concerning the textuality
of the national tradition and culture, I find, in Lumbera, three
imperatives for Filipinos as readers and re-inscribers of “history”: (1)
to assert the presence of a native culture before the incursions of
colonialism in order to mark that presence as a basis of defiance against
colonial impositions by obliterations; (2) to enact a contrapuntal
hermeneutics in order to bring out the notes and themes of
appropriation and containment on the definition of the national culture
that, by implication, silences the native voice of assertion; and lastly,
as a conclusion by way of going back to an earlier premise, (3) to
foreground the element of struggle against a colonial cultural order.
Lumbera exemplifies the first imperative by providing in his
“revised history of Philippine literature” a substantial section that
accounts for the presence of “Philippine literature before the advent
of colonialism” (1997: 5-8). On these pages, Lumbera discusses the
folk epics, lyric poetry, and folklore that comprise the bulk of Philippine
pre-colonial literature. The implication and assertion is clear: the
claim of the so-called “mission civilatrice” attending the act of
colonization is untenable and intolerable.
In another essay on the centrality of the knowledge/power of
native culture, “Ang Pagpasok sa Lumang Kultura” (2000), Lumbera
asserts that another crucial factor that imperils the Filipino Subjectivity
is the Subject’s alienation from its native culture while sited in the
enticing presence and promise of the “new” colonial culture. Lumbera
explains this alienation in relation to an effective ideological state
apparatus of colonialism that is education:

Bunga ng kolonyal na edukasyon ang kalayuang

naramdaman ng kabataang Filipino sa kultura ng kanilang
mga ninuno. Pinapaniwala sila na ang pag-unlad ng bayan
ay nakasingkaw sa “bago,” at ang tatak ng pagiging edukado
ay ang pag-agapay sa lahat ng “bago” na unang nasaksihan
sa Kanluranin. (2000: 139)

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 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 91

In a scene of contrast, Lumbera depicts the radical decade of the

sixties that emphasizes the detrimental effect – to the positionings of
the Filipino Subjectivity – of the Filipino’s sense of alienation in the
presence of native cultural productions.

May bagong kamalayang nabuksan noong dekada 60.

Unti-unting kinilala ng mga intelektuwal na napalayo sila sa
sariling kultura bunga ng kanilang edukasyon. Noon
nagsimulang kulayan ng politika ang pananaw ng mga
manlilikha at ng mga iskolar. Naganap ang pagkamulat ng
mga intelektuwal sa di-halatang panlulupig ng kulturang
imperyalista ng Estados Unidos. At naging malaganap ang
kilusang makabayan, nagluwal ito ng mga organisasyong
pangkultura na sa sari-sariling paraan ay nagpanukala ng
pagkalas sa gapos ng kolonyal na kultura upang kamtin ang
pambansang identidad. (2000: 140)

Since national tradition and culture is constituted by and

constitutive of Philippine history as text and colonial con-text,
Lumbera sees the assertion of the presence of native culture as a
correlative act against colonial imposition and silencing. Going back
to the Martial Law period of the seventies that enacted violent
containment measures against nationalist clamors, Lumbera mentions
the connection between the cultural activity of identifying and asserting
a native culture (carried out, specifically, by the Cultural Research
Association of the Philippines), on the one hand, and the ethos of
nationalist protest enlivening it, on the other.

Sa panahong ang Pilipinas ay ipinailalim sa diktadurang

itinayo ng Batas Militar, nagsimulang salaminin ng
iskolarship sa kultura ang hibo ng politika ng Unang Sigwa.
Marahil, ang panunupil ng Batas Militar sa militanteng
likhang-sining ay may kinalaman sa paglago ng mga pag-
aaral sa kultura. Ang organisasyong Cultural Research
Association of the Philippines (CRP) ay tumipon sa ilang

September 2006 Vol. 8 No. 1

92 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

akademiko at iskolar sa buwanang mga pulong nito, at naging

daluyan ito ng makabayang pagbasa sa kasaysayan ng
kulturang Filipino. Bukod pa sa buwanang pulong, lumibot
ang isang grup ng mga propesor sa iba-ibang kolehiyo at
unibersidad sa Kamaynilaan na may dalang serye ng panayam
tungkol sa kultura ng lipunan. (2000: 140)

While claims to national tradition and culture could be potentially

liberating to the Filipino S/subjectivity in that the former defines “the
national identity” for the latter, there are claims that write the text of
that tradition – as well as the Filipino S/subjects subscribing to the
text – out of that space of national assertion. The dangers of these
claims, Lumbera believes, stem from an eternalization, thus,
fossilization of these tenets, of identity beyond the textuality of history.
In the essay, “ ‘Our National Tradition’ and the Changing Times,”
Lumbera dis-courses the national tradition defined by Reverend Father
Horacio de la Costa, S.J. (1916-1977), the first Filipino Provincial
General of the Society of Jesus in the Philippines and a recognized
authority in Philippine and Asian culture and history, by subjecting
the five principles constituting de la Costa’s definition or “staging” of
the Philippine national tradition to crucial interrogation concerning
the pertinence of these principles in the light of a Philippine social
formation in the stage of asserting its Self against the colonial terror
rustling out there.

In the five principles that Fr. De la Costa has so

perceptively elucidated, we have a set of values that
historical events have not made obsolete. We need to live
by pagsasarili, pakikisama, pagkakaisa, pagkabayani and
pakikipagkapwa-tao as our leaders in the past did. As a people
we have been shaped by these values, and we can see our
way through to the future under their guidance. (1997: 52)

Lumbera proceeds to discuss the implications of the elucidation

or reading of the five principles made by de la Costa:

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 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 93

Fr. De la Costa has not been content to leave his

elucidation on the level of analysis. He would also muster
the five principles toward a thesis pertaining to choices that
we have to make as a people seeking change. Thus, he
assigns to pagsasarili an economic interpretation that points
to a guideline in our people’s choice between collectivism
and free enterprise. Pakikisama is also subjected to a similar
interpretation. When he calls attention, in discussing
pagkakaisa, to the insistence on reason in the quotations
from Mabini, Jacinto, Bonifacio and Guinaldo, he gives the
word “reason” the connotation of caution and moderation.
And when he speaks of “a process of free discussion and .
. . the exercise of a certain reasonableness,” I understand
that he wants to mediate between the extremes represented
by the advocates of National Democracy, on the one hand,
and by the forces of our present free enterprise society, on
the other. (1997: 52-53)

Lumbera challenges the discursive appropriation made by de la

Costa in his enumerations and definitions of what constitute the
national tradition by, first, relativizing the tenets of the 19th century
historical con-text of European bourgeois liberalism, from where those
principles were derived; and second, redefining the concept of national
tradition by situating it squarely within the con-text of American
colonialism, which is different from the Spanish system of rule.
According to Lumbera:

The values of the leaders of the Revolution of 1896

were a legacy of 19th century European bourgeois liberalism.
They were the weapons available to those leaders and quite
adequate for the purposes of the struggle they were waging
against the Spanish masters. But tradition, as I understand
it, is constantly changing. It changes as conditions change,
and the conditions did change in the struggle for liberation
after the Americans replaced the Spaniards as our colonial
masters. (1997: 53)

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94 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

The following paragraph expresses Lumbera’s view of the text

of American colonialism in contrast to the Spanish colonial text. This
paragraph highlights a sentiment and perspective that underlies
Lumbera’s critical production, that is, to stage (as it has been discussed
so far) the Filipino nation and its appearance in S/subjectivity in a
strategically transgressive light:

Our experience under the American type of colonialism

should modify our interpretation of the national tradition,
even the hierarchy of principles embodying that tradition.
The educational system brought into the country by
Americans was a painless and devastatingly effective tool
for subjugation. Smarting from the refusal of the Spaniards
to teach Filipinos Spanish, we were only too grateful to learn
the language of the Americans. The far-reaching
consequences of our eagerness to learn the language of the
new masters, we have only begun to see clearly. Education
under the new regime distorted the Filipino’s historical
perspective. We forgot too soon, as Mrs. Nakpil sometime
ago reminded us, that the Americans were enemies. And so
we continued to remember our struggle for independence
against Spain, and continued to live by a tradition of
liberalism evolved while fighting the Spaniards. We failed
to note, it seems, that history had given us new enemies and
that we needed to adapt new strategies to cope with the
maneuvers of these new enemies. As a consequence, we
were defenseless against the blandishments of American
cultural domination which committed our people and our
economic resources almost irrevocably to foreign control.
(1997: 53)

Lumbera’s critical inquiry of de la Costa’s discursive production

of “the national tradition” points to the immobilizing gesture of
positioning and circumscribing the Filipino Subjectivity within the
parameters of the economically and/or culturally elite Subjects. Such

Vol. 8 No. 1
 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 95

a definition of the national tradition obliterates traces of the havoc

colonialism has wreaked upon the vast majority of Filipinos who are
victims of the colonial maneuvering of the country’s economic
resources. De la Costa’s stage and staging of the national tradition –
by implication of subject positioning – dampens the drive towards
decolonization. According to Lumbera:

Painfully it has dawned on us that those of us upstairs

have lost contact with those on the ground floor. Lulled by
our experience with mobility at the top, we have deceived
ourselves into thinking that all those below have been moving
along with us. Awaking from our self-deceptions, we might
consider a more dynamic interpretation of our national
tradition. (1997: 54)

De la Costa’s enumeration of the five principles defining the

Filipino’s national tradition are polite and gentle words: pagsasarili,
pakikisama, pagkakaisa, pagkabayani, and pakikipagkapwa-tao. In the
face of colonial bombardments, the Filipino Subjectivity as a position
is immobilized with these words (or “w-orders” as Gemino H. Abad
puts it) of gentility and civility. Lumbera mentions another instance
of a colonial im-position:

The absence of an equivalent for “demand” in Tagalog

may be interpreted as proof that the Tagalogs are an
inherently polite, gentle people. On the other hand, we
might look at it too in this light – that Tagalogs have been
deferring to masters for so long that the language has not
evolved a suitable word for the act of asking for what is
properly one’s due. In short, we have been living under the
illusion, fostered by our miseducation, that we are free agents
when actually we have remained colonials all along. (1997:
54)

In what light should the Filipino view and dis-course on/from

such “national tradition” – writing that it is, of history and in history?

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96 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

Without any ambiguity or hesitation, Lumbera states: “Perhaps the

only national tradition that we should honor is that which would hasten
our own personal decolonization, and that of the rest of our
countrymen” (1997: 54). And given this paradigm of interpreting
what should define the text of Philippine national tradition, Lumbera
foregrounds the centrality of struggle against colonial impositions as
the structuring principle of reading the country’s literary and cultural
productions, as well as of appraising the significance and aesthetic
value of these productions. This paradigm of reading and appraisal
finds itself staging literature’s constitution in history as a constituted
as well as a constitutive entity unraveling in “stages.”

Literature’s Constitution in History and Stages

In contrast to a conceptual framework that subscribes to: (1)

history as an unproblematic given of “what happened” and “what was
there”; and (2) literature as a universal aesthetic category and
production defined as a product of history that is, at the same time, if
“good,” also an instance of historical transcendence into the universals
of things – Lumbera’s critical paradigm provides a glaring contrast of
difference and defamiliarization. Lumbera’s kritika foregrounds the
textuality of history and sees it as a text and colonial con-text that
constitutes the S/subjectivities of the Filipino people. Putting
literature on the same plane of textuality as history/historical writing
that names a nation and defines a national tradition, Lumbera sets the
stage for literature and gives it a more dialectical role in history. Neither
simply a product of history in the passive and mirror-reflective sense,
nor a production that walks the path of historical transcendence via
the route of a priori (read: ahistorical) category of aesthetics – literature,
for Lumbera, is literally and conceptually a writing that is a text
constituted by the con-text of history, while at the same time,
constitutive of this history-writing. That is to say that as writing,
history is perceived as a dynamic entity that opens and closes itself to
movements of significations and signifying practices – like literature
– defining the socio-political con-text. Thus, in the schema of staging

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“history as writing” and “writing as history,” Lumbera makes a double

assertion of emphasizing history as a movement in stages and of
foregrounding literature – its production, reception, and aesthetics in
history – as a great refusal to any gestures of fixation and eternalization.
For Lumbera, fixation (e.g. of Philippine literature as primarily
writings in Spanish and English) and eternalization (e.g. of aesthetic
norms) are colonial charges at the expense of Philippine literature and
culture in the broad sense of the term, with heavy implications for the
nation’s dialectics of S/subjectivity.
In this paradigm of staging both Philippine history and literature
as texts that, among other functions, construct – for better or for worse
– subject positions for the natives, Lumbera moves with resolute
conviction to write a Philippine literary history that presents the
country’s diverse streams of literary productions as leading towards
“one, single history” (1997: 4). And in his own words concerning the
“strategic mobilization” towards “one, single history” of Philippine
literature, Lumbera writes: “Philippine literature demands to be read
as a record of the Filipino people’s struggle to define for themselves
the values that would allow them to cope with the forces that had
conditioned and continue to condition their collective lives” (1997:
61).
It must be noted that in the quote cited above, specifically in his
reference to the struggle of the Filipino people as a collective native
identity, Lumbera points unambiguously and repeatedly to the colonial
forces and conditions as the object of the nation’s agon. Here and
from here, Lumbera is not simply presenting an-Other mode of writing
Philippine literary history. In fact, he is deriving and defining an
aesthetics for Philippine literature from and by writing this literary
history. “Such a comprehensive view [of seeing literary works from
various regions as ‘component parts of one, single history’] reveals
that the high points of Philippine literature are presented by works resulting
from the struggle of the Filipino people to assert their native culture against the
culture of the colonizing power” (1997: 4; my italics).
With this critical view of seeing the history of Philippine literature
as a story of the Filipino people’s assertion of native identity against

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colonial definitions and fixations, Lumbera names and canonizes “the

nationalist literary tradition.” This tradition has Francisco Balagtas’s
Florante at Laura and Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo
as cornerstone works. While Balagtas’s metrical romance bears the
status of nationalist significance by virtue of attribution of subsequent
readings and significations, Rizal’s two novels “formally” set the
nationalist theme for eventual variations of later writers as they
“improvise” towards the coda of national liberation. Given the
importance of this tradition in the critic’s writing of the nation and
the former’s bearing on Philippine literary aesthetics (which will be
discussed later in this section), Lumbera’s explication of the tradition’s
founding moment in the dialectics between the two canonical writers,
on the one hand, and colonial history, on the other, will provide the
readers with a benchmark of Lumbera’s key points of observation
and valuation (for a revaluation in the next section).

By the time the Propaganda Movement was reaching

its peak in articulating the grievances of young native
intellectuals, Florante at Laura had become much more than
a love story replete with anachronisms in time and setting –
it had been turned, by the agency of popular form, the
reformists’ own condemnation of colonial abuses in the
nineteenth century.
It was the achievement of Rizal in his two richly-
detailed realistic novels about contemporary conditions in
the Philippines of his time that firmly set the direction for
the development of a nationalist tradition in Philippine
literature. Noli Me Tangere (1887) and El Filibusterismo (1891)
. . . asserted the right of a colonized people to be treated
with justice and dignity, and showed the consequences for
both the colonized and the colonizer when that right is
withheld. (1997: 72)

While naming the nationalist literary tradition (subsequently

constituted by such literary luminaries as Juan Abad, Lazaro Francisco,

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Amado V. Hernandez, and Edgardo M. Reyes, among others) as the

dominant tradition defining “good” and “great” Philippine writing,
Lumbera does not give the impression that Philippine literary history
from the founding moment began to move without hurdles along the
highway of nationalist assertion. In fact, he cites the emergence of a
major sidetrack and setback that drew the nationalist journey down
the “academic” path leading eventually to an “erosion of nationalist
consciousness.” This debilitating detour was brought about by the
allurement posed by a gentle academic course of study: literary theory
and criticism, or, more precisely, formalist criticism. In “Breaking
Through and Away,” Lumbera cites the entry point – chronologically
and discursively speaking – of “criticism” thus:

Philippine criticism, as the formal study in English or

the vernacular, of a literary work for the purpose of
elucidating its content and method, came to the Philippines
with the advent of U. S. colonialism. As such, its concerns
and approaches had been directed by political motives,
ideological rationalizations and cultural assumptions of the
colonizer as these were communicated to Filipino students
through the educational system which employed English as
the medium of instruction. In high school where literary
taste began to be formed, textbooks . . . provided readings
from English and American Literature, sometimes selected
with an eye on what the colonizer had assumed to be the
interest and needs of young Filipinos. The same pattern
obtained in college where such textbooks . . . continued to
cultivate a taste for writing from English and the United
States. (1997: 55)

And what Lumbera would consider the reversal of fortune began

when this colonial system of teaching literature and fashioning literary
taste started a chain of reading – subsequently, writing – practices
that aborted the concerns for the socio-political con-texts of literature
as well as the attending implications of these con-texts to literary
appreciation, judgment, or, in short, aesthetics.

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100 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

In tracing the beginnings of literary criticism to the

classrooms of the American Occupation, one will begin to
understand why there had persisted in Philippine criticism a
tendency to evaluate Philippine Literature as though it had
been written under the same conditions that obtain in
Western societies. The overwhelming number of stories,
poems and plays that Filipino students of literature studied
in Philippine high schools and colleges was of Western origin.
Selections were analyzed and discussed in accordance with
the literary theories that shaped the thinking and style of
the authors who pursued their craft within the premises of
their respective societies. Since knowledge of Western
society could only be secondhand to the majority of students,
it was not surprising that the intimate nexus between artistic
creation and social realities was often missed and what was
emphasized instead was the “universality” of the experience
embodied in the literary works.

[. . .]

Conditions created by colonialism thus made Philippine

criticism most receptive to the formalist approach to
literature on which New Criticism (brought into the
Philippines from U. S. universities after the Pacific War)
conferred academic recognition and intellectual
sophistication. . . . Authors, particularly writer-critics, were
quick to perceive what had been done or being done in
Western writing, and were impelled to duplicate the matter
and manner of Western authors by their zeal to make up,
through their works, for what was seen as missing in
Philippine Literature. (1997: 55-56, 57)

In other words, for Lumbera, the formalist criticism fostered by

colonial educational system not only canonized a body of Western
authors; it also institutionalized a code of aesthetics and reading/

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writing practices “in-forming” the Filipino S/subjects. This

canonization and institutionalization, in Lumbera’s view, made the
dialectics of Philippine S/subjectivity vulnerable in two major ways:
Firstly, historically speaking, it led to the privileging of Philippine
literature in English as the Philippine literature. The case is
understandable: it was this body of writings in English that deliberately
worked its way to, and eventually, in the context of the tradition and
aesthetics of, writings in English (be they British or “American”). These
Filipino writers, through time, became exemplars and knight templars
of the “English” or colonial aesthetic code. Given their sphere of
writing and discursive influences that is the academia, these writers –
through their professions and vocations as teachers, scholars, critics,
and authors of textbooks – disseminated the gospel of good writing
(and what made or broke it). The result: a distorted perception –
built through time – that Philippine literature in English would be the
future of Philippine literature in terms of the former’s presupposed
“seriousness” in “craft” and “artfulness,” in contrast to the other native
writings in vernacular languages. The matter is elaborated thus:

In this connection, it is necessary to undo the general

misconception that the history of Philippine Literature
revolves around the achievements of our writers in English.
Because they have been the more articulate and
knowledgeable critics and literary historians, intellectuals
writing about Philippine writing in English have been able
to give this branch of Philippine Literature a nationwide
and even international projection. (1997: 90)

Secondly, and from the quote cited, it would not take much
imagination to infer that the second consequence of privileging the
Western aesthetic code Philippine writing in English worked in
accordance with, was the marginalization of Philippine vernacular
literatures. According to Lumbera, “with the emergence of Filipino
writing in English, vernacular writing suffered a loss of stature and
was consigned to the level of ‘popular’ publications interested only in

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entertaining or pacifying audiences” (1997: 76). The “fall” of vernacular

writing marked not only the rise of writing in English to the status of
“mythology” in the Barthesian sense, but also the devaluation of
vernacular writing and whatever it represents in terms of themes,
forms, traditions, and aesthetics. Writing in 1977 on “The Rugged
Terrain of Vernacular Literature,” Lumbera amplified the connection
between colonial education and the deplorable state of scholarship
on matters “Philippine,” specifically, on literature in the regional
languages.

When a Filipino enters a Philippine library, he should

come into contact with books by Filipinos and about the
Philippines. However, thanks to the institution known as
Filipiniana, it is possible to be a book worm in any of our
better libraries and still be completely ignorant of the literary
and scholarly works by Filipinos.
Of course, it is true that available works by Filipino
scholars and men of letters are hardly enough to fill a fair-
sized room in a system which effectively stifles creativity
and productiveness among intellectuals lured by the promise
of a “universal audience” through English into frittering
away their talent and energy on learned topics in Western
literature . . . . The same educational system discourages
many from gathering together works by Filipinos for
purposes of serious study by insisting on the study only of
literature that has “withstood the test of time,” meaning
the masterpieces of the great master writers of the Western
world.
By impressing on Filipino students what really mattered
was Western expertise if they wished to be scholars or critics,
our colonial education succeeded in devaluating native
culture and its link with a past that was seen as “backward”
and “narrow” and, in lieu of this, promoted a culture that
was projected as “modern” and “universal” and therefore
“valid for all times and climes.” (1997: 88)

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In this scenario of what Renato Constantino calls “the

miseducation of the Filipinos” in English (here, in Lumbera, to mean
both the linguistic and the discursive sense), the Filipino “reader,”
consequently, finds two roads diverged on this brown, native earth.
Whichever path s/he takes, s/he is bound to misrecognize S/
subjectivity. S/he may align this with what Lumbera disparagingly
calls “the cultural elite,” and be alienated from the native literary
production, since the latter, owing to its difference in tradition,
represents what is aesthetically disdainful. Or s/he may consider this
one of those innumerable entities in the category of the Filipino masses,
and unwittingly subscribe to the binary of writing in English as artistic
productions s/he is not equipped to understand and appreciate, and
writing in the vernacular tongue as “popular” texts for mindless
consumption. Whichever road s/he takes, the implication to Philippine
literary aesthetics is disastrous. How, then, can s/he get out of this
maze of presupposedly irrefutable aesthetic code passed on by the
“Western benefactors,” alongside the con-texts of Philippine writings
in English and the vernacular?
On this question, Lumbera unwaveringly puts his foot down and
declares the native literary tradition the ultimate arbiter of good
aesthetic taste. Consistent with Lumbera’s logic in foregrounding the
textuality of history and literature, the “laying bare” of “literature”
and “aesthetics” as texts and constructs relativizes and puts between
inverted commas pronouncements against vernacular writing in terms
of the latter’s not being literature enough. For Lumbera, it is clear
that a literary work is produced by and within a tradition that long
existed before the former finds itself an “individual talent.” This
tradition is shaped by a confluence of socio-political as well as cultural
factors in history. The “Western” tradition, like this native tradition,
is a construct within certain historical specificities. Thus, it is but
logical to say that the rightful umpire of what is good literature, that
is, good Philippine literature, cannot and should not be ignorant of
the literary tradition that in-forms the literary text in the first place.
And in this context, Lumbera believes in the imperative of defining
the various native literary traditions – a critical act he exemplifies in

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his doctoral dissertation in 1967, which was published in 1986 as

Tagalog Poetry, 1570-1898: Tradition and Influences in Its Development. (It
must be noted that it is in view of the disparity of his critical vision
and the deplorable state of scholarship in vernacular literature that
Lumbera proposed an inquiry into “The Rugged Terrain of Vernacular
Literature” earlier cited).
To balance the scale of aesthetic judgment on Philippine literature
with the weight of tradition on the one side, Lumbera proposes the
question of “for whom?” to rest on the other end. The question,
originally raised by Mao Tse Tung in his “Talks at the Yennan Forum,”
is an apt reminder that literature – whatever it is construed to be –
becomes meaningful and beautiful if it can reach out and break new
ground in the consciousness of the masses that constitute 90% of the
Philippine populace. To put in another way: literature (in the traditional
sense of works acknowledged as literary or in its broad sense of film
and comics writing) becomes good if it can, through its own “writing”
or “discourse,” offer liberating subject positions for the Filipino readers
(in the broad sense of the term).
To cast this aesthetic criteria in closer proximity to the readers
and its attending implication of liberating subject positioning in a more
substantively positive light, it helps to point out certain facets of the
category and judgment of the following in relation to defining the
category of “aesthetics”: society, literature, and the people/readers
at large. Lumbera’s depiction of contrast provides an invigorating
context for the reinstitution of the Filipino readers in matters of
defining aesthetics:

. . . Acquiring literacy under the educational system

set up by the colonizers, our writers in particular learned to
think and write as the thinkers they studied and wrote.
Contemporary Philippine society has been graphically
presented as a pyramid, of which the 90% base is composed
by farmers, workers and the unemployed. With their income
level way below what is universally acknowledged to be
adequate to keep body and soul together, most Filipinos do

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not have the education, much less the leisure, to appreciate

literature produced according to Western norms. When
commentators on Philippine Literature remark on
“relevance,” they are merely pointing up the obvious, namely,
that much of the writing our writers have been doing hardly
relates, if at all, to the basic needs of its supposed audience.
It ought to be apparent that a good part of our literature has
been addressed to a minority that cannot claim to represent
the entire Filipino people.
. . . Art has not always been a property of the elite in
society. In history, art had progressively narrowed down its
audience as a given society moved towards a more complex
economic structure which fragmented social components
into specialized sectors. Under a simple structure, art was a
community affair at which presided an artist or artists who
did not see themselves as separate from the audience that
found pleasure or profit in their songs, poems or tales. . . .
[A]rt has not always been for an elite, and one should not
mistake the state into which art has evolved as its immutable
nature. (1997: 95)

It must be noted, however, that in defining this general aesthetic

criterion in conjunction with a literature that spells a close affinity to
the general Filipino readers, Lumbera is not arguing the case for one
literary form, style, theme, and aesthetics that would not change. In
fact, Lumbera foregrounds the “bago” or, literally, the “new” in writing.
In the essay, “Ang Bago sa Pagbabago: Paano Kinikilala ang Bago sa
Panitikan, Kritisismo at Pagtuturo?,” Lumbera writes: “Ang ‘bago’ ay
ang umiba sa luma, at sa pag-ibang iyon ay nakapagdudulot ng kaalaman
at kabatiran na hindi pa natin alam at batid” (2000: 173). Literature
as a writing, a category, a construct, or a stage, changes in relation to
its con-texts. The staging of literature and the valuation accorded it
should not be seen as a final, immovable set. The challenge posed by
“staging” literature is, in the first place, to relativize whatever dogma
threatens to immobilize the native literary production and to impede

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it from developing and charting new artistic and thematic terrains.

The hope offered by “staging” literature alongside its various con-
texts is the promise of evolving “stages” for both the category of
literature and its con-texts (history as historiography being one such
text). Lumbera describes the “new” writing thus:

Umuusad sa pagsulong na yugto ang panitikan bunga

ng pagsisikap ng mga manlilikha na ihanap ng apirmasyon
ang kanilang pagkamalikhain sa pamamagitan ng mga
akdang “umiiba” sa nangauna. Nagiging mayaman ang panitikan
– dumarami ang mga anyo, lumalalim ang temang hinuhugot sa
materya na pinagtiyagaang liripin ng awtor dahil sa pangangailangang
tuklasin ng mga manunulat ang “iba.”
[Ang “bago”] ang mohon na nagpapakilala na ang
kasaysayan ay sumulong, at napapanahon nang suriin ang
mga pamantayang pinatatag ng paulit-ulit na paglalapat sa
mga akdang maluwag sukatin. (2000: 173-174; my italics)

It must be noted that while Lumbera, in the conclusion of that

essay, would not want to go to the extent of asserting that the “new”
in writing is a denotation of quality and a definition of an aesthetic
yardstick, I believe – contrary to Lumbera’s disavowal – that the “new”
writing as an “evolving” text in con-texts is – in the light of the
discussion above (and in the next section) concerning Lumbera’s
discourse of aesthetic judgment in relation to the people of a particular
class and race – not far from an assertion of an aesthetic judgment as
well as the trajectory of such a judgment given aesthetics’ nature as
construct in con-text.
To substantiate my contention, I will cite Lumbera’s usage of the
Filipino word dating. This word, I believe, sums up Lumbera’s view of
an aesthetics for Philippine literature in particular, and culture, in
general. In the essay, “ ‘Dating’: Panimulang Muni sa Estetika ng
Panitikang Filipino,” Lumbera seeks to establish the basis of an
aesthetics for the Filipinos. The word has the denotation and
connotation of both appeal and impact. For a work to be good, it

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must have dating. For one to feel and appreciate the appeal and impact,
one must be rooted strongly in the knowledge of the literary tradition
from which the work is produced. On this point, the centrality of
tradition, and the knowledge/power that tradition signifies are
emphasized. Furthermore, for one to feel the impact of that literary
work, that writing has to be able to relate to the reader as a historical
subject, and cannot afford to rehearse on something once “new.” Lastly,
for literary writing as a whole to continue to have an impact on the
community of readers, it should not and cannot entertain the prospect
of staying and thriving on “the same impact.” In other words, the
writers, the readers, the literary writings, the tradition, and the national
writing at large – all have the mandate to grow and evolve alongside
each other. And this thought, I believe, is the essence of Lumbera’s
aesthetics.

Lumbera on Revaluation

If Lumbera’s aesthetics of literature is premised on the terms of

history as a text; the category and value of literature as a construct
and a relation; and the significance, thus beauty, of literature at large
as a defining and evolving text of intervention in the signification and
in the signifying practices writing the nation and positioning the
national S/subjects – why would Lumbera resist (though not without
traces of tension in articulation in his kritika) the statement of the
“new” writing (as he defines it and cited above) as an aesthetic valuation
of the beautiful? His sympathetic passage towards the so-called new
writing is worth a re-view:

Ang paglitaw ng bago sa panitikan ay hindi natural gaya

ng ipinahihiwatig ng talinghaga ng pagsibol ng halaman na
madalas gamitin ng mga romantikong komentarista upang
tukuyin ang pag-unlad ng panitikan. Ang anumang pagsalungat
sa kinaugalian, ang anumang pahiwalay sa landas na
kinahiratihan, ang anumang pagtatakwil sa luma, ay ginagamitan
ng dahas ng umiibang manlilikha at tinutugon naman ng dahas ng

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lipunang takot sa pagbabago. Bunga ng sinadyang pagkilos ang

“bagong” akda, at ang tagumpay nito sa pagpapakilos sa iba
pang manlilikha ay siyang nagtutulak sa panitikan upang umusad
tungo sa hinaharap. (2000: 172; italics added)

On the one hand, while Lumbera acknowledges the literary,

critical and social “frames” that the so-called new writing has to find a
way into in order to enact the critical gesture of breaking the frame,
he levels a warning against interchanging the “new form” of writing
with the valuation of worthy and quality writing:

Ang “bago” ay hindi terminong nagpapakilala ng

kalidad. Ibig sabihin, hindi dahil at “bago” ang isang akda
ay mahahaka nang mas mahusay, mas magaling o mas
masining ito kaysa “luma.” Ang tanging isinasaad ng termino
ay ang “kaibhan” ng akda batay sa panahon at sa katangian.
Iba pang usapin ang kuwestiyon ng kalidad. (2000: 175)

The tension between these two points of the “new” on the one
hand, and of its relation to and denotation of aesthetic value on the
other, in fact, opens up a critical (and on hindsight, a productive) fault
or “space between” (to use Abad’s term) on the seismic ground of
Philippine kritika. The tension, I believe, arises from a critical “fault”
of under-standing on the nature and role of “form.” Or, to put it in
another way, the tension becomes conspicuous when a certain under-
standing of the “form” in the “form and content” dynamics in literature
meets up or collides with the fact of literature as a writing, a discourse,
a signifying practice, or, in other words, a form of textual cohesion.
Firstly, “form” is, oftentimes, in Lumbera’s critical discourse,
accorded the identity and value of a “medium” of signification. And,
thus, form is a “vessel” and “vassal” in the service of the worthy
content of Philippine reality and realization. The following two
passages will highlight this critical tendency towards the signification
of form as regards its relation to content in significance.

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The first one provides an account of: (1) the entry of New
Criticism into Philippine literature; (2) Lumbera’s binary valuation on
the aesthete-poet writing in English, Jose Garcia Villa, in relation to
the “major” writers writing in the nationalist literary tradition; and (3)
the “necessity” (vs. relativity) of “skill and craftsmanship” as form.

The entry of New Criticism into Philippine Literature

may be traced to the return from American universities of
Filipino writers and teachers who brought back with them a
sophisticated critical method resting on the assumption that
a literary work is primarily a construct of words. The New
Criticism had the effect of giving academic respectability
to Villa’s aestheticism by making it more concrete and
comprehensive. Thus, it became a justification for writing
that abandoned the traditional social role assigned to it by
the works of the Propaganda Movement and the Revolution
of 1896. On the positive side, it inculcated in the writers
the necessity for skill and craftsmanship so that a literary
work would create its intended effect. (1997: 30)

The second passage, from “An Approach to the Filipino Film,”

discusses the nature and relation of form and content in the text of
“film” this way:

There is nothing ostensibly wrong with applying

“universal” norms in judging the worth of Filipino film art.
Putting a film together, whether done in the U. S. or Senegal,
involves the same principles of directing, acting, photographing,
editing, etc. However, a film is not merely an interplay of
light and shadow, of movement and stillness, or of sound
and silence. It is about something, and this something is
rooted in the realities of the society which produced the
film. Subject matter, after all, is always particular, and it is for
this reason that the aesthetic criteria applied to American films
do not always apply to Filipino films. (1997: 194; italics
added)

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110 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

The second passage provides a clearer statement of Lumbera’s

understanding of form – an understanding that manifests an
unproblematized knowledge and acceptance of form as a homogeneous
and neutral add-on entity of “sameness.” Moreover, it emphasizes
that it is the subject matter or the “reality content” that defines the
“significance” of the text. And it is this critical understanding that
defines and underpins his “realist orientation” (as Soledad S. Reyes
would put it), that, in turn, exalts the “realist” nationalist tradition
formally launched by Jose Rizal with the two novels that belong to the
noble lineage of realism (as cited and discussed earlier).
Secondly, Lumbera’s canonization of the “realist” orientation as
the dominant – if not, the only and inevitably proper – paradigm or
modality of representation leads him to look at texts of other modalities
as a lesser textual mode of representation, if not in an outright manner
of pronouncement, a lesser text. Given this view and granted his
nationalist frame of consciousness (of the empirical reality out there),
Lumbera cannot help but look at the phenomenon and text that is
“popular culture” (e.g. comics) – which is predominantly written in
non-realist modes – with a suspicious eye. The paragraph below, that
is of various “distinctions,” exemplifies the implication of this “realistic
thus, automatically, real” horizon of expectation to the specific act
and general sense of reading as a practice.

Popular culture as a category ought to be clearly distinguished

from “folk culture” and “national culture.” Where the latter
categories refer to what Filipinos originally had, and what
they had indigenized in the course of their history, popular
culture refers to cultural forms and their respective content, which had
been introduced from without, before these had been assimilated into
the sensibility and value-system of the people. In the Philippine
context, folk culture denotes the traditional culture that a
distinct community of people has evolved (sometimes in
isolation from others) in its struggle with nature, and in the
process of accommodation and resistance experienced by
each community in its multifarious relationships with

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outsiders. The various “folk cultures” of the Filipinos, as

“homogenized” by communication technology and especially
the action of history, serve as the variegated foundation for
“national culture.” The latter term refers to the dynamic
aggregate of ideas, traditions and institutions embodying
the values and aspirations of the people as these have been
concretized by their struggle against colonial rule and
neocolonial control. (1997: 156; italics added)

Thirdly, this critical under-standing of form as a passive medium

mediating – in the exclusive sense of “reflecting” – the history or reality
out there coexists with (if not, gives rise to) a homologous frame of
perceiving “language” as a medium or form (as it indeed is) housing a
“body” of content. This view consequently privileges Filipino, or a
Filipino language like Tagalog, and/or a vernacular language as the
rightful Philippine language of being and expression – owing to its
empirically native signifiers – in contrast to English as a colonial
language borne out of a foreign culture and thus (in the logic of
Lumbera), bearing the imprint of inability to be of use in the service
of nationalist ends without the strings of alienation attached. In other
words, based on this realist logic of the empirically given, “Filipino”
obviously (and thus, read: automatically and discursively) speaks the
native “terms” in contrast to “English.” In an essay with an
unambiguous thesis as a title, “Pagsasalin tungo sa Panahong Tapos na ang
Pagkabilanggo sa Wikang Ingles,” Lumbera puts his points against English
thus:

. . . Ang totoo, ginamit ng Estados Unidos ang Ingles

upang maipailalim sa kapang yarihan nito ang mga
mamamayang nagsuwail sa Espanya. Higit pa sa alinmang
sandata ang lakas ng wikang bilang instrumento sa
panunugpo, lalo na kung gagawin itong daluyan ng mga
kaisipan at pag papahalagang makapag papahupa at
makapapayapa sa poot at paglaban ng sambayanang
kinukkob ng dayuhan.

September 2006 Vol. 8 No. 1

112 DAVID JONATHAN Y. BAYOT

[. . .]

[S]a ngalan ng pagpapakilala sa mundo sa mga

kabataang Filipino, nangyaring naging pader na kumulong
sa mga Filipino ang wika mismong tinulay nila sa pag-angkin
sa edukasyon. Samakatwid, kinulong ng naganap na cultural
na pagkakabukod ang mga Filipino sa impormasyon,
pagpapahalaga at panlasang dulot ng Ingles. Ingles ang
wikang siyang nagbuo para sa kanila ng balangkas ng daigdig
ng sining at panitikan sa labas ng mga hangganan ng sarili
nilang bayan. (2000: 107, 108-109)

To put it in another way: within this self-effacingly formal and

realist logic and modality of thinking, Filipino, like English, while
correctly and positively understood as a discourse – social, political,
and cultural – is taken (not without a negative implication) to mean a
fixated entity confined within a certain designated continuum
characterized by immutability, rather than a space overdetermined by
crosses of texts, con-texts, and intertexts. In this case, both languages,
while sharing the same “form” as discourse – a historical one in terms
of their points of origin – are defined and confined within their own
streams of origin and are presumed to travel along their respective
paths of linearity beyond the incursive possibilities of shifting historical
plates.

Works Cited

Abad, Gémino H. The Space Between. Quezon City: University of the

Philippines Press, 1985.
Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. London: Routledge, 1980.
Lumbera, Bienvenido. Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema
and Popular Culture. Manila: Index, 1984.
_____. Tagalog Poetr y, 1570-1898: Tradition and Influences in Its
Development. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press,
1986.

Vol. 8 No. 1
 BIENVENIDO L. LUMBERA ON REVALUATION 113

_____. Abot-Tanaw: Sulyap at Suri sa Nagbabagong Kultura at Lipunan.

Manila: Linangan ng Kamalayang Makabansa, 1987.
_____. Pelikula: An Essay on Philippine Film/Pelikula: Isang Sanaysay
tungkol sa Pelikulang Pilipino. Manila: Cultural Center of the
Philippines, 1989.
_____. Revaluation 1997: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema and
Popular Culture. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 1997.
_____. Writing the Nation/Pag-akda ng Bansa. Quezon City: University
of the Philippines Press, 2000.
Lumbera, Bienvenido L., and Cynthia Nograles Lumbera, eds. Philippine
Literature: A History and Anthology. Manila: National Book Store,
1982.
_____. Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology (revised edition).
Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, 1997.
Reyes, Soledad S. The Romance Mode in Philippine Popular Literature and
Other Essays. Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1991.

September 2006 Vol. 8 No. 1

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