We had our first "Readings on Filipino Topics" discussion today. We read Katrin de Guia's "Theories of Filipino Personhood" (2008) from Kapwa: The Self in the Other. First, I was disappointed because people came at 7:00 PM instead of 6:00. And a handful of people who said they would come ended up bailing. I spent the first hour eating my dinner and playing kulintang at the Whippersnapper (Pantayo practices are held there every other Wed. when we're not meeting for the reading group so my instrument was there). But when 7:00 came around, people arrived and we had a very vigorous discussion. Our discussion about Sikolohiyang Pilipino (S.P., or Filipino Psychology) moved from trying to understand why "hiya" and "utang na loob" could possibly be interpreted as a good thing; to making connections about why we act the way we do, why our parents and relatives behave the way they do; and finally, how we could possibly reconcile our Filipino selves with our Canadian selves in the classroom, at the dining table, and in our minds. And I freaking loved it.
One of the attendees was a young filmmaker who is writing a few scripts that centred on Filipinos. Now, he has some familiarity with the topic since he's lived in the Philippines for a period of time, has read and had discussions with people about Philippine culture, and so forth. So in the beginning he kept pointing out instances of how Filipino culture is no good. How "utang na loob" could keep a person in "permanent debt" and how older Filipinos would never see a younger person as their equal, how "hiya" kept a person from advancing, etc. All very good and to him, true things, because he experienced it himself. Well, the very convenient thing is, that de Guia has an answer to these points. The fact is that most of what mainstream people think of as "Filipino psychology" has in fact, a colonial origin. de Guia, quoting Enriquez, notes that those who were teaching Filipino psychology did not make a distinction between "Psychology in the Philippines" and "Philippine psychology. The former is "Western psychology" imposed upon Filipino minds, behaviours, etc. The latter is culturally-fair psychology using methodology more in tune with the Filipino way. On top of that, according to Enriquez's "From Colonial to Liberation Psychology," when "Psychology" began to be taught at UP, most of the teachers who taught it were not Psychology majors but American-trained Filipinos who knew how to speak English well and taught from a book. Not to mention that some of the values they said Filipinos have were chosen precisely because they allowed us to be more easily controlled by the American colonial powers. For example, de Guia says, "utang na loob was singled out by the American social scientists as an important aspect of the Filipino character because it promoted the colonizers as benefactors." Eventually, throughout our history, these values that came to be recognized and identified during the American period became "common sense." That is, people started internalizing them and thinking of them as true reflections of the Filipino. So in a way, it began to corrupt our minds. It began to make us think that our culture was inferior. (Renato Constantino would call this an example of the "miseducation of the Filipino.") During the discussion I kept pushing the group to adopt some objective distance between themselves (who experience having to "answer" to their elders, cultural clash between themselves and their parents, etc.) and these values we were learning about. "What could possibly," I asked, "push generations of Filipinos over thousands of years to value things like 'utang na loob' and 'hiya,' as well as the other values listed by Enriquez like 'kapwa' and 'pakiramdam'? What good could they possibly have seen in them to continue to uphold them and pass them on to their children?" One person asked whether de Guia and Enriquez were, in a sense, creating a new generation of Filipinos who have a different value system. Another responded, is it that these values are new, or that they had always been there but were never defined or stated. I think that both of them are correct. These values of the Filipino had been there for generations, were present before colonization, continued to be there during colonization, and continues to be there. Even within us, these values remain. Even if our parents fail to teach us the Filipino language, by their behaviour and the way they are in the world, they teach us how to be like them. But, what de Guia and Enriquez and other scholars in Filipino psychology are doing are "uncovering" these values through their appropriate methodology and "legitimizing" them as Filipino values by publishing books and teaching Sikolohiyang Pilipino within the university settings (incidentally, S.P. was the first Indigenous Psychology besides Western Psychology that was taught within a university setting). And, in fact, what we were doing tonight was the same thing. By discussing S.P. and reading about them and learning about them (and hopefully, mindfully applying them in our lives, our work in the arts, in the community, and so forth), we are part of the inherently decolonizing project of S.P. It is a project that Enriquez described as a counter to the negative perception of Filipinos by non-Filipinos, and I would add, by Filipinos with a colonial mindset. //
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Just when I was getting around to internalizing (and therefore learning) the idea that an artist should be entrepreneurial, I'm struck by the question: could it be the case that educators now, in this post-economic- crisis, multicultural, globalized period, also need to be entrepreneurial? Could I possibly pull off a career as a freelance educator? Does such a thing exist?
I'm one of those lucky Millennials who was able to study the major I wanted to in University (or rather, I grew to like what I was studying, and then ended up switching my degree to focus on that which I enjoyed studying). I focused on Asian Studies, with a specialty in the Philippines (including Filipino American). So what does one do with a degree like that? On the one hand, I see the value of the things I was learning. Finding out about well-researched, culturally-fair writings on the Philippines, reading academics who write in Filipino because they understand the need to speak with other Filipinos...these are so important. This is the kind of work that is decolonizing. It counters non-Filipinos' and colonized Filipinos' negative opinion about the Philippines. But on the other hand, how exactly does one make a career in decolonizing? As I see it, there is a hunger and an excitement that I see in Filipino Canadians to learn and read anti-oppressive, anti-racist, culturally-rooted works about them. But currently there is no space where I can "teach" what I know. At the University of Toronto, about the same time that I was starting to conceptualize how I can share my new-found knowledge (gained by reading materials I had collected over the years on Filipino topics), they gathered academics together to meet and brainstorm what could be included in a class about the Philippines. So that's a cool thing that's happening within an institutional setting. But the learning about Filipino topics needs to happen now, because Filipinos are here now. And it needs to happen on the ground, with people who may not necessarily be within the walls of academia, and can't afford or can't go through the hurdles required to be in a university class. So I didn't go to those meetings at U of T. Instead, I read on my own. And what I was reading was so powerful and so satisfying. Like standing in front of a mirror and liking what I saw, when for years my reflection was always crowded with what I thought was ugly. I knew, just from being friends with Filipino artists and young people, that they would find these things important too. So when the opportunity came up to have a space where discussions can take place (through the Whippersnapper gallery, a local art space), I jumped at the chance. And I started emailing and writing Facebook statuses and telling people about this reading group, and people have been just as excited and interested as I am. But to get back to my original point, the question now is how I could earn my coin. This work is needed and I enjoy doing it but at the same time I need to eat, live, move within this capitalistic world. Currently there is no place or institution that would pay me to do this work. So that's how I got the conclusion that maybe I need to apply entrepreneurial strategies to do this work. Is it really the case that community work is always non-profit?? There must be a different model. There is also the hurdle of the pre-conceived notion that to do what you love means you don't care about the money. But I have already gone past that hurdle when I was able to equate artistic work = entrepreneurial work. You need to get paid, and it's OK to love what you're doing. And vice versa, it's OK to love what you're doing, and find ways to get paid doing it. Now, to apply that to teaching decolonizing topics to Filipinos in Canada.... I have always been of the persuasion that languages, like men, are born equal. They just grow up differently, in different households, so to speak, in different economies and cultures. Like people and countries, they grow up and grow rich, they fall into poverty, they engage in commerce (they import and export), they dominate others, they stagnate or thrive. I insist that they are never inferior, they are only sometimes afflicted with an inferiority complex in regarding themselves against others. The only way to guard against such feeling is to use any language constantly, in every manner, in all human activity--commerce, industry, science, art, love, understanding others. It is only in exercise (by being spoken and written) that language can stay alive, assert itself and become capable and robust. Otherwise, language withers and dies. Or becomes a ritual remnant like Latin (though ritual as a literary property of language is another story). |
Words, images, & fripperies by Christine Balmes unless otherwise stated. Archives
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