Neocolonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness: Essays on Cultural Decolonization

318 Pages·1978·41.274 MB·English

by  Renato Constantino

COUNHR
CONSCIOUSNESS
OH miURAl DfCOlONBATION
tSSAyS
i

NEOCOLONIAL IDENTITY
AND
COUNTER-CONSCIOUSNESS
International Library ofSocial and Political Thought
General editor Istvan Meszaros
THEYOUNG HEGEL
Luka'cs
THEPHILOSOPHYOFPRAXIS Vazquez
ANTONIOGRAMSCI Davidson
WILUAM MORRIS E. P. Thompson
MARX'S THEORYOF ALIENATION (5th edition) Mesz&os
NEOCOLONIAL IDENTITY
AND
COUNTER-CONSCIOUSNESS
Essays on Cultural Dccolonizatioii
by
RENATO CONSTANrmO
I
Edited, with an Introduction by
Istvan Meszaros
LONDON
MERLIN PRESS
©
1978 The Merlin Press
First published 1978, by The Merlin Press Ltd
3 Manchester Road, London E14
Printed by Whitstable Litho Ltd,
Whitstable, Kent
ISBN cl 85036 220 2
pb 85036 2210
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION
1
PART FACING HISTORY
I:
Identity and Consciousness:
The Philippine Experience 25
PART SOCIETY IN DEPENDENCY
II:
The Filipinos in the Philippines 95
The Filipino Elite 115
The Corrupt Society 129
The Filipino Politician 148
Society Without Purpose 165
Diplomacy Without Policy 188
PART PROSPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT
III:
Westernizing Factors in the Philippines 211
Global Enterprises and the Transfer of
Technology 227
Development in the Context of Philippine
History 246
Nationalism and Partisan Scholarship 260
Intellectuals and Activists 277
Ethics for Nationalists 292

INTRODUCTION
"We see our present with as little understanding as we
view our past because aspects of the past which could
illumine the present have been concealed from us. This
concealment has been effected by a systematic process of
mis-education characterized by a thoroughgoing inculcation
of colonial values and attitudes—a process which could not
have been so effective had we not been denied access to the
truth and to part of our written history. As a consequence,
we have become a people without a sense of history. We
accept the present as given, bereft of historicity. Because
we have so little comprehension of our past, we have no
appreciationofitsmeaningfulinterrelationwith thepresent."
Constantino Wrote these words in his introductory essay to
J.R.M. Taylor's monumental work — The Philippine
Insurrection Against the United States—dj\d they give a very
good indication of the nature of his enterprise. He is
described as a historian and political scientist. He is neither,
inthe traditionalsense ofthese terms. He is a highly selective
historian who is only interested in a "Usable Past": the
programmatic title of the last chapter of his recent History
of the Philippines.* And his concern with Political Science
is no less partisan: a synthesis of knowledge in such a way
that it should force his readers to re-examine their attitudes
to the forces and events he describes. As a Filipino reviewer
1 Monthly Review Press, New York and London, 1977. First published in
1975 by Tala Publishing Services, Quezon City, under the title: The
PhUippines: A Past Revisited. To be followed by The Continuing Past; an
equally programmatic title for the second volume which is planned toUke the
narrative from 1941 tothepresent.
1
Introduction
of a collection of his politicsd essays put it: "Constantino
addresses himself directly to our humanity, and seems to
challenge us to prove it. Indeed, 1 find Dissent and Counter-
Consciousness a moving piece of intellectual persuasion.
. .
That Constantino is able to recall his readers to their
humanity should be a measure of his power as a writer."^
Politics and history areclosely integrated in Constantino's
writings, in the service of demystifieation and cultural
decolonization: the dual task wnich he consciously and
passionately pursues. He knows full well that the pricewe
are asked to pay forthe routinized "objectivity" ofacademic
historiography is the reduction of the rich and complex
dynamism of the live social process into isolated "facts" and
"events." Their transformation into petrified beads, with a
hole in each, so that they can be conveniently arranged in a
mechanical succession on the thread of lifeless chronology.
In Constantino's vievv^s: "History for most of us is a melange
of facts and dates, of personalities and events, a mixture of
hero worship and empty homiletics about our national
identity and our tutelage in democracy. History appears as
a segmented documentation of events that occurred in the
past, without any unifying thread, without continuity save
that of chronology, without clear interrelation with the
present."^ To such view he opposes a conception of history
which "must deal not only with objective developments but
also bring the discussion to the realm oi valuejudgments.'^^
And since the value judgments referred to arise from the
agonizing choices and alternatives of the present, politics
and history become indissolubly integrated.
But why history?
Well over a century ago a great national poet"* hailed the
arrival of the railway with the following exclamation:
1 Petronilo Bn.Daroyrcv'icvj'xn^DissentandCounter-Consciousness in Graphic,
2 September, 1970.
2 History ofthePhilippines, ed. cit., p. 7.
3 Ibid.
4 Sander Petofi (1823-1849).