Jose Rizal

Essay on discussions on Wilhelm Tell and José Rizal's translation of Friedrich Schiller's drama at Korean universities: Encounters with Korean renditions of the Tell's story lead the way into the international, east- and south-east-asian network of republican thinkers at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.

He may have done good, but good is not enough to be a hero. Everyone can be good; everyone can do good. So, in my thoughts, this is not a standard and a reflection of being called to be a hero. However, no law, executive order, and formal proclamation have been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero.

This article explores José Rizal’s Noli me tángere as a site and source of rumination on clothing’s historical significance in the Philippines in the late nineteenth century. The characters in the novel represented various social types, whose clothes contribute to our knowledge of nineteenth-century men’s and women’s clothing and to the role clothes played in colonial power relationships, status competition among natives, and gender politics. Clothes suggested a period of ferment when colonial divides were being blurred in part by intermarriages and upward social mobility. Through clothing, the novel also showed how female body parts were sexualized and subjected to the male gaze.

* Dr. Coo's research was made possible through a grant she obtained under the Merit Research Awards (MRA) Program of the Institute of Philippine Culture and the research load she was awarded as SOSS Research Fellow by the Office of the Dean of the School of Social Sciences (SOSS), Ateneo de Manila University. This article was completed with support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 754446 and Universidad de Granada Research and Knowledge Transfer Fund - Athenea3i.

This is a reflection paper for the story of a man who risked his life to save his country and reclaim the independence and liberty that colonizers had taken away from them for so long. A man who inspired the Philippine nationalist movement and proved that the pen is mightier than the sword. And, thoughts about the story of dreams, hopes, and even sorrow that has awakened Filipinos to what is happening in their own glorious nation. This is my impression and observation to the story of Jose Rizal, one of the most prominent Filipino figures in Philippine history for his heroism and patriotism.

The word “cacique” usually refers to a local strongman, boss, or warlord, and “democracy” denotes the political system that has put such powerful figures in command of politics at the national level. A prototype of this politics first appeared in 1897 when Emilio Aguinaldo, the former mayor of Kawit, Cavite, took over the leadership of the revolution and then became president of the First Republic. Ever since the election of former Davao city mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, as president in 2016, the notion of "cacique democracy" has all but been confirmed in the eyes of most political observers. But what are the origins of this discourse? How did the term "cacique," originally from the Carribean, come to define Philippine politics, and what is wrong with its present use?

(Published  version of a previously uploaded paper with the same title)

The Filipino “elites” have a starring role as heroes and villains in Philippine history. So-called “ilustrados” were vanguards of the Propaganda Movement whose writings helped inspire the Philippine Revolution in the late nineteenth century and from whose ranks have been drawn many of the country’s “National Heroes.” The urban middle sector and municipal elites actively participated in the Philippine Revolution. But the Filipino elites have also been taken to task for “betraying” the Revolution, for putting their selfish, factional interests above those of the nation and the “masses”, for collaborating with the colonizers, and for being the principal beneficiaries of the American-era “colonial democracy” and post-war “elite democracy” that have plunged the country into crisis for most of the twentieth century.

This book shows how Filipino literature has intervened in the intellectual and popular debates on the historical origins, ascendancy, power, and legitimacy of the elites. Writers like Jose Rizal, Nick Joaquin, Ninotchka Rosca, Miguel Syjuco, and Ramon Guillermo are unsparing in their criticism of elite authorship of the Philippines’ past and present woes while seeking to recuperate the critical stance once represented by the “ilustrado.” The book identifies a number of emblematic cosmopolitan figures— the “middle sector” or “middle element” in Manila and other urban areas, Manila men and musicians, Overseas Filipino Workers, intellectuals, and Fil-foreigners—whose emergence as social forces points to the ongoing redefinition of the elites and the transformations of Philippine society, politics, and economy.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "Patria e intereses"
1  Who are the "Elites"?
2  Portraits of the Elites as Filipinos
3  The Misadventures of Ilustrado Nationalism
4  Ilustrados and OFWs
5  People's Power, Crony Capitalism, and the (Anti-)Developmental State
6  Transnational Elite Alliances
7 Overseas Filipino Intellectuals and Fil-Foreigners
Epilogue
Notes
Works Cited

Every student that was introduced to research contributes differently to the paper; some give their best effort, and some are just passive. There is inconvenience in having one’s name cited as et al., especially if they have been the latter throughout the research process. It is an outright disrespect to those who contributed equally—or supplementary—as the surname cited. Likewise, I share the same sentiments at the unorthodox amount of hype Rizal has received over the years.

Does Rizal deserve the recognition he has been receiving for the past decades? Is he a hero who saved the country or was he just a romanticized patriot? Critically-acclaimed historian Renato Constantino gave a whole new perspective on the matter.

This essay follows some traces of William Tell, the mythological hero and the literary figure of Friedrich Schiller, in Korean history and South Korean institutes of German Language and Literature. Based on the experience of a reading tour, I try to tackle the contradictory movements of national exclusivism and global connections that seem to converge in the networks of early East and Southeast Asian liberals – and the intellectual climate of today.
The essay was written in German and translated into French by Camille Luscher.

Memory is integral to one's identity. If one does not remember the words he speaks, the actions he does, and the concepts he believes in, then he does not really know himself. The same can be said of communities. Their collective memory is integral to their collective identity. However, memory is not always accurate and reliable. Thus, there are things that people believe had happened, but they cannot provide enough evidence to prove that those things did happen.

In the town of Pangil, Laguna, the residents continue to believe in the story that Rey Carlos III lived there for two years when he was still a prince and that he gave the images of Nuestra Señora de la O and of Santo Niño de la O to the residents of Pangil as gifts. Meanwhile, the residents of Lucban, Quezon hold on to the belief that José Rizal stayed in their town and wrote his El Filibusterismo on their Puente de Arco. Both stories lack strong evidence to prove that they actually happened. This essay would like to determine possible origins of these two stories and to determine the reasons why people continue to believe in them.

'1898' marks the birth of both the American empire and the Filipino nation when the U.S. Navy joined forces with Filipino revolutionists in ending Spain's rule. The alliance ended when the Americans refused to recognise the Filipino republic and forcibly occupied the islands. Hopkins situates both the 'coming of age' of America and the rise of a Filipino nationalist elite against a wider backdrop of imperial rivalries, economic transformations, and stages of globalisation in which the British Empire looms large. The essay builds on Hopkins's account of Spanish rule leading to the Revolution. In contrast to Cuba, the Philippine interior was left relatively untouched, controlled mainly through the friar-curates who lorded it over the town centres but not their peripheries. Following upon Hopkins's discussion of the three foundational nationalists-Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, and Emilio Aguinaldotheir differences can be explained by the peculiarities of the Spanish colonial system and how each of them related to their society.

Dr. Jose Rizal has been celebrated as a national hero in the Philippines to the extent that most Filipinos revere him without fully understanding his true background. Renato Constantino, in his work "Veneration Without Understanding", questions that: Is he just a moment in the Philippine history? However, one should not deny the fact that Rizal played a very significant role in our history yet he is just a person, like us, who also had his misgivings that should not be overlooked.

When we hear Rizal as students, we instantly think that he is the main national hero of the Philippines. As a youngster, I indeed venerated without understanding Rizal’s existence. I just accepted that he is a hero who did nothing but great things because it was said so by our teachers. Come to think of it, there are other heroes who lived the same era as he did that in my opinion seemed more promising for the future of the country, more specifically the revolutionists.

The essay argues that Rizal’s new society—for what he considered as new men—has remained utopian even if some of its elements have already been fulfilled, especially during and after the American colonial period. The nationalistic spirit that Rizal wanted the Filipino people
to internalize, on the whole, has not yet been materialized. The author at the end discusses a possible Kantian solution.

This article presents two modes of export-oriented sugar hacienda production in the late-nineteenth-century Spanish Philippines. The Hacienda de Calamba epitomised a large-scale estate under a religious corporation; it was an enclave economy reliant on local capital and technology. In contrast, Negros showcased a range of haciendas of varying sizes in a frontier setting involving different ethnicities and supported by capital and technology mediated directly by foreign merchant houses. In both locations sugar planters opposed the colonial state, but whereas leaseholders in Calamba, led by Rizal's family, became intentionally political in their resistance, in Negros planters engaged in a persistent and calibrated evasion of the state.

Upang mas maintindihan ng karamihan kung bakit tinaguriang Pambansang Bayani ng ating bayan si Doktor Jose Rizal, magandang suriin at pag-aralan ang akda ni de Ocampo na “Why is Rizal the Greatest Hero” at ang ang pelikulang Dapitan ni Aguiliz. Binigyang diin ang dalawang katanungan sa akda’t pelikulang ito, una, “sino ang nagdeklara kay Rizal bilang pambansang bayani ng Pilipinas?”, at pangalawa, “bakit si Rizal ang tinaguriang dakilang pambansang bayani?”. Maraming punto sa akdang ito ang nagbigyang liwanag, subalit, nanatiling kinakailangang maipaliwanag ang mga isyung bumabalot sa pagkabayani ni Rizal.

Necessary Fictions examines the intimate but fraught connection between Philippine literature and nationalist discourse during the post-war period. Through close readings of the fiction of Jose Rizal, Amado Hernandez, Nick Joaquin, Edgardo Reyes, Ricardo Lee, Kerima Polotan, Carlos Bulosan, and Mano de Verdades Posadas, this book argues that the long-standing affinity between Philippine literature and nationalism is rooted in part on the power of literature to formulate, and work through, a set of questions that are central to nationalist debates on the possibility and necessity of social change: What is the relationship between knowledge and action? between the personal and the political? between the foreign and the Filipino? between culture and history, culture and politics, culture and economics?

Moreover, Philippine literature does not merely illuminate and deepen our understanding of the fundamental assumptions which inform nationalist discourse and practice.  It also registers the contradictions which exceed nationalist attempts to intervene, intellectually and politically, in the complex realities at work in Philippine society. These “excesses”, which bear the ineradicable signatures of the oppressed and the marginalized, expose the anxieties—and the liberatory potential—underpinning the difficult creation of Philippine modernity in the twentieth century and beyond.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER ONE:  The Problem of Consciousness 16
CHAPTER TWO:  The Fiction of a Knowable Community 53
CHAPTER THREE: Literature and History 105
CHAPTER FOUR:  Alien Nation 150
CHAPTER FIVE:  Authorizing the Personal and the Political 198
CHAPTER SIX: Unfinishing Revolution 242
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Politics of Criticism 277
CONCLUSION 311
WORKS CITED 324

Is Rizal a national hero or a moment of our history? Karl Rada's Reflection Paper on Renato Constantino's essay, "Veneration without Understanding," talks about Constantino's notion of why Rizal should not be considered a national hero or the pinnacle of our revolution history. It includes the author's insights on his view regarding Constantino's though on the relevance of Rizal in this present time and his arguments on the topics presented in Constantino's pamphlet.

[PARAGRAPH 1]: One of the major challenges in researching literary translingualism in the Philippines emerges from the discomforts of applying the current scholarly models to the specificities of linguistic diversity in this former colony of Spain and the U.S. in Southeast Asia. If, as Kellman posits, literary translingualism encompasses texts “written in a language other than the author’s primary language” (“Does Literary Translingualism Matter?” 109), any endeavor to investigate translingual literature in the Philippines will have to resolve first how a language achieves primacy. Should primacy always refer to the author’s L1? Can it also be an author’s dominant L2? What happens when an author is a simultaneous bilingual and thus has multiple L1s? Alternatively, if by translingual literature we mean texts “written in a language not native to the author, in two languages, or in a mix of languages” (Kellman and Lvovich 152), we need to figure out how an author becomes native to a language. A straightforward response cannot always be had in the Philippines, a linguistically plural society where code- switching is widely used as a mode of discourse (Thompson 1– 2). Implicit in such models is the widely held belief that monolingualism is the default mode of authoring literature (Wiggin 488). Translingual literature is hence thought of as a marked piece of writing in somebody else’s tongue or in a babel of tongues, or what Kellman calls as monolingual translingualism and ambilingualism, respectively ( The Translingual Imagination 19). But what happens if the linguistic borderlines that should contain literature are fluid to begin with? Does writing in a language that by definition is a composite of languages make one a translingual author?