Thesis Statement:

“Foucault’s later work (The Use of Pleasure) prioritizes subjectivity and truth while the earlier work (Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1) focus on power and knowledge. More specifically, in the later work, Foucault aimed “to study the games of truth, and the relation of self with self and the forming of oneself as the subject” (UP, 6). In this later work, Foucault analyzed how particular truths are mobilized in the formation of the subject, such that one might be required to recognize oneself as a subject through these truths. For instance, Ancient Greeks recognized themselves as individuals through their gender, class, age, wealth, marital status, and so on. An important part of what it meant to be a subject, then as today, was to recognize that one has a certain truth to manifest in one’s conduct. This focus on subjectivity and truth tends to prioritize the agency of the individual in that it highlights the action of the individual in constituting himself/herself as a subject through manifesting certain truths. Foucault’s emphasis on the activity of the individual in constituting themselves makes it possible for us to spot openings for individual resistance, that is to say, activities we might perform to subvert or resist the power relations we are enmeshed in”

Introduction

Use of Pleasure¹, when read uncritically, appears to indicate a clean break from Foucault’s work on power and its relation to knowledge-formation which was established in the period spanning Discipline and Punish²and the first volume of the History of Sexuality³. This, however, is a fallcy, for the “breakof Use of Pleasure from Foucault’s earlier work does not constitute a mere shift in interests, as if Use of Pleasure had no connection to the critical project of the study of power and knowledge begun in Discipline and Punish. Use of Pleasure, like Discipline and Punish , is a critique of determinism. For Foucault was very critical of determinism; indeed, he was vehemently critical of deterministic readings of his texts. Foucault states that .when I read..the thesis ‘knowledge is power’ or ‘power is knowledge’ I begin to laugh, since studying their relation is precisely my problem. If they were identical I would not know how to study them⁴ Therefore, if Discipline and Punish was a critique of determinism, Use of Pleasure is an affirmation of agency via subject-formation. Whereas the latter affirms the porosity and overall fragility of power relations, the latter affirms the agency of the subject. Use of Pleasure must not be read only as Foucault himself makes it out to be, namely a search for the modes according to which individuals are given to recognize themselves as sexual subjects of desire⁵ The project of self-mastery outlined in Use of Pleasure is not a mere outline for an ethical life, but also a preparation for political life, and thus of political action and resistance. The fact that Foucault complements his vocabulary of subjectvity and subject-formation with truth-formation is an affirmation of the capability of self-determination inherent in subjectivity, the conviction that 杜en are never conditioned absolutely”⁶ and that truth is not as absolute as it appears to be. Whereas Discipline and Punish affirms the centrality of the production of individuals via the intersection of various networks of power-truth-knowledge in disciplinary society, Use of Pleasure affirms the capability of subjects to decide for themselves, to act by themselves, to form their own truths and thus to establish for themselves a space of autonomy which power can never liquidate.

One might compare the relationship of Foucault’s early and later works via Nietzsche’s aphorism called “The Three Metamorphoses⁷ The picture of disciplinary society represented in Discipline and Punish is that of the dragon inscribed upon it’s scales are the values of all millenia⁸ Thus speaks the dragon, the value of all things- it gleams in me. All value has already been created, and the value of all created things- that am I. Indeed, there shall be no more ‘I will!’⁹ Foucault, in the spirit of Nietzsche, not only affirms the power of the will, he also affirms the power to create new values. This passage from the lion to the child, from willing to creating is the content of Use of Pleasure. The subject wills to be free, but also creates the new world wherein he can be free. Use of Pleasure is an exercise in the creation and pratcice of freedom.

I

Discipline and Punish can be read as an attempt to write a novel account of power.¹⁰ It was written in contradistinction to two other models of power which were dominant- and which still are dominant- during the time of its writing: the liberal juridico-legal model of power and the Marxist politico-economic model of power. Discipline and Punish is a critique of both models of power. For our intents and purposes, we will primarily focus on a summation of the former model.

The liberal model of power is embodied in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Stewart Mill. It assumes that all exercises of power are visible, and that all exercises of power can be normatively judged as either legitimate or illegitimate, sanctioned or unsanctioned, wherein the criteria for judgement is whether the exercise of power was based on coercion or consent. This criteria of consent and coercion is exemplified in the liberal conceptualization of the social contract. Discipline and Punish, however, abandons this liberal model due to the existence of practices and forms of power relations which escape this limited framework. Foucault writes, “We must…analyze the ‘concrete systems of punishment’, study them as social phenomena that cannot be accounted for by the juridical structure of society alone¹¹ John Ransom states, not all kinds of power can be described by the terms ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’¹² He gives the example of the monastery. The monastery executes a form of dressage upon its subjects which is not entirely covered by the dichotomy of consent/coercion. ..the individual is ‘subjugated’ to the monastic life. That is, he is molded into a ‘subject’ of a different kind¹³ In other words, disciplinary power is productive and transformative. Furthermore, the exercise of power in this dressage- the violence of this dressage, as it were- is outside the categories of consent and coercion. The former conviction is supported by Foucault in Discipline and Punish in which he states that Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and instruments of its exercise¹⁴ The latter convicition- the violence of dressage- is stated by Jacques Derrida. He writes, 吐rom the lips of the master this watchword [dressage, learning to live] would always say something about violence. It vibrates like an arrow in the course of an irreversible and asymmetrical address, the one that goes most often from father to son, master to disciple or master to slave¹⁵ The act of training and passing on knowledge and experience cannot be judged as either coercive or consensus-based. And this is the form of power which is exercised in the classroom between teacher and student, in the clinic between doctor and patient. It requires a new analytics of power, a micro-physics of power¹⁶

The novelty of Foucault’s analysis of power lies in its study of the relations between knowledge and power. conveniently formulates as ‘power-knowledge’¹⁷ He writes, ..see whether there is not some common matrix or whether they [power and knowledge] derive do not both derive from a single process of epistemo-juridical formation¹⁸ Let us summarize Foucault’s novel analysis of power.

Foucault begins with the assumption that truth is not value free. This assumption was posited in contradistinction to the views of the enlightenment, which stated that science and truth were progressive, neutral and eternal. Theprogressive view of science was memorably formulated by Immanuel Kant in “What is Enlightenment?” as man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity¹⁹ The Enlightenment saw science as propelling the rectiliear, prorgessive movement of man away from myth and supertsition and into the age of reason This progressive view of science was coupled with the assumption that truth was neutral and eternal The neutrality of science and truth is found in positivism and scientific objectivity which sees scientific methodology as a neutral lense which tests phenomena which are present at hand. Finally, science and truth are seen as eternal. This can be seen in the scientific vocabulary of 斗aws which are eternal and applicable to all cases.

We cannot deny that science has lead to improvements in everyday life. We can, however, challenge the view that science is always beneficial, that it always leads to progress, that it discovers eternal laws via neutral scientific methods. Foucault’s genealogical method is a demystification of these views. He writes, perhaps…we should abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside it’s injutcions, demands and interests²⁰. Genealogy first of all, is a historiographical method of conceptualizing history in it’s stutters and breaks. In a Foucaldian genealogical historiography, ideas and concepts are presented as ever-changing and flowing. Genealogy is a thoroughly historicist method. This historcist position is seen in Foucault’s recurrent references in the titles of his books to the births of institutions- the asylum, the clinic, the prison. In all of these, institutions are seen not as progressing from primitive or backward circumstances. Nor are they seen as neutral and always beneficient to then-contemporary conditions. Rather, each birth of institutions is reconceptualized as trigrerring new technologies of power, new forms of social control, new forms of containment. This is seen in the first chapter of Discipline Punish. Instead of seeing the shift from the excesses of sovereign power to the institution of the prison, Foucault sees more sinister forms of power. Foucault writes, the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle…has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of humanization²¹ The disappearance of sovereign power, however, is seen as a refinement of the technologies of power. It is also the birth of a new form of power- normalization. Around this new penal style”²², new forms of knowledge gathering and knowledge production circulated, which reinforced the new forms of power. A new form of power gave birth to new forms of knowledge- ..a whole army of technicians took over from the executioner: warders, doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists, educationalists…²³ And new forms of knowledge gave birth to new forms of power- ..the great book of Man-the-Machine was written simultaneously on two registers: the anatomico-metaphysical register, of which Descartes wrote the first few pages…and the technico-political register…La Mettrie’s L’homme-machine is both a materialist reduction of the soul and a general theory of dressage, at the centre of which reigns the notion of ‘docility’²⁴ This mutual reinforcement of power and knowledge is what Foucault calls “power-knowledge relation”

In summation: the Enlightenment philosophers saw knowledge as neutral, eternal, and progressive. Foucault, however, rewrote the history of thought such that we would see the relation of power to knowledge and knowledge to power, which Foucault calls as power-knowledge relations In this new history of thought, power and knowledge are seen as mutally supporting: foundations of new modes of power are seen as productive of new forms of knowledge; knowledge production, in turn, creates and reinforces relations of power.

Foucault’s reconceputalization of power, therefore, already excludes the possibility of a normative basis for the judgement of power, insofar as this basis is based on a dichotomy between consent and coercion, for such a distincion is already a form of juridico-legal knowledge production. In other words, the very idea of a basis of critique of the use of power based on a dichtomy of coercion and critique is already an idea which supports existing forms of power. This dichotomy of coercion and consensus posits, reproduces and legitimates the juridico-legal insitutions which claim a neutral basis of knowledge²⁵. The coercion-consensus dichotomy can never be monoplized by a neutral body such as the state or the juridico-legal apparatus because this monopoly legitimizes these kinds of institutions and the expertise which is included in them. Liberalism cannot claim neutrality because it is always already included in the relations of power and knowledge.

Furthermore, Foucault’s reconceptuatlization of power goes beyond the coercion-consensus dichtomy because it analyzes forms of power which cannot be judged as violent The relations between a student and a teacher and a doctor and a patient are power relationsnot because of the use of force (illegitimate or otherwise) but because of it’s formative aspect. Disciplinary power, though it may use force, is not concerned with “hurting”, it is concerned with producing docile and obedient bodies Such subject-production cannot be judged because it is often seen as necessary- indeed it is- for the whole of society. Discipline and Punish, therefore, is a critique of the equation of power and violence. Power is not applied, nor is it possessed, it is active in the very institutions of everyday life. Power is not something which is aqcuired, seized or shared, something which is one holds to or allows to slip away²⁶ Education, for one, is a form of power because it produces docile and obedient subjects. Do not concentrate the study of punitive mechanisms on their ‘repressive’ effects alone, on their ‘punitive’ aspects alone, but situate them in a whole series of their possible positive aspects²⁷

Foucault’s critique of the sovereign model of power is embodied in the remark in History of Sexuality, Vol.1 which states that “in political thought and analysis, we have not yet cutt off the head of the king²⁸ Foucault opposes the typical top-down analysis of power in favor of an analysis of power wherein the subject is caught in a net of power relations, in a multiplicity of power relations.Foucault writes, ..there is no binary between and ll-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of all power relations…no such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more limited social groups²⁹ Thus, for example, he opposes the notion that power over sexuality is repressive Indeed, he opposes the notion that power is exercised on sexuality in favor of a conceptualization of power wherein sexuality itself is a form of power in which the body is caught up in a multiplicity of power relations.

Foucault, however, is vehemently against the integrated model of power. This integrated model of power is seen in the Marxist-inspired belief that education produces people who are just 田ogs in a machine A prominent example would be Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensonal Man, which though it contains a notion of conformity as power similar to Foucault’s notion of normalization, still seems to believe that industrial society functions via the integration of all people into the 杜achine In contrast, Foucault prefers a disagregated model of power, wherein the body is caught in a network of power relations, but not integrated into an over-arching system of domination. 釘y power, I do not mean ‘Power’ as a group of instutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens to a given state. I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation, which in contrast to violence, has the form of rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general mode of domination exerted by one group over another, a system of effects, through successive derivations, pervade the whole social body³⁰ In other words, Foucault is against the determinism of other analyses of the functioning of power. This new mode of analysis has new a legion of consequences both in theory and in practice.

We said beforehand that Discipline and Punish is a critique of two predominant modes of power, the liberal and Marxist variants. The former, as has been stated above, was criticized for it’s one dimensionality and it’s inability to analyze non-sovereign, non juridico-legal forms of power. The latter, on the other hand, is critiqued for it’s over-determinism, it’s assumption that power operates in an overarching, integrated system. In a Foucauldian analysis of power, there is quite simply no malicious spirit, no malevolent class or minority which operates its will via the totality of power relations, no “thy will be done”. To this deterministic mode of analysis, Foucault presents a disaggregated ontology of power relations, which criss-cross into each other’s domains, but which are not integrated into a larger, manipulable totality.

This disaggregated model of power has immense implications- it implies, first of all, that a complete overhaul of revolutionary proportions is both unconceivable and unachievable. Because the entire sphere of power relations is not integrated, it cannot be overhauled in single movement. But neither does it add up as an immovable and irresistible force. The implication of Foucault’s novel analysis is that the disaggregation of power presents a multiplicity of spaces for resistance. The multiple intersections present multiple points of resistance, multiple spaces for struggle. Indeed, it is no longer to speak of 途esistancein the singular, no longer correct to speak of fighting the system, but of multiple resistances, multiple battles.

Herein is the relation of Use of Pleasure to the earlier works. Use of Pleasure, far from abandoning the project of an analysis of power, affirms it. Or rather, whereas Discipline and Punish and History of Sexuality, Vol.1 were concerned with a reformulation of the analysis of power, Use of Pleasure is concerned with individual preparation for resistance. It is in a strange way a self-help book on how to live and how to resist in a world of an intersecting matrix of power-relations.

The equation of freedom with liberation was the result of the revolutionary ethos which had pervaded much of western thought. Foucault’s analysis of power-relations not only changed the definition of power, it also changed the meaning of resistance and ergo, of freedom. The revolutionary logic of overhaul could only have functioned within an ontological presupposition of power as singular and omnipotent. This conceptualization of power and revolutionary overhaul was accompanied by an image of freedom which could be gained only via the liberation caused by the process of revolution. However, the reconceputalization of power as plural and not singular effectively liquidated any hopes of a revolutionary overahul of power and thus of a revolutionary concept of libertion and freedom. In other words, our concept of freedom was entwined with a revolutionary ethos and a unilateral conceptualization of power. Foucault’s uncircumventable critique of the unilateral analysis of power was also a critique of the accompanying model of revolutionary liberation, and was, mutatis mutandis, a critique of the emancipatory notion of freedom. After Foucault, we can no longer believe in revolutionary overhaul and emancipatory freedom. We are now forced to reconceptualized freedom itself. Ransom writes,

“The revolutions in the East have resulted in a kind of ironic disappointment. For all their drama, they signal an end to attempts in 21^st Century to realize the ends of human emancipation through the reorganization of social life. With the demise of the ‘Revolution’ both as a viable goal and as a millenial promise, we [must]…detach the goal [freedom] from the disredited means used to achieve it…One of Foucault’s primary goals is to achieve both a reconceputalization of human freedom and a successul separation from the means used to achieve it until now…He wants to develop a postrevolutionary ethos that does not degenerate into apathy or, implicitly, into an accomodationist reformism³¹

Herein lies the importance of Use of Pleasure- in it’s attempt to locate a postrevolutionary, post-emancipatory notion of freedom. The revolutionary attitude which has dominated the world can be summed up in Marx’s infamous 11^th Theses on Feuerbach: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it³² The peculiarity of this statement lies in the fact that the philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways, but that there is only one way to change it- and because this is Marx, it is obviously via revolution. But the revolutionary project has been tried and judged as a failure. One might put the failure in poetic terms: the revolutionary project sought to change the world, yet it forgot that it was within the world, therefore it was swallowed by currents which it had caused.

In overturning the world, the various revolutionaries could not avoid overturning themselves. The revolutionary mythos has ended in self-defeat; may it perish in the pits of tartarus.

Is Foucault implying that we cannot, as Marx implied, change the world? Perhaps. But if this was true, why then would have Foucault written a single word after History of Sexuality Vol. 1? If disciplinary society cannot be overhauled as a whole via revolution, indeed, if revolution could have only ended in self defeat, why then hope to resist at all? Because Foucault knew full well that the human subject will never be determined. The subject, insofar as he is an agent, he cannot be subsumed by the networks of power. Use of Pleasure located freedom in the very core of the self. The disciplinary dragon states, 典here shall be no longer any ‘I will!’³³ But the subject-agent, like the lion says, 的 will Nietzsche knew that a future generation of creators would come; Foucault is the herald of such a generation. Use of Pleasure is the text for that post-revolutionary generation, a generation which lives in a disciplinary matrix, but which is never just a dot on that matrix. Use of Pleasure tells us very implicitly that one can never simpy be a dot on that matrix.

II

I will now move on to the next section of our text- the analysis of Use of Pleasure and it’s implicit message of exercising freedom in a discipinary age. This section will be written with the conviction that Use of Pleasure, far from advocating a merely ethical life, advocates a life of resistance. As the thesis statement states, Foucault’s emphasis on the activity of the individual in constituting themselves makes it possible for us to spot openings for individual resistance, that is to say, activities we might perform to subvert or resist the power relations we are enmeshed in Indeed, the ethical life proposed by Foucault in Use of Pleasure is but a prologue to it’s real message, no matter how implicit it may be- a return to the political life.

Before I summarize the argument of Use of Pleasure, I will first digress via an examination of the political life of Ancient Greece using other texts which complement the research done by Foucault This is important because Use of Pleasure is rerutn to ancient greece. This return implies that the ethical life which Foucault fashions out of his examination of the prescriptive texts of ancient greece would already indicate a call back into the political. The texts which Foucault studies would have been written against a background of political life. Indeed, these texts would have been guides concerning the self-mastery necessary prior to the entrance into the polis. Slavishness would have automatically excluded a citizen from engaging in political life. Use of Pleasure, therefore, is a self-exorcism of the slavish fascist which has gotten the best of many rulers, and which can be reasoned, stands to overthrow even the best of us, thus foreshadowing political self-defeat. One cannot engage in political resistance in a disciplinary society without first having mastered oneself.

Aristotle made a distinction between qualified and unqualified forms of life. In ancient Greece, this distinction was tantamount to the distinction between the private and the public. Aristotle, of course, disaggregates the qualified life into different kinds, of which he priveleges the philosophical life, bios theoretikos, as the highest possible kind. But for our intents and purposes, I will focus on the political life.

That the degree of difference between the Greeks’ experience of the polis and our experience of the political is utterly incommensurable can be proven by a genealogical comparison of our contemporary experience of the political with the experience of the polis by the Greeks. The difference is made obvious in our vocabulary of the political: politics is mere childish “bickering”, it is dirty, it is but  sound and fury, signifiying nothing. Larry Hardiman, for example, states that “the word politics is derived from the word ‘poly’ meaning many,and the word ‘ticks’ meaning blood sucking parasites“³⁴. And a recent newspaper article states that:

“However, the fact remains: please all, and you will please none. I知 sure the student council values the discourse, but I trust them enough to know that their actions should speak louder than their words.Don‘t get me wrong, I appreciate the gadflies. What worries me though is that all this talk will lead nowhere, that in the end, well be stuck in a cycle of sound and fury, signifying nothing³⁵

This utter loathing towards the political would have been utterly alien to the Greeks. 哲ot only would we not agree with the Greeks that a life spent in the privacy of ‘one’s own’ outside the world of the common, is ‘idiotic’ by definition…we no longer think primarily of deprivation when we use the word ‘privacy’³⁶ To the Greeks, the private was a form of deprivation because the “the natural, merely social companionship of the human species was considered to be a limitation imposed upon us by the needs of biological life³⁷ In other words, the distinction between the public and the private was one and the same with the distinction between man qua man and man as mere animal. Man, after all, is a species, and the fact that we need to reproduce ourselves on a daily basis attests to this. The private realm was where this biological side of man (along with all other intimate concerns) was relegated. “That individual maintenance should be the task of man and species survival the task of the woman was obvious, and both of these natural functions…were subject to the same necessity of life³⁸

So long as one was chained to necessity, whether voluntary or otherwise, one was a mere animal. This was based on the conviction that man was the only animal to have ever transcended the ignominy of the herd. Man was the only animal that possessed an individual identity in addition to a biological body. And logically speaking, only the public realm was fit for the asserting of this individual identity because the private realm was precisely the realm of the prepolitical, mere necessity. Thus it is that the polis is the only space fit for the plurality of indivduals, the fact that “men, not Man live on the earth and inhabit the world”³⁹ and that dwelling in the private realm was a deprivation. Only in the public realm could one assert one’s individual and hence distinctly human character. “The public realm…was permeated by a fiercely agonal spirit, where everybody had to constantly distinguish himself from all others…the public realm, in other words, was reserved for individuality⁴⁰ The private, therefore, was inhuman and 渡either labor nor work was constituted to possess sufficient dignity to consitute a bios at all”⁴¹, both of them being concerned with necessity, regardless of whether or not it was voluntary [as with work, and with the life of the artisan] or otherwise [labor].

The contemporary world’s loathing of the political stems from the inversion of the primacy of the public in favor of the private. This is seen not only in the fact that politics is seen as counterproductive, but also in the fact that politics itself must primarily be productive. The state, whether a welfare state or otherwise [neoclassical economics and neoliberal ideology both see the state as just another firm], is primarily administrative and not political. It’s role has shifted from being primarily a political space to being an administrative organ. The administrative state, which manages the entire nation like “one enormous body which has only one opinion and one interest”⁴², can no longer be political, for it only has one general will⁴³ One need only look at Philippine politics’- indeed all contemporary politics’- reliance on public approval ratings to verify this claim.⁴⁴

In summary: the Greeks made a clear and self-evident distinction between the public and the private. This distinction was tantamount to the distinction between man and animal, which was based on the observation that only man had an individual identity in addition to his biological existence. The public was the proper place of individuality, and the private was the proper place of the bioological reproduction. This implies that a life lived primarily in the private, indeed any form of life away from the public life, was considered inhuman and a form of self-deprivation. The conteporary distrust of political activity stems from the loss of the political, which is part and parcel of the priveleging of the administrative function of the state as a manager of the one-dimensional, one-opinioned nation.

The important thing to recall here is that all biological concerns, all actions [if they can even be called action, for action was political, not biological] caused by necessity were logically excluded from participation in the political sphere. So long as one acted out of necessity, one was merely animal, and did not belong in the polis. Necessity, however, was not limited to bare necessity, that is, to the chains of the life process itself. For as Arendt has rightly noted that 鍍he bonds of necessity need not be made of iron, they can be made of silk⁴⁵ This observation was made by the Greeks long ago, for slavishness- being chained to the pleasures- was also a a grounds for exclusion from the polis, for 鍍oo great a love for life obstructed freedom was a sure sign of slavishness⁴⁶ Given this, Use of Pleasure can be read as a call for a return to the political life.

Discipline and Punish, in this context, can be read as an implicit critique of the administrative state and the loathing of the political which accompanies it. Discipline and Punish, along with Foucault’s later work on biopolitics and governmentality, can be said to be a renewed effort to study the processes of information gathering which is part and parcel of the administrative state. Arendt, after all, rightly observed that the subsitution of behavior for action, the conformity of modern day society and the increasing reliance on statistical homogeneity wherein all spontaneity is relegated to deviance arose simultaneously with the rise of the administrative, apolitical nation-state. Arendt writes, ..it is meaningless to search for politics…when everything that is not everyday behavior has been ruled out as immaterial⁴⁷ And because both Foucault and Arendt place a great deal on the role of increases in population- Arendt makes several remarks about the correlation between a larger population, statistical relegation of spontaneity to deviance and social conformism; Foucault makes a reference to the increase in population in the 19^th century- it would be irresponsible to see their references to similar phenomena as mere coincidence. One might say that Foucault substantiates Arendt’s observations on conformism. Discipline and Punish is a study of the role of the history of normalization and it’s correlation to the bureaucratic-administrative nation-state. Foucault however, unlike Arendt, was insightful enough to have seen that there still are spaces of political action, that Arendt, remarkable as her observations were, was undoubtedly tinged by a spirit of defeatism. Foucault, by reformulating power as disaggregated and not as merely vertically asymmetrical, saw what Arendt did not see: that the modern homogenizing nation-state relies on mechanisms, which, by their fragmentary nation, create spaces for political resistance. The point here is that the social is not the complete liquidation of the political, for the governing of the social relies on mechanisms of knowledge-gathering and formation which are themselves so fragmentary that they produce resistances- that is, politics. The administrative state, the cornerstone of the social realm, does not liquidate political action- indeed, it creates resistance.

Use of Pleasure, therefore, is an invitation back into the political insofar as the ethical life which it proposes is prepolitical, necessary for the survival of the political. It is true that the bureaucratic-administrative state’s fragmentation creates political spaces. Yet political action cannot and must not begin before the self-mastery necessary before entering into political action. In Arendtian terms, one must order one’s private affairs such that they will not intrude into political practice. Although the Greek experience of the political is alien to us, and that the social has now taken over the political, it does not necessarily follow that one can no longer make the leap from both the private and the social and into the political. This leap necessitates self-mastery, an exercise of freedom which begins with the practice of self-discipine. One must first learn to distinguish between one’s private concerns and political concerns, and only then can one begin to resist. The return to Ancient Greece is now a matter of obviousness. What Foucault wished to tell us is that a model for preopolitical self-discipline was already with the Greeks, that the Greeks knew well long ago that one cannot begin political practice without first exercising ethical self-discipline.

III

I can now begin with the analysis of Use of Pleasure itself. What then, is the content of Use of Pleasure, and in what way does it consitute a guide for political action and resistance?

An easy way out would be to assume that the relation can be found in the shift of terminology, that whereas Foucault’s early work was concerned with the relation of power and knowledge, thereof Foucault’s later work was concerned with the relation of subjectivity and truth. This, however, does not suffice, because it does not specificlly show how subjectivity and truth form avenues of resistance against the mutually reproducing couple of power and knowledge. The task, therefore is to locate how the resistance engendered by subjectvitity and truth are already prefigured in Discipline and Punish.

Subjectivity and truth are already prefigured in Discipline and Punish insofar as Discipline and Punish is already a critique of the conventional notions of these concepts. The reformulation of power and knowledge already presupposed a simultaneous (and implicit) reformulation of subjectivity and truth. The reformulation of truth was already explained above, when the view of knowledge as progressive, neutral and eternal was critiqued. Truth was reformulated as multifacted, ever changing and also as caught up in the various relations of power which produce individuals. In other words, Foucault’s reformulation of truth was already connected to subjectivity via power. Truth, in the power-knowledge chain, produced subjectivity. What Foucault simply did in Use of Pleasure was to reverse the relation. He moved from asking how truth aided the various power-knowledge networks in producing subjects and moved to asking how subjects use truth to consitute their identity. Politics, after all, as the Greeks have taught us, is possible only due to individuality. Politics is the realm of the individual, and thus of identity. In a world in which truth aids in strengthening the grip of power on subjects and in supporting the subject-production of power relations, in what way does truth and subjectivity provide an avenue for resistance.

The ket here lies in the problematization of sexuality. Foucault states that “the question I would like to pose is not, ‘Why are we repressed,’ but rather ‘Why do we say, with so much passion and resentment against our recent past, against our present, and against ourselves, that we are repressed?’…we must also ask why we burden ourselves today with so much guilt for having made sex a sin⁴⁸ Foucault then went on to study how “our eagerness to speak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless this opporunity to speak out against the powers that be”⁴⁹, and how this “incitement to discourse”⁵⁰ and all of it’s associated tactics reproduce and reinforce the various apparatuses of the “deployment of sexuality⁵¹History of Sexuality, however, does not answer the question it posits, namely how individuals consituted themselves as subjects of a sexuality. ..when I came to study the modes according to which individuals are given to recognize themselves as sexual subjects, the problems were much greater⁵² Thus Foucault shifted to a genealogical analysis of “the practices by which individuals were led to focus their attention on themselves, to decipher, recognize, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire… a certain relationship that allows them to discover…the truth of their being⁵³ The question has thus shifted from how truth and power produce subjectivity to how subjects themselves consititute themselves as subjects defined by the axioms of such truth-claims. Perhaps Foucault at this point had realized that he had not escaped deterministic analysis, that by saying that subjects were merely produced, it took out the power of agency. By saying that the success of power-relations lies not in the mechanisms and tactics used but in the conscious-subject formation of subjects. The question shifted from “Why do we say that we are repressed?” to “Why and by what process does the subject- in a process which is out of the grasp of power relations, for this falls on subject-formation itself- consitute himself as a subject of truth claims?”. By what ways do we believe that we must call ourselves as 途epressedor other such categories?

Such a shift in the analysis of power carves out a space of resistance in the power-relation itself. By not making a determistic disctintion between “false” and “true” consciousness Foucault was saying that we are not 吐ooledinto believing that we are subjects. Rather, we ourselves willingly constitute ourselves as subjects of truth-formation. This implies that the moment of decision is left to the subject, not to the structures of power, and that the subject, in a moment of enlightenment, may choose to emerge from his self-imposed immaturity.⁵⁴ Power, in short, can never close the possibility of the subject using his own reason, of deciding that 的 am not that 的 will”⁵⁵, that 的 will create my own values⁵⁶ Thus Foucault states that the objective of his project was “to learn to what extent the effort to think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so to enable it to think differently”⁵⁷ Power can never exorcise the possibility that the subject will think otherwise and decide for himself.

This moment of decision, this moment of self-thought and of self-consitution, is the liquidation of all forms of power. Tyrants fear the day that their subjectes will cease to think of themselves as mere subjects. Tyrants use terror in order to prevent their people from thinking, to bend their will. But not even terror will ever defeat the possibility that the subject will overcome his fear and think otherwise. This is the proper time and proper moment for political resistance. This is the time for the forward push of the will and the uncontrollable power of creation. But this preparation for the struggle of political life presupposes as self-conquering. Only when the self has finally mastered onself will it be the time to fight. Only in such a time will judgement be clear enough to yield positive results, and eventually, victory. Rational thought, after all, can only work successfully when the head is cool and clear of distractions, when all doubts and distractions have been cast aside. If King Solomon, like David or like Samson had been blinded by desire, would he have been as clear in thought and judgement? Even Jesus himself had to master himself. One cannot even imagine the fear he must have felt in the garden of Gethsemani. But in the end, he clears himself of doubt; only via that could he have endured the agony of the cross.

Thus it is that Nietzsche wrote that it lies not in the willngness to bear the heaviest of burdens (like the camel) , nor is it in the courage to say 的 will!(like the lion), but it is in the sheer capacity to create one’s own truths, to think otherwise, to use one’s own reason, to have a firm conviction that one holds a truth distinct from others, can one engage in the struggle of politics. And this in turn, presupposes that one has sufficiently controlled one’s own temptations that one can finally lift the cross that is politics. Why would one bear the heaviest of weights, indeed how can one bear the heaviest of weights when one has doubt in one’s heart, when one is gripped in the enthralling madness of passion? How could one will the act of resistance when there is no “I” to will? Nietzsche and mutatis mutandis Foucault, that one must “let [one's] virtue be too exalted for the familiarity if names: and if you speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer. Thus say and stammer, ‘This is my good, this I love, just thus do I like it, only thus do I wish the good’⁵⁸

Bibliography:

Aquino enjoys majority trust, approval ratingshttp://www.businessmirror.com.ph/home/top-news/20332-aquino-enjoys-majority-trust-approval-ratings .Accessed Janurary 22, 2012

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. United States: University of Chicage Press 1958

______________. On Revolution. England: Faber and Faber Limited, 1963

David, Randy. “Nation of Lawyers http://opinion.inquirer.net/21563/a-nation-of-lawyers”accessed January 22, 2012 Accessed January 22, 2012

Derrida, Jacques. Spectrers of Marx:the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf. United States: Routledge, 1994

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Vol.2: The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. United States: Vintage Books 1990

________________. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. United States: Vintage Books, 1972

________________. The History of Sexuality, Vol.1: An Introduction. Trans Alan Sheridan. United States: Vintage Books, 1978

Hardiman, Larry.http://www.searchquotes.com/search/Larry_Hardiman . Accessed January 22, 2012

Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?” http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html accessed January 22, 2012

Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm Accesed Janurry 22, 2012

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (England: Penguin Books, 1969)

Noel, Rafael. “Sound and Fury”.  The Guidon, http://www.theguidon.com/1112/main/2011/08/sound-and-fury/ .Accessed January 22, 2012

Ransom,John S. Foucault’s Discipline: The Politics of Subjectivity. United States: Duke University Press, 1997

I

Walter Benjamin’s thesis in The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility is that changes in the mode of production entail changes in the mode of perception, and that the most recent changes in the mode of production have so utterly changed art that they have called into question the very categories defining “art” itself. “They call for theses defining the tendencies of the development of art under the present conditions of production”[1]

Yet Benjamin’s essay fails to explain why the katana still has an aura. For the katana is a work of art- it is embedded in a tradition not only of combat but also of aesthetics- and it was mass[2] produced in World War 2 and even earlier still. Yet the aura of the katana still remains. To an extent, the katana has been commodified; yet it remains far from being a mere commodity.

There are two reasons for this limit- the first being Benjamin’s simplistic demarcation of ritual and politics and the second being is failure to consider the lacuna caused by the shift in the means of destruction[3]. For as shall be demonstrated, the concept of the political and the experience of war are both implicitly rooted in ritual and religious experience- specifically, sacrifice. In what follows, it shall be shown  that the aura of the katana and the uncanny of sacrifice burn in the same incandescent light- the flame of one, which still fuels war, illuminates the other.

II

The paradox which this paper explores can be worded as thus: why is it that there still remain traces of individuality despite the de-individualization inherent in mass warfare?  The paradox can be illustrated in the concept of sacrifice. Why is it that expendable soldiers are called on to sacrifice? The very notion of self-sacrifice presupposes a “self” or a recovery of it thereof.

In Blood Rites[4], Ehrenreich states that sacrifice (and thus ritual) is rooted in the omnipotent memory of man-as-hunted. In sacrifice, one is not only called upon to identify with the one who wields the knife; one is also invited to identify with the one who is to be sacrificed[5].

The link is established once one considers that predators and certain deities both have one thing in common- they are carnivores[6]. The need for defense caused certain men to die for the greater good of their tribes: “men were probably employed to guard the periphery of the group. The male, so used, is the primordial sacrifice.”[7] The link between war and ritual are made clear: “The weapons have changed beyond recognition over the millenia, but the basic emotional responses represent defensive mechanisms which evolved in combat with a deadly, non-human ‘other’”[8]

To die for the greater good- does this not summarize the protectionist logic analyzed by Young? “We” protect” our “Own” from “Them”[9]. This formulation is most explicit appearance in political thought in Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political[10]:  the friend-enemy distinction, the constant references to the possibility of killing the enemy- these are but remnants of predation, the foundation of ritual.

Benjamin makes an explicit reference to how the mass reproduction of art shifted its locus from ritual to politics:

“as soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social function of art is revolutionized. Instead of being founded in ritual, it is based on a different practice: politics”[11]

But as has been illustrated, it is not only art but also politics which has a parasitic relationship with ritual. And while it cannot be denied that the aestheticizaton of politics culminates in war, it must be added that the parasitic relationship of politics with ritual still remains. In the last analysis, it is cycle from ritual to ritual. War, then, despite its association with politics, is still in the realm of ritual.

III

“American soldiers feared the sword, or more precisely, its mystique…because Japanese soldeiers would make these banzai attacks- desperate, all-out charges- holding their sword as if they believed in its magical powers”[12]

The passage cited above offers irrevocable proof of the mystique of the katana. It may not be directly connected to the concept of aura. Yet one cannot deny that the katana carries something similar to aura. Without a doubt, it would at least have the same effects in time and space as the aura.

But would it be just to pinpoint this aura merely in terms of the unintelligible irrationality of the banzai- or for that matter, kamikaze- strikes? The predominant narratives of the American encounter of the Japanese in World War 2 focus in general on the aspect of alterity. Edwin P. Hoyt, for example writes: “The two tales from the Hagakure are offered here to prepare Western readers of the book to understand a philosophical approach to life so different from our own…”[13]

And thus another article writes: “The results of the Jap fanaticism stagger the imagination. The very violence of the scene is incomprehensible to the Western mind.”[14] But this very self-same article reveals an insight which goes beyond attempts to rationalize the irrational: “The ordinary, unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing on Attu indicates it.”[15]

“Nothing on Attu indicates it”- yet one can detect the betrayal of hesitance. Perhaps he is human. Beyond the unreasoning, irrational, ignorance of the Jap, one senses the experience of a “fearful symmetry”, of the all-too-human.  There is in short, the uncanny, and the omnipotence of the concept of sacrifice attests to this. The uncanny is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar”[16]. It is for this reason that kamikaze pilots are often “adducted in discussion of the 9/11 hijackers.” [17]

The advent of the gun democratized glory. It can be said that the camera in art is the gun in war- whereas the camera sped up the artistic process by emancipating art from the hand; the gun accelerated the production process of warriors and weapons. Whereas old means of destruction took years to produce warriors, and whereas the old means of destruction could only produce few weapons for the few who could afford it, the new means of destruction revolutionized war. Training was reduced to months (“a knight began training in boyhood, but a bowman or a gunner could be readied for combat in months or weeks.”); the elite’s place was taken by the mass.

But was the birth of mass warfare the death of individual, close-up warfare? Not only the soldier but also the enemy is de-individualized. The former was atomized due the rise of mass warfare. The latter was atomized because the gun made killing an impersonal business. “The archer or gunman might never known which individual have been doomed by his by his arrow or bullet”[18]

Yet the fact that the need to glorify the struggle still exists is disconcerting; there always seems to be a nostalgia for greater causes illustrates that there is a remnant of the old mode of destruction. Thus certain men were known to have berated the use of projectiles. There is thus nostalgia- or uncanny.  Ehrenreich cites a case of a French man complaining of the anonymity created by the gun

“…that this unhappy weapon had never been devised and that so many brave and valiant men had never died by the hands of those…who would not dare look in the face of whom they lay low with their wretched bullets”[19]

What is thus despised with the mass warfare of the modern age is the anonymity it creates. The de-individualization created by the gun and the mass represses all possibility for glory and sacrifice. Yet the very nature of war needs ritual. Facism attempted to satisfy the maw with aesthetics, and its culmination- nationalism. Yet as long as war still de-individualizes, then there can be no sacrifice.

Hazing is transformative; it is the last fragment of ritual which still remains in the practice of war. But so long as the aim of this practice is to de-individualize is to render anonymous-part and parcel with the modern experience of war- then there will always be the uncanny of sacrifice and thus, the aura of the katana and the morbid satisfaction with self-sacrific- 9/11, kamikaze, banzai.

Word count: 1618

Bibliography:

Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935-1938, edit. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: The Origins and History of the Passions of War. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997

Freud, Sigmund The Standard Edition of the Complete Pyschological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII ed & trans. James Stracey. London: Hogharth, 1953

Hoyt, Edwin P. Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986)
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko “Betrayal by Idealism and Aesthetics: Special Attack Force (Kamikaze) Pilots and Their Intellectual Trajectories (Part 1)”, Anthrolpology Today 20, No. 2(2004): 15

O’Neill, Tom Samurai: Japan’s Way of the Warrior, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/japan/samurai-text/1

Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996

“World Battlefronts, THE ENEMY: Perhaps he is Human”, Time Magazine, July 1943

Young, Iris Marion “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Masculinist Security State” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2003, Vol 29 no. 1 (2003)

Context: This is the introduction I wrote for our POS55 paper:

Argument/Thesis Statement: This paper seeks to undermine the totalizing formulation of public discourse as primarily homogeneous by examining whether or not there is class heterogeneity vis-a-vis the issue of government actions on recent events concerning Spratlys and the resulting Philippines-China tensions

The entrance of revolution into the pantheon of political phenomena and into the lexicon of political (and non-political) language is but a recent phenomena: “Revolutions, properly speaking, did not exist prior to the modern age; they are among the most recent of all major political data”¹ . And it is in the speeches and battle cries of revolution(s) that the wordfreedom, in the multifaceted sense of the word, is most often extolled

Freedom as a word is multifaceted because the two revolutions on which our tradition of revolution is founded upon, the French and American revolutions, offer differing definitions of freedom. For the Americans, freedom was public freedom. For the French, it was freedom from suffering. This demarcation does not only suggest a correlation with a difference in context- for America had a prosperity that France could only dream of- but also helps explain another intriguing difference in their political lexicon- the French le peuple could not be more dissimilar from the American “We be the people…”. Robespierre and Saint-Just’s definition of people couldn’t be anymore different from the Founding Father’s definition of people. “…the word ‘people’ retained for them [the American revolutionaries] the meaning of manyness, of the endless variety of a multitude whose majesty resided in its plurality…the American concept of people identified with a multitude of voices and interests…”²

By contrast, the French le peuple lacks this notion of multitude. People for Robespierre was understood not in the plural but in the singular, le peuple toujours malheureux. People, in short, in the singular sense of the world, understood not as a multitude of voices but as a single unified cry of suffering. “The very definition of the word was born out of compassion, and the term became the equivalent for misfortune and unhappiness”³. People, for the French, meant a mass, and an irresistible one at that.

This equation of people with mass and suffering, the glorification of suffering as a virtue and the call for compassion is what Arendt credits with the downfall of the French Revolution. When the French asked for politics to come from the heart and not from the mind (via reason), the French revolution ceased to be political: “Passion and compassion are not speechless, but their language consists in gestures and expressions of countenance rather than words”⁴. Language, and by this virtue, discussion and argumentation, is the mouthpiece of politics. The French revolution failed because the heart only feels; its language is feeling. It does not speak, and is thus non-political.

Politics is politics because of difference and distance. Difference is what characterized the American definition of people, and ergo, distance. Compassion, the driving force of the French revolution, “abolished the distance, the in-between which always exists in human intercourse”⁵, and especially in politics. “By the same token, he [Robespierre] lost the capacity to establish and hold fast rapports with persons…”⁶.

Something wicked, this way comes: the entrance of the mass in the political scene does not only mark the downfall of the French revolution- it also foreshadows and culminates in the Nazi death-camps. The shadow of Auschwitz still looms high on the horizon of modernity. Despite the decades long distance in time, the masses of the French revolution and the huddled masses of Auschwitz share an uncanny similarity. Where the French saw the irresistibility of necessity in motion (“In this stream of the poor, the element of irresistibility, which we found so intimately connected with original meaning of the word ‘revolution’ [as seen in the irresistible revolutions of the planets] was embodied, and in its metaphoric usage it became all the more plausible as irresistibility was connected with necessity”⁷), the Nazis saw fuel for the fulfillment of the “laws” of nature or history. The overcoming of distance in the French revolution via compassion was now achieved by the Nazis via terror: “By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them…even the desert of tyranny appears like a guarantee of freedom”⁸. “what took place in the Holocaust and in the countless other disasters of the twentieth century [and before], [can be pinpointed on] where the other person becomes a faceless face in the crowd…” ⁹.

This facelessness is one of the symptoms of Philippine politics: not only in corruption and in the crimes of Capitalism, where perhaps fellow Filipinos are seen only in terms of cold cash relations, but also in how public opinion is represented. There is only “one” public opinion, only one unified subject which is shown to us by PulseAsia, always just a yes/no approval rating, and never presented any other way. It is as Ezra Pound once declared: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough”.

This is not meant to chastise what Philippine politics has achieved, but is an attempt to divert from a path which has been proven faulty, an attempt to show that although a majority of the state’s constituents are poor, this does not mean that they are only poor. A move towards constituency in the plural, and not in the singular, totalitarian les tojours malheureux.

Why did President Aquino say “Kayo ang Boss ko” and not “Kayo-kayo ang mga boss ko”? True, the first is a more practical pronouncement: it aims to assert loyalty to the Philippines and to the Filipinos as a whole. Yet it glosses over the multiplicity of voices. It speaks of a normative Filipino, not of Filipinos. This essentialist tendency is best illustrated by President Aquino’s totalizing formulation: “Saan ba nakasulat na kailangang puro pagtitiis ang tadhana ng Pilipino?”. Sino ang “Kayo” na tinutukoy ninyo, ginoong Aquino? The Philippines is indeed in a time of upheaval, and in our current state of economic and social turmoil, the word “Filipino” serves is a signifier for the collective, continuing, endurance of our nation. Yet who are the signified? Filipinos, after all, though this claim may not be academically supported, have a multitude of opinions.

This paper takes as its base of relfection the recent public discourse on the issue of Spratlys and the tensions in Philippine-Chinese relations and attempts to analyze them from the lens of economic class and asks the question “Does economic class and the conditions of living associated with that class illustrate difference in opinion?” In doing so, it hopes to:

1. Illustrate the plurality of Filipino voices; if there is heterogeneity of opinion via class, then surely, there is heterogeneity via some other classification

2. Look for ways in which these voices may be activated. Filipinos must learn to speak, to argue for their right to have their say. In what ways can the silence be broken?

3. To encourage the replacement of the term “the” Filipino with Filipinos.

4. To provide a prognostic analysis of Philippine politics. If the mass has been identified with totalitarianism, then may this paper serve as a prognosis of a possible evil to come, and as a guide to its thwarting.

  1Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Russell: Faber & Faber, 1963) 2

This brief article was written in response to an opinion piece which was published in the most recent issue of Guidon.

The essay which I which I wish to critique begins promisingly enough; it wishes to call people to action. And I quote: “Hundreds of times we have heard the age old mantra that “actions speak louder than words”, but have we ever thought of how actually speaking out might be the one that makes enough”.

This part of the essay is the best part; it calls us to speak out as a way to change things, or perhaps to resist the ways things are being run. Yet whatever brilliant insight is demonstrated here is marred by a certain banality. At this point, the essay begins to go into a downward spiral. I will cite the most incriminating part:

“How many times have you settled for mashed potato instead of your coleslaw?”

Reason is what defines us as humans. This is not to say that animals don’t think or lack consciousness, but that human reason has done, and is capable of, far greater things than any other animal. While it is true that insects have discovered complex living mechanisms much earlier than we have (African termite mounds are astoundingly organized and complex for such a “primitive creature”), the potential of human reason can easily override whatever animals can accomplish. By the reason which makes us human, we have discovered philosophy, science, arts. We have plotted the orbits of the heavens. In the colorful words of Hofstadter:

“I would suggest that it is only because we tacitly believe [that we are more rational] that most of us are willing to eat animals of one sort or another, to smash flies, swat mosquitoes, fight bacteria with antibiotics, and so forth. We generally concurr…that a cow, a turkey, a frog, and a fish, all possess some form of consciousness…but by God, it’s much smaller than ours…” (from the preface of Douglas Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher, Bach, and Eternal Golden Braid”)

Speech, then, is the mark of this rationality. Where animals thrash and bite, we argue and speak (unless war breaks out). When we reflect of think, we speak to ourselves. When we are in the process of argumentation and decision making, we speak not only to ourselves (as we develop our arguments) but also to others. When we seek to resist, when we seek to challenge, when we seek to change things, we speak. Yet the call to speak which is asked for in the editorial I am critiquing is weak; It is banal, it is trivial. It calls for us to speak, but only when it is for our convenience. In the words of our rather shallow opinion-writer: “I had no trouble in asserting my rights as a consumer…I can’t help but feel sorry for our nation has become”.

The context of the opinion piece I am critiquing is that the author had terrible cellphone service and that she used her ability to speak by asserting her “consumer rights”, and that this inability to assert one’s consumer rights is the inability of the Filipino to assert his consumer rights. And this precisely why it is so wrong and it so insulting: it equates the state of the nation and the mission of speaking to “consumer rights”, to complaining about mashed potato and cellphone service. The author of this opinion piece draws attention to herself- Look at me, I have no problem asserting my consumer rights by complaining about terrible service- and she uses this to pity the nation- look at our nation, it doesn’t know how to speak, in contrast to me, who knows how to assert my consumer rights. It is as if the problems of the nation can simply be remedied by complaining about getting mashed potato and not coleslaw.

Perhaps the problem of our nation is that it cannot speak; but this inability to speak must not be reduced to such a trivial example. Is mass poverty the result of an inability to assert consumer rights? The author even has the gall to call the nation apathetic- in contrast to her, because she complains about cellphone service. My point here is that the struggle of the nation to be a nation by speaking is not the same thing and is much greater than “consumer rights”.

The conundrum which the nation experiences is not an inability to assert one’s consumer rights, and that asserting consumer rights is in no way representative of the form of speech which our nation needs to acquire/learn and utilize. These so-called consumer rights by which we should respond (according to the opinion piece which I am critiquing) or speak or act are in no way the solution; they are in fact illusions and are inadequate.

“…the tiniest complaints are left unsaid, who knows what major problems will be left to rot in the country. Filipinos need to stop being okay with getting used to being pushed over”. While I concede the fact that the tiniest ignorance of problems lead to bigger problems being ignored (which was why I was so critical of the case of plagiarism in the SC sometime ago), I must correct the voice which is lent to us by “consumer rights” is not a voice at all. She presupposes that all Filipinos have consumer rights when the fact is that a majority of Filipinos cannot even complain at all because they have nothing at all. She totalizes the Filipino condition into a problem of “consumer rights” when, in fact, a majority of Filipinos cannot even afford to be consumers at all, much less assert their consumer rights. The illusion of speech which is lent to us by “consumer rights” carries no weight at all. It is an empty form of speech and action.

Whatever customer-centric advertisements are aired which claim to put the customer first, the fact is that the customer can only speak if only he is a customer. One can only bear consumer rights if one can afford; if one cannot , then one cannot assert these consumer rights at all. And due to the fact that a majority cannot consume, how can consumer rights assert, much less speak, about anything at all? The human ability to speak has been reduced to the money in one’s pocket. By acknowleding “consumer rights” as a solution, the author of has disabled the ability of many Filipinos to speak at all. The opinion piece began with a call to speak, and it ended with a paralysis of this ability to speak.

The year was 1724 when a strange creature was found near the outskirts of the fields of the current town of Hameln, Germany. The thing, which was described as “a naked, brownish, black-haired creature, who was running up and down…and was about the size of a boy of twelve” (Candland 1993, 9), was enticed with a prize of apples and lured into the town, whereupon he was “first received by a mob of street boys, but was very soon afterwards placed for safe custody in the Hospital of the Holy Ghost, by the order of the Burgonmaster [Mayor] Severin” (Candland 1993,9). It, or rather, he, was nicknamed Peter, and he was the first fully documented case of a feral child wherein “Feral” is defined as “untouched by human contact, human demands, and human forms of socialization” (Candland 1993, 9).

According to Candland, the discovery of Peter at the time reignited the timeless debate of nature/nurture, or the debate over “What, and how much, of ourselves is innate, unlearned, cleaned of the effects of experience and socialization, and what can and do human beings learn from their experiences, their teachers, the environment” (Candland 1993,13). In Candland’s own words: “Peter provided a seemingly unusual opportunity for his fellow human beings to examine the effects of socialization as separate from what human humankind knows and does by nature” (Candland 1993,10).

Now, historically speaking, Candland was correct when he said that the discovery of Peter reignited the nature/nurture debate, the debate on what is learned and what is instinctively known, and the demarcation between the two. But this is not the debate with which this paper is concerned about. Rather, this paper centers on a demystification of the dominant paradigm that the fullest realization of man only happens when he is civilized.

The dominant paradigm at the time, and of all periods before, and perhaps until this very day, was that man could only realize his humanity to its fullest only when he was civilized, and that conversely, he would be reduced to his most feral when he was uncivilized, or isolated outside of society. Such was the distinction, Arendt notes, that Aristotle made (using speech) between barbarians and civilized Greeks (Arendt 1977). This is even more the case in Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality: “Savage man, when left by nature to bare instinct alone…will then begin with purely animal function” (Yousef 2001, 245).

But the questions which will destroy the traditional standpoint regarding social isolation and ferality, and civilization and humanity are these: Will man become feral if and only if he is isolated outside of society? Or is it perhaps possible that man becomes feral if he is isolated within society? How and why is it possible for man to be isolated within society? Or, taking the question to its most extreme and logical conclusion: Does society itself, by isolating its people within it, reduce human beings to “bare instinct alone” (Yousef 2001, 245)?

The answer to the final question, regarding the relationship between ferality and civilization is a clear and definitive yes. In fact, we see them every day on the streets, usually rambling and exceptionally filthy. A majority of the time we avoid them: we ignore them, and we fear them.

It is the specter which haunts the darkest recesses of highways, roads, and the collective Filipino consciousness. It mindlessly roams the jungles of concrete and steel, forever lost in a liminal of neither here nor there, neither completely hidden nor completely displayed, neither feral nor human, and finally, neither mania nor melancholia.

I refer to, of course, none other than the Philippine phenomenon of the taong grasa.

Foucault writes, in Madness and Civilization: “Madness borrowed its face from the face of the beast” (Foucault 1961, 72). It is through madness that man becomes feral. Or more specifically, it is through madness that the animal in man is released.

This paper is interested in formulating a theory of madness not just as a psychological phenomenon, wherein madness can be designated as a psychological breaking point resulting from socio-environmental factors, but also as a political phenomenon, more specifically and more importantly, as an application of sovereign power. In other words, what this paper wishes to achieve is an explanation of why the taong grasa becomes insane. In this paper, I will return to the belief that “power makes mad” (Foucault 1979, 27), which Foucault abandoned in Discipline and Punish (In Foucault’s own words, “Perhaps we must abandon the belief that power makes mad” [Foucault 1975, 27] ), if only to illustrate the raw brutality of power- that power at its most brutal turns men mad; that power does not only destroy the body, as was the case with Damiens the regicide (Foucault 1979, 3), or of the numerous others before him, but, as is the case with the taong grasa, withers self-consciousness, perverts desires, unleashes the beast, in short, targets and destroys the mind and makes men mad.

How then, will this aim be achieved? How, then, will the phenomenon of madness be approached? First, this paper will locate madness within Philippine culture, in both its realities and its representations, by simultaneously traversing into Philippine literature and case-studies of taong grasa. Second, this paper will then analyze these realities/representations from a Hegelian/Foucaultian perspective. That is, this paper will critique and analyze madness and its representations using Kojeve’s An Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Daniel Berthold Bond’s Hegel of Madness and Tragedy and from Foucault’s Madness and Civilization. Finally, this paper will discuss the ways in which these causes of madness are used as tactics in modern day capitalist Philippine society, notably from the Marxist concept of alienation and the Arendtian concept of atomization, embodied in the discourses surrounding the filthiness of the taong grasa, and in doing so, attempt to connect madness to the discourse othe taong grasa.

What are the implications of this methodology and this paper? In doing these steps, this paper will pinpoint not only the sovereign cause of madness, but also the madness of modern day Philippine capitalist society. For if according to Foucault, power is everywhere, then madness is everywhere. Madness is the norm, not the exception: “Madness is the rule, sanity the exception. To be normal, to be sane is the most difficult thing in the world to be” (Arcellana 1973, 90)

Thus, the primary and ultimate tasks of this paper are clear: On the one hand, the primary goal of this paper will be to prove that madness, or more specifically, its causes, are an application of sovereign power, by a sovereign distortion of the subject On the other hand, the ultimate goal of this paper will be to point out the madness in modern day Philippine capitalist society- to paint a picture of the taong grasa not as the irrational man in the rational world, but as the most visible extremity of madness in modern day Philippine capitalist society, to illustrate the madness inherent in modern society- in short, to reformulate the taong grasa not as a madman, but a madman of the madness of our civilization. Now is the time to illustrate what Marx meant when he said that “The nation feels like that mad Englishman in bedlam” (Marx 1935, 17)

Jose Rizal, in the preface to Noli me Tangere, once wrote about the social cancer in Philippine society:

“In the catalog of human ills there is to be found a cancer so malignant that the least touch inflames it and causes agonizing pains…To this end, I shall endeavor to show your condition, faithfully and ruthlessly. I shall lift a corner of your veil which shrouds the disease…for as your son your defects and weaknesses are also mine”

(Rizal, trans. by Guerrero 1961, ix)

Now it is no longer a social cancer, but a social madness in the capitalist system of modern day Philippine society which has gripped the country and has manifested itself in the form of the taong grasa, the madmen of the madness of our civilization. Therefore: In lieu of what Rizal endeavored to expose and to achieve during his time, so shall I “endeavor to show [my country’s] condition. For as in the admirable words of the great Dr. Rizal, “as your son, your defects and weaknesses are also mine” my country’s suffering is my suffering; my country’s defects are my defects; my country’s madness is my madness; and my country’s cross is my cross to bear.

Those words were written not only to set the tone of this paper, but also to hopefully, hopefully illustrate to the reader in a few words the conundrum of the madman; For the problem of the madman is that he can neither speak nor be spoken for; he can only be spoken of- The madman’s speech is speech which mocks our speech; And praise be the fool who claims to “represent” the madman. No, the madman, and the taong grasa can perhaps only be spoken of- illustrated in art, re-presented in literature.

But to admit self-defeat is intolerable. For us to speak for the madman, we must assume, and even embrace the role of the madman, the life of madness, of the empty smile which haunts- and pray that we escape, unscathed! And we must illustrate the madness of society, if only to show that in our being human, we all have the potential for madness, and we are in fact are all, already, and perhaps unknowingly, insane.

In conclusion: Dear reader, realize your madness! Realize the madness of the abscess of your soul, in the emptiness your desires, and from which capitalism seeks to profit from; As Michel Foucault cited Pascal in his preface, so shall I: “Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness” (Foucault 1965, ix).

II. Sanus/Sanitas: On the Condition of the Taong Grasa

For now we will abandon the relationship between madness, civilization, and ferality. But we will return to them later, when we relocate ferality, and thus madness, in the realm of being- or rather, in the realm of non-being and of negativity.

We begin with a specific year- 182, in fact. This year is important because it marks the year in which Anton Juan’s one-act play garnered the1982 Doc Carlos Palanca Award For Literature. This text is crucial for what is written within is central to this paper: “Pagliko natin sa kantong ‘yan makikita nating muli and isa sa kanila, batong gawa sa laman at buto, maitim, maitim, binalutan ng araw at gabi, dura’t ihi. Anong tawag sa kanila? Taong Grasa, sabi mo…” (Juan 1982, 246)

There are two distinctions which characterize the “being” of, and the experience of being, a taong grasa (if there is such a thing, which will be put into doubt in this paper): he is insane and unsanitary. The latter has been pointed out quite clearly in the passage I quoted above. The former, on the other hand, is not seen in the same passage, but is also seen throughout the text. For example: “Biglang may kakausapin bagamat walang tao maliban sa kanya” (Juan 1982, 247)”.

Here is further proof of the unity of these two elements in the taong grasa:

“Taong Grasa… it is a derisive term in Filipino slang used to refer to individuals occasionally seen wandering aimlessly on the streets, clothed in the dirtiest of rags, and covered in enough grime to have recently taken a dip in a pit of blackened grease and soot. The usual presumption is that the Taong Grasa is insane- which is not far off, considering that the sort is given to sudden outbursts and ravings…” (Ramos 2003, 11)

Interestingly enough, these characteristics are both negations: the prefix “-in” negates the word “sane”, whereas the prefix “-un” negates “sanitary”. The characteristics which define the taong grasa are purely negative. This “negativity” is also intrinsic in the label of the taong grasa as a “taong grasa”. When it is not conjugated, the label “taong grasa” takes the form of “tao-na-grasa” (UP Diksyunaryong Filipino 2010, 3582), which literally means “man-of-grease”, or in my preferred translation, “man-of-filth”. It is as if the being of the taong grasa is worth nothing, and even less than nothing. He is pure negativity. He is not even “human”- he has been defined by, and also, as filth. He is not a “tao” but a “tao-na-grasa”, not a man but a man-of-filth, a man whose being is non-being. This is important because it is connected with madness: madness, according to Foucault, “became the paradoxical manifestation of non-being…confinement merely manifested what madness, in its essence, was: a manifestation of non-being. In the words of Foucault: “by confinement, madness is acknowledged to be nothing” (Foucault 1961, 115).

Which brings us to my proposition: If madness is related to non-being, then perhaps non-being is the cause of madness, more specifically the madness of the taong grasa. Sovereignty, then, is related to madness by way of non-being, the negation (and thus reduction) of a man’s being to non-being.

Let us now return to the taong grasa. Earlier on, we have said that the taong grasa is characterized by two negations: his in-sanity and his un-cleanliness (or un-sanitary characteristic). But now I suggest that the two are related, more specifically that the negation of the Sanitas (unsanitary) is what caused the taong grasa’s madness, the negation of his Sanus. I suggest that perhaps there is something in being a taong grasa that made him mad.

However, I do not claim that it is merely filthiness which causes madness. Rather I believe it is in the stigma of filthiness- that it is just that the filthiness of the tang grasa is that which fully illustrates this condition. Thus, we must look for how filthiness alienates, or atomizes, or separates. But considering this, we must study how the taong grasa became nothing, the conditions in which he lost himself. Perhaps there is a stigma in filthiness, that by being filthy, or under similar conditions, man is reduced to nothing, simultaneously in the eyes of others and within the self, thereby leading to madness- that by being filthy the being became filth, the being became non-being, that the being became earth once more- and by this process, madness sprung forth.

III. Sanus: Étre, Pauvre et L’aile de Folié – Locating the Root of Madness

Let us first begin from the standpoint of Sanus with an examination and analysis of a few words from Francisco Arcellana, taken from his short story entitled The Wing of Madness (I). Arellana writes: “As long as I know that I am mad, then I am safe” (Arcellana 1973, 89).

These words, when taken at face-value, appear to be an absurd contradiction. For in that sentence, there seems to be an epic clash of the diametrically opposed domains of reason and un-reason.

How is it possible for one to know that one is mad? Or rather, if madness is, in the words of Foucault, “consorted indiscriminately with all the forms of unreason” (Foucault 1965, 70), then how can an unreasonable man reasonably know that one is unreasonable How is it possible for the madman to know that he is mad despite the fact that he is mad and unreasonable?

The “contradiction” in Arcellana’s baffling statement is resolved in a few words: “Man is self-consciousness” (Kojeve 1969, 3). Let us examine Kojeve’s words in their entirety:

“Man is Self-Consciousness”. He is conscious of himself, conscious of his human reality and dignity; and it is in this that he is essentially different from animals, which do not go beyond the level of simple Sentiment of the self…

Man becomes conscious of himself when…he says ‘I’ ” (Kojeve 1969, 3)

Now Arcellana’s statement makes sense. It is clear that we must no longer interpret his statement as a contradiction, that it is a statement which falls between rationality and irrationality and thus fails to satisfy either of them and is thus irrational and absurd, nor should we interpret madness as primarily categorized with unreason. Instead, we must now instead locate madness in self-consciousness.

And this is not a contradiction! It is entirely possible for one to be simultaneously self-conscious and completely irrational. No better example can be found than the madman who thinks he is something else, or who attaches special qualities to himself. A madman may walk stark naked and filthy into the middle of the street with incoming traffic coming his way and declare that he is the “King of the World” (or something to that aspect), and in that scenario, he is equally irrational and self-conscious. In the words of Foucault, “at a deeper level, we find [in madness] a rigorous organization dependent on the faultless armature of a discourse” (Foucault 1965, 96).

Madness does not deny logic- what actually confounds is that it is so logical, yet illogical. But regardless, what is not lost is self-consciousness. “The man who imagines he is made of glass is not mad…but he must be mad if he, believing he is made of glass, he thereby concludes he is fragile, that he is in danger of breaking” (Foucault 1965, 94)- here we see the madman’s logic as correct, for if one is made of glass, then he is liable to be be fragile. Yet it is in its rationality that it appears irrational. “The marvelous logic of the mad which seems to mock that of the logicians because it because it resembles it so exactly” (Foucault 1965, 95). But still, regardless of the rational irrationality or the irrational rationality of madness, the madman still knows himself- “I am made of glass, I am king of the world!”

This view of madness as intertwined with self-consciousness is supported and complemented by Arcellana when he says that “Madness begins consciously as a loss of control [of the self]¹” (Arcellana 1973, 89). For this statement alone not only verifies our theory that madness is connected with consciousness; it also makes the distinction of madness as a conscious loss of control over the self, a self-conscious struggle.

Arcellana also made a further specification of this distinction later in the same text:

“…First it was like a shadow: I was unmoved; Second, it was like a breath: I hardly felt it; Third, it was like a wind: I was warm with love, but the wind chilled me; Fourth, it was like a wing…it struck me again and again; Fifth, it is a huge bird- ugly, hateful, obscene…”

(Arcellana 1973, 91)

Pay attention to how the madness progresses: In the earlier stages, madness is not felt. When madness is still a shadow, it is “unmoving”. Later on, the madness progresses morbidly: Madness shifts from an “unmoving madness” to a madness of perpetual movement. Notice how the degree of violence increases from wind (“First to go were my eyes. They were always raging everywhere…I lived only in my eyes and only my eyes were alive in me” [Arcellana 1973, 89]) to wing (“Then my hands went. My berserk hands! Now that they have stirred, when finally they have lifted, they are monsters” [Arcellana 1973, 89]) to bird (“Finally, the body, and loss of control², partial or total; and a state of anarchy…” [Arcellana 1973, 89]).

Furthermore, it can perhaps be concluded that the degree of violence increases as the degree of madness increases. We can perhaps deduce that the strength of the hold of madness is inversely proportional to the amount over control of the self- that is, as the degree of control over the self decreases, the degree of violence increases. Each successive increase of the degree of violence is the outward reaction to the inward loss of control of the self.

Madness then, for Arcellana (and this paper) is clearly associated with the loss of the self, or a loss of control over the self. The violence of madness progresses slowly, but surely, moving from an “unmoving” madness to a madness of permanent movement, to a madness of violence (or perhaps even a violence of madness). This analogous to what Foucault points out in Discipline and Punish, what he called as “a slackening of the hold on the body” (Foucault 1979, 10). The roots of madness and the violence associated with it are rooted deep within the core of the self.

But this explanation of madness as a self-conscious struggle against a loss of control is not enough. Because if this was to suffice, it would lack a crucial element: the element of desire. Self-consciousness pre-supposes desire. In Kojeve’s own words:

“The (conscious) Desire of a being is what constitutes that being as I and reveals it as such by saying “I…”… The human I is the I of a Desire or of Desire…The very being of man therefore implies and presupposes desire” (Kojeve 1969, 3).

This statement makes more sense when mentioned with another one: “Man becomes conscious of himself at the moment when-for the ‘first time’- he says ‘I’”

But although desire is crucial, it is not enough: “animal Desire is the necessary condition of Self-Consciousness; it is not the sufficient condition. By itself, this Desire constitutes only the sentiment of the Self” (Kojeve 1969, 3).Kojeve notes that there is another kind of Desire which will transforms simple “sentiment of the Self” into true self-consciousness.

How is human self-consciousness achieved? It is achieved via a dialectical process: Desire is a negativity which must be negated in order to realize self-consciousness and escape ‘simple sentiment of the Self’. In his own words, “…the’ I of Desire’ is an emptiness that receives a real positive content only by negating action that satisfies Desire in destroying, transforming and ‘assimilating the desired non-I” (Kojeve 1969, 4). Furthermore: “The I created by the active satisfaction of such a Desire will have the same nature as the things toward which that Desire is directed: it will be a ‘thingish’ I…an animal I” (Kojeve 1969, 4)

Thus if the “I of Desire” is characteristically negative, then dialectically speaking, the only way to “realize” the “I” is to “negate the negativity” of Desire, “not like the animal ‘I’, be ‘identity’, or equality to itself, but ‘negating-negativity’” (Kojeve 1969, 5). These are the crucial passages in understanding the dialectic of desire: First, “For there to be Self-Consciousness, Desire must therefore be directed to a non-natural object… [but] the only thing that goes beyond the given reality is Desire itself” (Kojeve 1969 5). It is made clear here that the only thing which can negate desire, and will thus realize self-consciousness is another desire: “Desire directed toward another Desire, taken as Desire, will create, by the negating and assimilating action which satisfies it, an I essentially different from the animal ‘I’” (Kojeve 1969, 5)”. Finally, and in conclusion, “Desire is human only if the one desire not the body, but the Desire of the other; if he wants ‘to possess’ or to ‘assimilate’…if he wants to be ‘desired’, or ‘loved’, or better, ‘recognized’, in his human value, in his reality as a human individual” (Kojeve 1969, 6).

There are two kinds of desire- first, an animal desire, and second, a human desire. The former is a desire of objects, the latter a desire of desire or better, a desire to be desired. And in order to move away from the negativity of the animal self, in order to be human, the negativity of animal desire is to be negated, and the only thing which can negate desire is desire. Therefore, this desire to be desired, this desire to be recognize, this desire to be the object of another person’s desire, is what makes us human.

But what does this relationship of desire and self-consciousness mean for this paper? How shall this desire be connected with madness? The answer to those questions lies in Arcellana and Foucault.

We now know that, for Arcellana, “madness begins consciously as a loss of control” (Arcellana 1973, 89). But that citation was a mere fragment of the whole. The entire statement is rendered thus:

“Madness begins consciously as a loss of control. First to go were my eyes. I do not know when first they pounced on breasts and thighs, but since they sought nothing else. My runaway eyes!…They were always ranging everywhere seeking only breasts and thighs and secret places…how I would wrench and twist so that they could feed long and deep on dark parts and secret places, how in my world only breasts and thighs existed” (Arcellama 1973, 89)

Here is desire, equated with madness: breasts and thighs equated with the loss of

control of the self.

And in the words of Foucault: “The savage danger of madness is related to the danger of the passions and to their fatal concantenation…The distraction of our mind is the result of our blind surrender our desires” (Foucault 1965, 85).

This connection between the power of desire and madness is verified by a short story entitled “The Banana Jewel” which was included by Maximo D. Reyes in his anthology of Philippine folklore entitled Legends of Lower Gods (1990). “The Banana Jewel” tells the story of a man who is driven mad by desire. In this story, it is said that whoever takes a fallen banana jewel, which is also known as Mutya, which apparently hangs from a banana flower facing east at midnight, will grant great strength, on the condition that the person who claims it will be able to place it in his mouth and keep it there- while fighting a hideous monster. Now, the main character of the story, a young man decides to take the test. Upon putting the banana jewel in his mouth, the monster appears, and the two fight. The battle at first appears to be close, as the banana jewel had granted the young man strength; but carelessly, the young man started to taunt the monster. The jewel fell to the ground, the monster vanished- And lo and behold! :

“…from then on, the man was never the same…he was often seen walking at the town square singing and laughing. He would leap into the air and hurl insults at no one in sight. He was fighting the demon who owned the jewel that he had captured and lost” (Ramos 1990, 3).

Now, this story at first appears to be a story of immaturity, that the moral here is that the young man deserved his fate because he was too immature. Or perhaps it may be interpreted as a warning against pride. But the truth is that in the end, madness is there because of a desire which cannot be satisfied- that his entire body is fighting the demon who owned the jewel. What causes the madman to fight the demon in his mind is the desire for the jewel, to possess it once more.

This connection between desire and madness is also seen in Anton Juan’s Taong Grasa. The monologue throughout the play is filled with references to the madness of the taong grasa, more specifically the habit of the taong grasa of speaking to someone who is not there.

Thus it is written that “Biglang may kakausapin, bagama walang tao maliban sa kanya”. But it is made clear later on that the taong grasa is referring to his stomach, or to the acid which churns in his gut. Observe:

“Narrator: Masusuka siya

Taong Grasa: ‘Huwag! Huwag mong iluwa ang binigay ko sa’yo! Pag niluwa mo ‘yan, ‘yang pinagaksayahan ko ng pagod…sige, iluwa mo. Iluwa mo’t kakainin ko ulit ‘yan. Hihigupin ko, baka sa akala mo…’

N: Kukunin ang bayong. Ibabalasa ang balutan may lamang mga ulo ng isda kakainin.

T: Sige, kumain ka na ” (Juan 1982, 257)

It is clear in this monologue that the taong grasa could not have been talking to anyone other than his gut.

It is Foucault who gives the most definitive words on the link between desire and madness, or rather, passion and delirium.

Madness, Foucault points out, begins with the unity of the body and soul through passion. Primarily, he notes: “the mind’s movements obey a mechanical structure which is that if the movement of spirits” (Foucault 1973, 86). (The spirits which Foucault refers to here are “animal” spirits). “Before the sight of the object of passion, the animal spirits were spread throughout the entire body…but at the presence of the new object, the majority of spirits are impelled into the muscles of the arms, legs…” (Foucault 1965, 86). “…under the effects of passion…the spirits circulate…one more step, and the entire system becomes unity in ehih body and soul communicate immediately” (Foucault 1965, 86). Desire overcomes the body, and it is what causes it to move. Passion has taken hold of the body and controls its movements: “…Desire dis-quiets him and moves him to action…action tends to satisfy it, and can do so only by the ‘negation’…of the desired object” (Kojeve 1969, 4).

This is what we have been looking for- a condition in which self-consciousness is overcome or consumed by desire, yes, man is self-conscious. He is still conscious or aware of himself in the act of saying “I desire…” Yet at the same time, when man is moved by desire, his self is no longer his. It is not he that moves, but his desire, which moves him, which controls his body.

Again we return to the scene in the one-act play Taong Grasa, in which the taong grasa is revealed to be talking to his gut His actions are dictated by the acid shooting from his gut, to eat. In doing so, he surrenders his self- “Sige kumain ka na” (Juan 1982, 257). Here, “Sige” is a sign of the acceptance of defeat and of surrender to necessity- he loses his self, he is alienated from his self. He struggles self-consciously against himself in a fight to retain control over himself. But this struggle is in vain, for his desire has already taken over his body.

It is also in the reversion of the Self into the animal self in which the ferality of madness appears. For when the self is reduced to its animal desires, then the body will essentially revert to its animal form; “madness threatens modern man only with that return to the bleak world of beasts and things” (Foucault 1965, 83). Furthermore, “…it was this animality of madness which confinement glorified…” (Foucault 1965, 78).

Finally, Foucault writes, “Madness borrowed its face from the mask of the beast….this model of animality prevailed in the asylums and gave them their cage-like aspect, their look of the menagerie”

(Foucault 1965, 72)

It is from the subjection to the desire of objects in which the two faces of madness appear: mania and melancholia. For both forms of madness are occupied by desire. Melancholia is characterized by a sense of longing: “Melancholia is ‘a madness without fever or frenzy, accompanied fear and sadness” (Foucault 1965, 121). Furthermore: “melancholia is a long, persistent delirium during which the sufferer is obsessed by one thought” (Foucault 1965, 118). Mania on the other hand is the opposite: “While the melancholic’s mind is fixed upon a single object, imposing unreasonable proportions upon it, but upon it alone, mania deforms all concepts and ideas” (Foucault 1965, 125). The opposition between mania and melancholia is stated as thus: “Melancholia…is always accompanied by sadness and fear….in the maniac, we find audacity and fury” (Foucault 1965, 125).

It is clear that madness in the Philippines is primarily associated with mania. This is the case with Arcellana, who associates madness with a loss of control .As is the case with the taong grasa (“The usual presumption is that the Taong Grasa is insane- which is not far off, considering that the sort is given to sudden outbursts and ravings…” [Ramos 2003, 11]). And most curiously, madness is associated with the phenomenon of the Amok.

Yet madness is associated with melancholy in the Philippines too. The taong grasa’s cry in “Taong Grasa” is more than sufficient to illustrate this:

“N: May biglang tunog ng nagprenong kotse. Magmumura ang nagmamaneho

T: Anak ng buwaya ka! Tinuloy mo na sana! “ (Juan 1982, 251)

Or perhaps the anguished cries of Sisa in Guillermo Tolentino’s opera version of Noli Me Tangere (1944) will suffice:

“N: …Awit ng Gabi ang kanyang inawit, awit na kalunuslunos

Sisa: Gabi, Oh! Gabing gabi/ Gabi ng kalungkutan: Bituin ma’y wala, wala ring ang buwan

Ganyan, Oh! Ganyang-gaanyan; Ang bulaklak ng buhay; Ang halimuyak ay sagana, Ang talutot ngayo’y lagas/Lanta’t kupas” (Tolentino 1944, 36-37)

Or perhaps we might return to “Taong Grasa”:

“N: Tatawang papaiyak

T: Tumatawa ako, pero hindi ko alam, nalulungkot din ako, matagal nang hindi ko nadama ng hapdi sa aking mga mata ” (Juan 1982, 254)

And it should perhaps be noted here that it is in melancholia that the madman laughs;

“Sisa: Crispiiiiin! Basiliooooo! Hindi po, huwag po, hindi po, tunay maawa kayo.Hoo- hoo-hoo (Hagulhol ng iyak at tuloy hahalakhak)

Ha, Ha, Ha …anak ko, halikayo. Ha, Ha, Ha…Dios ko!” (Tolentino 1944, 19)

It is also from the unity of body of soul achieved in passion in which the fragmented images of madness arise. According to Foucault: “beginning with passion, madness is still only an intense movement in the unity of soul and body…but this intense movement quickly escapes the reason of the mechanism, and becomes, and irrational movement….the Unreal appear…”(Foucault 1965, 93). “…the totality of madness is parceled out…according to figures, images…fragments which isolate man from himself… [and] from reality” (Foucault 1965, 93).

In order to fully appreciate the connection between desire, madness and the production of madness, perhaps we should consult not a Filipino poem, but a poem by the French poet Jacques Prevert’s, entitled “Late Rising”:

“Terrible is the soft sound/ of a hardboiled egg/cracking on a zinc counter… terrible is that sound/ when it moves in the memory/ of a man who is hungry/Terrible also is the head of a man…when he looks at six o’clock in the morning/in a smart shop window and sees/a head the color of dust/ But it is not his head he sees in the window…/he dreams imagining another head, calf’s-head for instance/ with vinegar sauce/ head of anything edible…”³ (Prevert, 1988)

On the other, the fragmentary experience of madness is also verified by Arcellana. He writes: “But the moment that you see the bird…you know that the shadow, the breath, the wind, and the wing, are parts of the bird, and have no reality apart from the bird” (Arcellana 1973, 86). It is made clear in Arcellana’s text that everything other than the bird itself is just a fragment, that they ‘have no reality apart from the bird’. The bird is the totality, and everything prior to the bird is a mere fragment.

And Arcellana is ambiguous regarding the question of the way in which the images add up. It is not presented as if the images of prior to the bird add up such that it is first a, then a+b, and then a+b+c, leading to a summation of a+b+c+…+x = bird. The images are experienced individually- It is first a, wherein a is experienced alone, and then it is b independent of a, and then c independent of both a and b, with a conclusion in a+b+c+…+x = bird. “It is first shadow, then it is breath…then it is a wind…then it is a wing… then it is a bird….but the moment you see the bird…you know that [everything prior] are parts of the bird and have no reality apart from the bird” (Arcellana 1973, 86 [my italics]).

This bleak situation- when desire cannot be satisfied, but in which desire remains, and in which desire consumes the self – is neither mere literary fantasy nor hypothetical situation. Hannah Arendt, in On Revolution, puts it best: “Poverty is more than deprivation, it is a state of constant want and acute misery whose ignominy consists in its dehumanizing force; poverty is abject because it puts man under the absolute dictate of their bodies, that is, under the absolute dictate of necessity…” (Arendt 1963, 54).

Arendt’s statement on poverty is the key to the search for a situation in which animal Desire overpowers the Self, and it is in poverty wherein desire overpowers man, where man is put under the absolute dictate his body.

Yet is there not another kind of desire which must be satisfied, the desire of desire, and the desire to be loved or to be recognized?

Fear not, for poverty also provides a situation in which the desire to be loved is recognized. Citing John Adams, Arendt writes:

“‘The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet he is ashamed…He feels himself out of the sight of others, groping in the dark. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles and wanders unheeded… he is only not seen…to be wholly underlooked, and to know it, are intolerable’ ” (Arendt 1963, 63-64).

Poverty subjects man to desire, regardless of whether it is animal desire or human desire. This is because the former, animal desire, can drive man mad by subjecting man to desire- that is, by putting man under the absolute dictate of his body – whereas the latter, human desire, can drive man mad by turning man into nothing, or more specifically, by making man undesirable: “He feels himself out of the sight of others… Mankind takes no notice of him… to be wholly underlooked, and to know it, are intolerable” (Arendt 1963, 63-64).

But poverty is not also a subjection to the dictate of desire. It also includes an awareness of the great disunity between desire and the satisfaction of desire arises. It is in the condition of poverty in which man is becomes aware of the great disunity of the world, when man realizes the separation between himself and his objects of desire The taong grasa in “Taong Grasa seems to be aware of this great disparity between him and those around him: “Mga demonyo, kung kalian dapat tumawa, hindi tatawa. Ngayong wala nang nakakatawa, doon naman tatwa. Pag ako naman tatawa, bawal!” (Juan 1982, 252)

But this knowledge of the disunity in the world is, in itself, enough reason for madness to exist.

Daniel Berthold Bond, in the essay Hegel on Madness and Tragedy, states that Madness for Hegel begins with an awareness of the chaos in the world, and a desire for unity in the face of such disunity. Berthold-Bond quotes Hegel and states that: “Human consciousness is a ‘craving for…unity” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 74). “Yet this yearning is perpetually frustrated …the world is never a simple mirror of our inner desires, but throws them into question” (Bertold-Bond 1994, 74).

And it is in this attempt of the mind to impose order that man becomes mad: “…the broken character of of the world effects a similar inner division of consciousness” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 74). Furthermore, Berthold-Bond states that it is this desire for unity in the world that the images of madness arise: “…[madness] achieves the desired state of self-reunification through a projective dream life which directly expresses it’s desire” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 75). Furthermore, Berthold-Bond notes that “Hegel sees the mad self as replacing reality with a substitute formation…madness in fact, is described as a sort-of ‘dreaming while wake’” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 75). Ultimately, in the attempt of the mind to impose unity upon the chaotic world, the mind itself is divided

And oh, how the mind withers, how the mind is alienated from itself! Madness is when the mind withers into itself, is alienated from itself, and reverts into a primitive condition. The first condition, the withering of the mind into itself is noted as such: “His [Hegel's] general view of madness is a state of withdrawal of the mind into itself: (Berthold-Bond 1994, 74); “[madness is] a state in which the mind has sunk into itself, has sunk into itself” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 75). Following the withering of the mind into itself, the second condition is that the mind is alienated from itself, “…consists in its being positively separated from itself” (Berthold Bond 1994, 75). And the third condition, that of a return to the feral state, is explained as such: insanity is described by Hegel as “…a final capitulation in the face of the alienating character of existence, where the mind ‘reverts back to’…a primitive way of being” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 74).

This primitive way of being is noted as a condition “…where the role of nature, the body, and the unconscious dominates” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 74). “[madness is]…the sinking inward into what Hegel calls nature…basically apre-rational level of mental life, the ‘life of feeling’…” (Berthold-Bond 1994, 81) Here, once again, we can locate ferality in madness, a return which is thus analogous to Kojeve’s “sentiment of the Self”, or Arendt’s “necessity”.

To be poor is a hundredfold worse than to be a slave, for the master still relies on the slave- “He [the master] merely destroys the products of the slave’s work” (Kojeve 1969, 24)- and the slave can still realize the fullness of self-consciousness by working and by overcoming himself and his master- for “it is only through work that man is a supernatural being that is conscious of his reality” (Kojeve 1969, 25). But in poverty, the chance to change is taken away: the poor man cannot change or “dialectically overcome” himself for he has already been transformed- into nothing. He cannot strive for recognition- in fact it is almost impossible to be recognized, for he is forever an “Other”.

This is the key to Kojeve’s ending, for it first appears that the master has won, yet in the end, the slave wins and becomes the “truth”. But poverty has “mastered” the poor and is thus even less than a slave. He can neither transform himself nor the world. How can one still become ‘supernatural’, a being of his own reality, when one is not even recognized, or when it is through poverty in which man takes a step towards a return to the Hegelian “natural”, the pre-rational state?

Thus, in conclusion, we can perhaps say that Madness is a paradox; madness, as we have seen, is still a form of self-consciousness, for we have shown that madness is a self-conscious struggle to keep control of the body. But simultaneously, madness is a loss of control, a form of surrender to our desires, to the point in which we no longer self-consciously control our bodies, but in which our bodies are controlled by our desires, such that our very body becomes analogous to a puppet wherein the puppeteer is our desires. Furthermore, madness can also result from an attempt of the mind to impose a unity upon the disorders of the world. Yet it is in this attempt of the mind to impose order in which the mind itself fragments, and withers into its pre-rational form.

In addition, madness can either be the end of a reduction to nothing, or can be the means to which man is reduced to nothing. Madness itself reduces the self to nothing, but the reduction of the self to non-being can also lead to madness. Madness is either the result of insignificance or is insignificance in its purity.

Finally, we can conclude that it is from the barren condition of poverty from which the fountain of madness gushes forth. Whether it is through an attempt of the mind to unify the world, or through the subjection to desire, it is in poverty where we can find the possibility of madness. Man is reduced to nothing and becomes mad in poverty through the domination of his desires and the disorders of society. Yet simultaneously, it is in madness in which man becomes purely nothing, in which his being becomes non-being, in which self-consciousness yields consciously to the abscess of desire.

From this perspective, John Adams was perhaps, prophetic. For in his words: “He rambles and wanders unheeded… he is only not seen…to be wholly underlooked, and to know it, are intolerable” (Arendt 1963, 93). It should be clear that Adams was not merely referring to poverty; he had foreshadowed its madness- and perhaps predicted the taong grasa, he who “rambles and wanders unheeded”.

Wherein can we locate sovereignty? If madness is the result of a reduction to nothing, then sovereign is he who reduces man to nothing; the ways by which this reduction is achieved is discussed in the next chapters.

IV. Sanitas: Sovereignty, Madness, Taong Grasa’s body.

We have henceforth established a few things about the taong grasa: First, that he is by name and association someone that is negated, by virtue of his reduction from tao to tao-na-grasa and his negative aspects as in-sane and un-sanitary. Second, we have established how madness is nothingness, and how the reduction of man to nothing, be it his animal desire or his human desire, is the possible cause of madness, how the dictate of necessity, or the emptiness of the “I of Desire” leads to the nothingness of madness. Finally, we have also shown how poverty is the possible root of madness, and how poverty in itself can bring about madness, when one attempts to impose an order upon a disordered world.

Yet we have only discussed one aspect of the taong grasa so far-his madness. To end our discussion on the component of Sanus only would do injustice to the taong grasa, because we have yet to locate sovereignty. Therefore, in order to locate sovereignty, we must now turn our eyes to the other, but no less important part of the taong grasa: Sanitas, or the un-cleanliness of the taong grasa. At this point, we must begin to ask: in general, “what is the body saying?”, and in the case of the taong grasa, “what is the taong grasa’s body saying? What does the excessive filthiness of the taong grasa say? What are the discourses of the Filipino body?” And how does the discourses of the body of the taong grasa relate to sovereignty, and this sovereignty to madness?

Foucault begins Discipline and Punish with the gruesome, graphic narrative of the execution of Damiens the regicide. What has been cited there by Foucault does not need to repeat anymore. But what is important is that there is something analogous between Damiens’ excessive execution and the taong grasa‘s excessive filthiness. Just as Foucault saw a spectacle of blood and gore, flesh and bone in Damien’s execution, we see a similar element of spectacle in the taong grasa. This is emphasized in the following lines from “Taong Grasa”:

“N: Nakangaga, bulok ang mga ngipin, sugatan ang labi, sunog ang balat ng ng pissngi…kumapit na ang libag sa kanyang balat, mahaba’t maiitim ang kuko, namumuo ang naghalong grasa’t alabok sa buong katawan. May galis sa pwet, na bahagyang nasisilip dahil sa kaluwagan ng pantalon. Pisi ang kanyang sinturon…” (Juan 1982, 247)

Does this not compare to the excessiveness of Damien’s execution? Is it only by mere coincidence that the taong grasa in “Taong Grasa”’s cheeks and and skin has some similarity to the sulfur, oil, wax and lead poured unto Damien’s gaping wounds?

In addition to the spectacle of filth, we must forget that madness itself is a spectacle. As Foucault wrote: “Here is madness elevated to spectacle above the silence of the asylums, becoming a public scandal for the general delight….madness continued to be present on the stage of the world” (Foucault 1965, 69)

And Foucault goes on: “Madness became pure spectacle…until the nineteenth century…madmen remained monsters- that is, etymologically, beings or things to be shown” (Foucault 1965, 70). And Foucault goes on and on, until we come full circle to the image of the madman as beast (see Foucault 1965, 70-71).

We can find, therefore, the thread of sovereignty in the expressiveness of the taong grasa, both in the spectacular excess of his madness and his filthiness. But is the same model of excess seen in Damiens the same modality of sovereign power in the taong grasa?

No- this explanation is lacking. Why? Because there is glaring distinction which we must not and cannot overlook between the execution of Damiens and the excessive filthiness of the taong grasa: what we see in Damiens is punishment applied directly to the body itself. Power and sovereignty is found in the application of supplice. But unlike the public execution of Damiens, the filth of the taong grasa is not an applied filth, and the sovereign power which can be found in the taong grasa is not an application of supplice. Unlike Damiens, in the case of the taong grasa, power is not applied- at least not directly.

In short, unlike Damiens, in the case of the taong grasa, overeignty is not the application of supplice. However, it can be asserted that sovereignty can be found in the discourses of the filthiness of the taong grasa himself, in the values, meanings and symbolism attached which render that filthiness analogous to sin and the taong grasa analogous to a leper. Sovereignty is in the economy of filth itself.

What is the evidence of this claim? It is in the fact that we ignore the taong grasa. It is in the fact that we think that the taong grasa is “so-yucky, napaka-eew naman, so kadiri!” As we have said, the taong grasa is both a spectacle and a specter. His filth is spectacular. His madness is spectacular. Yet we refuse to watch the spectacle. The spectacle of the taong grasa elicits shame and disgust. The taong grasa becomes a specter, a ghost which lingers ever so closely, something which is so very real, but something which we prefer to categorize with the phlegm and dirt of the streets.

In short, my claim is that we have allocated a space for the taong grasa within society, but isolated from everyone, through the discourses of his filthiness. This isolation through filthiness is sovereignty. This is power-knowledge.

Under what criteria do we categorize the taong grasa as untouchable? And who made these criteria? Why does the taong grasa offend us so much? Why does he disgust us? Sovereign power is found in the discipline which tells us to avert our eyes from the taong grasa, that which instantly repels us away. For isn’t disgust also something which can be affected by power-knowledge? The gag reflex is often thought of as a mere biological apparatus. But to think of the gag reflex as a mere biological object is wrong. Indeed, disgust can induce the gag reflex, can induce vomiting, but disgust is not always merely psychoanalytically or biologically triggered. As Wilson notes:

“Disgust is not simply a ‘moral sentiment’…but also a proto-legal activity, a necessary condition for the legal system as well as civilization. Disgust teaches you to keep certain things at a distance, to avoid contact… ‘disgust rules’, the socially inscribed prohibitions of specific contacts and acts, evolve everywhere, and everywhere possess socio-cultural purposes” (Wilson 2002, 50)

Our task, therefore, will be to connect this analysis of disgust to the madness of the taong grasa.

The key to the historicization of the taong grasa lies in Foucault’s analysis of Kantorowitz’s “the King’s Body”. On one side of the spectrum, we see “The King’s Body”. “At the opposite pole one might imagine placing the body of the condemned man…in the darkest region of the political field represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king” (Foucault 1979, 29).

This is the spectrum, along with its historicity, which we must locate. For the discourses of the excessive filthiness of the taong grasa do not merely create discourses for disgust and isolation- they construct and inaugurate another kind of body: the docile, productive body. We already know the unideal, the inverse, the in-sane and the un-sanitary. Now we must locate the ideal, the sane and sanitary. On one hand of the spectrum, there lies the taong grasa, hidden but spectacular, volatile, filthy and unproductive. On the other end lies not the productive, docile docile, healthy in both mind and body. Sovereign is he who created the criteria from which we isolate the taong grasa. Thus, we must look through history and witness the fall of the taong grasa, and the creation of boundaries which lead to his madness, and which simultaneously allow the taong grasa to be both spectacle and specter.

Before we begin our re-construction of the historical fragments of the taong grasa, we must point out a few junctures which must be highlighted:

First, we must identify the junctures in which the trinity of productivity, cleanliness , and mental health are related to productivity, with the goal of establishing a possible link or common theme throughout the history of the taong grasa.

Second, we must identify a situation or an event which enabled the taong grasa to be simultaneously a spectacle and a specter and attempt to locate this event with the historical trinity of hygiene, mental health and productivity. Only then, can we begin to trace the thread of the taong grasa‘s fragmented history.

What are the two junctures which illustrate the holy trinity of cleanliness, mental health, productivity and their relation to docility? Here are the two critical junctures: the first can be found in a term called tropical neurasthenia, or in the case of the Philippines, Philippinitis (Anderson 2007, 131). The second can be found in a survey created by the Philippine Mental Health Institute entitled Happiness is a State of Mind, dated June 29, 1952.

At this point, it must be specified that tropical neurasthenia is not directly connected to filthiness- it is more closely related to the incapability of the body of the American man to acclimatize itself to tropical conditions, thus leading to a loss in productivity, termed by the Americans as a loss of “nerve force” (Anderson 2997, 131). But what will be made clear later on is that tropical neurasthenia is deeply embedded in a colonial formulation of civilization plus hygiene, which Anne McClintock notes in her essay entitled Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising. But regardless of this distinction, what the concept of tropical neurasthenia offers is the fact that climate and hygiene factor into productivity, in turn reducing the productivity of the body.

Mental health is also related to productivity. As pointed out by Happiness is a State of Mind:

“Mentally healthy people are able to meet the demands of life. They do something about their problems as they arise. They accept their responsibilities…they make use of their natural capacities. They are able to think for themselves and make their own decisions. They put their best effort into what they do and get satisfaction out of doing it” (Philippine Mental Health Institute 1952, 33)

Mental health, hygiene and productivity, the holy trinity which the taong grasa so violently opposes. All three are the marks of the efficient, docile body. All three are violently opposed by the violent, insane, unsanitary taong grasa. This docile body is the one which we must locate in Philippine history. Under what circumstances did the docile body rise and the taong grasa fall?

Yet there are other things at work, and other questions which must be answered, such as: what event caused the taong grasa to be simultaneously a specter and a spectacle?

In the case of Madness and Civilization, there was an event which enabled madness to be both a specter and a spectacle, which Foucault called “The Great Confinement”.

He, in fact, begins with these words: “By a strange act of force, the classical age was to reduce to silence the madness…” (Foucault 1969, 38). But this act of silencing achieved two things: it hid unreason from the realm of the visible, yet thrusted madness into the public eye. Thus, two things were achieved: unreason became a specter, yet madness became a spectacle. Thus, Foucault writes: “By a strange act of force, the classical age was to reduce to silence the madness…”, yet later he cites: “Confinement hid away unreason, and betrayed the shame it aroused; but it explicitly drew attention to madness…a strange contradiction” (Foucault 1969, 70)

But this silencing of madness was not an exclusive event; The Great Confinement itself has its pretexts; madness had its “sacred” circles. Foucault writes that the great confinement did not begin spontaneously: “The asylum was substituted for the lazar house” (Foucault 1969, 57). What is this “lazar house” that Foucault refers to? It pertains to leprosariums, houses in which those infected with leprosy were put in. For according to Foucault, the meanings of confinement have a similarity to the rites of exclusion applied to the leper.

“From the High Middle Ages to the end of the Crusades, leprosariums had multiplied their cities of the damned over the entire face of Europe” (Foucault 1965, 3). Soon the lepers disappeared throughout Europe: “…from the fifteenth century on, all were emptied…by the time Edward III ordered an inquiry into the hospital of Ripon…there were no more lepers” (Foucault 1969 4-5).

Indeed, the lepers disappeared slowly, but not without “first being inscribed within a sacred circle” (Foucault 1969, 6). Foucault notes that “…his [the leper's] existence was yet a constant manifestation of God, since it was a sign both of His anger and His grace” (Foucault 1969, 6). Foucault cites this rather amusing prayer for evidence:

“ ‘My friend’, says the ritual of the Church of Vienne, ‘it pleaseth our lord that thou shouldst be infected with this malady’…and at the very moment when the priests and his assistants drag him out of the church with backward step, the leper is assured that he still bears witness for God” (Foucault 1969, 6)

Wherein can we find this sacred circle in the Philippine context? Where can we find a similar attempt to banish unreason to oblivion? The former question, on the one hand, forms the beginning of our history of the taong grasa, towards how cleanliness became a fetish and a discipline, and how these are related to productivity. The latter question,on the other hand, points towards the culminating point of our history: Imelda Marcos’ construction of whitewashed walls around depressed areas in the 1970′s in the name of the good and the beautiful, a symbolic ritual of the sovereign construction of boundaries around the taong grasa.

V. Can the Filipino Body Speak?

I’d like to draw the reader’s attention towards three inter-connected images which will display an intertextuality vis-a-vis the discourses of the Filipino body. The first, of course, is Anton Juan’s portrayal of the taong grasa. The second is the “Taong Putik Festival” in Aliyaga, Nueva Ecija. The third is from an essay by Mayel P. Martin entitled History as Rumor: The Political Fantasy of the Negrese Elite in Vicente Groyon’s ‘The Sky over Dimas’, wherein she highlights the connection between labor and filth.

I have cited, re-cited and re-iterated lines from Juan’s “Taong Grasa” repetituvely in the paper. But now I’d like to draw attention towards a single line: “Lupang hinugis sa anyo ng tao…parang anino, parang bato” (Juan 1982, 246). It is obvious that Juan’s imagery in that line invokes a connection between religion and cleanliness similar to the rite and procedure of the Church of Vienne, the difference being that, on one hand, the rite of the Church of Vienne attempts to justify the suffering of the leper by saying that the plight of the leper pleaseth the lord, while on the other hand, Juan’s imagery suggests that filthiness is opposed to, and thus cleanliness is connected with, divinity. This distinction is supported by the fact that the line in question, “lupang hinugis sa anyo ng tao”, is preceded and succeeded by images which emphasize the deplorable filthiness and general conditions of existence of the taong grasa, such as “…binalutan ng araw at gabi, dura’t ihi” (Juan 1982, 246).

Juan’s imagery recalls that of the Book of Genesis, in which it said that man was formed from the earth by God: “…t’il thou return to the earth, out of which thou return” (Genesis 3:19)⁴. Yet Juan’s imagery serves a different purpose: the creation of man was supposed to highlight a certain sacredness in man; Juan’s imagery serves otherwise, as it is made clear that the taong grasa was created from the filthiness around him. Pay attention to the syntax, for it is stated that the taong grasa is filth shaped into the form of man, not man shaped by some divine force from the earth. Juan’s imagery was not meant to highlight divine intervention, but designed to highlight man in the most despicable, pathetic state possible. It marks a shift from tao-na-grasa to grasa-na-tao.

The book of Genesis itself points towards this distinction: in Genesis, man is said to have been created uniquely in the image of God himself. This distinction is also found when one finds that the creation of man is the only part of the creation story which does not begin with “….[and] God said, let there be [x]”. Man’s creation is the only one with the distinction “God created man in his image; in his divine image he created him” (Genesis 1:27). But in the case of the taong grasa, there is no such distinction. The taong grasa was neither made nor given an image, he was mere filth in the form of man.

This distinction between image and form is crucial. “Image” suggests a kind of distinction, a kind of visual identity. But form does not necessarily denote that kind of distinctiveness. A shadow, for instance, possesses a form, not a distinguishable image. It is completely possible for the shadow of Object A to have the same form as Object B, yet still remain complely distinct in image from Object B. But the taong grasa in “Taong Grasa” has no such distinction. He has only form, no image. He is non-distinct in image from the filth around him.

Yet filth has other dimensions in the Philippine context: let us examine the case of the “Taong Putik” festival in Aliyaga, Nueva Ecija.

What is the “Taong Putik” festival? It is essentially a ritual which is observed annually on the 24th of June. In this festival, the faithful wear a garment of banana leaves and slather themselves with mud (Quismoro, 2010):

“On Thursday morning, nearly 1,000 Taong Putik (literally “mud people”), individuals who daubed different parts of their bodies with mud engaged in a procession around [barrio] Bibiclat with the image of Saint John the Baptist…Aside from their mucky skin, the other thing that made the mud people such a striking sight were their thick and highly abrasive “coat” fashioned out of banana leaves…By tradition, the mud people go from house to house, collecting either candles or money, which they would use to buy even more candles”(Quismoro, 2010)

It is clear that there is a religious connotation attached to the spectacle of filth. In the case of the “Taong Putik” festival, the connection is emphasized by the fact that the “Taong Putik” festival is a commemoration the feast of St. John the Baptist. This implies a connection to cleansing power of baptism. This is proven by a statement from one of the faithful: “I present myself to him all dirty, but in the end I am cleansed” (Quismoro, 2010)

Filth stains; it clings to the body. It is a visual reminder that one is not to be touched, that one is to be separated from everyone. Filthiness implies a stigma which separates one from everyone else. In the case of the “Taong Putik Festival”, the usage of mud recalls the stain of sin. This dimension of filth is also seen in the ritual of Ash Wednesday, in which men are marked with a cross of ash on their forehead to remind them and all those around them of their sinfulness

But the image of the stain of filth contains yet another dimension, in the form of the stain of labor. Martin offers us an analysis of the usage of the image of ground or earth in Vicente Groyon’s novel entitled The Sky Over Dimas: “The three contiguous expressions of ground in the novel, referring to the worker’s feet…resonate with the melodramatic Filipino derogatory expressions hinugot ka lang sa putik, and hampas-lupa” (Martin 2010, 24). Filth is used as a derogatory term in the Philippine context.

Thus we have located the connotations of filth in the Philippine context. But where did these meanings come from? From what historical moment did they arise? And in what historical moment did these meanings attach themselves to the Filipino body? When and where can we find their sacred circles, and when were they inscribed in them?

There have been two major historical movements which mark paradigm shifts in the representations of the Filipino body: the Spanish and the American colonizations of the Philippines. We can find in the former the roots of the fetishism of cleanliness and the beginnings of disciplinary systems. These disciplinary mechanisms were further developed in the American regime. Furthermore, these shifts also indicate a shift in the mode of production, in which the perception of the body must have changed. Therefore, we must now study how those two regimes and paradigm shifts and changes in the mode of production inaugurated a new body, and how the taong grasa forms its inverse.

The body, of course, has not been completely subdued. Yet, the body is no longer easy to read, caught up as it is not just in the art of ‘speaking for the self’ but in the crafts of deception and disguise. Stranded between images of Hollywood and memories of ancient sorcery: ‘What is the Filipino body saying’”

(Mojares in Arriola 1993, 192)

Julius Bautista and Ma. Mercedes Planta (2009) have identified for us three variations in the perceptions and representations of the Filipino body: the “native” [or rather, pre-colonial] body, characterized by its usage as a canvas, the sacred body, inaugurated by the Spanish colonization and marked by a turning away from the body, and the sanitary body, marked by the American colonization and characterized by its medicalization.

The pre-colonial body is know for its eloquence, notably in its ornamentation, such that Bautista and Planta call it a “canvas” (Bautista and Planta 2009, 149). Such was the case with the Visayans, who were called pintados due to the amount of tatooing they did to their bodies (Mojares cited in Arriola 1993, 197).

Bautista and Planta also note another interesting observation about the precolonial Filipino body:

“…it is significant to not that early Spanish accounts are replete with descriptions of the people’s good health and meticulous hygienic practices….What we consistently find in such descriptions is a pleasured, cleansed, decorated and indulged native body” (Bautista and Planta 1993)

Notice that this cleanliness close to Foucault’s “arts of existence” (Foucault 1990, 10). By this virtue, cleanliness is not necessarily a negative object when viewed from this paper. It is an art, not a category by which men such as the taong grasa is reduced to nothing. Rather, it is an example of “those intentional and voluntary actions by which men do not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being….”(Foucault 1990, 10). This “art of existence” is located throughout out the history of pre-colonial Filipino bodies. As Mojares notes:

“Take the filing and blackening of teeth, for example…blackening the teeth was not simply cosmetic, it was a way of defining the human. The rationale goes this way: Savage beasts…have white teeth; so do the demons of the spirit world….hence, ceremonies at the time of puberty often involved the filing and blackening of teeth to ensure that one would not be mistaken at death for an evil spirit”

(Mojares cited in Arriola, 1993, 197)

What we have then, in the precolonial Filipino body is the embodiment of art. “In all these examples, one sees that the care and embellishment of the body were charged with a great deal of meaning. The body was a medium of art, magic, status, power” (Mojares cited in Arriola 1993, 198). Yet sadly:

“Seeing how the body was space on which culture was on which culture was inscribed, the European colonizers…proceeded to ‘colonize’ the body….the colonizers proceeded to eradicate [practices of individuality]: long hair, tatooing, elongated earlobes, teeth filing and ‘nakedness’…We lost our tattoos. They have been either criminalized or sublimated….we lost our body as a source of magical potency and began to look at it either as the earthly receptacle of a transcendent soul or secular instrument for pleausure, vanity, or gain”

(Mojares cited in Arriola 1993, 198).

Thus began the rise of the production of docile bodies in the Spanish era. Disciplines were produced upon the Filipino body, turned it into something which can be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (Foucault 1969, 136).

“….religous books of the Spanish period carried admonitions as to how the natives, suppressing his natural friskiness, should carry his head, arms or feet or use his eyes or mouth. Indeed, colonialism did not only impact on economies or politics, it imprinted itself on bodies” (Mojares cited in Arriola 1993, 198)

Herein is our foremost example of disciplinary systems in the Spanish era: Pag susulatan ng Dalawang Binibini na si Urbana at Felisa na Nagtutro ng mabutinng ugali by Modesto de Ocampo, hencforth called in this paper as Urbana at Felisa. What is Urbana at Felisa? It is a proto-novel written by Modesto de Castro in 1864, which takes the form of a fictional correspondence from Urbana, who went to study in Manila, addressed to her younger sibling, Felisa, which details a list of “virtues”, “morals” and guides for proper etiquette and socialization for her brother Honesto, who wishes to study in Manila. Yet if read from a Foucaltian perspective, Urbana at Felisa is a handbook on discipline. As Bautista and Planta note, “In the Spanish colonial regime, administrative control depended largely on the role of the clergy who prescribed that the body’s physical upkeep must correspond with certain codes of religious piety and spiritual purification. These presciptions were deployed through manuals…” (Bautista and Planta 1993, 150).

But this unification of bodily care with spiritual cleanliness was located in a shift on the perspective about the body. As Bautista and Planta say, “In describing manuals…we discover as much about the vissictudes of missionary and colonial agency as we do about the bodies they sought to regulate” (Bautista and Planta 1993, 152). Read from this standpoint, Urbana at Felisa serves as a manual for discipline and the production of docile bodies. Let us interrogate its contents.

There are two letters which we must pay attention to: the first, is a section which details the discipline which takes place at mealtime. The second, is a section which deals with cleanliness. In the first case, it is written:

“Sa isang piging ay maraming lubha ang masasamang gawang nakikita, na laban sa kalinisan sa kabaitan at sa kamahalan nang asal….iilagang marumihan ang mantel, lamesa…nang ‘di mapahamak…ang magpakita nang lambing at magpairi-iri ay nakamumuhi sa bata. Ang humimod sa daliri, hipan ang mainit na sabaw, lamasin ang ulam…ay pawang kasalauaang nakapandidiri sa nakakakitang tao”

(de Castro, 1864)

It is made clear that certain acts can lead to shame- shame, which Foucault has noted, must be hidden away. Yet Urbana at Felisa also follows the “control of activity” (Foucault 1979, 149), specifically “The body-object articulation”(Foucault 1979, 152). “Discipline defines each of the relations that the body must have with the object” (Foucault 1979, 152). Such is seen in Urbana at Felisa: “kung ang hinahawakan ay baso, kutchara, kopa, ay huwag punuin, at nang di mabubo…kung darampot nang baso nang tubig, ay tingnan muna kung malinis ang daliri…sa pag-inom, kung mangyayari ay gamitin ang dalawang kamay, ang mga daliri ay sa dakong puno…” (de Castro 1864).

Urbana at Felisa also obeys “…the correlation of the body and the gesture” (Foucaault 1979, 152) But in this case, it serves to remove certain gestures.

Sa pagkain, ay iilagan ang paguubo, at kung hindi mangyari ay tumindig, gayon din naman ang pagluwa, pagdahac, pagsinga…kung ‘di maiilagan at kung minsan ay mabiglaanan, lumingon sa kabila, takpan ang bibig nang panyo…. Ilagan ang pagkamot kamot…. Huwag magpapauna sa matatandá sa pagsubo… kung matanong naman ay sumagot nang maikli at banayad; ngunit, lilinisin muna ang bibig nang servilleta kung mayroon, at kung wala ay panyó at huwag sasagot nang lumilinab ang bibig at namumualan…” (de Castro 1864)

Bautista and Planta explain the rise of this discipline as “a repression of the body’s most natural impulses” (Bautista and Planta 2009, 152). Yet ironically, “native bodies are defined by the unreflective impluse to act upon and appease them” (Bautista and Planta 2009, 152).

These disciplinary characteristics were also carried over into the discourses on cleanliness and linked with productivity and divinity: “Pagkatapos nang pagpupuri sa Diyos, ang pagpilitan nang tao ay ang paglilinis nang katauan…kalinisan at kahusayan: malinis man at marikit ang damit, kung walang kahusayan, ay di nagbibigay dilag sa dinaramtan” (de Castro 1864)

Thus we have located an important shift in the Filipino body: from an “art of existence”, or from a “canvas”, the Filipino body moved into a zone of discipline. Individuality was replaced with “virtues”, “values” and “morals”. The focus has now shifted from the body to the soul and its salvation. “The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary” (Foucault 1979, 11)”. Furthermore, “…since it is no longer the body, it must be the soul” (Foucault 1979, 16).

We can perhaps analyze the Spanish colonial treatment of the body with these words: If the corporeal body were to do wrong, the blame would be appropriated or would stain the body and the soul. Therefore, a literal stain on the body would bleed through and thus also stain the soul. Such is the case with the “Taong Putik” festival: the corporeal stains reflect the stains of sin. There is an economy of shame attached to that stain. Nakakahiya, nakakapahamak, nakakadiri- these are but some of the words which were located, and which were created in the economy of the discourses of the Filipino body in the Spanish colonial regime. What was once care was enshrouded in discourses of sin and salvation.

We have thus located the origin of the specter- shame. It is through shame in which the Filipino body is appropriated an isolated spot. What was once a care in the form of excess (“There is, on the contrary, a sense of luxurious excess in the natives technologies of care” [Bautista and Planta 2009, 150]) shifted and became a discourse of shame and oblivion.

When the focus shifted from the visible body to the hidden heart, and with the inversion of the order of heart and body, the body would perhaps have had to inevitably yield and move into the hidden realm. Thus what was once spectacular would become specter-like, and purposely made specter-like: present, but hidden away. Visible, yet ignored. The shamed Filipino body occupies a space of shame isolated within society.

McClintock notes a similar absurdity: she notes how Victorian era advertising reveals a paradox: “…as the cultural form that was entrusted with upholding and marketing abroad those founding middle class distinctions- between private and public…- advertising also began to confound those distinctions. Advertising took the intimate signs of domesticity…into the public realm” (McClintock 1998, 305).

It is in McClintock’s words in which the full absurdity of specter/spectacle is shown: we have noted how the Spanish colonial regime hid the spectacle in a boundary of shame. Yet McClintock illustrates a contrary example: a distinction between the private and the public was made, but the distinction was blurred. What was once in the realm of the domestic, non-spectacular private was suddenly thrust into the public and made a spectacle.

Thus we have an irony: the Filipino body was hidden away, but the cleansing commodities which were once private were made into a spectacle. What is the link between the two?

Not to say of course that such a fetishism of cleanliness did not exist before. Again, the Spanish regime had set it up with the junction of shame and cleanliness. But perhaps there is an epitome, or a culmination of these movements. What could it be?

“What alchemy could change the oriental quality of their blood?” (Anderson 2007, 52)- this quote is perhaps what best describes the epitome of not only the fetishism but also the discipline of cleanliness.

Foucault begins his essay entitled Panopticism with an illustration of the plague stricken town (Foucault 1979, 195). We can locate a similar even in Philippine history.

“When American forces entered Manila…what struck them were the conditions in the Philippine capital after they entered it in August 1898…The Manila Times announced the arrival of dentists, doctors, lawyers…Overnight, Manila was turned into a circus” (Bautista and Planta 2009, 157). “…the sanitation of the towns was extremely bad…The habitation sof the villagers were surrounded by filth of all kinds- slops, garbage, fecal accumulations, rubbish, and other debris. Weeds and rank vegetation were allowed to grow along the fences in the yards and the streets” (Anderson 2007, 48)

Sometime around or before the Americans entered Manila, the Americans were fighting with a combination of disciplinary tactics. “They began to retain Filipinos in the discipline of hygiene and to render sanitary their barrios” (Anderson 2007, 45). “Civilians had to be rendered obedient, not with armed force but through administration. ‘We have to govern them…and government by force alone cannot be satisfactory to the Americans” (Anderson 2007, 48).

“At the height of Western colonialism in the twentieth century, medicine [and hygiene for that matter] became an essential part of the self-image of ‘civilizing imperialism’” (Bautista and Planta 2009, 158). But where did this image of ‘civilizing imperialism’ stem from, and how was cleanliness connected ?

“Soap is civilization” (McClintock 1998, 304). This, McClintock notes, was the Unilever company slogan. The same theme of course can be found in a famous advertisement by Pears, which says that “The first step towards lightening the white man’s burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness” (Anderson 2007, 55). The American occupation of the Philippines is the epitome that we have been looking for. It is the point in which the historical moment in which the specter/spectacle process was made fully possible: the Spanish regime plunged the Filipino body into the abyss of shame, effectively realizing the possibility of the specter. Yet the spectacle aspect was brought by the Americans. Drawing upon the Victorian fetishism of cleanliness, the spectrum which we have been looking for was perhaps completed: we have now located the civilized, docile body in Philippine history. The existence of such a body is verified by Anderson.: “It seemed possible that hygiene, education, and industry would in time uplift…groups of savages, turning natives into proletarians. From the 1880′s the government had been making an effort” (Anderson 2007, 57). That plan of hygiene/education/industry was originally for American Indians, but Anderson notes that “after Aguinaldo’s resort to guerilla warfare late in the 1899, the U.S army…recognized the similarity of Indians and Filipinos” (Anderson 2007, 57). “The army and the emergent colonial state thus attempted an intensive reform and disciplining of Filipino in situ, to render them more docile and amenable to distant American control…”(Anderson 2007, 56). Thus, as Anderson concluded, so will wee: “Just as raw recruits to the army were trained and transformed into disciplined soldiers, so might the medical officer and sanitary inspector attempt to reeducate Filipinos to make them proper, retentive colonial subjects” (Anderson 2007, 71)

But simultaneously, the attempt at civilization via hygiene would have its failures. Overcivilization became a concern: “the Klima is a sort of Shylock that exacts a pound of flesh a day, while the humidity and monotony are so depressing are so I am 1/16 of what I used to be mentally” (Anderson 2007, 155). “The white man might live among the banana palms- he might trade, or for a time, fight boldly- but it was likely that….the white race would degenerate, and civilization would not thrive in the tropics”- a crucial link between madness and civilzation.

The culminating point of our history of cleanliness is the visit of Lyndon B. Johnson in the Philippines in 1970:

“The Marcoses were unrestrained in their efforts to present their Philippines as they wanted it to be seen. Potholes were filled, streets cleaned, buildings scrubbed and whitewashed walls erected so that the visiting dignitaries wouldn’t have to look at the slum poverty” (Bonner 1988, 59)⁵. Of all of these, the construction of whitewashed walls is the most symbolic. We have said that sovereign is he who reduces man to nothing. Sovereign power would take the form of the isolation of man, of the construction of boundaries which would turn man into a specter- there but not there, present, but ignored. It is said that some of these whitewashed walls still remain, both in the real world, and in our gag reflexes.

VI. Conclusion: Madness and the Modern Age, Madness of Civilization (Reflections)⁶

The fragmented mind reflects a fragmented world. The mind turned mad embodies

a world gone mad, and a man turned mad reflects the madness of the world around him. And while it may be true that a volatile and filthy body in the form of the taong grasa is opposed to a docile and productive in our modern age, the latter said to be preferred over the former. Yet we must now ask, which are we to believe is the true madman? What does it mean to be truly mad, for is not docility already a form of madness? We have pointed out how madness stems from the reduction of man to nothing. But isn’t docility already a reduction to nothing, to a mere machine of production? Is it only “the eagle and the sun”(Foucault 1979, 217) which are rendered usesless?

Poverty is the point in which man is reduced to nothing. Yet poverty is not merely being poor, for the bonds of necessity “need not be of iron, they can be made of silk”. In our modern age of consumption, and in age where we have a system in place which encourages one to be excessive, to be bound and gagged with the chains of luxury, then are we not all already mad? The I of Desire may be an emptiness, but we have system in place which balatantly tell you in your face: lose yourself, indulge, give into temptation and cosume, consume, consume.

I will leave these questions suspended for now- perhaps the reader will be moved to answer them. But for now, I leave thee with a few verses from from Almario, if only to make the reader feel the wind of the wing of madness:

Pagka’t hindi ito paraiso, huwag mong hahanapin

Ang katahimikan sa ingit ng muwelye

At ngisngis ng eheng naglalway sa grasa…

…Dinaglat na ngiti’t kinoryenteng titig,

Ang paghahanap mo’y putol na hiningang

Nilason sa eter at hinurnong buwan;

Nilunod sa koro ng pangilang lagari

At adagiong teklado ng orasan.

(Almario 1998, 41-42)

“I felt strange passing. I felt passing over me a wind from the wing of madness” (Baudelaire 1992, 258).

Today was the first time (in Psy101) that one of my papers had been read in class. It was probably the most nerve-wracking experience I have had to sit through in a long time. It was made all the more nerve-wracking because of who was reading my paper.

The last, I think, situation were I felt nervous all the way was probably my first POS61 (There is no need to name the professor) class. I had not experienced an oratorical rampage (the only way I could put it) even close to what I had seen. Thus it provides a good counter-point: the former was the master, teaching me how to speak. Now it was me, the student, listening to his own words from another person’s mouth.
Perhaps that was what made it so nerve-wracking. To hear my words delivered by a person who was miles greater than I, was simply an honor. My seatmate told me that I was genuinely shaking. Or rather, cowering.
Or perhaps it was in the recollection of the experience of writing. The experience of writing, at least for me, is one of great melancholy. I am never as depressed as when I write. For the words which I write are those which he me the most. In them are to be found the voices of specters- perhaps the whispers of Arendt, Foucault, maybe Marx if I was daring enough.
At times I feel a great sadness overcome me briefly when I feel that I have surpassed what I thought I could do. Whenever I write lines such as “The goodness of the heart, when revealed, becomes an object of suspicion; I’m sure a certain man from Nazareth can attest to that” surprise me, and fill me with great pride. And it is because of this pride that I feel melancholy- because for instant, I had found brilliance, or maybe enlightenment, only to lose it and continue on in my usual way.
Either that explanation suffices, or maybe I’ve thougt about writing too much; maybe I feel tears for no reason other than because they randomly appear. Whatever the explanation, writing for me, is filled with loss. And there were no tears as I wrote those lines.
Or perhaps the reason that I felt nerve-wracked was because of the reasonable applause I received after. I say reasonable not out of negativity, meaning to say that I’m thinking of the applause as “pwede na”. No, when I say “reasonable”, I refer to a modest amount of applause. They could’ve chosen not to give me applause at all. But maybe they genuinely did enjoy it, and I am pleased if they did.
Maybe there was a bit of sarcasm in the clapping. Maybe they clapped ironically, they clapped because of how much a smart-ass I am. Well, I have to agree. I am a smart ass. Citing Hobbes, Augustine, Aquinas and Arendt definitely qualifies as smart assery. Even more demonstrative of smart-assery is the fact that I briefly touched on Robespierre. And all this for a psych101 reflection paper!
I write these lines (and all the previous ones) knowing that I am walking into dangerous territory. As I open my heart, so wil the people pry and detest it, emotion turned into an object of suspicion.

What is it that Arendt said, that “The qualities of the heart need darkness and protection against the light of the public to grow and to remain what they are meant to be…However deeply heartfelt a motive may be, once it is brought out and exposed for public inspection, it becomes an objection of suspicion rather than insight” (Arendt, On Revolution 91)”?
If there be suspicion, so let there be suspicion. But if there be belief, then let there be belief. For perhaps just tonight, I lay myself bare, if only in the hope that people realize this was written in gratitude for an amazing day.

(An assignment for TH 121)

In the beginning was the calm- the calm before the storm. The air was chilly, and the wind was beginning to pick up its pace. But generally, it seemed as if it was going to be as rainy as before, and no more than that. And then the sky darkened, darker than before. We looked up into the heavens, and we saw that the sky hung grimly, in a shade of black that was darker and deeper- and perhaps even blacker than black. And the rumbling we heard was terrifying- as grave and as terrible as a stomach which had not eaten for days, or as imminent as death in the eyes of a starving tiger.

Ever so ominous, the thunder prowled amongst the clouds, terrible like the sound of a stomach of a starving man dragging himself across concrete towards food, or like the frenzy in the eyes of a madman strapped to a hospital bed. Equally as terrifying as the sound was the sight- charcoal-black clouds gathered around and swept around, and piled one on top of another, all the while rumbling with the sound (and the echoes) of a thousand horses running. The end, we were sure, was imminent; And tomorrow, we were sure, was gone. And when the rain came, it fell in torrents. Even the raindrops crashing on our windows seemed bigger. We could tell something was terribly wrong. We could tell from the anger in the voice of the wind, or from the weigh it seemed that every raindrop was trying its best to collapse our roof. From the windows of our balcony, we watched as the floods mercilessly devoured the houses those in the lower areas of the village. We watched as the rats and the cockroaches ran out by the millions, fleeing and scampering from the fury of walls of water. In the beginning, was the calm. In the duration, was the chaos. And in the closing, the withdrawing. And all throughout, we slowly lost hope. Because the end, we were sure, was nigh, and tomorrow (as with hope) was gone.

At last the skies ended their fury. At last the floods began to subside, and the rats and cockroaches scampered back into the sewers. So did our town’s hope- it withered back within us. Tomorrow seemed dead to us. But the sound of children’s laughter, and the first rays of sun, and the gradual turning of bruised flowers towards the sun, assured us, and showed how dumb we all were. Because truth be told, tomorrow is always there, and hope springs eternal neither in the future nor for the future, but in the present, in the things which we do, in the beginnings of everyday life. Hope for whatever- a better future, the coming of “God’s Kingdom”, hope for anything- is always built upon, is neither merely reaped nor collected like tax, but sowed and patiently grown.

The Totalitarian Tendencies in Marx’s Theories and their Mitigations

One might wonder about the nature of, or what exactly was haunting Karl Marx throughout his life and writings. For we know that Marx often made allusions to “specters” and other things in his writing. . One such example would be a line in The Communist Manifesto: “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism”.

Other Gothic creatures hide in the recesses of Marx’s works. For instance, Marx writes in The 18^th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”.

But the objective of this paper is not really to determine what specters Marx was hiding from. That is the job of psychologists, or of historians who wish to understand the man behind the text. No, the task of this paper is to locate the specter of totalitarianism which haunts Marx’s texts themselves, to unmask these totalitarian tendencies within the totality of Marx’s work, by reading his philosophy through the spectacles of Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, and to look for their possible mitigations from within Marx’s texts.

Marx at times appears to be a prophet. For Marx often talks about not what can happen, but what will happen. Balibar notes that this is why the failure of the proletarian revolution of 1848 was so crucial, why “the disappointment, when it came, was therefore all the greater”ⁱ. Before the failure of 1848, Marx “shared the conviction that a general crisis of capitalism was imminent” ⁱⁱ. But the failure of the 1848 forced Marx to re-found his ideas. Balibar notes: “It meant enduring eclipse…of the concept of ideology”ⁱⁱⁱ

What is ideology? Arendt gives us an explanation: “An ideology is quite literally what its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history, to which the idea is applied; the result of this application of this idea is not a body of statements of something that is, but the unfolding of a process which is in constant change”^iv. Furthermore, Arendt writes: “Ideologies pretend to know the mysteries of the whole historical process…because of the logic inherent in their respective ideas”.

Now, to have an ideology in itself is not evil^v. To believe that certain events can beget subsequent, logical events, to believe that there is certain logic in a course of events, to look forward- there is nothing terribly wrong about these. But to prophesize about things, to claim that the actions of the persent will be validated in the future regardless of what the action was, to claim that the future will vindicate all- here, an evil is possible. This is where totalitarianism resides. Arendt writes:

“The propaganda effect of infallibility… has encouraged in totalitarian dictators the habit of announcing their political intentions in the form of prophecy…the liquidation is fitted into a historical process in which man only suffers or does what, according to immutable laws, is bound to happen anyway. As soon as the execution of the victims has been carried out, the prophecy becomes a retrospective alibi: nothing happened but what was already predicted”^vi

Here lies the totalitarian potentiality in Marx. The sense of imminence, the sense of the inevitability of conflict, the belief that conflict is unavoidable which permeates Marx’s works has a totalitarian potentiality in the sense that those subject to the violence have effectively been rendered meaningless.

I speak of course for the “eventual” bourgeois victims^vii. I speak of course, of the proletariat who will be fighting in the course of revolution. If the end of revolution is already inevitable, then the means of realizing the end, (e.g violent revolution) and those who will be swept away by it (e.g the bourgeois), and those who will die (e.g some of the proletariat), have already been, to an extent, predicted and are thus expendable. If the end has already been predicted, if the end of capitalism is certain, if the victory of the proletariat is already assured, then the deaths along the way, and the importance of those individual lives is rendered to nothing as they were simply part of an inevitable movement towards communism. It is the combination of the two elements of inevitability and movement, in the form of the expendability of the masses subject to this movement, which characterizes totalitarianism.

Let us see what Arendt has to say about this:

“Terror as the execution of a law of movement whose goal is not the welfare of men…but the fabrication of mankind, eliminates beings for the sake of the species, sacrifices the ‘parts’ for the ‘whole’. The suprahuman force of nature or of history has its own beginning and its own end, so that it can be hindered by the new beginning and the individual end which the individual man really is”^viii

This is the key characteristic of totalitarianism- its “lawfulness”- it’s claim to merely execute the laws of movement of history, or of nature, that it can do no wrong because it was merely following what history had dictated it to do. This is why in a totalitarian regime, individual man is expendable. Totalitarianism “is quite prepared to sacrifice everybody’s immediate interests for the execution of what it assumes to be the law of History, or of Nature”^ix.

This is the fatal totalitarian characteristic that Marx almost realized. By reducing history to the history of material relations, by making communism inevitable, Marx almost crossed over into totalitarian territory, because he had made all events prior to the victory of the proletariat calculated, necessary and pre-dictated by the law of the movement of history. In doing so, the violence of the revolution itself, and those who would be hurt (bourgeois and proletariat included) had been made inevitable.

How then, do we challenge or mitigate the totalitarian tendencies of Marx’s theories? The key would be to abandon the “schema of causality”^x, to accept, as Marx did^xi, the “bad side of history”^xii, to view history no longer as a predictable process moving towards and inevitable end, but as a series of either ruptures, like Foucault’s genealogical interpretation of history, or as a series of transitions, as Marx did later in his life, in the “transitional phase” of the dictatorship of the proletariat^xiii.

The key, therefore, is that which was presented in the Russian Commune: “What is proposed in these texts, then, is the idea of a concrete multilplicity of paths of historical development. It does not follow a pre-existing plan, but emerges from the way in which distinct historico-political units immersed in a ‘single’ mileau, react to the tendencies of the mode of production” ^xiv

Another key in order to challenge the totalitarian tendencies of Marx’s theories would be for the proletariat to continue to have an active role in the revolution, in direct contrast to the masses.. We know that the end of Marxism, the classless society would be a possible beginning of the totalitarian system. We know that the proletariat and the mass have a sort of “collective” consciousness to them, e.g the proletarian-consciousness w/c separates the proletariat from thelumpenproletariat, while the mass has a kind a “we” mentality to it. In the words of Arendt: “the disturbing factor in totalitarianism is…the true selflessness of its adherents…the amazing fact is that neither is he likely to waver when the monster begins to devour its own children…he may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his death sentence if only his status as a member of the movement is not touched”^xvThis is also seen in the similarity between Marx’s concept of the specie-being and the Nazi concept of the Volksgemenschaft: “This new community, tentatively realized in the Nazi movement in the pretotalitarian atmosphere, was based on the absolute equality of all Germans, an equality not of rights, but ofnature”^xvi

But despite these similarities, there remains one demarcation of the difference between proletariat and mass: the proletarian get to play an “active” role in history whereas the masses do not. Balibar has noted how the Marxist conception of history is perhaps the only one “which has perpetuated the idea that ‘those at the bottom’ play an active role in history, by propelling it ‘onwards’ and ‘upwards’”^xvii.The masses on the other hand are the ones who have become indifferent: “The term masses applies only where we deal people who because of sheer numbers or indifference…can not be integrated into any organization” ^xviii. The challenge therefore, would be for the proletariat to be perpetually active not only during the revolution, but perhaps even beyond. The moment that the proletariat become indifferent, the moment that the proletariat cease to care, that is the moment when the totalitarian tendency in Marx can be realized. But as long as the proletariat remain active, as long as the revolutionary spirit remains, then the totalitarian tendency can be kept at bay. These then are the mitigations of the totalitarian tendency in Marx: First, a return to the belief in the spontaneity of history, and second, the firm belief that history can be taken into ones hands via revolution. These, then are the keys to the salvation of the unholy ghost of totalitarianism in Marx.

Though the body may rot, though the flesh may decompose, though what was once dust will return to dust the “spirit” of the body, or more specifically, the “essence” of the body remains.

Such as memories. Memories eventually becomes intrinsic with the body. Though death erodes the body, memories remain. How many of us will reflect upon memories when beloved ones die? How many of us will speak of, look back at, and recall memories, such as a smile, or laughter? Or the moments which enticed these from us?

Or wisdom. Though the brain will cease to exist, the wisdom of men will remain. Why is it that we speak of great philosophers and their wisdom? Why do we still speak of the “wisdom” of Solomon even though we have never seen Solomon?

Or most especially, the soul. Of the things which might be included with the definition of the “essence” of man, the soul is the most important. It is from the soul that love springs. It is from the soul that bravery springs. It is from the soul that all the great qualities of man- compassion, mercy, charity, humility, among many others- spring.

Recently a distinguished and beloved man from DBTI recently passed away. The only thing I ask of you all, as we mourn the loss of the “physical” Vicente Racaza is that we recall the memories, celebrate his life, venerate his wisdom, and remember his soul.

It is rare that we see great men among us; It is even rarer that we get to experience their greateness, that we have memories to recall of them. And it is rarer still that we find greater man than them, that we find men who can even equal, musc less surpass, their wisdom and their love.

Together we mourn. Together, we pray. Together, we celebrate his life.

Amen, and goodbye, sir Racaza.