Publications

Sinisikap ng sanaysay na ito na pag-isipan at pag-ugnayin ang “noumenal” at ang “nominal” gámit ang panulaan ni Allan Popa at ang interpretasyon ng kritikong si Romulo P. Baquiran, Jr. sa poetika ng makata. Ang diskursong inilatag ng makata at ng mga tula tungkol sa salita, panahon, at wala ay mababása bÍlang tangka na abangan at silipin ang “noumenal,” o ang mga bagay-sa-sarili-nito (das Ding an sich). Gayumpaman, sapagkat nagsasarili ang noumena lampas sa ating wika, karanasan, at kaalaman, maaari lámang natin itong lapitan sa pamamaraang penomenolohikal. Ang utos sa tulang Sa Lukoy ni Popana “Hayaang tumugma ang pantig/sa pintig ng di makahihintay na saglit./Hayaang sumayaw ang wika alinsabay/sa kumpas./Hayaan sa panandaliang lugar” ay hindi nalalayo sa atas ng mga penomenologo na bumalik “sa mga bagay mismo” (zu  den  Sachen  selbst), at sa tinutukoy ng kritikong si I.A. Richards na, “Mahalaga hindi ang sinasabi ng tula, kundi kung ano ito.” Kung ipauubaya  ang  kahulugan  at  talinghaga  sa  mga  salita  at  bagay  mismo,  kinakailangan  nito  ng panibagong uri ng pagbabasá. Kinasangkapan ko rito ang sintaktikong lapit sa tula na bihirang gawin ng mga kritiko at mambabasá ng tula. Dito mapalilitaw ang halaga hindi lámang ng mga “nominal” (pangngalan) kundi maging ng mga di-nominal at mga pagpili ng salansan ng mga salita. Nagtatapos ang sanaysay sa pagmumuni sa gampanin ng makata at panulaan sa pagtutulay ng kaalaman at paniniwala, at sa pagsasalikop ng agham at panitikan para sa “pagtuklas ng kagandahan ng Sining.”

Soon after President Ferdinand E. Marcos proclaimed martial law, institutions were set up to support the development of the shipping industry. Shipping is integral to the overseas and domestic flow of commodities and also had to be developed as a complement to the cash crop economy that was prevalent at that time. At the onset, several presidential decrees were issued in support of the industry. Multilateral lending was also made available to stakeholders in the industry and there was actually a marked improvement as the seventies came to a close. However, several pertinent personalities within the President’s circle undermined that agenda to pursue their own motivations. This included the reckless acquisition of vessels and the breaking up of a colonial-era institution that used to be an integral part of the Philippine maritime industry. As such, major shipping assets went to waste as the economic crisis of the early eighties set in and became part of the Aquino Administration’s agenda of cleaning up the damage done by the Marcos regime.

Renato Constantino was one of the most prominent postwar public intellectuals whose works on Philippine history and society were either praised for its nationalist message or criticized for its controversial Marxist views. What is often neglected in appraisals and literature about Constantino were his prewar writings published on the official student organ of the University of the Philippines, the Philippine Collegian. Hence, this paper studies Constantino’s Collegian editorials by showing that his early social criticisms were essential foundations of his more popular postwar intellectual works. To do this, the paper contextualizes Constantino’s early life by underscoring his exposure to the nationalist undercurrents of the Commonwealth period. After tracing the factors that shaped Constantino’s nationalist thinking, this paper then probes into his Collegian editorials so as to understand the general message which he conveyed to his readers. To prove the significance of his Collegian editorials to his intellectual legacy, this paper expounds on how Constantino performed early social criticism in the context of a prewar Philippine society. Lastly, this paper locates the place of his prewar writings within the breadth of his intellectual contributions as a whole. In doing so, Constantino’s Collegian editorials could be appreciated as a compelling starting point for a more profound form of social criticism which he practiced during the postwar years.

This paper catalogs the provincial, municipal, and barangay-level place names—or toponyms—of the island province of Marinduque. Through close readings of primary historical sources and lexicographic texts, hypotheses on the provenance of these toponyms are forwarded. They are organized based on ten toponymic categories: physical descriptions, flora, fauna, persons, local or national events, geopolitical categories, human attributes, objects, concepts, or activities based partially on the categories in Jocano (1965), Medina (1992), Lesho and Sippola (2018), and Martynenko and Chesnokova (2019). The linguistic sources for Marinduque toponyms affirm the province’s place in the Tagalog speaking regions, but strong signals also point to contact with Bisayan and Bikol communities.

This paper presents a historical study of four earthquake disasters that occurred in Luzon, Philippines, namely: (1) the 20 August 1937 Luzon Earthquake, (2) the 02 August 1968 Manila-Casiguran Earthquake, (3) the 17 August 1983 Ilocos Norte Earthquake, and (4) the 16 July 1990 North Luzon Earthquake. This research work uses historical seismology as a primary framework. The study adheres to its emphasis on the historical analysis of human experiences and societal conditions in the context of earthquake disasters. Using newspaper articles, government reports, and seismological studies, this study argues that the four subject earthquakes set specific and time-bound institutional responses and scientific output that formatively contribute to the history of the country’s responses to calamities and continuing policy formulations as a component of post-disaster rehabilitation. This paper discusses the following: (1) a brief survey of the scholarly works in the field of historical seismology; (2) the scales and impacts of the four subject earthquakes; and (3) an extensive discussion of the state’s crisis management of the post-disaster situation, with a focus on the roles of the military in the rescue operations, and the dynamics of institutional scientific knowledge production and policy formulations concerning earthquakes and public infrastructures.

This article is an assessment report on Akademiya at Bayan Kontra Disimpormasyon at Dayaan’s (ABKD) fact-checking campaign from December 2021 to June 2022. It examines ABKD’s origins, organizational structure, objectives, and social media initiatives conducted over a seven-month period. It also provides a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the network’s fact-checking activities. The data extracted from the network’s Facebook page, Twitter account, and Tiktok account reveal important information about the effectivity and limitations of fact-checking campaigns. The authors of this assessment report, who are also the fact-checkers of ABKD, hope to impart crucial insights, observations, and best practices about fact-checking as an initial step to fight fake news and disinformation.

Coupling the author’s autoethnographic account and walk-map with literary texts set at the University of the Philippines Diliman [UPD] campus, the present article treats walking as a form of ethnographic and countermapping practice. These two processes, “autobiographical reflections” and “a return to text,” constitute an autoethnographic practice that is “non-positivist,” “post-fieldwork,” and “post(modern)-ethnography” (Esteban 2018). The ethnographic component attempts to provide descriptions of walking within the campus according to the community members’ perspective. From this position of the walking folk, the countermapping component seeks to redefine the space and place that have long been determined and demarcated by the state and institutions of power. The result can be labelled “phenomenological,” if what we mean by such is “to pay [closer] attention to experiences of tactile, feet-first, engagement with the world” (Ingold & Vergunst 2016) and an approach that “means heavy linguistic analysis… [since] language is itself data, words providing insights into how people look at the world around them” (Tan 2008). Such two-pronged approach necessitates an introductory discussion on the practice, concept, and method of walking, a brief spatial history of the campus, and an examination of ideas on walking as “everyday” and “event”. The article ends with reflections on how the UPD community can be considered as “folk” and their ways of doing and knowing as “folklore”.

The present article attempts to trace the missionary itinerary of Fr. Juan Duárez de Santa Cruz, one of the most distinguished Franciscan friars in Camarines. Making extensive use of unpublished archival material, it focuses on two important aspects of his work: the foundation of the town of Daraga and his role in the construction of the church, and his will to found a Franciscan institution in Spain specifically aimed to train friars to be sent to the Philippines. Finally, it provides an English translation of a wide array of key documents in order to understand the history of Cagsawa, Budiao, and Daraga from 1715 to 1814.

This study focuses on the emotional experience of homesickness of propagandists and relates it to the birthing of the Filipino nation in the late nineteenth century. I show that these young migrant men straddled two worlds, where both modern ideas of individualism and “parochial” sentiments of community existed together. Second, I demonstrate the change in the migrants’ gaze as it slowly began to include the larger entity of the nation. In the end, I argue that these points illustrate tensions found in a nascent nation as Filipinos navigated their emotions within the context of colonialism and modernity.

The Philippine Army’s (PA) current capability development planning (CDP) process is rooted in the broader modernization effort of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that was begun in the ‘90s. it follows the 21st century trend in long-term strategic planning where most Western-aligned countries have adopted capability-based planning (CBP) frameworks due to the flexibility, adaptability, and efficiency that they bring to the table. The PA’s own CDP process is embedded in a strategic planning logic that follows four main steps: an analysis of future defense and security scenarios; an assessment of current and required capabilities; the crafting of detailed rolling plans; and the listing of capital-intensive priority projects for immediate funding by the AFP. This process can best be seen in the recently completed PA Medium-Term Capability Development Plan for 2022 to 2028. The CDP process is followed by other steps in the strategic planning logic, including force structure and program development. Ultimately, the properly executed CDP in the PA provides decision-makers options to maximize the use of limited resources and thereby optimize the country’s military modernization.