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The Return of the Na(rra)tive

(Reflections on the 2022 National Elections and How it Mortifies Postmodernity)

Simple. The father was ousted. A new attempt to reconstruct the narrative of democracy in the face of a widow and mother. The son of the ousted grew in stature in the antumbra and periphery of consciousness, together with those who bear his father’s nostalgic days. And so the story of excesses went on. Until now.

So why did Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., win? Let me offer an answer--- an angle with a defamiliarized haul. But let me make it clear at this very onset that I did not vote for him, mainly because of historical conscience. Rather, it is an hermeneutic of cultural narrativistic consciousness.

Resurgence and Reminiscences: An Uncanny Intersection

Self-proclaimed history buffs and/or investigative journalist-wannabes try to champion the fact-check stance: The Marcos regime of the mid-20th century Philippines was not really a golden era. Economic reports would corroborate this, they say.

However, the phenomenology of remembrance and silenced memory of and from the grassroots marching on to the contemporary times did not, apparently, die; but simply remained dormant. In fact, the “let me educate you” rhetoric provoked the re-evaluation. Both the older ones, in their subaltern silence, and the younger ones, in the boisterous jungle called “social media” meet at a certain level and the result is now a given: 30+ million votes[1] for the otherwise now known as the “solid north” (unified with the “solid south”)… across the board. Borrowed convict and social epistemology, as it were, as group think mechanism cannot seem to win against a revisited living memory and reviewed popularized understanding of the past decades of the Philippines. A dormant historical memory is enough to embrace the deeper longing of the unmortifiable ground for hope and aspiration in the persisting and inherited psyche of those who walked and breathed and lived through the 1970s Philippines down to the present.

Now, you ask: what about the horrors of Proclamation No. 1081? Yes, there are. The narratives pile over each other. But it is not the whole story either, is it? And this, I believe, is what both fueled both the resurgence and reminiscences, leading to the return of this Ilocos native---bearer of that narrative from the north---back to the central seat of power.

Decadence of Virtue: Postmodernity and Sociology of Episteme in View

Are these the necessary metanarratives? Is this view to be taken as the explanatory frame for all this nascent recent history, with its umbilical cord still uncut? Well, yes… until challenged, and if need be, debunked. But until then, let this proposition stand: This Marcos Saga is interpretable as unfolding narratives, with slight modifications and permutations via Proppian[2] lenses.

Now, the attempts or allegations of historical revisionism cut both ways as the supposed bedrock of historical consciousness perpetuated and unquestioned from the past couple of decades or so has now become the very challenge to the authors of EDSA.

Juan Ponce Enrile ‘repents’ of his youthful spring. Toni Gonzaga bites the bullet of the anti-Marcos angst in that pre-candidacy interview with Marcos Jr. himself. Boy Abunda’s comments on his presidentiable-interviews further propel the indeterminacy of what was rather celebrated as ‘textbook knowledge’.

See, history? It is a text. It is a tapestry, which the beauty or fragility is yet to unvail depending on the skillfulness of its weavers and decorators. Figures mentioned are the accidental[3] consciousness moulders, even as they are some of the country’s culture shapers. It was as if it is only a matter of time before the unfolding comes and so here it is: 30+ million votes for the otherwise now known as the “solid north” (unified with the “solid south”)… across the board.

This sub-tectonic shifts in epistemic and sociological perceptions indicate one clear thing: Filipinos---regardless of stripes, strides, and shades---are homo narrationis as they are homo sapiens. Nothing can sever the main head of this psychical hydra---no, not even the Herculean denial of it i.e., the postmodern turn. People---Filipinos---are incurably narrativistic and will perennially yearn for the grand narrative that holds and explains and maintains the loose ends of the proverbial tapestry… coherently. The mechanisms and machinations of those who debauch in the delusion of discoursal upper hand are, I would say, the necessarily illegitimate children of avarice, and so the result is the extended net of suspicion snaring consciousness in broad daylight of academic and social discourse, unless or otherwise observed and preempted, thus challenged as is now. This does not mean from my end, however, that I take history as a continuous invention and reinvention of and by those who are in power. Au contraire! Rather, I deem it as having and being in the ability to semi-transcend from the events and read them, while immersing into them, so as not to be dissolved and swallowed by these deluge of information at hand.

My dear readers (regardless of your agreement or the absence thereof), this is what this 2022 Philippine National Election has evidenced.

That irrespective of our sympathies, antipathies, and apathies to the Marcos phenomenon, history’s entwined tendency to be read and interpreted, and then passed on is on the collision course of any attempt at denying the objectivity and discoverability of coherence in culture, history, sociology, and anthropology---in its either demise or glory.

So, am I saying that Bongbong Marcos is the proverbial child of providence unto critical awareness? Far from it! What I am affirming is history is too tightly entangled with consciousness, that some might lose in its labyrinthine intricacy and commit the lazy blunder of either randomness or absurdity and abandonment.

There is always something behind and beyond the veil of our collective perception and keenness in and with anything that transpire will bring the necessary criticalness or criticism, which the threshold is the possibility of and for counter-perspectives: those that have always been there awaiting discovery, either because unnoticed or repressed.

As we draw this treatise to a close, thence, this is the bottom-line I wish to leave and let-linger: the need for a holistic, pervasive, and comprehensive awareness and interpretation of the human effort and subjectivity in this contingent time-space-matter-consciousness continuum availed at differing scales of history in general; in the Philippines in particular, is inevitable. And as long as events unfold, no attempt at self-defeating heuristic will stand strong, rather, it will keep on collapsing on its own qualifications and sub-qualifications---there is no point denying it. And even in the recent Philippine history, the same cane be seen, claimed, and opined.

Is the return of a Marcos an accident, i.e., an unforeseen event or is it a drama---in gradual inscripturation, waiting to be acted at, and even if not narrated, will produce this sense of transcendental catharsis through jubilation, pity, and fear? If and must the ensuing presupposition remain, then the stance stands: History is intentional---immersively, by the ‘actors’; objectively, as the unravelling of grand events. Thus, without mincing words, and from this vista, the Ilocos native, Marcos’ Jr.’s return is intentional since the decades past; this politico-historical narrative is bound to happen as events are plucked as to strings of the lyre in rhymes and reasons, albeit beyond immediate fathom. What, then, is the biggest question?

Who do you say does and has these ways this grand?

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N.B.: Photo not a copyright of the author

[1]Each for Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte [2] Reference to Vladimir Propp’s ‘Morphology of Folktale” [3] In a Thomistic sense