IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS AS VALUE: FALL

IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS AS VALUE: FALL-OUTS OF METROPOLITAN HUMANNESS
Author(s): Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Qui Parle, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2003), pp. 143-182
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
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IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS AS VALUE:
FALL-OUTS OF METROPOLITAN HUMANNESS
Neferti X.M. Tadiar
isa spirit,afterall, but an untold story,a novel
thatawaits to be written?
What
-Tony
Perez
In the pivotal scene of Filipino writer Tony Perez's controversial
1980, when Tom, the narrator, stumbles into per
novella, Cubao
sonal salvation at a charismatic miracle rally, a seemingly inconse
evan
quential detail stands out.' While he observes the American
gelist preaching theword of God and the crowd fervently respond
the stage, shouting and singing praises and
ing, approaching
to
the
Lord, Tom beholds a striking detail: the "so very, very
prayers
white" [ang puti-puti] countenance of the American preacher. In
the face of this intense whiteness
of mass
desire, Tom unexpectedly
grace and mercy, his own
punctuating the sonorous scene
finds himself the receiver of
surprising and uncontainable
the very experiential proof of the intimate, earthly pres
ence of God. "Humagulgol ako. Inisip ko, kahit pa'no, dumating
divine
emotion
and Diyos, dumatingang Diyos sa Cubao [Iwailed. I thought,
somehow,God had arrived,God had arrived inCubao]" (C, 73).
of thischromaticdetail isa fleetinginstant
Althoughthesurfacing
within the narrative, it is nevertheless an important and telling one.
Qui Parle, Vol. 13, No. 2 Spring/Summer 2003
144
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
For at thismoment when whiteness makes
Tom encounters
itsbrief and yet intense
in himself that is at once
appearance,
something
the manifestation of divine presence and the very substance of uni
versal humanness. As the novella articulates, universal humanness
consists of that aspect of a person's being that lies beyond any
worldly determinant of social identity, such as nation, race or sex
serves as
uality, an essence forwhich whiteness
privileged sign.
Richard Dyer writes thatwhiteness
involves "something that is in
but not of the body."2 For Tom, that "something" which whiteness
involves is value.
is undoubtedly moral, as the divine
mercy and forgiveness he cries out for and receives would attest.
But far from being simply a quality or condition conferred by a tran
Tom's newfound
value
religious order, that value is also the product of a more
indeed, fleshly, economy. Tom's redemption is, after all, a
redemption from the demeaning, petty living he makes as a call boy
on the proliferating seedy inner fringes of Cubao, a commercial dis
scendent
material,
trictof metropolitan Manila
developed under the authoritarian re
of
Ferdinand
Marcos.
Under
this regime the prostitution in
gime
became
the
dustry
paradigmatic
industry of a national economy
based on the marketing of cheap sexualized
labor to attract foreign
largely U.S.
capital investment.3 In 1980, the time of the no
vella's writing as well as of itssetting, the Philippine economy was
more
tied to international financial
institutions than ever, having
on
to
loans
fund itsvarious moderniza
dependent
foreign
tion development
for
projects
attracting greater investments of
transnational capital. Tom's redemptive moral value can not be
become
understood
apart from the local economy within which he circu
lates as a sexual commodity, as well as the transnationalizing
national economy that this local sexual economy serves to supple
ment. Both the formand the substanceof his redemptionhave
alreadybeen shaped by these local and nationalsexual economies
inasmuch as they are the same econornies
that gave rise to the fault
or debt thatcompels such redemptioninthefirst
place. Put simply,
Tom's divine experience of redemptive value in the fetish form of
can be understood as logical compensation
for the
whiteness
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
racializedand sexualized lackthat isproduced inhim (theformof
his necessary devaluation) as the condition and consequence
of
the Philippines'
role within a transnational capitalist economy.
Even God's arrival in Cubao must be seen in light of itsworldly
preparation.
However, Tom does not behold in the face of whiteness the
it
value of the embodied person, the American preacher inwhom
appears, nor the value of the U.S. as the place of itsorigin. He sees
rather his own abdicated
human value. Whiteness
and betrayed, but ultimately recuperable,
has itself liftedoff from the embodied per
a value intrinsic to
son of the preacher to become the
signifier of
those who, under a previous colonial symbolic economy, would
appear to have none. Relatively freed from any particular embodi
ment and therefore implicitly from any bodily race- whiteness
can be found and developed
signifies the quality of humanness that
in each
and every person. However, whiteness
is not simply the
a
race
dominant
of
of
expression
symbolic system
transported from
the global metropolitan West to the periphery. It is also the product
in the
of a particular universalist claim to humanness that ismade
to
effort
liberate
oneself
from
the
condi
contradictory
experiential
tions of the everyday devaluation
the expansion of global capital.
and debasement
underwriting
My point is that the racialized humanism that appears to be
of an expanding
Eurocentric social
the sheer accomplishment
order (and its racist system of human value) is also the uneasy
achievement of a particular kind of resistance against that imperi
alist order (and its racist, heterosexist logic of production of eco
nomic value). Indeed, the perceptible
identification of whiteness
with recuperated human value emerges precisely out of Tom's
the experience of his own corporeal debase
of human value
under this order. This white countenance
efforts to countenance
ment
appears
at a particular historical moment when
a racialized
uni
versal currencyforsocial and subjectivepractice isput intoeffect
gestureon thepartof theperiphery.Inthe
bymeans of a liberative
of
experience contemporaryPhilippineurban lifearticulatedby
Perezwe witness theconcrete rendering
of thismoment and of the
145
146
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
way such a global
realized.
achievement
and
its fallout are simultaneously
As the effect of a specific mode of subjective resistance to an
older global order, the percept of whiteness does not, however,
only index its socio-historical conditions of possibility. Italso acts
as a new point of subjectification, another place from which to
reorganize one's subjectivity. In other words, the percept of white
a new
ness is a
signifier that calls into being
modality of urban sub
jectivity,which works in the service of an emergent metropolitanist
order of social relations. The making of this metropolitanist order
on the level of the nation's capital can be viewed as part and par
cel of the processes of transformation we refer to as globalization.
As an astute recording and enactment of the minute affairs
and micro-events of urban subjective life,Perez's work thus affords
an exemplary view of these transformations in the realm of subjec
tivity that take place within the particular historical moment of
Manila's
But beyond the work of recording
metropolitanization.
and enactment, Perez's writing also performs a practical function.
It acts as an apparatus of subjectification, a form of experiential
for the shaping of new subjects and their social relations. It
is not a trivial fact that for a few years Perez worked as a psy
chotherapist or that he considers his chosen writing vocation as
media
that of a "healer not of ailments of the body but of ailments of per
In this light,Perez's ren
[sakit ng katauhan]."4
sonality/personhood
dering of Tom's experience may be understood as an effort to pro
vide subjective resources and measures for healing the "ailment"
that Tom, as a particular case, suffers.
I interpret Tom's "ail
Against Perez's own understanding,
ment," as well as the solution Perez offers for it, inmore social and
historical terms. For Perez's very diagnosis and writerly treatment of
(i.e., as human
suffering as "ailments of personhood"
is
dilemmas) constitutes a specific mode of experience, which
in character, and political and economic
in signifi
socio-historical
subjective
cance. This mode of experience makes consequential
use of a uni
versal currency of human suffering as the means of creating a new
would be capable ofovercomingthedire
metropolitansubjectthat
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
costs of living life in the urban recesses of the globalizing national
itwould be an inordinate stretch to think of his work
capital. While
as anti-imperialist, or even nationalist, Perez's important role in the
vernacularization of Philippine theater in the 1960s can be said to
have contributed to the cultural cause of the anti-imperialist move
a local expressive currency,
By honing the vernacular as
ment.
Perez's original plays inTagalog participated in the nationalist pro
ject of resolving the general crisis of cultural alienation wrought by
neocolonialism. Given this larger orientation of Perez's work, it is
not difficult to glean the tacit workings of a social project at the
background
of his creative endeavor,
a project crucially sustained
and shaped by both the political agenda of nationalismand his
as the
repudiation of it.5Today, Perez notes, "As long
we
our
not
will
remain
creative
read
do
of
works,
people
majority
a ThirdWorld country." This tacit social project consists of the lib
eration of Filipinos from Third World conditions through the cre
explicit
ation of a metropolitan subject rather than a nationalist one. By
overcomes subal
looking into the processes by which this subject
ternity,we are led to recognize not only the historical, social expe
riential work that contributes to the realization of racialized hu
manism
as the universal currency of subjective valuation, but also
of this realization.
the social consequences
The Historical
Racialization
of Value
To a certain extent, the conditions for racialized humanism thatwe
witness through Tom were already laid down under Spanish colo
of the Tagalogs and other indigenous
to
Christianity during the sixteenth century.6
Philippine peoples
as "something that is inbut not of the
Dyer's definition ofwhiteness
nialism with the conversion
motifof Christianity
conveyed
body" highlightsthe foundational
through Spanish
rule. That motif is incarnation, or the human em
bodimentofwhat transcendsthebody.Under Spanish theological
rule,themoral virtueof nativeconvertscould onlybe ascertained
by itsderivativeand mimetic relationto thespiritof Christas the
human
incarnation of God. A fixed referent thus determined moral,
147
148
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
human virtue -
a transcendent spiritual ideal towards which the
natives were forcibly expected to strive, but which, to the extent
that the natives were the very embodiment of sinful, corporeal
forever remain beyond their reach. God was the
nature, would
"Infinite Creditor" towhom the natives paid tribute and perpetual
ly indebted themselves (CC, 96). Whiteness was the spiritual sur
plus of God, indistinguishable from thewhite Spaniards who were
God's representatives. As a signifier of moral value, itcould thus be
experienced only externally. For whiteness to be experienced by
the former natives as a value
intrinsic to being human, another
to prevail.
of
social
had
organization
dynamic
Colette Guillaumin
of the
argues that with the ascendance
bourgeois mode of production in European and U.S. societies and
in the nine
into a global economy
the expansion of colonialism
teenth century, a new form of racism emerges, different from the
racism of previous feudal, aristocratic orders.7 Ifwe
look at the
economic
of
it
of "in
bears
form
the
value,
conception
bourgeois
but not of the body" articulated by the idea of incarnation. Marx's
famous analysis of the mysterious character of the commodity-form
isprecisely a critique of the idea of Christian incarnation as itoper
ates
in the practices of commodity-fetishism.8 For Marx, "Christi
its religious cult of man in the abstract, more particular
anity with
i.e., in Protestantism, Deism, etc.,
ly in itsbourgeois development,
is the most fittingform of religion" for a society of commodity pro
ducers (CP 172). As Mark Taylor argues, both Marx's analysis of
as "value inprocess" (CP 256)) and
capital (defined
Hegel's specu
lative logic, which Marx's theory of value appropriates, are predi
cated on the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity.9
Marx's
specific intervention, however, consists in showing how
(as between
religious fetishism in the relations between people
people and God) passes intoa fetishismin the relationsbetween
things.10 In the Christian cosmology of capitalism, money and com
incarnations of a hidden substance value:
modities become
In itsvalue-relation with the linen, the coat counts only
under this aspect, counts therefore as embodied
value,
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
as the body of value. Despite
its buttoned-up appear
ance, the linen recognizes in ita splendid kindred soul,
the soul of value. . . . Itsexistence as value ismanifest
ed
in its equality with
nature of the Christian
just as the sheep-like
in his resemblance to
the coat,
is shown
the LambofGod. (CP 143)
As Harry Chang shows, this mode of thought peculiar to capitalist
is crucial in the very
relations, i.e., the fetishism of commodities,
formation of "races" as the objectification of the social relations of
slavery and, subsequently, of "free" labor." In the course of colo
and industrialization, race
nial Europe's capitalist development
enters into the value-relation
itself.Or I should say, race begins to
in order to approach
in
this
value, and
way retroactively determines the meaning of
value as thatwhich is not raced. Justas a thingmust transcend its
stand
in for that which must be eschewed
itsphysical body, inorder to emerge as a commod
sensuousness,
a
ity, thing possessing value, so must the freeworker transcend his
corporeality,
the aspect of his being which aligns him with an
nature in order to become a bearer of value (labor
appropriable
power).12 Since race comes to signify precisely this appropriable
of the histories of slavery and
corporeal nature as a consequence
itself,as the invisible content of an object or
from its outward form, becomes
person distinguishable
aligned
is not raced.13 Hereon, value takes on the social
with thatwhich
colonization,
value
aspect of those who, by virtue of theirmonopolistic agency over it,
personify it in its ideal form as money. Although the value inhering
itsenigmatic
inmoney would seem to transcend all sensuousness,
power consists precisely of itssuprasensible reflection of the social
characteristics of production as objective socio-natural properties
ofmoney itself.1"Value
reflectsthe racialized relationsof itspro
duction,
inparticular the alienation of and from racialized
a suprasensible
"quality" of unmarked,
labor as
immaterial, even spectral
power.Thewhite subject is,simplyput, the realizationof the sub
As thepersonification
of the
of thevanishingmediator.15
jectivity
money-form
of value
in its position
of disinterest and
transcen
149
150
NEFERTI
dence
X.M.
TADIAR
(its exclusion
from the world
of consumable
objects), the
to
the
aspires
subject
highest (most fetishized)
instance of itself: "capital as the subject of value in itsmovement
white
hence
of growth."
Indeed, it is in itsappearance
pendently self-valorizing, capital-subject
lydemonstrates itsproximity to God.
as the self-moving, inde
thatwhiteness most vivid
Dyer writes:
At some point, the embodied something else of white
ness took on a dynamic relation to the physical world,
something caught by the ambiguous word "spirit." The
spirit organises white flesh and in turn non-white
it has enterprise.
flesh and other material matters:
white
Imperialism is the key historical form in which that
process has been realised. Imperialism displays both the
of enterprise
in the white
exhilaratingly expansive
ment. (W, 15)
relationship
character
person, and its
to the environ
In the Philippine context, it is this character of enterprise and, more
particularly, of capital (rather than merely territorial) expansion that
distinguishes the project of U.S.
Spanish colonialism.
imperialism from the project of
imperialism, a new dynamics of racialization
comes to replace the rigid hierarchy of racial castes imposed by
of a native mercantile
Spanish colonial rule.With the ascendance
an
race becomes
class through
agricultural export crop industry,
Under
U.S.
increasingly integral to class formation. Hereon qualities of racial
in this emergent nation
superiority could be found to be embodied
domination was sustained by economic as well as
identificatory ties to foreign capital. The white spirit thus shows
itself to be no less than the spirit of capital, a spirit no longer con
fined to the harsh dispensation of the Friar, but rather in some sense
al elite, whose
freed for those inGod's
grace to draw from.While
under Spanish
colonialismGod may have already been thewhite Father,under
U.S.
imperialism He gains a benevolent
countenance.
His Spirit is
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
evangelical,
democratic
went
AS VALUE
descending upon earth to bring everyone within
realm of His beneficence.
the
From the late 1960s to the late 1970s, the Philippines under
a radical economic
restructuring,which linked itmore inti
mately with transnational capital by completely orienting itspro
duction towards export. This nationalization
of imperialism (by
which Imean the assumption by the state of powers and functions
held by the U.S., but here with respect to the restof the country) at
once manifested itself in and realized itselfthrough the metropoli
tanization of the national capital, Manila.16 With
transnational
financial capital as both itsmeans and itsobject, theMarcos State
transformed the urban space into the material site for the subcon
tracting of multinational production. Metro Manila did not only
serve as a showcase of modernity for the attraction of predomi
as the instrument for the greater
nantly U.S. capital, italso served
into the international world
integration of the Philippine economy
rose to political and
the
U.S.
and
colonial
power during
post-independence
new
with
the
"cronies"
Marcos State con
of
the
periods, together
solidated and parceled out the bodily resources of the nation in a
market. Parts of the old national elite which
economic
strategy to attract foreign loans and investments for the ostensible
In thisway they established what would
purposes of development.
prevail during this period as the dominant mode of accumulation
of foreign capital principally characterized by what has been
called "rent-seeking activities" closely linked to the strategy of
"debt-powered growth.""
As an attempt to synchronize Philippine urban lifewith the
of Manila
developed metropolitan world, the metropolitanization
consisted of innumerable projects of beautification, infrastructural
improvements, and the construction of hotels, cultural centers, and
conventionhalls.Manila was dubbed the "Cityof
international
Man,"
one of the "many homes of mankind"
that together would
of prog
comprise theenvisionedend of the inexorabletrajectory
ress: the earth as "a global city."18As I have shown elsewhere, this
of Manila created itsown contradictory refuse
metropolitanization
in the form of the urban excess population
and the informal econ
151
152
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
omy they motored as the means of their own survival.19 It is from
this seamy side of what will later be hypostasized as globalization
that the historical experience of whiteness as value, as well as the
new order of social organization
can be concretely articulated.
Experiencing Whiteness
and production which
it indexes,
as Value
1980, this seamy side is the world of casual male sex
work. Of the socio-historical context referred to by the title, Carlo
Tadiar writes:
In Cubao
From the late seventies to the early eighties, at the very
height of theMarcos dictatorship,Cubao acquired
itdebuted American-style
national significance because
.
.
.
Cubao allowed the masses
malls in the country.
access
to a cornucopia of American-identified goods for
the firsttime, finally introducing into the Philippines the
fantasy sustaining full-fledged capitalism: universal con
sumerism unlimited, unrestrained, free consumption.
or perhaps logicallyCubao acquired a
Ironically
shadow
reputation as a market formale
youths.20
consumption and the male sex market are
in the experience of Tom, the six
relation
brought
logical
teen-year-old boy who is first introduced intoCubao's dark, glittery
In Perez's novella mass
into a
world of boy prostitution
by his friendButch:
Man, we've got none now, Butch said once. We were at
Ali [Mall] then, wandering about, 'cause there were so
many things to see, so many delicious things to buy, you
just think, later,when you've made some money. Let it
be for now. All you can do is look, pretend you have
show off to the chicks, give them a couple of
even
winks,
though they're snobs, fun to annoy, anyway
some,
you can't bringthemtoConey or Shakey's.
We've
got none now.
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
What do you mean now? We never have any. I'm
let's just go home.
hungry
But Butch didn't want to go home yet.
Let's go hunting for fags, Butch said. They'll give
us some.
(C, 4)
everywhere, both Butch and Tom feel an
absence. Butch's refrain,Alaws tayo ngayon [We've got none now],
ismatched by Tom's, Tomguts na ko, a slang expression for "I'm
Faced with commodities
a play on his
hungry" which makes of theword "hungry" [gutom],
name. This absence disables them from acting like real men, and
forthe things
leads them to lend theirbodies to bakias [fags]21
fill
which theybelieve would
their lack:money and American
goods. After his firstsexual encounter Tom uses themoney he earns
to buy a Dyambo
hat dog [jumbo hot dog]. As Tadiar reads this
scene: "To bite into the hot dog is to bite into the fantasy of an
is a terrestrial metonym, par
heaven of which Cubao
adise on earth."22 But like the penis of Tom's only American cus
tomer,which is forced into him and which he describes as a jumbo
hot dog, the fetishized object does not satisfy, leaving something to
be desired but, at the same time, leaving something to desire
with. The exchange
leaves him with the medium of desire is itself exciting, betokening seemingly infinite
which
money
comes
It
then as no surprise thatwhen he receives this
possibilities.
American
in its highest form after being raped by Ken, the
desiring medium
American, he experiences a kind of euphoria. As he remarks in
life that Iever held dol
awe, "That was the only time inmy whole
lars [No'n lang ako nakahawak nung dalar sa buong buhay ko]" (C,
itwould seem, are the real thing.
55). Dollars,
As the purported universal equivalent for all currencies, the
privilegedmedium of global exchange, the dollar acts as that
unequivocal signof power atwhose behest the nascent Filipino
elite would establish theirown mythical prowess.23The dollar
indexestheverysocio-symbolicorderof latecapitalismonwhich
its representative status as the new gold standard (at least until the
1990s) depends. Itdoes notonly represent
money and the infinite
153
154
X.M.
NEFERTI
TADIAR
possibilities itportends, but also the very place fromwhere money
seems to derive such power. We might say, then, that by holding it
in his hand Tom momentarily holds the key to that sublime place
resides and where all desire that depends on value
or object is fulfilled. Or we
might say, by holding this
is
held
he
himself
it,
by
possessed by itssupreme omnipotence.
key
Hence his euphoria.
where
all value
as itsmeans
In his remarkable ethnography of male sex work in metro
Manila, Carlo Tadiar argues that the socio-symbolic order of capi
talist modernity shapes what he locates as the motoring conceit of
sex market, that is, the notion of the essential difference
the customer as bakla (homosexual) and the kolboy (male
sex worker) as lalaki (literally,male, presumed to be heterosexual).
the male
between
argues that the phallocentrism of this order reshapes the
local sex-gender system such that relations between bakia and lala
ki can only take the triangulated form of commodity relations.24
"Both bakla and kolboy are reaching for the phallus. Where
the
Tadiar
one
thinks he is looking
formoney." Both "man"
centric value. Each is, as
tion, the signifier of the
for a man, the other thinks he is looking
and "money" are incarnations of phallo
Weeks defines it, "the representa
Jeffrey
laws of the social order, the law of the
to the social (and patriarchal)
Father, through which obedience
order is installed."25 But the very heteronormative imperatives that
shape this exchange (requiring the kolboy to be the real man) trans
formsman into a "fallen" form.26Hence, Tadiar notes the kolboys'
obsession
with oridyinal [original] commodities,
that is, brand
name commodities from the U.S., as somehow guarantees of the
value of their personhood and, more particularly, their manhood.
These U.S.
commodities
that value, both of which
signify both real value and the origins of
are to be found in an otherworldly place.
Inasmuch as real phallic value, which
these commodities
em
body,will always lieelsewhere,thekolboyswill necessarilyalways
be lacking.Drawn intothe circulationof bodies and money in
which both kolboysand bakias endlesslygo hunting[hanting]for
each
thus experiences
his life as a series of sexual
that amount to nothing. Time seems to stand still; he for
other, Tom
exchanges
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
gets what year it is. "Because the days flyby so quickly. Like money,
when you spend it [Ang bilis kasi dumaan ng araw. Parang pera,
(C, 41). He tries to keep a listof all his "hap
'pag ginastos mo]"
a
listof debts, a listof sins [parang listahan nung
penings," "like
(49), but he loses count.
mga utang, listahan nung mga kasalanan]"
inCubao as shadows. "At night, the
He begins to see the people
shadows of the leaves on the ceiling would move and move. Like
on the overpass, inCubao. Moving,
were so
people,
walking, there
many
..
." (49).
Then one day he and his friends happen upon a religious rally
of Don Stewart, the American evangelist. Here Tom encounters the
real thing, even more real than dollars. "So very white, so very
clean [ang puti-puti, ang linis-linis]" (72), he thinks to himself
the preacher who speaks in English (the language of those
as "dollar-spokening") about God, Jesus, and
mockingly referred to
the Holy Spirit, "About people, about sins, about everlasting life,
about those who were happy, Idon't know, about everything" (72).
about
Before the all-encompassing
understanding of the American evan
Tom
is
in
the
swept up
gelist,
religious euphoria of the crowd:
People were
shouting so loudly. Everyone was crying,
wailing, hurrying to get near the stage. He was praying,
his face so very, very white, saying, come near, come
near to God [Diyos], to God (Gad), to Jesus, to the Holy
Spirit, come near, He was
ifyou didn't see Him....
therewith him on stage, even
My God, my God,
forgive me!
I cried and cried, I am so bad,
Iwailed.
God
I thought, somehow, God
had arrived inCubao.
had arrived,
Ididn'taskwhy. (73)
The "Infinite
Creditor,"that is, theCatholic God of Spanish rule
[Diyos],descends to earth,sublatedby theevangelical Protestant
God of benevolent U.S. assimilation
[Gad]
(CC, 96). Tom's sins, his
debts,are heremet by thekindcountenanceof a God verydiffer
155
156
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
ent from the distant, prohibitive Spanish Catholic God moralisti
cally invoked by his older brother, the stern, pious father-substitute
whose
authority,
like that of the Catholic
priest, symbolically
derives fromthe Christ the King figurehangingover his bed.
on an outdated calendar.)
In contrast to
(Significantly, the figure is
God the Patriarch, God the Savior is close by, humanly near. His
is the act of
very arrival in this forsaken, lumpen world of Cubao
His infinite forgiveness and love.
Against the merely real value of dollars and all that they por
tend for someone, Tom discovers a value that is for no other; it is a
value without equivalence or relativizing condition but, as he also
becomes painfully aware, a value he has continuously given over
to others for a price. He discovers that his humanness [pagkataol is
above all relative worth or price (i.e., is value in itself,which he
bears and yet, by allowing himself to be treated as a thing, he
betrays).27 Thus, Tom finds both his sin and his salvation in the same
moment. Having encountered true Value through itswhite repre
sentative, he realizes how far he is fallen from the ideal of a tran
scendent, metropolitan humanness by which he might recognize
and measure his own soul. He and his friends climb to the top of
the rally is held. From this place of transcen
dence, they view the entirety of theworld inwhich they had been
immersed. There, they decide to renounce theirways, theirway of
living, and to redeem their lost souls (that is, the intrinsic human
the coliseum where
value they continuously gave over to others).
This recognition of true Value and the divestment
from his
life that such recognition demands, constitutes
conversion. "In other words, thanks to the act of
debased
previous
Tom's personal
conversion, the subject is supposed to attain a kind of alterity from
the self and, in a spectacular shiftof identity, thus arrive at his or
herverybeing,whose functionistomake thefaceof thegod shine
forthwithin."28 The conversion
thatTom undergoes is also implicit
In the transformative process of this direct
communion with God, Tom's previous experience of himself as
ng kata wan,
corporeal
being for others
pinag-arkilahan
ng laman [whose body was
pinaggamitan ng ari, pinagbentahan
ly an economic
event.
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
rented out, whose sex was letout for use, whose substance was for
turns into an experience of himself as someone
sale] (C, 78) with at least potential Value.
The Minoritized
In exchange
inwhose
Costs ofReligious Human
Redemption
for his total surrender to this Supreme Being in Itself,
image he ismade, Tom becomes a human subject. For
subject means reducing all his
"Hermie was
contacts, including Hermie, his steady, to shadows
no more
no longer human, just a name . .. [dehin na tao, pan
na lang.. .1" (79). Such redemption depends upon the repos
galan
session of one's self from the agency of another's corrupting, com
indeed, from the agency of the other who
modifying desire
occupies one's desire. In the wake of redemption and from the
Butch, this conversion
to human
place of transcendence where ittakes effect immediately comes the
mga baka kayo! [Youmother
denouncing cry: "Puking ina n'yo
whore, you faggots!]" (81). Or better, the denouncing cry becomes
the enunciative act of one's redemption.
Uttered by Butch and reprised by Tom as the contents of the
entire chapter that follows, this denouncement
consolidates all of
Tom's very different sexual experiences all his happenings into one social identity that remains external to him: mga bakia
kayo ["you faggots," but also, "you are faggots"]. Although the cat
egory bakia bears greater social consistency and a much longer his
tory than this argument might suggest, it isonly at this moment of
enunciation that the bakia comes to be configured as the positive
embodiment of the kolboy's lack, a lackwhich is no more fully felt
than in the process of one's redemptive constitution as human sub
a social
category of persons
ject.29Unlike the extant use of bakia as
form
and
characterized by effeminate bodily
comportment and
all
cross-dressing, the denouncing cry in the novel encompasses
the customers of kolboy sex work, regardless of the gender-cod ings
of their behavior. In thisway bakia becomes a category denoting,
above all, a commodifying same-sex desire for the male body.
Reconfigured
must be eschewed
as such, bakia comes to stand for thatwhich
in order to resolve the internal contradiction
157
158
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
that prevents the kolboy from becoming a fully-realized, desiring
human subject. Itmust be recalled thatwithin the context present
ed by the novel, the bakia are the bearers of money, which is the
ostensible object of the kolboy's hunting. As he takes thismoney in
exchange for his body, the kolboy sinks into sin, each "happening"
converted into an ever-increasing debt that itselftakes the place of
his original lack. In the moment of Tom's and Butch's conversion,
the debt that must be settled in order for them to attain their
humanness
becomes
the very identity of the bakla, who
targeted for itspayment.
Caroline S. Hau writes about a similar conflation
is hence
in her dis
cussion of the spate of kidnappings of ethnic Chinese carried out
by the criminal Philippine state from the late eighties to the mid
nineties.30 Hau argues that the conflation of the Chinese with alien
the kidnapping-for-ransorm enacts, can be
ating capital, which
traced to the historically contradictory roles assigned to and played
state. In
by the Chinese in relation to the colonial and neo-colonial
as alien capital is the means and
of the social contradictions gener
nation-state's own identification with global
effect, the figure of the Chinese
object of a violent displacement
ated by the Philippine
capitalism.
In another work, Hau observes the way inwhich this figure
recurs in Philippine nationalist literary texts as part of a wider
nationalist effort to imagine a unified body politic that could over
come
the prevailing social and economic
inequities generated by
neocolonialism.31 Her reading of Edgardo Reyes' 1968 novel, Sa
Mga Kuko ng Liwanag [AttheClaws of Daylight] isof particular
pertinence here, as itdemonstrates the racialized personification of
alienation that takes shape through the social realist imaginings of
urban protest literature. In Reyes' novel, the humanist hero, Julio
[frommatiyaga, hardworking], is the Filipino Everyman
Madiaga
who journeys fromthe idylliccountrysideto the corruptand
exploitativenational capital in search of his disappeared sweet
heart,Ligaya [happiness].That journeydoes not only chronicle
Julio'salienation throughhis absorption intothe urban capitalist
economy,
it also
raises his national
and class consciousness
that
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
serves to overcome
AS VALUE
that alienation.
that Ligaya has
Discovering
become the sexual captive of Ah Tek, the figure of Chinese capital,
Julio attempts to rescue her but when his plan fails and Ah Tek mur
ders Ligaya, he takes his fatal revenge against Ah Tek instead. Hau
as a "nationalizing" moment
reads this fantasy of vengeance
wherein the protest against alienation that threatens to take away
the Everyman's humanity "is directed against the Chinese, who is
both an alien and instrumentof capitalist alienation" (NF 165). The
figure of the Chinese becomes the embodiment of an entire social
system, which is seen to prevent the humanist hero's realization of
his humanity and his attainment of happiness.
1980 in relation to the
Something similar is at work inCubao
baka, whose symbolic condensation as an identity isperformed by
is the big-time
the sinister and remote figure of Hermie. Hermie
bakia who first lures Butch, himself the original kolboy in the story,
into the demeaning
sex-money exchanges he subsequently dis
avows. Hermie
is surrounded by the trappings of modern affluence.
Like Ah Tek he signifies money. He hovers over the narrative, inter
mittently invoked but virtually invisible. To Tom he ismysterious
and indecipherable, he is unlike any of the other bakia Tom has
met. Exuding power, he provides well for his kept lover. He is kind
In
and materially generous, but also murderously possessive.
then,we find the symbolic figure of the Chinese as "alien"
capital, the source of the debasement and unfreedom of everyday
alienation.32 Like the Chinese, who "perverts the 'true' value of cit
is a perversion of the true value delivered to
izenship," Hermie
Hermie,
forsaken by God's white representative (NF 138). On the
level of national urban life, racism helps to resolve class antago
nisms; on the level of submetropolitan
life, homophobia
helps to
Cubao's
resolve the racism of the "universal"
law of value. The gendered
sexualizationof theworker'scorporealdebasement that isalready
implicitin labor'sprotestagainst itsemasculation by capital is
underscoredand materialized by Tom's and Butch's own literal
prostitution.3
It is, in part, the heterosexist sexualization
of com
modificationthatforPerez demands a homophobicsolutionto the
problem of alienation. Tom turns away from one heteronormative
159
160
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
lygendered and racialized system of value underwriting the pros
titution economy only to embrace a differently calibrated, but ulti
identical, system of value underwriting the politics of
mately
humanist redemption. Hence the consolidation of bakla identityas
the corrupting disease that has to be purged from the metropolitan
spacewithinwhich thehumanizingself isupheld.
Scorned by his self-redeeming lover, Hermie emerges out of
the teeming crowd of undifferentiated faces, "like a ghost in a
(C, 86), and shoots Butch
[parang multo sa panaginip]"
dead. Unlike the case of the kidnapped Chinese, the dramatic vio
of the kolboy's white redemption rebounds on
lent consequence
dream
the bakla, not as the purported source of the kolboy's alienation,
but rather, as the movement of identification with a universal hu
manness. However, this reversal is not an overturning of the pre
vailing
logic, but merely
its precipitous
fulfillment.Whether
the
or themovement (identification),
it
of identity)
product (thealterity
to a fatal end. Blood, rain, and the chaos of bodies mix
in an explosion that stops the infernal city-machine for a moment.
all comes
And then itstarts again, the relentless pounding
pouring through Cubao.
tread of the crowd
It is upon seeing the dramatic consequence
of his and Butch's
Tom
that
lies at the core of
that
another
truth
suspects
redemption
the truth, perhaps, that he had been seeing the world
his acts from the place of his immanent redemption all along. That truth
thatwill be the turning point for a second conversion comes to him
through the urban deluge intowhich both Hermie and Butch dis
appear, a deluge
that dissolves
the dead
still of his universal human
valorization,
leaving only morsels of time past [pira-piraso kong
This
other truth that calls Tom into a second moment of
nakaraan].
conversion, a further subjective becoming, appears not as any par
ticular content but rather as a question and a regret.Tom asks him
self: "Who was Hermie? Who was Sonny, who was Bert, who was
Ken,who were those fiveguyswho playedmusic at Clark and at
Subic,who were all thosepeople Iallowed a piece ofmy life
people,
faces, mere shadows
scendence,
..
." (C 90). From the place of tran
as a race of dark,
all those others can only appear
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
figures,what Guillaumin describes as an "undifferentiated
mass, floating somewhere outside the passage of time, like an eter
nal essence fromwhich no single individual stands out in space or
obscure
convey the hollowing out of persons as
they also suggest the full beings from
which they are cast but which they necessarily obscure, the living
persons they depend on but draw away from. Shadows suggest, in
other words, all that Tom doesn't know: "what a waste, what a
time" (RS, 53). Shadows
empty forms. However,
waste, I knew so many things, but I didn't know [sayang, sayang,
ang dami kong alam, pero hindi ko alaml" (C, 89).
This obscurity isdepicted for the reader in Perez's sparse nar
rative in the emptiness of itsdescriptions. It isprecisely the glaring
blank spaces that stand out from underneath the bare bones of this
narrative, that highlight the complexities of life that are not known.
uses to reassure Tom
Simple lang, "It's simple," is the refrain Butch
are
into
is.
The refrain isprecisely the
how easy the job they
getting
instrument formaking this lifeeasy. By reducing his encounters to
theirmost minimal outlines, Tom relieves himself of the burden of
knowing, of feeling, and of responding to the lives he comes into
contact with, but also of feeling and registering his own reduction
corporeality, to a piece of matter like all the disposable
matter that saturate Cubao. As a strategy for coping with
of
pieces
own
his
abjection, Tom experiences his life in this kind of muting,
to mere
obscuring, and exterior way. He views everything in its exterior
formand is spare in his
including himself and his own body
and
the
barest physical
characterizations, noting only
descriptions
details as
The whole
isolated objects marking the spaces of his happenings.
narrative consists of the stark verbal and sexual
in, in a series of discontinuous
exchanges he engages
which he appears to be an accidental participant.
events
in
One of Perez's noteworthyliterary
formalachievementslies
inthisascetic economyof expressionthathe bringstoTagalog fic
tional narrative. Perez's narrative style might be said to perform a
minimalistsurfacing
of perceptibleobject-forms
fromtheundiffer
entiatedsea-likemorass of urbanexistence intowhich everything
would
otherwise disappear.
"I am a visual writer," Perez claims.34
161
162
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
isa line.A sentence isa figure.A paragraph isa composed
As
material expressions of urban being, verbal gestures or
picture."
kinds of speech [wikal are, for Perez, themselves objects to be sur
"Aword
faced. As Benilda Santos comments, "For Perez, words have very
different qualities. These are not used to indicate a meaning or the
meanings of a relationship, for example, but rather to become pre
cisely that.That very condition of a particular relationship: the des
tiny or direction of that relationship."35
This use ofwords as the very matter of human relations places
the reader in a situation of not knowing, and of wanting to know
similar to that of Tom. The very ghostly atmosphere that results from
Perez's
sparing style augurs other immanent, yet invisible pres
surrounding every surfaced word-thing, heightening the
detail
enigmatic quality and affective importof each commonplace
ences
a
spared from nothingness. In play on the mysterious character of
which
reflect
the
social relations of their production
commodities,
as the intrinsic quality of these things, the reader is haunted by the
unknown subjectivities
might contain.
that foregrounded word-things
suggest and
Everything Tom spares from his dry listingof piecemeal expe
one
riences confronts him finallywith the truth they portend: "-
fan, tiles, a cabinet, a mirror, a lightbulb, plastic flowers, a plaster
of Paris Sto. Niho, a blue taxi, papers piled up, a small refrigerator,
a magazine, coconuts, a square hole,
Butterfly,crushed, the 'Ever
are the undigested kernels of Tom's
lasting Thrill'" (C, 90). These
in the
leftovers
of
encounters,
experience that cannot be absorbed
in
circulation of exchangeable
and
food
which
bodies, sex, money,
he and his clients are caught. Their peripheral presence alludes to
the lives they were connected with, lives beyond the existence of
"mere shadows," beyond
identity (beyond the disease of bakla
thatTom creates as theobject of his fear,inorder that it
identity
may be exorcised),beyond commodification.
These
remainders of Tom's experiences
are somehow
integral
vital
parts of those very lives they indicate; theyare life-parts,
aspects of thesensuous and experientialactivityof the individuals
who
use them. As such, they also hint at other social
relations he
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
might have had with his clients, relations that he can as yet only
barely grasp. In contrast to that substantification of time which
these racializing economic transactions imply, each of these frag
ment pieces [piraso] suggests a different time and bears the possi
bilityof opening up intoanotherqualityof time, likethe square
hole
in the van where Tom
is raped: "through itentered the wind,
it
entered
the
sun, through itentered the noise from the
through
...
outside
[do'n pumapasok
iyong hanging, do'n pumapasok
.. .]" (C, 55).
do'n
iyong araw,
iyong ingay sa labas
pumapasok
"Pieces of time past," the pieces of his lifehe allowed others to par
take of return as signs of a new calling.
Historical
Transformation
and Secularist Conversion
is subtitled "FirstCry of the Gay Liberation Movement
in the Philippines [Unang Sigaw ng Gay Liberation Movement]."
Perez clarifies that this is "a cry only inone's dreams [sigaw sa pan
Perez's book
garap lamang]" for such a movement cannot happen within the
near future. Nevertheless,
in a letter to X included in this collec
Perez
if it
the
tion,
contemplates
objectives of such a movement
were to happen: the acceptance of one's male body; the
loving of
rather than the desiring of a
[karaniwang lalaki]; the battle for "equal em
ployment opportunities"; and the replacement of "fleeting affairs
and earthly enjoyment" with deep friendship and love. Perez's
one's
fellow bakia
conventional
man
[kapuwa-baka]
an ethics of respect founded on the recognition in
of true selves of value beneath their worldly trappings,
vision advocates
people
including the trappings of gender.36 The deep friendship and love
two of the same, but
is a relation not between
he envisions
between
equals.37 As the vanishing mediator
of universal
subjec
themeasure of humanvalue as that
which cannotbe bought,
tivity,
or
as
that
intrinsic
worthof being,
others,
possessed, governedby
thatwhitenesswhich calls Tom intosubjectiveredemptionis thus
theconditionof possibilityand limit
of Perez'sprojectof humanist
liberation from homosexual
abjection. White
value
is a condition
of possibilityof thismovementto theextentthatitis themeans by
163
164
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
into
Filipino subject of gay liberation can come
not
the
form
in
which
this
only provide
being.
subjective
man
can
it
is
be
the
free,
very substance in him to be
Filipino gay
serves as the limitof thismovement to the extent
freed.Whiteness
which
Perez's
Itdoes
that itspromise of liberation from racialized and sexualized exploi
tation draws constitutive sustenance from the depletion of other
are here figured inbakia, who cling to
(trans)gendered beings who
false hopes, false ways of living and loving, false dreams, and who
persist in their own unfreedom.
Iwould argue that Perez demonstrates
the racist and hetero
normative law of value supporting the demeaning sexual relations
of possessive exchange through which Tom and others are led to
map their desires.38 In returningTom to an open-ended embedded
ness in the shadow-pieces
of Cubao,
and through these pieces
behooving
him to find new ways
of being with
others, Perez
critiques the constitutionof a redeemed subjectwho
implicitly
would
transcend and renounce those liveswith whom
he has come
in contact. However, inconstructing a pure, free, intrinsically valu
able human subject as the subject of that liberation, Perez also
to the white normativity of an emerging global sexual
accedes
identitypolitics. Perez's very use of the term "gay" as the umbrella
concept for this movement of liberation indicates this emergent
itpossible.
If,
politics, as well as the historical shift that has made
as Martin Manansalan
the
"cultural
and
argues,
politico-economic
milieu
this concept to become a hegemonic category
individuals as well as groups of individuals .. are
that allowed
for describing
conspicuously absent in the Philippines," (DH, 195) itsambiguous
presence here evidences a new socio-historical situation at hand.39
1980 attests to a process of historical transformation
and social conversion that is underway. In this specific context, the
Cubao
conversion manifests
itself in the minoritization
of bakia under the
The analogy thatIdrawbetween the
rubricof homosexual identity.
in contemporary urban formu
specific racialization of the Chinese
lations of national community, which Hau analyses, and the homo
phobic personification of urban alienation inCubao 1980, ismeant
to highlighta common historicalprovenance forboth formsof
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
and the respective claims to equal civil rights and
representation towhich such minoritization, in some quar
minoritization,
political
ters, gives rise. Hau suggests that the conflation of race and class
exemplified in the case of the kidnapped Chinese has as itshistor
logic that used to be
state vis-a-vis the
neocolonial
the fact that "the extractive
ical condition
identified with
the colonial
and
and diffused throughout soci
generalized
It
"extractive
the
be
that
ety."40 may
logic" to which Hau
argued
refers saw itshighest instance in the crony capitalism of theMarcos
state, the deposing ofwhich, as well as the subsequent rise and vig
Chinese
has become
orous propagation of neo-liberalism and democracy that followed,
ushered inprecisely the generalization and diffusion of a logic that
had concentrated in and created the authoritarian state.
of the "newly
'manufactured' person" that is the bak/a/homosexual to the author
itarian regime, locating in the 1970s the nascent hegemonic prac
tice of homo/sexualizing bakia as an identity.41Although he does
J. Neil Garcia
not provide
an account
Garcia
phenomenon,
tions between Martial
he observes
also
links the minoritization
of historical determination
interestingly alludes
for this new
to constitutive connec
Law and "the efflorescence of gay culture"
in the metropolis during this period. He points to
as one "reason for
homophobia within the revolutionary struggle
the 'allowance' ostensibly granted by the Marcosian
dispensation
to local gay discourse." "So," he muses, "the agonistic space which
was granted Filipino gays for a good part of theMartial Law period
the logical trade-off for the generalized
sup
at the time" (P 20-21).
of
socialist
discourse
pression
Ifwe were to carefully track the mediations comprising this
we would see as one of itscentral conditions of
"logical trade-off,"
may
have become
possibility a forcible turn away from the problem of.national
iden
titythathad formore thana couple of decades preoccupied pro
gressive,
liberal, as well
as conservative
social
forces, and which
had shaped dominantconflicts inpolitical and economic policy
executed and inscribedby thedecla
and practice.42
Presidentially
ration ofMartial
Law, this turn can also be characterized
as the sub
lationof theproblemof national identity
byHumanism, the state
165
166
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
ideology of the New Society.43 In effect,Martial
Law can be said to
have overcome the abiding crisis of Philippine lifethroughthe
establishment of a crisis government, a state form that arrogated to
itself the powers unleashed by the intensification of this crisis in
order to unify the nation under its command. The authoritarian
unity of the nation accomplished
by repressive means thus found
in the Marcos state the symbolic realization of Philippine identity,
an identitywhose
point of constitution was
no less than Universal
Humanity.
We are led then to recognize generalized humanism as both
and instrument of the repression of progressive,
consequence
nationalist movements
seeking the radical resolution of modern
the category of
alienation,
repression, and exploitation, which
national
identity attempted to articulate but could only inade
For the logic of humanism's sublation of national
address.
quately
ism as crisis is undoubtedly a violent symbolic and material accom
is this better encapsulated
than in Imelda
plishment. Nowhere
Marcos' wide-reaching
the heterogeneous,
efforts to consolidate
autarchic areas within and surrounding the nation's capital as one,
single environment formetropolitan humanity. Imelda extolled that
"a metropolis
is not space alone; it is a dimension of the mind, a
of
the
surge
spirit" (1,80) and that "the call of themetropolis is truly
a summons to humanity" (1, 86). The Ministry of Human Settle
to eliminate from the
ments, headed by Imelda, thus proceeded
own
Man"
of
the
of
its
inassimilable
debris
"City
projects to attain
to clean up the physical debris,
this humanity. "Having proceeded
we must now pay more attention to the non-physical. Having intro
duced measures
against physical pollution, we must proceed
against spiritual pollution. We go from the outer to the inner envi
ronment, from the external to the inner being, from the out-reach to
the in-reach of theMetropolitan
Filipino" (1, 162). This process of
humanization,which courted international
capital, yielding the
regime millions of stolen dollars, illuminates important connections
between Perez's text and the "Marcosian dispensation.""
Iam not sayingthatPerez's humanismsimplymimed thatof
theMarcoses.
Iam claiming that Perez's articulation of a prevailing
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
social dilemma,
as well
AS VALUE
as the desired path of one's escape
from it,
finds its condition of possibilityand limit in the generalized
-
humanism purveyed by the newly built environment of theMarcos'
New Society. In effect, the New Society is the space determining
the shape of public expressions of freedom and happiness and
- the
unprece
regime allowed. Cubao
hope, which the Marcos
dented focus not only of thiswork, but of a series ofworks by Perez
itselfthe product of this new dispensation. After all, Cubao
ingreat part
owed itssudden commercial success and prominence
In trying faithfully to cap
to crony connections to theMarcoses.45
was
ture the molecular
operations and affective structures of this city
and the social beings that animate it,Perez inscribes the
very sinews of the powerful summons that it issues and that he
a creation.
ambivalently heeds. However, this inscription is also
machine
Unlike most
of peripheral
accounts
scholarly anthropological and sociological
socio-cultural life,Perez's literary rendering of urban
is also a practicum for the molding of subjective desire.
experience
The mundane
striving that Perez creatively inscribes serves as
the very fuel and fodder for the operations of that metropolitan
Inother words, this regime
apparatus of capture, the "City of Man."
of democratic subjection, within which the denizens of metropoli
tan Philippines found themselves equal under the law of state
humanism, also greatly depends on the experiential labor of those
subjects working on themselves, working to be worthy, that is,
working for their value. This labor,whose other side is a liberative,
creative becoming, iswhat makes the very spaces contracted as the
material site of modernization.
Indeed, it iswhat enables and sup
ports these transformations that seems everywhere
place around it.
As the material
to be
taking
infrastructurefor the foundation of a moral or
served as the built environ
spiritual infrastructure,metro Manila
ment for a whole set of social, cultural, and subjective transforma
tionswhose reachwe have yet to fullygrasp.One of theways we
is to cast them intermsof
might thinkabout thesetransformations
an
emergent
secularism
that arguably
had
never
permeated
to thedegree that itdid thenand has
Philippinesocial formations
167
168
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
now. This emergent secularism is by no means a turn away from
religion, which clearly suffused the self-representations of the New
it
Society and its leadership. Rather, like itsEuro-American models,
is "a shifting, unsettled, and yet reasonably efficacious organization
of public space that opened up new possibilities of freedom and
action."48 Such freedom and action depends on the privatization of
moral and religious differences, even as a generic Christianity over
sees this very organization, as well as the public space inwhich its
own mores find expression. Certain evangelical, Protestant features
this generic Christianity, as well as the new public
it
It is no coincidence
that
that at the
sought to organize.
sphere
height of theMarcos
regime, numerous mass evangelical Christian
characterize
took place, often at the very centers built under the
regime's auspices, such as the Don Stewart crusade at the Araneta
center depicted
in the novel. The space accorded
such religious
crusades
events confirmed and expanded the new secularism of the state. At
one such crusade in 1977, Imelda gave a speech that provides a
In this
picture of the Protestant features of this new secularism.
speech, Imelda describes Filipinos as "engaged inour own miracle
of resurrection," a process of bodily and spiritual redemption in
from
Old World bigotryand
spiredby theexampleof the liberation
degradation that founded American freedom and spiritual strength.47
Like Billy Graham, to whom
Imelda pays tribute formaking "man
more God-like, and God more human," the U.S. becomes
the
means
incarnation of God attain
and ideal symbol of the mundane
able by the Philippine nation. "God is not a stranger but a friend,
here in the Philippines. We fully realize that as we strive to make
Metro Manila
God.
itsbasic foundation is the City of
the City of Man,
For it is love that affiliates man to God" (1, 70). Here we wit
ness the familiarization and personalization of relations with God,
the closing of the gap, one might say, between God and Man,
which distinguishes
Protestant
fromCatholic piety.
spirituality
With the removalof themediating roleof priests,saints,and
theHoly Church, thepointof command shiftsfromGod and His
the national individual representatives to the moral subject
who hereon must serve as the guardian of his own inner spiritual
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
value. This value, which links the moral subject directly to and in a
homologous relation with God, can be found within an inner space
marked by a new privacy, a space configured as both a refuge and
a site of moral redemption. It is now the individual moral subject
is responsible for his own redemption, which
is attainable
within this life. Protestant secularism opens this possibility of sal
who
vation on earth as the premise of human striving. This possibility
must partly be seen as the achievement of the ecumenical Christian
resistance to the dictatorship and itsState spiritualism.48
I have already hinted at some of the Protestant features of
spiritual infrastructure.God is by the side of self
humans forwhom he has unbound
love. Tom's re
Tom's newfound
determining
demption depends no longer on the priestly absolution of his sins,
but on the divine forgiveness he experiences through his own act
1980 is
of deeply feltpersonal remorse.What we witness inCubao
precisely the conversion of a debased, commodified life into a new
the daily self-devaluation
ethical subject. Invented to countenance
supporting the regime's metropolitanist aspirations, this new ethi
cal subject nevertheless serves as the means for the privatization of
a generalized
repression. Carried out by urban demolitions, elimi
nation of dissidents, and public censorship, such repression was
the condition of possibility of the nation-state's uneasy identifica
tion with an unmarked capitalist humanity.
Faith In Kiyeme
[Frivolous Detail]
It is in lightof these metropolitan transformations and theirmater
ial and spiritual infrastructure thatwe can account for the specific
foreclosures of Perez's political articulation of subjective liberation.
The morally ascetic, Protestant self that Perez fashions as the means
of thissubjective liberationdemands theeschewingof frivolities,
the signsofmaterialartificeand commercializedtransactions
that
characterized
the economy
of Tom's debasement.
Hence
while
Tom sees asworthyof rescuethosepieces [piraso]thatare residues
of others, having faith in their immanent or
he cannot see any relation between
potential meaningfulness,
of his experiences
169
170
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
them and those other particularities that he describes as kiyeme
those excesses of personality, frivolous ges
[silly affectations]
tures, surplus posturings, and expressive artifices which he sees as
characteristic of the duplicitous and worthless effeminacy of bak
las. As Butch describes them, "Mga pa-etsing-etsing
lang. Mga
babaeng walang kuwarta, walang dyoga, walang kepyas, walang
kinabukasan"
(C, 8).*49Kiyeme, as well as et-singan and ek-ekan
(varieties of queen-like behavior) all bodily mark those who bear
them as beings lacking the virtues of white humanness. To the
extent that such virtues continue to inform Perez's project of gay
liberation, these beings and theirmodes of personhood can only be
to fall away. We might say these fallen forms
are the hidden price the strange fruit
tendered by the libera
tive claim towhite normative human value.
what must be made
Ifwe
understand
the accoutrements
rather than as mere
of kiyeme as subjective
secondary attributes of
life-creating practices
given beings, we are confronted with the objective reality couched
behind this metaphor of price. In a continuum with swardspeak,
the phonetically and semantically playful, paronymic and het
eronymic modes of speech wielded by the affirmative sward whom
they help to fashion, the mercurial modes of acting denoted by
kiyeme, etsingan, ek-ekan, kunday, kendeng, must be considered
as creative, life-enabling, even death-taming, practices that make
for subjectively and socially viable forms of being-in-the-world.50
They are, in a word, indispensable forms of subjective and social
life-making struggle on the part of a particular refuse of urban hu
manity seeking hospitable places of habitation, as well as resisting
the dominant strictures against their own creative presencing.
These practices of superfice, as social arts of self, are integral parts
of the kinds of living that people have made for themselves under
the name of bak/a.
Like lalaki, forwhom the kolboy stands, bakla is a dominant
fiction thatmeans "more than a set of representational and narra
consensus. It isalso a libidi
tologicalpossibilitiesforarticulating
nal apparatus or 'machinery for ideological
ment which is as vital as labor or exchange
investment', an invest
to the maintenance
of
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
formation."1 The practices of livingwhich create, sus
as
tain, well as contain, this dominant fiction are productive of the
value that is accumulated elsewhere and that returns as the very
the social
measure
of their failed humanness, their imputed worthlessness
[walang kuwenta]. Hence, the dominant fiction of bakla is also the
means of new forms of exploitation. As tools of the trade of the
makers of spectacles, beauty, and pleasure, which are constantly
appropriated by the dominant culture and for this reason seem
never to inhere inor abide with them, libidinal practices of kiyeme,
of ek-ekan, of feminine artifice, vitally make the world they seem
could say that these practices make for
merely to adorn. We
Manila's appearance as a city incosmopolitan drag. Describing the
in the
re-opening of one of the landmark gay discotheques
a
revived sex-tourist district of Malate,
reporter grasps the queer
truthof the City of Man's metropolitanism:
"kiyeme is reality."52
1980
Tom himself makes
the equation between price and kiyeme
when he contemplates the compensations afforded by his hunting:
"Give twenty, thirty,forty,a hundred. Different kiyeme, different
[Pa-beinte, treinta, kuwarenta, sapuwe. Pa-iba-ibang
(41-42). The ambiguity of whose
iba-ibang happening]"
this is blurs the line of distinction between kolboy and
happenings
kiyeme,
kiyeme
bakia thatTom himself is at such pains to draw. After all, the small
time change thatTom associates with the garapal [shameless] bak
las and expresses as kiyeme applies to him as well. His earnings
consist of petty cash, which serves to supplement the formalwages
of realworkers like his brother and thuswhich can only have come
from non-work and can only offer triflingpleasures in return.This
daily experience of his own small-time existence, of happenings
which lead nowhere and amount to nothing, of an excessive
liq
into a solid, worthwhile
life iswhat
uidity that cannot accumulate
impels him towards the embrace of transcendent value. As the
medium of conversion of his compensation
into consumption, this
experience
that appears
as
are hunting, seeking amusements
or
supports the formal urban economy
Cubao by day.Additionally,the cat in heat, towhich he likens
Cubao at night,isalso Tom himselfaswell as all theotherkolboys
hunting, just as the bakias
171
172
NEFERTI
TADIAR
X.M.
diversions
happening.
While
ina way
[aliw]
Perez's
that can only be described
humanist
of his conversion
as kiyeme, or
claim might be seen then as an
to the secularist universal ideal of
expression
individual humanity (the "cult of man in the abstract"), this con
version can also be shown to bear its limitson the very surface of
his attained subjective constitution. As Judith Butler argues:
Conventional
norms of universality
reiterations, produce unconven
and exclusionary
can, through perverse
tional formulations of universality that expose the limit
ed and exclusionary features of the former one at the
a new set of demand
time that they mobilize
.. . there is no
way to predict what will happen in such
instances when the universal iswielded
precisely by
same
those who
signify itscontamination.
. . .5
inVicente Rafael's discussion of
This unpredicatability isevidenced
the uneven and contradictory character of the Christian conversion
during early Spanish colonial rule. There, submission to
the universal doctrinal word of Christianity was accompanied
by a
of Tagalogs
hollowing out of the very call to submission. The token character of
the performed rites of conversion exposes the very limitsof itssup
Similarly, the particular universalizing sub
posed accomplishment.
jectification articulated by Perez broaches the limitsof humanness,
which his own identifying claim invokes.
We can view those limits in the formal and thematic function
[piraso] that surface at the novel's end. Unlike the
symptom, which, taking its form from value, can only mark the
absence of the full traumatic context that gives rise to itas a lack of
of those pieces
nor latentlymean
these pieces are neither meaningless
are
rather, part-objects still awaiting signification.
ingful.54They
(indeed, of
They are traces of non-abstract relations of meaning
meaning,
new
social
racialized
relations) yet to be made.
that Tom
value-production
Even after the trauma of
experiences
has become
homophobicallyembodied inHermie (as symptom),these part
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
objects remain, as ifto haunt him with what, in spite of everything
he knew, he didn't know "who?" "Who was Hermie? Who was
?" These remainders confront Tom with the question of
Sonny...
the possible relations he may have foreclosed, and the potential
self he might have had through them. In thisway, the remainders
act as details not in the sense of a minor component of a pre
totality (being neither merely referential nor
given meaningful
merely symbolic, neither realist, allegorical, nor modernist), but
rather in the sense of tasks to be carried out as part of the process
of arriving at the who. This who is as much one's own self as it is
others', and consists of the very process of coming to know oneself
in and through others, a praxis inseparable from the urban refuse's
daily work of prevailing.
The tangible details Perez spares from the worthless and
undifferentiated shadow life towhich the refuse of metropolitanist
thus become practical tasks for the cre
humanity are condemned
ation of a new self, a new relational being. In "Oberpas" [Overpass]
and "Paskil" [Poster], stories in the same volume, Perez demon
strates the life-importance for the petty as well as lumpen urban
dweller of this practice of sparing detail as a practical task for spar
ing the self and for releasing a different subjective potential. "One
creates new modalities of subjectivity in the same way that an artist
creates new forms from the palette.""5 For Perez, "emotions consti
tute the creative writer's palette of colors." As thematerial of expres
sion of such emotions, surfaced fragments of the rapidly deteriorat
ing, changing environment become elements in the recomposition
of new selves.
social
Both against and in keeping with prevailing conditions of
pulverization, which the authoritarian regime brought to
effect as the by-product of its own consolidation
of power, and
which the post-authoritarian
regimeshave since made into the
basis of new forms of exploitation,
Perez articulates a practice of
care predicatedon a peculiar,perhaps queer, faithindisposable
materialdetails. In thisway, thefalloutof global humanismas the
achievement
itualmeans
is recast as the spir
of Philippine metropolitanization
of a new thriving in theworld. That new form of thriv
173
174
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
ing does not consist of a self that is an atomized piece of consum
able and disposable matter like Tom, but, rather, of a self as a
means of coordinating scattered life-remainders into a viable lifeof
one's own. As
I've suggested, the aesthetic form of Perez's work
instantiates for the reader the call to another mode of being which
beckons Tom. Perez's writing isprecisely an exercise in the making
of a singular life.As he proclaims, "the objective of creative writ
a matter
ing is individuation" (F 68). Individuation is not however
of differentiating oneself from other members of the social collec
one has become
integrated. Itconsists of open
ingoneself to and connecting with other singular beings ina world
of details. The self thus acts as a communicative port throughwhich
tive within which
signifying pieces of other selves might be received, reconfigured,
and managed. Unlike the ideologically free self that serves as the
in the urban
destination of a political, activist consciousness
protest writings of the period, Perez's self serves as the agent-medi
um of passage for the
subjectivities
submerged and dematerialized
dwelling in the urban unconscious.
In this light,Perez's turn in the mid-1990s
not
really depart
accounts he seemed
to spirit quests does
as a writer, which by all
to have abandoned.56 On the contrary, the pro
from his vocation
ject of searching transpersonal encounters with spirits of the
in "bondage to the earth-zone" as well as non-human
deceased
entities dwelling in the urban fabric appears to be the occult devel
opment of this self as agent-medium for the release of the living
ghosts of violation and unfulfillment, whose hollowed presences
are intimated by dislocated
in the urban environ
details-signs
ment.57 In these widely publicized spirit quests, Perez conjures new
alchemies of faith out of a mixed assortment of New Age, Jungian,
cosmopolitan, native, and local mystical sources. These alchemies
of faithlabeled by Perez's publishers as "Filipino transpersonal
serve as experiential supports for the formation of a
psychology"
civil spiritsociety,a spiritually-connected
would make
socialitythat
shared sense of the bits and pieces of catastrophe
strewn around
it.
This sociality is exemplifiedby the telepathicsocial networkshe
assembles
into his teams of SpiritQuestors.
Strangely enough,
these
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
telepathic social networks do not only resemble the telecommuni
cational social networks of Generation Txt, the new generational
urban class of mobile tele-texting technology users who have freed
their loci of identifications from local, territorially-bound commu
nities. The SpiritQuestors are Generation Txt.
The self as social coordinating medium
that arises out of such
of practicalattempts
alchemiesof faithcan be viewed as the result
to amelioratethe individualizedsubjectiveand bodily tollexacted
intense exploitation
of
devaluation
and continuous
are
in
evident
the
labor.
Such
attempts
already
practices
Philippine
of this labor,which not only depends on a social network for itssub
by
the
sistence, but also serves as the subsistence support for a continual
as a facilitative nexus of
ly devalued formal labor force. The self
renewed relations with others appears as the subjective apparatus of
an emergent service class trying to stay buoyant in conditions of
sinking personal value. Characterized by openness, this subjective
social
apparatus can be viewed as the consequence of a widespread
a
of
centralized
the
authoritarian
of
the
state,
power
critique
critique
in part made up of just such struggles to escape the racialized and
sexualized
life-devaluation on which
such power depended.
The crisis effected by this critique led to the deposing of the
Marcos
regime in 1986. We can even say that ithelped bring about
the transformation of the authoritarian state into a coalitional type
no
government, which postures
longer as a domi
nant power or a mere instrumentof power but instead as a secular
mediator of plural political and economic desires and interests.58 It
of democratic
is more
whose
than coincidence
administration
Protestant elected
social
reform.What
that the post-authoritarian president
exemplifies this secular state was the first
to this office. State reform is the mirror-image of
E. San Juan, Jr.calls with respect to the popu
lardemocraticmovement as mutationsof sensibilitysince 1986
can
in these subjective transformations, which,
in
be viewed
Perez's work, attain and express the spirit of a new metropolitan
form. This new metropolitan form,whose "spirit" is neither simply
the "spiritof capitalism"nor the"spiritof resistance"but ratherthe
uneasy cooperation
of both, has been given the name civil society.
175
176
NEFERTI
X.M.
TADIAR
1 TonyPerez,Cubao 1980At Iba FangMga Katha:Unang SigawNg Gay Liberation
sa
Cacho
(Metro Manila:
Pilipinas
Hereafter cited as C. AH translations are my own.
Movement
2
Publishing
House,
Inc., 1992).
RichardDyer,White (Londonand New York:Routledge,1997), 14.Hereafter
cited
as W.
3
inWhat is ina Rim?
See my "SexualEconomiesintheAsia Facific
Community/'
CO:
CriticalPerspectiveson the FacificRegion Idea, ed. ArifDirlik (Boulder,
Westview
4
5
Press, 1993).
"Ang
May-Katha"inTonyPerez,CubaoMidnightExpress:
Mga PusongNadiskarilSa
Riles
Manila:
Cacho
(Metro
House, Inc.,1994).
Ng fcg-ibig
Publishing
Mahabang
Perez has written disparagingly of nationalism, calling it"an adolescent obsession"
that is the arena of the journalist rather than that of the creative writer. For Perez's
see BienvenidoLumbera,"Philippine
role inPhilippineliterary
Theater
history,
1972-1979:A ChronicleofGrowthUnderConstraint"inhis Revaluation1997:
of
Cinema,and PopularCulture(Manila:University
Essayson PhilippineLiterature,
Santo Tomas Publishing House,
1997), hereafter cited as R; and Doreen
Fernandez,
Palabas: Essayson PhilippineTheater
History(QueznonCity:Ateneo de Manila
6
7
8
University Press, 1996).
For an astute analysis of the dynamics of this conversion process, see Vicente L.
in Tagalog
Translation and Christian Conversion
Rafael, Contracting Colonialism:
Society Under Early Spanish Rule (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993).
Hereafter cited as CC.
Racism, Sexism, Power, and Ideology (London and New York:
Routledge, 1995). Hereafter cited as RS.
Marx's extensive religious references in his analysis of capital ingeneral are not idle
a
systemic critique of the speculative idealism inhering in
analogies; they comprise
Colette Guillaumin,
thebourgeoisconceptionofvalue, themystifying
of everydaylife"
which
"religion
he credits Hegel as "the firstto present
sive and conscious manner." Capital,
102-3. Hereafter cited as CP.
itsgeneral forms of motion in a comprehen
vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1977),
9 Mark C. Taylor,
About Religion:Economiesof Faith inVirtualCulture (Chicago:
ofChicago Press,1999).
University
10 SlavojZizek,Mapping Ideology(LondonandNew York:Verso,1994)
11
12
F?ul Liem and EricMontague, eds. 'Toward A Marxist Theory of Racism: Two Essays
by Harry Chang," Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 17, no. 3 (1985): 34-45.
For a historical account of the "whitening" of the Irishworking class, see David R.
Working
Roediger,TheWages ofWhiteness:Race and the
Makingof theAmerican
(London and New York: Verso, 1991 ).
Cf. the differential, but intrinsically related, use of "race" for the severance of Native
American and Hawaiian
traditional relations and prior claims to their land inorder
Class
13
to justify
thesystematic
and facilitate
of thatlandand itsresources
appropriation
by
the U.S. government and U.S. corporations. Here discourses of the soluble blood of
Native Americans
and Hawaiians
(as distinguished from the insoluble blood of
and "selective assimilation" of
Blacks) prepare the ground for the "disappearance"
See
into the unmarked mainstream,
these communities
i.e., white, population.
Kehaulani Kauanui, Ph.D. dissertation.*
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
14
AS VALUE
of thecommodity-form
consiststherefore
"Themysterious
character
simplyinthe
fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men's own labour as
as the socio-natural
objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves,
Hence italso reflects
of thesethings.
thesocial relation
of theproducers
properties
to the sum total of labour as a social relation between objects, a relation which exists
apart from and outside the producers. Through this substitution, the products of labor
become commodities, sensuous thingswhich are at the same time suprasensible or
social
(C, 165)." While
Marx
or social"
reads the "suprasensible
character of the
as quantitative
thecapitalist
of the labor
labor(whichisproperly
commodity
reading
contained
in the commodity-form), he also suggests that themysterious character of
of thequalitative
thecommodityformistheexpression
alienationof labor,and of
the qualitative experience
of labor as an abstract amount
in relation to a total sum.
15 This isnottosaythatsuchsubjectivity
isnotfilled
withall kindsofcontent?recur
ring narrative themes, feelings, attitudes
?
which
critical scholars have
insisted
ofwhiteness. Iammerelypointing
out theformal
upon codingas the"ethnicity"
16
lynchpin of such content.
See Temario C. Rivera, Landlords
and Capitalists:
Class,
Family, and
State
in
and Development
Philippine
Manufacturing(QuezonCity:Centerfor Integrative
Studies and University of the Philippines Press, 1994), 15-16. The Marcos
state's con
solidation
offinancecapitalfrom
of a monopoly
foreignloansand itsestablishment
can be said
its
the
and
economic
rivals
of
and
cooptation
through quashing
political
to follow in the footsteps
ofWestern imperialism.
One of themajor differences
isthattheformer
betweenthislocal imperialism
andWestern imperialism
did not
itdid sig
profits from thisrent-seeking behavior. However,
out
the
of
the
extraction
destruction
and
direct
modes
nificantly carry
non-capitalist
of capital through foreign capital investment schemes, proving once again, as
are entirely
Western
imperialists did, that the methods of "primitive accumulation"
consistent with, and necessary to, the expanded reproduction of capitalism. See Rosa
Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (London: Routledge and Kegan Raul, 1951 ).
capitalize
17
accumulated
The term is from Emmanuel
S. de Dios, "The Erosion of the Dictatorship"
inDic
Roots
of
Aurora
and
Revolution:
eds.
Javate-De
Power,
Dios,
People's
tatorship
.
Petronilo
Foundation,
Daroy, and Loran Kalaw-Tirol (Metro Manila: Conspectus
1988). See also, Leonora Angeles, "Why the Philippines Did Not Become a Newly
A Philippine
Kasarinlan:
World Studies,
Country,"
QuarterlyofThird
Industrializing
18
19
20
vol. 7, nos. 2 & 3 (4thQuarter 1991-1 stQuarter 1992): 90-120,107-108.
See Imelda Marcos'
address, "Earth: the City of Humanity," in The Ideas of Imelda
National Media
Production
ed. Ileana Maramag
Marcos,
(Metropolitan Manila:
Center, 1978). Hereafter cited as /.
Neferti Xina M. Tadiar, "Manila's New Metropolitan Form," differences: A Journal of
Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 5, no. 3 (1993): 154-178.
Male SexWork"
"Kolboy:Desire,Disgustand theCreationofValue inPhilippine
as
83-4.
K.
Much
Hereafter
cited
of
discussionof this
my
(Unpublished
manuscript),
toB. CarloTadiarVreading
of
novel'sexpositionofwhitenessas value is indebted
thenovel,and hisbrilliantillumination
of thisreadingthrough
work.
ethnographic
See also J.Neil C. Garcia's
reading of Perez's humanism
inPhilippine Gay Culture:
The Last30 Years,Binabae toBakla,SilahistoMSM (QuezonCity:University
of the
Philippines
Press, 1996); hereafter cited as P.
177
178
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
21
The translation
of bakla isa politically-fraught
issue.Inthecontextof thisnovel, I
have chosen to translate it initially into the derogatory "fag" or "faggot" to the extent
tenorinwhich theyare deployed
thatsuchwords conveythegenerally
derogatory
here, even though they do not necessarily connote
the "berdache"
or
gender-cross
of thesocialcon
ingqualitiesadheringto thenotionofbakla.On thecomplexities
see Martin
F.Manansalan
'Gay' Experience
inAmerica,"
struction of the bakla,
and the Filipino
22
23
24
IV, "Speaking of AIDS:
inDiscrepant Histories:
Language
Translocal
Essayson FilipinoCultures,ed. VicenteL. Rafael (Philadelphia:
TempleUniversity
of thebakla figure
citedasDH. Fora history
and Philippine
Press,1995); hereafter
gayculture,see J.NeilC. Garcia,Philippine
Gay Culture:TheLast30 Years,Binabae
toBakla,SilahistoMSM.
Male SexWork,"
"Kolboy:Desire,Disgustand theCreationofValue inPhilippine
153.Tadiarprovidesa striking
analysisof the"lure"as a crucialpart
psychoanalytic
of the economy
of desires underwriting the male
sex market.
FilomenoV. Aguilar,Jr.,
Clash of Spirits:TheHistoryof Power and SugarPlanter
Hegemony
1998).
on a Visayan
Island (Quezon
City: Ateneo
de Manila
University Press,
want
I
toquicklyclarify
As Iwill discussbelow,
thatthisisthedominantimperative.
it isprecisely the resistance against this imperative that accounts
for the ambivalence
inthetendentious
provokedby gay rights
politics.Such ambivalenceis registered
claims and counterclaims made
25
26
in behalf of "gays" and baklas.
"Preface to Homosexual
Homosexual
Desire," inGuy Hocquengem,
Weeks,
Jeffrey
is the fetish, the true universal reference-point for
Desire, 30. "And as the money
so the Phallus is the
is a phallic
capitalism,
reference-point for heterosexism. Ours
?
whether by absence or pres
(or 'phallocentric') society. The Phallus determines
ence ?
the girl's penis envy, the boy's castration anxiety; itdraws on libidinal ener
gy in the same way as money draws on labour" (38).
?
incash or in kind?
is 'required', and becomes
"Some form of material benefit
importantmarkers
[sic] for the 'real male'
to 'retain' his masculinity. This applies even
toa casual fling,
whichoftentakesplace aftera sessionof drinking
paid forby the
bakla. The beer, and the 'real man's' becoming lasing (drunk) can be described as a
way of distancing. It is not importantwhether the male was drunk or not; invoking
27
aswill othergifts
thebeer,paid forby thebakla, 'legitimizes'
thesexualencounter,
ispursued"(MichaelTan,quoted inTadiar,"Kolboy:
and benefitsifa relationship
Male SexWork," 119).
Desire,Disgustand theCreationofValue inPhilippine
can
an
as value
glean
early Protestant formulation of this notion of humanness
in itself inKant: "Now, I say, man, and ingeneral, every rational being exists as an
We
end inhimself
used by thisor that
and notmerelyas a means tobe arbitrarily
will
... All
a conditional worth
objects of inclination have only
.. .Therefore theworth
ofanyobjectstobe obtainedbyour actions isat all timesonlyconditional.Beings
existence does not depend on our will but on nature, ifthey are not rational
are therefore called
on the
beings, have only a relativeworth as means and
'things';
other hand, rational beings are designated 'persons' because
their nature indicates
in Pheng Cheah, "Posit(ion)ing Human
that they are ends in themselves." Quoted
in Transnational Asia Facific: Gender,
Rights in the Current Global Conjuncture,"
whose
Lim, Larry E. Smith, and
Culture, and the Public Sphere, eds. Shirley Geok-Lin
Wimal Dissanayake
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 18.
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
AS VALUE
that guarantees the condition under which persons can be
in themselves dignity: "That which is related. to general human inclinations
and needs has a market price ... But thatwhich constitutes the condition under
Kant calls the substance
ends
alone something can be an end in itselfdoes not have mere relative worth,
inCheah, 19.
i.e., a price, but an intrinsicworth, i.e., dignity." Quoted
which
28
AchilleMbembe, On thePostcolony(Berkeley:
of CaliforniaPress,
University
29
Manansalan
30
genealogy to pre-colonial practices.
Caroline S. Hau, "'Who Will Save Us From the "Law"?': The Criminal State and the
31
inVicente L. Rafael, ed. Figures of Crimi
Illegal Alien in Post-1986 Philippines,"
nality in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colonial Vietnam (Ithaca, NY: Southeast
Asia Program Publications, 1999).
Caroline S. Hau, "Chapter 4: Alien Nation," in her Necessary Fictions: Philippine
32
1946-1980
Literature and theNation,
(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University
Press, 2000). Hereafter cited as NE
There ismore to this thanmere analogy. Perez himself deploys this figure inhis 1970
2001),
229. Hereafter cited as OP
discusses bakla as "an enduring social category" with a social dynam
ics inadequately captured by terms such as homosexual,
queer, and gay which
some scholars and writers have translated it into. Garcia argues that bakla has a
longer history than "homosexual,"
which
he attempts to substantiate by tracing its
in
AnakngAraw [Child
of theSun],aboutthe intimate
lives
of residents
play,entitled
a Manila
boarding house. Bienvenido Lumbera notes that the unseen Chinese figure
in the play "seems to embody the forces of economics on which the fortunes of the
boarders depend"
(R, 240). It is he who controls "the economy of theworld of the
play," an economy of missed encounters, aborted relations, and failed desires for inti
macy and love, an economy characterized by deep uncertainty and unfreedom. As
the forces of economics, the figureof the Chinese iswhat prevents the self-realization
and self-determination of the individual characters. His personification allows the
translation of bare economic
33
34
35
subsistence intoemotional subsistence and deprivation.
the metaphorical
prostitution of the laborer invoked by Marx. See my
"Prostituted Filipinas: The Crisis of Philippine Culture," Millenium. Also, unlike his
metonymical prostitution via the prostitution of his lover, the body which belongs to
Unlike
him, as in the case ofMadiaga.
Interestingly, in the 1987 film of this novel directed
a
is himself led into prostitution, which becomes
by Lino Brocka, Madiaga
key
moment in his path towards revenge.
inQuezon
(Manila:
Tony Perez, A Filipino Werewolf
City: An Author's Notebook
Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2000), 78. Hereafter cited as F
"Para kay Perez may kakaibang katangian ang mga salita. Hindi ginagamit ang mga
ito bilang pantukoy ng isa o mga kahulugan sa isang relasyon, halimbawa, kundi
upang maging iyon na. lyon na mismong kondisyon ng isang partikular na relasy
on: ang
o
kapalaran
patutunguhan ng relasyong iyon." Benilda S. Santos, "Pasa
kalye" inTony Perez, Cubao Midnight
bang Riles Ng Pag-ibig (Metro Manila:
My translation.
36
Express: Mga Pusong Nadiskaril Sa Maha
Cacho Publishing House,
Inc., 1994), xxii.
sa
"Walang bakla
langitpagkat wala ring lalaki at wala ring babae
na
sa
at
tao
minamahal
ng
ng Diyos."
Diyos,
lamang
nagmamahal
mga kaluluwa
(C, 165).
179
180
X.M.
NEFERTI
37
TADIAR
In his lettertoY, Perez praises Y's relation to hisWestern
forbeing "a
lover,
Wayne,
relation of two persons who are equal" [relasyon ng dalawang
taong magkapantay].
Forwhat characterizes the bakla-relation [relasyong-bakla] in its"cleanest and finest
form" [pinamalinis at pinakamagara
niyang anyo] is true, good friendship, a rela
or
[lantay]. The use of the word "lantay" here
tionship that is "pure"
"unalloyed"
to
this
the
counterposes
relationship
relationship
prevalent heteronormative
betweenbakla-lalaki,thefiascoofwhich (inthecase of the lalaki"actually"being
For
bakla) ishorrifyingly
conveyedbymeans of thenotionof "tanso"(counterfeit).
a discussion
of this discourse of counterfeit and authentic currency in bakla-lalaki
the bakla-relation consists of equals, itdoes
relations, see C. Tadiar, "Kolboy." While
not, however, consist of sameness. As he writes, "walang dalawang
taong magkat
(K, 150). It is important to note
ulad, kayat wala ringdalawang baklang magkatulad"
that Perez makes
this point in the context of the issue of coming out, a decision that
"ang bawat tao ay may kanikaniyang bilis at bagal, at kani
he sees as personal:
dalang atdalas ngpag-inom"(K,150).
kaniyangsisdlanng tubig,at kani-kaniyang
As
will
I
argue
later, this demarcation
of a personal
realm, which
isboth a source of
lifeand a potentialsourceofpainVang tubigna kinabubuhay
ay nakapagdudulot
38
din ngsakit, kundi nakalulunod"
(K,1 50)], betokens an emerging secularism.
Perez suggests that the prevailing aspiration to heteronormative relations of love
and possessivenessthat
amongbaklas bearswith itall thetiesof privateproperty
mar bakla ways of loving, and prevent them from attaining relations of friendship
that are "pure" and "free."
ay relasyong lantay, at di kinakailanang
Ang tunay na pakikipagkaibigan
selosan,
ng
ng lansiban, ng pakikiapid o ng iba
tampuhan, ng
sangkapan
pang maaring magsilbing balakid sa mabuting
relasyong mag-asawa.
Ang tunay na pakikipagkaibigan
ay malaya,
di pinabibigatan
o kinatatal
ianngmga kondisyon,
ngpaghatingmga ari-arian,
ngpagdeklarang
sa
estado,ng pagbabago ng apelyidoat pag-atangngmga tungkulin
pag-aaruga,
pagpapalaki,
pagpapakain,
pagbibihis
at pagpapaaral
sa
mga anak.Ang kalayaanitoay siyanghiyasngganitongrelasyon.(158)
in
39 With thisproviso,
Manansalan uses thetermtodescribeFilipinogay immigrants
the U.S., ostensibly
40
D'Emilio,
"Capitalism
the place where such a hegemony
and Gay Identity."
holds sway. See also John
Hau, "TheCriminalStateand theChinese inPbst-1986Philippines,"inGeopolitics
of theVisible:Essayson PhilippineFilmCultures,ed. RolandoB.Tolentino(Quezon
different
Press,2000), 230-31. This isa slightly
City:Ateneode Manila University
version of Hau's
the IllegalAlien
essay, '"Who Will Save Us From the "Law"?': The Criminal State and
inPost-1986 Philippines," cited above. In this version, Hau reads the
as well as Chinatown, "the citywithin the city," as synech
"minority" figureof Ah Tek
doches of Manila, synechdoches that cast into relief "the deforming and dehuman
izing violence, the rapacity and alienation that characterizes the city itself (217).
41
also notes the enduring resistance against this hegemony, as when he men
tions the great "animosity" provoked by his own public pronouncement
of the
are bakla."
are
not
but
that
"all
bakla
all
homosexual
homosexual,
objective reality
Garcia
(/?53).
IN THE FACE OF WHITENESS
42
fundamental to social movements
since the revolu
tionagainstSpain inthe latenineteenth
century.
See ImeldaMarcos' speech, "Humanism:
The Ideology,"in The ideasof Imelda
Romualdez
44
181
seen in itsown ri^it,isdifferent
cer
Theproblemofnationalidentity,
fromthough
nationalfreedom,
tainlyclosely linkedto theproblemsof nationalsovereignty,
national justice, etc. thatwere
43
AS VALUE
Marcos.
fashioned herself as the figure of this courting, becoming the ambas
sador of Filipino humanity abroad whose main taskwas to attract the good favour
and capital trustof the international community. See for example her appeal, made
Imelda Marcos
at the1976 International
BankJoint
AnnualMeeting,held in
MonetaryFund-World
to bringabout,"through
which she invites
First
World nations
MetroManila, in
their
a newworldorderfitfor
man" (/,62).
wise use ofcapitaland technology,
45 All themalls and franchises
Tomand Butchhangout inand yetfeelexcluded
that
was built incon
were establishedduringthisperiod.AliMall, specifically,
from
junction with one of theM?rcoses'
events staged to attract international attention:
theworld heavyweight
boxingchampionshipfight("ThrillainManila") between
Muhammad
Ali and George
Frasier. The Araneta
family,which
owned
the com
thatexpanded into
mercialcenterofCubao,was a memberof the landedoligarchy
of theM?rcoses.The scionof thisfamily,
urbanrealestate,andwas a close friend
46
youngest daughter, Irene.
Greg, latermarried theM?rcoses"
E. Connolly, "Refashioning the Secular," inWear's
William
Left of Theory? New
Workon thePoliticsof Literary
andKendall
John
Butler,
Theoryeds. Judith
Guillory,
Thomas (NewYorkand London:Routledge,
2000).
47 "TheCityofMan isFoundedon theCityofGod," (/,69-70).Deliveredat theopen
ingof theMetroManila BillyGrahamCrusade in1977.
48
.
G. Tiongson, Ma. Luisa Doronila, Alice Guillermo, and Fe
Mangahas,
Ideology and Culture of the New Society," in Synthesis: Before and Beyond
February 1986, ed. and intro. Lilia Quindoza
Santiago (Quezon City: The Inter
Nicano
"The
49
Forumof theUniversity
of thePhilippines,1986).
disciplinary
Perez's poem, "Manipesto,"
included in the same volume, blatantly decries in the
refrain of protest movements
(IBAGSAK) these same forms of excessive behavior.
BAGSAKangkunday/IBAGSAK
angkendeng/IBAGSAK
angkiyeme... IBAGSAK
angetsingan/IBAGSAKang
abasan/IBAGSAKangek-ekan...
IBAGSAKangbaluk
totna pananalita/IBAGSAKang balikukongisipan/IBAGSAKang baligtarang
kateuharf
50
(101-3).
of swardspeakforcopingwith and addressingAIDS, see
For the importance
The practices of swardspeak and kiyeme are often associated with
no means exclusive to bakla in lower-class situations and
occupations
though by
such as parloristas, manicurista,
[beauticians, manicurists, market ven
palengkeras
dors]. The vital significance of these practices in sustaining one's lifeand living are
Manansalan.
51
52
53
of
articulatedintheshortstory,
"Lucy"byMiguel Castro inLadlad:An Anthology
Manila:
GayWriting,ed. J.Neil C. Garcia andDanton Remoto(Metro
Philippine
AnvilPublishing,Inc.,1994).
Kaja Si Iverman, Historical Trauma, 115.*
at Coco Banana," quoted inP, 78.
Mario Taguiwalo, "The Pursuit of Happiness
JudithButler, "Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism,"
in
Contemporary
Contingency
HegemonyUniversality:
Dialogues on theLeft,eds.
182
NEFERTI X.M. TADIAR
Judith
Butler,ErnestoLaclau,and SlavojZizek (London& New York:Verso,2000),
40-41.
54
55
56
For Fredric Jameson, image-fragments in
Western work are products of the practice
of the symptom, which operates "to confront us with the structurally incomplete,
which, however, dialectically affirms itsconstitutive relationship with an absence,
with something else that is not given and perhaps never can be." The Cultural Turn:
Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1988
(London: Verso, 1998),158-159.*
Felix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm (Bloomington and Indian
apolis,
Indiana University Press, 1995), 7.
Perezhimselfremarks
thatthevocationofa Spirit
Questorwas notof hischoosing.
In 1997, he writes, "I had other dreams.
Iwanted
to be the country's
leading play
inFilipino.Iwanted tobe a nationalartistfor
fictionist
wrightand post-postmodern
drama and
literature.My objectives
thenwere
to complete my theater
trilogies and
a projected36-volumeCubao series.
When I receiveda different
calling in 1996,
all of thatchanged."Beings:Encounters
of theSpiritQuestorswithNon-human
Entities
Perezdescribesthis
1999),65-6. Elsewhere,
(QuezonCity:AnvilPublishing,
time as "a timewhen
others thought that Ihad abandoned
being
a Christian
in favor
a time
when othersthought
thatI
ofbeingknownas an explorerofotherreligions;
a teacher of emotional
conventional
teaching in favor of being
literature and theater in
truth; a time when others thought that I had abandoned
In truth, Iabandoned
favor of being known as a writer of the occult....
nothing. I
simply affirmed thewerewolf within myself. I increased, Idid not decrease. And I
thereby became the complete person that Ibelieve everyone ought to be" (F,vii).
had abandoned
57
See Tony Perez, The Calling: A Transpersonal Adventure (Manila: Anvil Publishing,
Inc., 1996) and Beings: Encounters of the Spirit Questors with Non-human
Entities,
ed. Cecilie Legazpi (Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1999). This development can be
inpart by the "composite, heterogeneous baroque character "of the con
accounted
version to secular humanism towhich his own work testifies.As Mbembe writes,
a composite,
conversion
"always has
heterogeneous
baroque character. In this
respect, itparticipates in hybridization, in the erosion of ancient references and tra
ditional ways that always accompany
the rewriting of fragmented new memories
and the redistribution of customs" (OP, 229). Indeed, Perez's role in the collective
Questors isas urbanshaman.Perez regularly
projectof theSpirit
publishedthespir
itquest narrativesinThePhilippineStar,a fairly
which has
Catholic newspaper,
58
increased his "clients" all over the Philippines.
In this transformative divestiture can be located the beginnings of the "diversifica
tion" of capital that allows the very cognition of Value as U.S. whiteness. The crisis
of the bilateral relation between
U.S. and Marcos
leads to the relativization of U.S.
(that is,with respect toAsian Values), and hence to the complex reorganiza
tion of racial categories that Raul Gilroy points out as characteristic of today's "nano
Value
politics."