Filipino- a bundle of many identities
Is there such a thing as a Filipino identity? I remember 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume saying that there is no such thing as self but only a bundle of selves. Using Hume’s argument, there is no such thing as a Filipino identity- only a bundle of many Filipino identities.
By asserting that the Filipino is just a bundle of many identities it means that there is no sense of Filipinohood in us that should bind us as one people. The bundle theory of Hume sidesteps our sense of unity and interconnectedness within our country and in the larger sense among all Filipinos worldwide. There may be a point in arguing about the continuity of the physical attributes of Filipinos like having small flat nose, brown in complexion, and with small physical structure, and the like. There may be physical regeneration of our physical attributes like some of us today are mestizos and mestizas but they are not that substantial to miss our traditional looks and posturing. There may also be psychological continuity that we persist as Filipinos because we can remember our past. In other words, our Filipino psyche is long-term. However, if I were to put words into the mouth of Hume, these ongoing identities in terms of physical and psychological identities do not make up the Filipino identity. The continuity of physical and psychological identities is not a ground for making out a genuine Filipino identity.
In the world of Hume, we have many Filipino identities. These identities are our subjective experiences. We experience Filipinohood or simply a sense of being united as Filipinos when we are in a foreign land. For instance, we are proud as being Filipinos by speaking Filipino or eating our own food in a different country, meeting regularly with our kababayans, working long and hard because it is the mark of being a Filipino toiling abroad, etc. But there are also some of us who after staying for sometime in a foreign land would willfully forget our sense of Filipinohood – we talk the way foreigners do as if our native tongue is a social taboo, or we eat and live like our foreign counterparts. On a different vein, we likewise feel this closeness and solidarity as a nation within ourselves when we pool our resources to help victims of man-made and natural calamities. But we feel indifferent about the untold social calamities in our midst caused by power-hungry politicians. Simply put, the Filipino identity is erratic. We seem not to get the real picture of the Filipino identity. Hume explains that it is nonsensical to grasp the self because there is no such thing as self. Just like us Filipinos it is without any sense to talk about unity of the Filipino people when there is no clear cut and definitive Filipino identity.
This Filipino identity crisis undeniably has been a perennial problem. To date we are unable to comprehend what it takes to be a Filipino. From all indications, it appears that we are still grappling for our Filipino identity, a Filipino being whose self is unified. The Filipino today is no more than a collection of his many and varied subjective experiences. Hume’s bundle theory asserts that a unified self does not even own these experiences because the self has no peculiar identity among the many and confusing selves almost leading to a Shakespearean comedy of errors. Our physical continuity and remembered experiences as Filipinos do not guarantee our Filipino identity.
Thus in conclusion, we still have much to discern what is meant and what it is to be a Filipino. The bundle theory of Hume is compelling and very telling yet I am hopeful that the necessity to have a Filipino identity will dawn upon us soonest.
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# oscar apostol on 11 Mar 2009 at 10:02 p
ReplyDeleteWhat is a difinitive Filipino identity? This is such a weak, lame excuse and flawed article further endorsing to weaken the notion of Filipino identity. We can’t be Filipino because we speak English or another language? It is bull! And since you are witing in English and not Tagalog I take it you must be from another planet and not Filipino. I hate our own people when they frame their argument based on looks, heights, mestizas and mestizos which is a cover up for wanting a better status. Such an old crappy approach a lot of people have identified with along with their colonial mentality to wit. Why can’t we be honest for heaven;s sake and not sell our identity down the drain? YES, VIRGINIA there is such a FILIPINO identity. I am one cracker jack borne in the Philippines. You are welcome to look at my brown skin, short stature, thicK accent and pug nose and all. AND I AM PROUD.
What has this got to do with being Filipinos? We are Filipinos except we are evolving and racial mixing. There is no such thing as a pure STATIONARY race. Everyone hss been diluted one way or another through the ages. Take Iraq for example that has three major groups claiming they are Iraques. Are you telling me they cannot feel or call thelmselves iraques? How about the great melting pot America. With Hume’s gobbledigook’s argument no one can claim he is an Ameican bcause there are whites, black, brown and asians as well as the unpure ones such as India’s untouchables?. Figure that out for yourself please and tell me.
An identity is based on substantial commonality among a group of people with bonded traditions, experiences, religion, physical attributes, food, family structure, tribal or group, language and dialects, customs, songs and melodies, stories and writings, utensils, clothings, etc. living in or/group of islands representing a country. Filipinos have all of the above. So don’t ever tell me I do not exist. I am a living breathing Filipino.
# Manny Almario on 12 Mar 2009 at 3:21 p
ReplyDeleteDear Reginald:
David Hume, as you have written, may have said there is no such thing as self, but only a bundle of selves. And so there is a bundle of Filipinos, and you can call this the Filipino nation. What makes a nation is not only a common language (for the Filipinos indeed have many different languages) or the same culture. What makes a nation is common destiny — the fact that a distinct people collectively share the same history or the same destiny or fate.
When the Spaniards invaded the Philippine archipelago in the early 16th century, suddenly, the inhabitants of our islands, who were free, became slaves. They became subjects of a foreign king, made to work for the Spaniards without pay, forced to die in their wars and forced to give up their farmlands to their masters. That was the common fate of our forefathers then, whether as individuals or as communities. When the Americans conquered us, they bought us from Spain for $20 million just as the Americans had bought African slaves in the free market. We became “Americanized”, taught English, but we were also programmed to consume American products, and to depend on the United States for our manufactured needs, like Colgate and canned food and cars, while sending to them our raw materials in a colonial relationship that condemned us to poverty, an arrangement that continues up to the present.
When the United States supposedly gave us “independence” in 1946, it left behind unequal treaties that bind us to the colonial relationship, and a colonial governing elite that sees to it that this neocolonial relationship is maintained. The privileged members of this elite do not see themselves as Filipinos, they are separate selves, that consider themselves more Americans or Spaniards than the native Americans or Spaniard. Many of them have residences in the US and Spain or Europe. They are rich, having benefited from the colonial system, and therefore do not share the common fate of the bundles of Filipinos. It’s not so much that they have lost their identity, but they never had one, being born subjects.
Filipinos who bear the same fate of poverty, humiliation, unemployment, forced diaspora as housemaids, caregivers and nursemaids, are a bundle that is a nation. It is to their collective interest if they can remove the bonds that condemn them to poverty.