Author Topic: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult  (Read 1166 times)

hubag bohol

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Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« on: November 20, 2013, 10:32:52 AM »
By Ninotchka Rosca | Yahoo Southeast Asia Newsroom – Mon, Nov 18, 2013


It was difficult to see and hear those words repeated, in media reports, articles, military and even White House briefings: “The Filipino people are resilient.”  A characterization which should raise anyone’s hackles, with its image of a jelly blob, quivering when punched, then quieting back to what it was before the rain of blows: sans sharpness, inert and passive, non-evaluating of what happens to its self.
 
No, we are not resilient.
 
We break, when the world is just too much, and in the process of breaking, are transformed into something difficult to understand.  Or we take full measure of misfortune, wrestle with it and emerge transformed into something equally terrifying.

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hubag bohol

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2013, 10:48:49 AM »
It is what is…and what isn’t

This is in sync with our indigenous worldview, expressed by our riddles, the talinhaga, on which every Filipino child used to be raised:  an understanding of reality, including ourselves, as metamorphic (or, capable of transformation).
 
A leaf by night; a bamboo by day – is how we look at our buri mat.  It is both what it is and isn’t.
 
And because this is a worldview which has to be lived in situ, it is unfathomable to the outsider, despite scholarship and analyses, which come up with nothing but the label “resilient.”

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hubag bohol

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2013, 10:49:15 AM »
We don’t spring back, we transform

Across oceans and throughout the five continents of this Earth, we carry the tales of our old heroes and muses, our elementals, who confront, in each re-telling, tests of strength and spirit.
 
Some break, like Mariang Makiling who hides in a thousand-year hibernation;  others metamorphose, like Bernardo Carpio who becomes a pillar of stone stopping cliffs from caving in on his village.
 
We may not remember their old names – names being the first to be erased under colonialism – but we remember how they were and how we are supposed to be:  metamorphic.

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hubag bohol

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2013, 10:49:42 AM »
What have we become after Yolanda?

These two legends represent the twin possibilities for the Filipinos’ metamorphosis.  Both are inexplicable outside of the local paradigm.  Just as what we’re watching now in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda seems inexplicable.
 
Who can fathom what drives a woman to open body bags of putrefying corpses in search of a husband, a son, a daughter?  At the end of a gaze that has lingered over a hundred dead faces, what is she now?
 
Who can measure the rage of the peaceable man breaking through the walls of groceries, warehouses, shopping malls?  And having pierced both law and walls of Authority, what is he now?

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hubag bohol

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2013, 10:50:07 AM »
The absence of thousands

To say that Filipinos are resilient is an assurance for those who have imposed upon them – much and repeatedly.
 
It is to say to themselves that we shake off tragedy much like ducks shaking off water.

It is to ignore the monuments to what has been suffered: matchstick debris of houses, muck and mud of vanished cities, stench of the dead and – oh! – the absence, thousands of absence, of those who used to be in our midst.   Who could be so resilient as not to be transformed by that?

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islander

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2013, 11:17:18 AM »
but isn't transforming also a form of resilience? 

resilience is not only "the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape", which is what rosca seems to be up against; it is also "the ability to last, a strength of character, toughness, indomitability".  one is transformed because one is resilient.  he does not break, does not give in.

but for once, i read a rosca work, brief it may be, that i can admire though not necessarily agree with.  however she passes herself off and whatever literary awards she may have received, her state of war book was a big letdown.  its blurb was that it can be likened to gabriel garcia marquez's love in the time of cholera.  my ten cents' worth: that was grossly unfair to marquez.

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islander

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2013, 11:21:09 AM »

fil-am ninotchka rosca
the name is a nom de plume

she must be keeping in fashion with cruella de vil in this photo.  but where are the 101 dalmatians? ;D

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hubag bohol

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2013, 11:42:40 AM »
but isn't transforming also a form of resilience? 

resilience is not only "the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape", which is what rosca seems to be up against; it is also "the ability to last, a strength of character, toughness, indomitability".  one is transformed because one is resilient.  he does not break, does not give in.

Morag OA ra bitaw ning iyang punto. And, as you point out, with this fulmination ignoy hinuon ang labas... :P

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hubag bohol

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2013, 11:47:42 AM »
Ms. Isle, please refer to her Wiki entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninotchka_Rosca

You can imagine who wrote it... ;D

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islander

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2013, 01:51:35 PM »
hehe, i have this feeling you know her personally...

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chicogon

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #10 on: November 20, 2013, 06:14:36 PM »
War on words... the rest of the world are resilient, Filipinos are not! Toinks!

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #11 on: November 20, 2013, 06:16:07 PM »
Basin siyay creator sa sine "Mutant Ninja"

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2013, 06:18:32 PM »
Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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chicogon

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Re: Commentary: Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2013, 06:26:24 PM »
Maajo na lang nang "resilient" kay sa ni lola namo sa gagmay pa mi "mirisi" (me-resi-lient) ;D

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