In Between and Outside, Difference and Dialectics

[Some of the PhD programs I applied to wanted to know more about my person and how it has shaped the kind of work that I do. This is the statement of “personal history and philosophy” I wrote in addition to the “purpose of study.”]

I was born in cosmopolitan Manila, capital of the Philippines, between two so-called “ethnic communities.” I lived most of my life in that milieu referred to in official state records as “Filipino-Chinese,” lacking both the “nativeness” of the Filipino and the “elite” status of the Chinese. In grade school I remember being chosen as a speaker in an event celebrating Philippine independence and the revolutionary struggle against Spain. My history teacher had picked me to be the Filipino “representative” (to mirror the Filipino rebel leaders) because of my diligence and my brown skin. I will never forget, however, that I was not really what she was looking for. My small Chinese eyes, she remarked, betrayed me.

This uncanny position in between characterized many of my interactions in early life that I can only identify now. In college, for example, “native” “Filipinos” had the stereotype of the “Chinese” as good with numbers, obsessed with business, and dismissive (if not disdainful) of Filipino culture. My “native” classmates thought I was one of them. I could not speak Chinese, however, and I did better on minor classes in the humanities while struggling in business courses required by my major. At the same time, I could not understand some expressions my “Filipino” friends used and was not familiar with some typical activities. Interacting with both groups failed, as it were, to make me think of myself as belonging to either one—on the contrary only heightening the problems of identity I felt.

Ironically enough, this can perhaps be accounted for by the fact that there is virtually no identity politics in the Philippines. Even as it is a very diverse “nation-state,” for some reason, Filipinos don’t really talk about ethnic differences (at least not formally). When riding the jeep, for example, while it is commonplace to find two Filipinos who could not look any more different from each other, there is no way to talk about such things or to raise such issues (much less claim one as more “Filipino” than the other). People simply do not think about it, much less bother with it. After all, were differences to be pointed out, many fine grades of distinction would have to be considered: for example, between the Spanish-Filipinos (the mestizos), the Filipino-Americans (the Fil-Ams), and within the “truly” “native” “Filipinos” the many different tribes (originating from different regions) incorporated in that entity, not to mention the uncertain status of the Muslims (the Moros) in the south and the somewhat unassimilated but homegrown “Chinese” (and, mixed with the “native” Pinoys, the Chinoys). Not to be forgotten, of course, are the intermarriages and mixtures between these already mixed groups (like myself). Thus I grew up finding no sense (or use) in so-called “identity categories” at the same time that I felt sharply my own singular difference. This is partly to account for, I think, my aversion to large, fixed, exclusive categories and attraction to syncretic combinations, singular performances, and molecular differences.

The feeling I had of being in between—an outsider—did not merely have to do with ethnicity. I never did understand how my father, the son of Chinese immigrants and who could barely speak Tagalog (the dominant dialect that serves as the basis of the national language), was able to develop an “understanding” with my mother, a “Filipina” from the province of Pampanga for whom Tagalog was a second language and who could not speak Chinese. The moments I spent with my father were moments in which he was trying to learn Tagalog. He also passed away early in life and was not able to teach me Chinese. My mother, on the other hand, taught me my “first language,” Tagalog, although in conversations with family she herself used her own mother tongue, Kapampangan (from her province). In grade school, I encountered, of course, that other dominant language, English, an unofficial “official” language of the country in which I was for the most part educated (although not in the way that the rich were; hence my accent).

From very early on in life, then, I existed amidst many, shall we call, different “traditions.” Which one is my own?, I never really could tell. Other than identity, however, there were also issues of power, palpable to me from the very beginning. It struck me that, on the surface, one can be thought to be part of a dominant group (“He is part Chinese . . .”) yet, in reality, not have much power (my father did do a lot of business, as a traveling businessman of sorts). Similarly, one can indeed possess substantial power (“I speak fluent Tagalog, the major language of the country”), but, as I realized later, only within a certain context (“You’re abroad. What is your Tagalog worth now?”). In my experience, at least, I felt as though a shifter, occupying positions in the majority or the minority according to the time, place, and situation I was in.

Compounding this shifting position in power is the inability to fully identify with not only one’s “natural group,” as it were, based on one’s “inherent” characteristics, but also with the political ideologies or causes in which one believes. So-called “left-wing movements” in the Philippines, for example, demand of the state to curb economic inequality. This is partnered, however, with the conservative appeal to traditional “Filipino” values in response to the globalizing and modernizing pull of the West, which, due to some admiration I have for the West, prevents me from pledging full solidarity with the “national” leftist movement. The absence of men and the preponderance of women (my mom, aunts, sisters, cousins, nannies) in my life has also, despite my somewhat successful education in the performance of the “masculine” gender, affected my desires such that to an extent I feel the stirrings of feminine sexuality—which keeps me even more at odds with the movement I am supposed to belong. It seems as though there is always something that keeps me from identifying and belonging. Less a matter of choice than simply the way that my life has worked out, again and again I am relegated to the outside.

This personal background has led me to some of the subjects I am intellectually interested in: ethnicity/race, sexuality/gender, class, language, culture, politics. More importantly, however, it affects my approach. I believe that there are, as Hegel says, contradictions everywhere. However, as I’ve found in my own life, in the great confrontation between thesis and antithesis, the subject is but a pawn who cannot necessarily identify with the “side” to which s/he is supposed to belong but simply exists in its “margins,” as it were. This position of the subject is not unlike the other fields of contention that the current confrontation, whatever form it has taken in the moment, has overshadowed, those inactive but no less substantive and perhaps even more potent differences relegated to the margins.

This is of course not to say that there are not valid abstractions that can be made on horizons larger than that of singular differences. In fact, these abstractions serve certain purposes since most acts (especially at the level of larger-scale individuals or collectives such as the polity) require a certain unification of molecular forces in order for movement to take place, to say nothing of the dangers of polarization and dogmatism that may result from solely and stubbornly remaining at the level of one’s difference. Then again there is also dogmatism in the identification and unification/totalization required by movement through dialectics, to say nothing of the danger that it may ignore (small) facts on the ground, the possibility that the argumentation that makes it possible only leads to bitterness and paralysis, and, of course, the inequality of sacrifice required of “members” to belong in one of the two groups. A view in between and from the outside like mine has made it possible for me to shift horizons from the large and the small, change standpoint from one to another (to another)—a view essential, I think, for any critical study.

Even before my father passed away and especially when he did, my mother had to spend long periods in the United States to work. She would eventually bring my sisters and me to the “New World,” but while she was gone, as early as the age of fourteen, even as we had a “maid” (a “domestic helper”) and our grandparents sometimes stayed with us for stretches of time, I had to manage our household in Manila. I did not only have to worry about who to bring to the dance (especially when I couldn’t bring another boy) or how to do my schoolwork on my own. I had to go from bank to bank to receive the money my mother was sending us, watch over my sisters, plan with the household helper what to cook for the week, do the household budget . . . Despite this, I managed to graduate valedictorian in high school and made the Dean’s list in college.

Realizing our economic disadvantages, from the beginning I motivated myself to work hard, copied the model of my mother and accepted the necessity of sacrifice (the deferral of fulfillment), all the while breaking borders while persisting in my position on the outside. These early life experiences have defined my ambition, work discipline, and social views, qualities that, together with my interests and approach, constitute the “person” that I am—a person that, I hope, will be given the opportunity to mold itself to the fullest. I can do this, I believe, by becoming a scholar. I still remember the time when, in my first semester at an American university, I joined For Love of Children and tutored disadvantaged kids in one of Washington, DC’s Black neighborhoods. I still remember how it made me feel, what I was able to do. Unfortunately, because of financial difficulties and my own personal commitments, I was not able to do it for long. I have the chance to do it again, however, or at least something similar. I can become a professor active in social movements, or at least a public intellectual—to which a university education would be the key.