Vintage Point: Rewriting history

New Dawn: Country delusions

Flip's World: Pondering one's birthday

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Vintage Point: Rewriting history

Borrinaga

We the writers of Bankaw News have been getting flak and smirks for our type of confrontational historical and cultural writing over the past few years. And for some concrete reasons: The critics - both constructive and derisive - do not want to let go (as yet)of their conservative and pro-establishment historical and cultural orientation. For that they would rather drag us down to their level of conservatism.

Fortunately, we are not “up” their level. Indeed, with our approach, we consider ourselves way “down” their level. So what’s the fuss?

We would like to remind our critics that historical revisionism is now a worldwide phenomenon. And it had succeeded in unsettling the conventional view of history. Some of us here in Leyte and Samar are not exactly ignorant of the global trend. After all, some of the seminal works on what is now called “regional” or “local” history were about the history of Leyte and Samar.

We would like to share with our readers some other thoughts about the “revisionist approach” that we use in writing historical articles. These were taken from the May/June 1995 issue of Index on Censorship, a journal published in London. The whole issue was devoted to the topic “Rewriting history” and includes articles of similar efforts around the world (USA, Russia, Japan, Israel, Korea, etc.).

The first quoted material is the editorial for the whole issue; the second is the concluding paragraph of an article entitled “Revisionism”:

All change on the history train

"Historians are dangerous, and capable of turning everything topsy-turvy. They have to be watched," said Kruschev in 1956 - one of the more candid admissions that people in power try to determine the history of their nations.

"It is a good moment to be looking at censorship in the writing of history. 1995 is a year of important anniversaries - of the end of the war in Europe, the liberation of concentration camps, the first use of the atom bomb, the signing of the UN charter, the fall of Saigon - and of the first shot fired in the American War of Independence.

"Some of the reordering of history has been particularly unsettling. In Germany a main thrust of the anniversaries this May has been to establish the sufferings of the German people rather than the horrors of Nazism. In Russia, key material from the Central Party archive has not yet been made available, despite promises.

"In Korea, the story of the Korean ‘comfort women’ is only now being fully told - a story of 200,000 young girls kidnapped and coerced into brutal prostitution for the Japanese military, and brushed under the carpet for nearly 50 years by the Japanese, Korean and US governments. Now the women themselves have broken their silence …

"The comfort women exemplify what is so disturbing about revisionist history - (it often exposes the) triumph of official orthodoxy, the voice of power, (in) obliterating the diverse voices of the people, for political ends.

"Even where the rewriting of history is a cause for rejoicing - the defeat of authoritarianism or racism, as in Russia or South Africa - there is still the danger of a new orthodoxy.

"One safeguard against the distortion of history is a free press, and we don’t have much cause for rejoicing on that front. There are journalists in all continents who are under threat of imprisonment or death … Free speech, as ever, is a hard and costly business.” (Editorial written by Ursula Owen)

Revisionism

"Even as history succumbs to the influence of science, it is becoming less ‘scientific’ in the conventional sense. Out of structuralism and post-structuralism, a new humanism has evolved that relishes texts as evidence of themselves rather than as means to reconstruct events.

"A new antiquarianism has arisen, which ransacks middens and treasuries for instructive objects. Historians are getting out of the archives into the open air - walking in the woods, strolling in the streets, making inferences from landscapes and cityscapes.

"The avant-garde are incorporating oral research and personal experience into their work, to the dismay of those still trapped in the lanes of a race for objective truth. The best effect of these changes is that there are now again history books that are works of art as well as of scholarship.

"Great history, like great literature in other genres, is written along the fault-line where experience meets imagination. When well written, it has all the virtues of egghead fiction, plus better plots. Right now, the past has a great future.” (Concluding paragraph of the article “Revisionism” by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto)



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New Dawn: Country delusions

Cabidog

What is a good life? To the Waray-Waray folks of Leyte and Samar, who have till now retained a distinct ethno-linguistic character known throughout the country, it could be reexperiencing the original warmth of home.

Many a friend had invited me to enjoy beautiful spots of their “place of origin” and instantly become tourist guides recounting acts of inspiring, innocent, carefree life during a not so distant past.

The longing to go back to a world prowled by former playmates, companions, relatives and loved ones in happy idle moments, would be very strong. The old public market, the plaza at the town center, the rugged country lane, the mound that served as diving board on a river bank, the eternal sands on the beach, the magnificent blue mountains, the towering rocks, and passageways under would exert a powerful magnetic force.

Even one’s usual place in the table during meals with the family could not be outgrown.

But more and more provincial folks, now, even in their youth prefer to blaze trails beyond familiar horizons. They opt for having a future outside. Home is only for nostalgia, ego trips, and the aged.

Northern prosperity offers a more juicy object of everyone’s desire than the riches of the natural surroundings. The color of money attracts more followers than intellectually nourishing local colors.

As soon as a country lad grows taller than the grass, he begins to wish for a motorcycle and wrap-around shades to make “porma” (show off) before the girls in town.

Or as soon as a country lass leaves her mother’s lap, she begins to look out for somebody to go with to the big city, be a domestic helper and watch at her “amo’s” (master’s) living room early evening melodramas on TV.

The lure of wealth, glitter and pretentious glory of the metropolis fuel the drive to find a place in the sun, away from home. Northern enticements of flashy modern living transforms into an ethical standard. Without them, life seems bad.

Notions of well being would change in time towards having maximum work to do. The busier - with appointments, things to transact, meetings to attend, pieces to write, etc. - the better. Hours spent in “lazy” thought, tuba drinking with friends, or in worship of sun and sky are condemned as a waste of time.

The good life, therefore, is thought as getting into the race, to where the hub of activity is, where the hurry and bustle goes, where time is an eternity of producing results. But these things soon begin to kill life itself.

Then, there’s the dream of returning to the pristine land and sea, and the memory of old home unyielding to the inroads of modernization.



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Flip's World: Pondering one's birthday

Ting	It was after midnight and I was walking home along the darkened highway, lit up only by widely spaced sodium lamps, some of which are not working. It is one hell of a way to start a birthday.

I am beginning the day I turn another year older, by walking along the street. Nothing was different. The same gray cement pavement stretch towards the far darkness, lined with the dirty yellow of antennae-like streetlamps.

The cold air, of course, always had this stimulating effect on the brain. After having imbibed a few glasses of the native wine tuba and spending a pleasant evening talking to the few wise men (some still exist, there is hope after all!), I had no complaints.

The night was old and growing older, just like me. At least, the night swallows up its fears and anxieties. Me? I have no choice but to walk on.

What's this about getting older anyway? It's just another year, just like the rest of those 26 years. I don't expect much changes in my life, at least not yet. I can't get married yet! I haven't got my first million yet! And most of all, I haven't published my book yet!

So, despite the hoopla about growing older, there's actually little that changes. I'm still the old me, although I can't really say the same about some of my friends.

You'd expect, as I did that night, that something wonderful will happen, that I'd be able to write brilliant, emotional prose, and express poetry in my words. Turning a year older is supposed to make you more mature, wiser and more intelligent. I should have been able to sing that high note that I have mooing for over a week now, or write that unforgettable line about life and love, and loneliness.

Not much luck, there. Although I think I imagined the stars to have grinned at me that night, though. So much for imagined solace.



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