Capital, Development, and Belonging in the Philippine Postcolony

CAPITAL, DEVELOPMENT, AND BELONGING IN THE PHILIPPINE POSTCOLONY

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

POLITICAL SCIENCE

AUGUST 2004

By Melisa S.L. Casumbal

Thesis Committee:

111 Carmelita San Luis Casumbal Roberto Reyes Casumbal

IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sa aking mga ninuno - ako ay nagpupugay at nagpapasalamat. My deep admiration, respect and gratitude extend foremost to the professors on my thesis committee whose pedagogies, scholarship, mentoring, good humor, and radical politics have inspired me to continue pursuit ofa career in the academy, despite my better judgement. I am especially grateful to my committee chair, Michael Shapiro, for not only apprehending, but modeling, my weirdly discipline-transgressing interests, and for the consistency and generosity ofhis support. I am also deeply grateful to the more officially transdisciplinary (double-burdened) Women's Studies scholars on my committee, Kathy Ferguson and S. Charusheela. I thank them both for modeling feminist women kicking ass in what remain intensely masculinist fields (political science and economics, respectively). I owe a special debt to Cham, who pushed me in exactly the direction I needed to go at exactly the right time. Thank you, also, to the other professors whose formidable intellect and charm I have so greatly benefited from during my time at UH: Noenoe Silva, Nevi Soguk, Sankaran Krishna, Jon Goldberg-Hiller, Barbara Andaya, Ric Trimillos, Lindy Aquino, Ruth Mabanglo, Imelda Gasmen, and Sheila Zamar. Sincere appreciation, love, and laughter go to my officemates and sister students, Diane Letoto and Lynn Anne Mulrooney, from whom I have learned the challenges and joys oflearning how to teach, and much else. Thank you, too, to the many graduate students (and former students) whose collegiality, cuisine, tsismis, inappropriate humor, rage, creativity, athleticism, and yes, scholarship, have sustained and inspired me as I completed my M.A.: Kalawaia Moore, Bianca Kai Isaki, Himanee Gupta, Melly Wilson, Sidney Iaukea, Thad Oliver, George Fernandes, Konrad Ng, Jenny Garmendia, Ikaika Hussey, and Keanu Sai. Maraming salamat sa mga kababaihan ng Urban Babaylan, sina Grace Caligtan, Darlene Rodrigues, Sonya Zabala, Gigi Miranda, Cindy Ramirez, Maile Labasan, Ellen Rae Cachola, at Yvonne T. Reyes at Geri Aglipay (honorary members). Mga kapatid ko - ang aking thesis ay isang pakikibaka sa laban ng marami. Napakalaki ng utang na loob ko sa inyo. I would also like to acknowledge the O'ahu-based community ofmusicians, artists, and activists who have taught me so much during these times ofwar and occupation, especially Kyle Kajihiro, the Ohana Koa hui (Aunty Teri, Aunty Gwen, Kalama, Bill, Welo), and Pete Shimazaki Doktor. Isang taos-pusong pasasalamat sa aking mga minamahal- kay 'Iokepa Salazar, kay Koa, at sa aking magulang at kapatid na sina Carmelita, Roberto, Robert, at Jacqueline Casumbal. Kay Nanay at Tatay - salamat po sa napakarami at napakahabang pagsasakripisyo ninyo. To you I owe the greatest utang na loob. To Bob and Jacky, my best friends, mahal na mahal ko kayo. Joey, aking sinta, aking mahal, you remain the bass in my funk and the wet in my ocean. Harinawang ng buhay ko maging pagdiriwang ng lahat ng sumasamba sa mga ninuno namin.

v ABSTRACT

This thesis explores "the new imperialism ofexploitation as development"

(Spivak 1999) in the post-independent Philippines. In examining the Philippines' positioning in specific circuits ofglobal capital, economic development is considered as industry, cultural practice, desiring-machine, and spatio-temporal imaginary. Focusing on state, social science, and activist problematizations ofagricultural biotechnology, migrant Filipina domestic work, and the peripheralization ofindigenous peoples and

Moros, the thesis examines how land, gendering labor, and the "unassimilable" native or

Muslim are constituted in discourses in which economic development is celebrated or contested as a reason ofstate (Nandy 1988).

The staging ofcapital in the Philippines since formal independence requires analysis that simultaneously considers neocolonial relations, efforts at decolonization, and conditions ofpostcoloniality. Such an entangled analysis (Mbembe 2001) might render intelligible the political transformations and economic difference overcoded through development spatio-temporality, and help to re-write economic development as propitious change (Zein-Elabdin 1998).

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements , v Abstract vi Table ofContents vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE - Agbiotech, Objects ofEthics, and the "Third World:" Thinking Beyond Development. 10 Introduction: Agbiotech Environs the World? 10 Transnationalization ofAgricultural GMOs 14 Agbiotech and the "Third World" as Object ofEthical Action 17 Peddling Development 23 Imagining/Enacting Noncapitalism 33 Conclusion 46 CHAPTER TWO - Towards An Overdetermined Analysis ofthe OFW: 48 "National Development," Value, and Filipina Migrant "Care" Production 48 Introduction 48 What is Overdetermination? 53 Feminist Narratives ofthe Social Relations of.. 59 Domestic Work Production by Migrant Women 59 Overview 59 Domesticating the Domestic 71 National Bodies, Devalued Commodities 75 "Contradictory Class Mobility" and other Counter-Narratives 81 "National Development," Care Crises, and the Overseas Woman Worker 93 Conclusion 98 CHAPTER THREE - "Filipinizing" Culture, Militarizing Development: Music, Time, War, Mindanao 101 Introduction: Entanglement 101 Militarizing Development: War on Development Time 107 Philippine Biopolitics: The Uses ofEthnicity 114 "Filipinization," or How to Produce a National Aesthetic 121 On the Cultural Politics ofNew Nativeness 127 Ayala's Becomings 133 Nono's Maps 138 Conclusion 144 CONCLUSION - UNMAKING DEVELOPMENT? 147 Appendix A: Map ofthe Philippines 152 Appendix B: Details of2004 U.S. Aid Package to the R.P 153 Selected Bibliography 154 Online 171 Mutlimedia 172

vii INTRODUCTION

The mid-1950s anglophone play "Sepang Loca" ("Mad Josefa") by Amelia

Lapena-Bonifacio opens with masculine modernization arousal. Son has been "sent by the Government" from "the city" where he lives and works, back to his provincial birth village. Son's subjunctive focalization indicates it is a place on the cusp: "By the time my men get done with this part ofthe old hometown, it will be crusted clear through with a foot deep ofcement. Think on't - a highway..." In contrasting this image ofprogress with "the busy little village dustroad," Son signals what Achille Mbembe calls the moving and multiple temporalities, trajectories, and rationalities ofthe postcolony.l

Son's focalization moves from an impending future to a present which is also a past:

"And yet now, this you see was once the village dustroad." This route is not yet a highway, and no longer a dustroad, but a connecting ofthe two - a temporal multiplicity.

Masculine, developmentalist landscape arousal, time moving in all directions, then a scopophilic flashback nine years to the village fool, Sepang Loca, dancing

"shamefully" on the Feastday ofSanta Clara, a celebration offertility. Flashforward to the cusp-now narrative frame, and Sepang Loca's dead body lies just offstage, where it will remain until the recovered body ofher dead infant son is dredged from a well and

1 According to Mbembe, "the notion of 'postcolony' identifies specifically a given historical trajectory that ofsocieties recently emerging from the experience ofcolonization and the violence which the colonial relationship involves... [T]he postcolony is chaotically pluralistic; it has nonetheless an internal coherence. It is a specific system ofsigns, a particular way offabricating simulacra or re-forming stereotypes. It is not, however, just an economy ofsigns in which power is mirrored and imagined self-reflectively. The postcolony is characterized by a distinctive style ofpolitical improvisation, by a tendency to excess and lack ofproportion, as well as by distinctive ways identities are multiplied, transformed, and put into circulation. But the postcolony is also made up ofa series ofcorporate institutions and a political machinery that, once in place, constitute a distinctive regime ofviolence. In this sense, the postcolony is a particularly revealing, and rather dramatic, stage on which are played out the wider problems ofsubjection and its corollary, discipline" (Mbembe 2001:102-3). See Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University ofCalifornia, 2001. placed on her chest. Onstage, the village men undertake the dredging while the women keep the fire stoked, the coffee warm, and the stories flowing. Sepang Loca's dead body, we discover, had been found slumped on the well wall shortly after giving birth to "yet another child" who will go unclaimed by his father. Mothers commiserate good- naturedly about raising the "monsters" that are their sons. Fathers perform morality as subterfuge for patriarchal alliance: Father decries the sin ofalcohol before Mother, she walks offstage, he rescinds his words before Son. This staging ofgendering in post- independence development makes uncanny the more familiar anti-colonial national allegory, which figures woman as violated nation.

Sepang Loca is given no poiesis, and almost no diegesis. We are not invited to imagine her agency; rather, we are told that she is a bit crazy, and that other women help care for her and her children. We see her once, dancing in a flashback at the play's opening, then at the conclusion when dead mother and infant are reunited. The allegory posits mother and son not merely as rural "victims" ofurban capital and Catholic expansion, but as laying bare the violent, masculinist patrimony ofthe Philippine burgis.2

"Sepang Loca" allegorizes a culture ofclass undisrupted by formal independence, a class ofagents and advocates ofpost-colonial development. The allegory hinges on the reading ofa birthmark, inherited by Son from Father, by Sepang Loca's dead infant from

2 As elaborated by Francisco and Carriola, burgis is a term used to describe a particular "culture ofclass" in the Philippines. Both "economic condition and sensibility," burgis refers to the ten to fifteen percent ofthe Philippine population comprising the middle and upper classes with whom political, social, and economic power primarily reside. These are "the landowners and small, medium and large entrepreneurs (including Catholic hierarchy), professionals and salary earners - usually college-educated and Roman Catholic" (Francisco and Carriola 1987:9). A feature ofburgis culture is "westernization:" "the middle class, notably the intelligentsia composed ofteachers, students, university professors, artists, writers, and lower level technocrats, are considered part ofthe burgis even ifthey live barely above the poverty line because their education allows them to be in the mainstream ofwesternized elite culture. The burgis lifestyle...is more oriented towards the U.S. and Europe than towards home and Asia" (ibid 11). 2 Son. I have chosen to introduce my thesis with a discussion of"Sepang Loca" precisely because it narrates this distinctly post-independence patrimony. The rapist is no longer a

Spanish friar or a Japanese soldier - the birthmark on the dead, disavowed baby is inherited from a man ofthe class that will lead the new, free nation into the modem era.

"Sepang Loca" occurs at a time ofbeginning, a beginning of"the new imperialism of exploitation as development" (Spivak 1999:371). It is particular features ofthis new imperialism ofexploitation - the social movements emerging to resist agricultural biotechnology, the dynamics ofgendering labor migration, and musical alternatives to statist collective belonging models - that the thesis engages.

This exercise should not be read as a critique ofeconomic development in any thoroughgoing sense. It is beyond the scope ofthis project to provide a comprehensive history ofeconomic development in the Philippines. While I examine rhetoric and practices associated with development, inflected differently in different contexts, and observe an interarticulation ofeconomic development with nation-building, this is not a study ofPhilippine economic development policies or projects or an assessment oftheir failures or successes. Rather, I am interested in how the Philippines is positioned in specific ways within global circuits ofcapital, and the particular forms ofviolence to which land, laborers, and the peripheralized are subjected as a result. And ultimately, I am concerned with how to think about decolonization in the Philippines given the current organization ofits economy - what Walden Bello describes as a "neoclassical tragedy."

The thesis examines economic development as industry, cultural practice, imperative, and reason ofstate - its discursive operations and rationalities, its metaphors as material practice, the becomings it mobilizes. I also consider its cartographies, its

3 functioning as episteme machine, as desiring-machine. I explore economic development and its discontents as markers ofthe Philippines' uneven subsumption by capitalism, as well as capitalocentrism,3 by focusing on the problematizations ofagricultural biotechnology, migrant Filipina domestic work, and the "unassimilable citizen" figured as lumad ("indigenous") or Moro (Muslim). I think through these problematizations as social, fictive, and affective inscription.

The staging ofcapital in the Philippines since formal independence in 1946 calls for an analytic framework which simultaneously considers neocolonial relations, efforts at decolonization, and postcoloniality. By neocolonial relations I mean regimes ofcapital accumulation and forms ofexploitation (expropriation ofsurplus) that, while different from, nonetheless mark continuity with, those ofthe colonial period. As Robert Young writes, "neocolonialism denotes a continuing economic hegemony that means that the postcolonial state remains in a situation ofdependence on its former masters.. .In the neocolonial situation, the ruling class constitutes an elite that operates in complicity with the needs ofinternational capital for its own benefit" (Young 2001 :44). There are many antecedents, for example, ofthe proposed United States (U.S.) - Republic ofthe

Philippines (R.P.) Free Trade Pact and Philippine WTO schedules to accelerate import- dependence, export-oriented industrial development, and removal of"trade barriers" such as quantitative restrictions and tariffs that protect local industry and commodities.4

3 Capitalocentrism, as elaborated by Gibson and Graham, involves situating capitalism at the center of development narratives, thus devaluing or marginalizing possibilities ofnoncapitalist development (Gibson-Graham 1996: 41). 4 These antecedents include the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909, which provided for tax-free and unlimited entry ofall U.S. commodities into the R.P. while imposing quotas on Philippine sugar and tobacco exports; the Friar Lands Act of 1904; which put large landholdings in the hands ofPhilippine burgis and U.s. businesses and gave U.S. interests control ofextractive, public utility, and commercial sectors; the Bell Trade Act of 1962, which established U.S. "parity" with Filipino interests to exploit Philippine natural 4 The Philippines, considered a "would-be" newly industrializing country (NIC) in the 1980s, was a test-case for World Bank (and later IMF) structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s (Broad 1988, Bello 2001). These programs emphasized trade

"liberalization," debt repayment, and rapid deregulation and privatization ofvarious economic sectors. However in the early 1980s, years ofdebt crisis and international recession, exports fell instead ofrising, while the liberalized regime for imports severely eroded Philippine industries (ibid). As debt continued to mount, increasing proportions ofthe Philippine budget were allocated to debt service, reaching 50 percent ofthe budget in 1987 (ibid 259). Philippine state debt, as ofDecember 2003, stands at P5.070 trillion or U.S. $96.7 billion. In the last five years, the government has allocated an average of

26 percent ofthe national budget to interest payments. The figure is much larger when principal amortization is included, averaging 38 percent ofthe total budget. 5

In the 1990s, lucrative state enterprises such as oil-refining and water supply management were privatized, and nationality restrictions on foreign investment were considerably loosened, with 100 percent foreign equity permitted in all but a few sectors.

Even the retail trade sector, long a "sacred cow," was opened to foreign firms (Bello

2001 :264). Measures ofthis sort were taken in the early 1990s in order to secure the IMF seal ofapproval necessary to re-enter world capital markets closed in the 1980s. In the

1990s, the Philippines became one ofthe most foreign capital-friendly economies in

Southeast Asia. According to Walden Bello,

resources. See Francisco and Carriola 1987, Constantino 1975, "Proposed R.P.-U.S. Free Trade Pact: Reinforcing Colonial Relations, Expanding Globalization," Ibon Facts andFigures, Vol. 25, No. 15 & 6, August 2002. 5 See the Freedom from Debt Coalition website at: http://www.freedomfromdebtcoalition.orglmain/pages/debt.php, news release December 5,2003. 5 The capital account was almost fully liberalized, with most foreign exchange restrictions lifted, making the peso fully convertible; full and immediate repatriation ofprofits, dividends, and capital; and the free utilization offoreign currency accounts. Significant liberalization was also imposed on the financial sector. After being closed for 50 years, the insurance sector was opened up to 100 percent foreign-owned companies in 1994. Especially critical in facilitating capital flows was the liberalization ofthe banking system... which was opened up to foreign banks (ibid 266).

The neocolonial restructuring ofthe Philippine economy occurs simultaneously with the efforts ofarmed insurrectionaries (e.g., the New People's Army, the Moro

Islamic Liberation Front) and radical social movement groups - often popularly referred to as "civil society" groups in the alter-globalization discourse - that remain very much focused on the project ofdecolonization. Ifdecolonization may be understood as "the process of... dismantling colonial power in all its forms," including the dismantling of more covert formations by which institutional and cultural forces maintain colonial power even after the achievement ofpolitical independence (Ashcroft et al1998: 63), then Spivak is correct to observe that "complete decolonization is impossible" (Spivak

1997:469). She is quick to point out, however, that "this is what it shares with everything else," including such audacious political projects as socialism. Spivak's discussion ofthe distinction between "decolonization" and "postcoloniality" helps us understand the radical political potential and salience ofeffortful attempts to "concern oneselfwith the persistent crafty details ofthe calculus ofdecolonization," for example, as academics. If postcoloniality "is a future anterior," signaling "a failure ofdecolonization," then it is also "a signal for the consolidation ofrecolonization," and thus, "not a signal for an end to struggle but rather a shifting ofthe struggle to the persistent register ofdecolonization"

(ibid 478).

6 This thesis is an attempt to cultivate what Spivak calls transnational literacy - a literacy that enables readers to "distinguish between varieties ofdecolonization, rather than collaps[ing] them as 'postcoloniality,'" and to recognize the "discontinuity of recolonization." The first chapter, entitled, "Agbiotech, Objects ofEthics, and the 'Third

World:' Thinking Beyond Development," examines the problematization ofPhilippine land and "landraces" as genetic use-values, intellectual property, and "virtualized" postfordist production platforms. I argue that organized resistance to agricultural biotechnology in the Philippines challenges what Pheng Cheah calls "neocolonial globalization" from anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and liberal environmentalist loci of enunciation. Opposition groups attempt to disrupt foreign capital "penetration" via tactics that renationalize agriculture and highlight the structural inequality ofthe world food system. Methodologically, my analysis is informed by the work ofArturo Escobar,

Eiman Zein-Elabdin, Arjun Appadurai, Timothy Luke, and J.K. Gibson-Graham.

The second chapter, entitled, "Toward an Overdetermined Analysis ofthe OFW

(Overseas Foreign Worker): National Development, Value, and Filipina Migrant 'Care'

Production," examines transnational feminist and Philippine statist discourses of

Filipinas' labor, value, and role in national development. By way ofa neo-marxist take on an Althusserian elaboration, I read the work ofNeferti Tadiar, Grace Chang, Rhacel

Salazar Parrenas, Nicole Constable, and Arlie Hochschild to demonstrate how the laboring, sometime-citizen body and subjectship ofthe migrant Filipina domestic is understood as managed, disciplined, exchanged, rights-resistant, and affectively invested.

The conditions ofexistence oftransnational care production are considered in light ofthe gendering operative in "national heroine" and "care crisis" rhetoric in the Philippines. I

7 argue that certain ethnographic practices ofcapture have important implications for political practice, in particular, for feminist struggles for domestic workers' agency access. My analysis here is also indebted to the work ofS. Charusheela, Cecilia Rio, and

Gayatri Spivak.

The final thesis chapter, entitled, "'Filipinizing' Culture, Militarizing

Development: Music, Time, War, Mindanao" considers how statist management of difference in the Philippines operates through the interarticulation ofstate violence and economic development. My analysis highlights the various modes ofbelonging at work in the rhetoric ofthe state, cultural agencies, and musicians, with particular attentiveness to their spatio-temporal models. If, as Michael Shapiro argues, nations can be understood as imaginaries - "abstract domains ofcollective coherence and attachment which persist through a complex set ofinstitutionalized practices" (Shapiro 2004:60) - my interest here is in examining some ofthe institutionalized practices, including those ofwar, economic development, and cultural governance, used to mobilize the abstract domains of

Mindanao and Sulu, as well as the Philippines. The work ofRenato Rosaldo, Deleuze and Guattari, Michael Shapiro, and Achille Mbembe inform my analysis.

The thesis attempts to assemble some contemporary transdisciplinary approaches to the critique ofeconomic development. I do not attempt to exhaustively discuss these methodologically-divergent analyses. Instead, I try to bring into dialogue (or at least juxtaposition) what might otherwise be understood as discrete scholarly projects, or subfields - those ofpostdevelopment or critical development studies, neo-marxist theory, postcolonial feminist economics, postcolonial feminist literary theory, and contemporary political theory. This effort may be understood as an attempt to advance a better

8 understanding ofthe complex, highly contingent relation ofthe operations of decolonization, gendering, capital, and "environ-ing" modalities.6

6 Timothy Luke's genealogical reading of"the environment" as "concept/word/idea" demonstrates its regimenting and martial roots: "Environing as a verb is a type ofmilitary, police, or strategic action. To environ is to encircle, encompass, envelop, or enclose... Therefore, to environ a site or a subject is to beset, beleaguer, or besiege that place or person (see Timothy Luke, "Commentary," in "The International Political Economy ofthe Environment and the Subpolitical Domain," in D. Stevis and V.I. Assetto (eds.), The International Political Economy ofthe Environment: Critical Perspectives, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 200 I: 231). Luke claims that the nexus "capitalism/democracy/ technology" is "environ-ing" the world (ibid 230). He writes, "After the Industrial Revolution, nowhere in the world holds out against machines: technology is everywhere. After the two world wars, few places around the world hold on to traditional formulas ofauthority: democracy is spreading everywhere. After the Cold War, nowhere in the world seriously holds forth as a real alternative to the market: capitalism is everywhere." He argues capitalism, democracy, and technology represent "an eclipse ofnatural otherness." 9 CHAPTER ONE

AGBIOTECH, OBJECTS OF ETHICS, AND THE "THIRD WORLD:"

THINKING BEYOND DEVELOPMENT

We will respect the religious, cultural, and ethical concerns ofpeople throughout the world. We will act with integrity, courage, respect, candor, humility, and consistency. We will place the highest priority on the safety ofour employees, the communities where we operate, our customers, and the environment. - Fulfilling Our Pledge: 2000-2001 Report, Monsanto Corporation7

The touted benefits to farmers and consumers are extremely questionable considering that the main promoters and stakeholders behind field testings and importation ofGMOs are agrochemical transnational corporations like Monsanto and Pioneer - TNCs who are notorious for their monopoly control over the manufacture and distribution ofGE seeds... Instead ofputting our lives, livelihoods and environments in the clutches ofprofit-mongering agrochem TNCs, legislators and government [ofthe Philippines] need to ensure free land distribution to the toiling peasantry and the development ofa self-reliant and sustainable agriculture effectively controlled by Filipinos. These are the keys to food security and self-sufficiency, not GMOs. - Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement ofthe Philippinesl

The dysfunction ofmarkets and states is, strangely enough, a key constituent component ofthe contemporary world system's environmental crisis. - Timothy Luke, "Commentary" (2001 :230)

Introduction: Agbiotech Environs the World?

When field tests on genetically engineered9 (GE) com began in western Europe in the 1990s, French environmental activist Jose Bove broke into granaries and urinated on

7 Available at www.monsanto.com.This is a one-year progress report discussing the actions the company has taken since making The New Monsanto Pledge in 2000 - "a five-point declaration that compels Monsanto to listen more, consider our actions and their impact broadly, and lead responsibly." This Pledge involves an ad campaign promoting the company's commitment to the principles of"Dialogue, Transparency, Respect, Benefits, and Sharing." It appears this campaign is largely a reaction to mounting public concern regarding Monsanto's business practices and "products." 8 Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement ofthe Philippines), "Peasants and Scientists Demand Ban on GMOs," 22 February 2002. www.geocities.comJkmuh/struglsafefood/n020222.html 9 Some vocabulary I will use throughout this chapter include the following, taken from "Biotechnology: A Scientific Perspective," by Francis Manning in The International Politics ofBiotechnology, eds. Alan 10 ("humidified") the GE crops. From western Europe to the Subcontinent, Latin America to Southeast Asia, activists have demonstrated opposition to the commercialization of agricultural GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) by disrupting field tests administered by TNCs such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Cargill, uprooting transgenic crops, engaging in guerilla food labeling campaigns, and mobilizing to close national markets to GM (genetically-modified) food and crop importation. Every available survey ofpublic opinion conducted internationally regarding labeling offood containing genetically engineered ingredients concludes overwhelmingly that people would prefer to know whether or not the food they purchase and consume contains GE ingredients

(regardless ofwhether or not this knowledge would actually impact their consumption practices). 10

Such practices and affect demonstrate defiance of, ifnot disregard for, the specialized knowledge ofagro-biotech "professional-technical experts" (Luke 2001 :317), as well as the "value ofperformativity" which serves as an organizing principle for the social and technical machines ofcontemporary technoscience. 11 The KMP problematize

Russell and John Vogler, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 -- Genetically engineered (GE): The standard US term for a process in which foreign genes are spliced into a non-related species, creating an entirely new organism (synonymous with "transgenic"). Genetically modified (GM): Equivalent in meaning to GE, this term is more widely used in Europe because it translates more easily among different languages. Genetically modified organism (GMO): The actual organism that is created through genetic engineering. Biotech foods, gene-foods, bioengineered food, gene-altered food, transgenic foods: Foods that have been created through genetic engineering. 10 A provisional list ofpublic opinion surveys includes: Shanahan, J. et al. "The Polls - Trends." Public Opinion Quarterly. 65:2 (Summer 2001),267-281; Subrahmanyan, S. and P. S. Cheng. "Perceptions and attitudes ofSingaporeans toward genetically modified food." The Journal ofConsumer Affairs, 34:2 (Winter 200), pp.269-290; The Safety and Health Practitioner (Official Journal ofthe European Communities). "Genetically Modified Organisms." 17:2 (Feb 1999), p.8; Maliwanag, D. "Bt Com Poses More Risk to RP Agriculture, Health." The Philippine Post. 13 February 2000. 11 Ibid 321. Luke argues, "Performativity is the central value ofthe social machine behind the technical machines ofthe 'informational revolution,' which also turn upon defining, developing, and then deploying specialized systems ofexpertise...Fast capitalist markets, which anchor and underpin global informationalization, co-evolve within complex networks oftechnical expertise defmed and dominated by 11 the issue offood security and self-sufficiency in the Philippines as an issue ofcontrol of land and farming, specifically, "the development ofa self-reliant and sustainable agriculture effectively controlled by Filipinos." Such opposition to practices associated with the transnationalization ofagricultural biotechnology illustrate resistance to what

Timothy Luke describes as "the environ-ing,,,12 or "encircling" ofthe planet by the nexus ofcapitalism/democracy/technology,13 or the "worldwide axiomatic" that Deleuze and

Guattari argue capitalism enacts as a global machine (Deleuze and Guattari 1983).

My interest in agricultural biotechnology and its discontents in the Philippines is inspired by the worlding practices ofmyriad individuals and collectivities. These include organic and small farmers, particularly in the global south, attempting to resist the juggernaut ofagribusiness; scholars doing work within the growing fields ofcritical development and critical environmental studies; and indigenous populations, whose expertise and objects ofstewardship are being wrenched from their epistemes and historic ecobiomes, recombinantly reconstituted, patented, and sold to the developed world by

TNCs.

professional elites... including 'not only corporate managers' but all those professions that produce and manipulate information.'" 12 Luke's genealogical reading of"the environment" as "concept/word/idea" demonstrates its regimenting and martial roots: "[A]n environment is the result ofan action from or the state ofbeing produced by a verb, 'to environ.' In fact, environing as a verb is a type ofmilitary, police, or strategic action. To environ is to encircle, encompass, envelop, or enclose... It even suggests stationing guards around, thronging with hostile intent, or standing watch over some person or place. Therefore, to environ a site or a subject is to beset, beleaguer, or besiege that place or person. See Timothy Luke, "Commentary," 200I: 231 13 Luke, T. "Commentary," 230. Luke uses this conceptualization to "mark how these social forces now surround all living and nonliving things on the planet as their 'environment.'" He writes, "After the Industrial Revolution, nowhere in the world holds out against machines: technology is everywhere. After the two world wars, few places around the world hold on to traditional formulas ofauthority: democracy is spreading everywhere. After the Cold War, nowhere in the world seriously holds forth as a real alternative to the market: capitalism is everywhere." He argues capitalism, democracy, and technology represent "an eclipse ofnatural otherness." 12 In this chapter, I examine some ofthe problematizationsl4 ofagricultural biotechnology by professional-technical experts and activists, in order to explore their imbrication with, and contestation of, discourses and practices ofdevelopment. I seek to suggest how, by "thinking beyond development," detractors ofagricultural biotechnology envision solutions to the problems ofecological devastation and the structural disparities ofthe international food system.

Methodologically, this study combines discursive and empirical analysis, postdevelopment theory, and (a limited attempt at) ethnography. My impulse is, with

Jonathan Crush, to "analyze the 'texts and words' ofdevelopment, while rejecting 'that language is all there is. ",15 I conclude by arguing that anti-GMO discourses and noncapitalist enactments, such as those ofthe organizations Kilusang Magbubukid ng

Pilipinas (KMP) and Greenpeace Southeast Asia in the Philippines (GSAP), work to denaturalize the logic and practices ofdevelopment, highlight the uneven en-vironing of capitalism/democracy/technology, and offer discursive possibilities and ontologies that privilege "place-based consciousness" and tactics as alternatives to development and capitalocentrism.

14 Problematization is, for Foucault, "what makes possible" the "transformation ofa group ofobstacles and difficulties into problems to which... diverse solutions will attempt to produce a response." Problematization (-- in "connection with these difficulties," thus suggesting a contingent, anti-deterministic process --) "develops the conditions in which possible responses can be given" and "defines the elements that will constitute what the different solutions attempt to respond to." Critical practice thus involves attempting to "see how the different solutions to a problem have been constructed; but also how these different solutions result from a specific form ofproblematization" (see "Polemics, Politics, and Problemizations," Rabinow, P. ed, The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984: 389-90). IS Jonathan Crush (1995), quoted in Arturo Escobar, "Place, Economy, and Culture in a Post-Development Era," in Prazniak, R. and A. Dirlik, eds. Places andPolitics in an Age o/Globalization. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001: 196.

13 Transnationalization ofAgricultural GMOs

According to a January 2002 report published by the International Service for the

Acquisition of Agri~BiotechApplications (ISAAA), a "publicly- and privately-funded network" which monitors international applications for clinical trials and commercialization ofgenetically modified (GM) crops, the "global area" planted to transgenics during the six-year period from 1996 to 2001 increased more than 30-fold, from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 52.6 million hectares in 2001. The increase in GM crop hectarage planted between 2000 and 2001 alone was 19%, equivalent to 8.4 million hectares or 20.8 million acres. This most recent annual increase is almost twice the corresponding increase between 1999 and 2000, which was 11 %, or 4.3 million hectares. 16 The explosion in planting ofcommercial GM or transgenic crops illustrates the unprecedented speed with which adoption ofa relatively new (20-year-old) biotechnology - genetic engineering - is occurring within agriculture.

Although agricultural GMO production appears to be growing rapidly, the transnational movement and adoption ofGMOs suggests what Arjun Appadurai describes as "technoscapes" marked by "relations ofdisjuncture." For example, while GM crops seem to be "going global," with 13 countries involved in production by 2001 (ibid),

ISAAA reports that only four GM crop-producing countries grew 99 per cent ofthe total hectarage, with the US at 35.7 million hectares (68 per cent), followed by Argentina with

11.8 million hectares (22 per cent), Canada with 3.2 million hectares (6 per cent) and

16 "Global GM Crop Area Continues to Grow and Exceeds 50 Million Hectares for First Time in 200 I." ISAAA Press Release, 20 January 2002, www.isaaa.org. 14 China, with 1.5 million hectares (3 per cent) (ibid). The nations in which the remaining one per cent oftransgenic crops were planted include Australia and South Africa (at

200,000 hectares each), and Mexico, Bulgaria, Uruguay, Romania, Spain, Germany, and

Indonesia (all at 100,000 hectares each) (ibid). While almost all GM crop production is concentrated within a few countries, the number ofcountries involved in production grew from one in 1992, to six in 1996, to nine in 1998, to 12 in 1999, and to 13 by 2001. 17

(lSAAA Director Clive James predicted in 1999 that transgenic crop production would likely plateau in 2000, "reflecting the unprecedented high adoption rates to-date and the high percentage ofthe principal crops already planted to transgenics in the USA,

Argentina and Canada" [ibid].)

Iflate capitalism is characterized by technological and financial flows generated by multinational and national corporations, facilitated by state agencies - including flows ofagricultural GE technology and GMOs - such flows, as the distribution ofGM crop production by state and hectarage demonstrates, are "not coeval, convergent, isomorphic, or spatially consistent.,,18 The nation-states producing commercial GM crops diverge in many ways, whether one's metric is World Bank Economic Report indices such as population size, GNP, GDP, etc., or markers ofdifference falling outside of developmentalist standardization systems, such as historic agricultural practices or ecobiome characteristics. These countries range widely along the "development continuum;" more than one quarter ofthe global transgenic crop area in 2001, equivalent

17 See c. James, "Global Review ofCommercialized Transgenic Crops: 2000." ISAAA Brief. 18 See Arjun Appadurai, "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination." Public Culture 12(1): 1-19. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000: 7. 15 to 13.5 million hectares, was grown in six developing countries.19 Indonesia commercialized Bt cotton for the first time in 2001, representing the first ASEAN nation to commercialize transgenic crops (ibid). The Philippines soon followed suit; on 5

December 2002, Monsanto Corporation announced that the country's Department of

Agriculture Bureau ofPlant Industry had finally approved commercial planting ofthe company's YieldGard Com Borer transgenic com.2°

Such differences among GM crop-producing states illustrates that agbiotech's

"paths and vectors" have "different speeds, axes, points oforigin and termination, and varied relationships to institutional structures in different regions, nations, or societies"

(Appadurai 2000:7). The transnational adoption, movement, and regulation ofGMOs demonstrates the complex and uneven dynamics ofcapitalist technological expansion and neocolonial modes ofproduction. The commercialization and transnationalization of transgenic crops are processes that continue to be met with remarkable types of opposition. An attentive genealogy ofthese processes would highlight the structural injustice ofthe international food system as well as the ecological and social costs of agribusiness (something peasants in the Philippines have known intimately at least since the so-called Green Revolution). The conditions ofpossibility for agbiotech's transnationalization include the flexible systems ofproduction, high-tech industry development, and globalization ofmarkets and forms ofregulation characteristic ofthe current era ofcapital expansion.21

19 ISAAA, op. cit. 20 "Monsanto's Insect-Protected Com Approved for Planting in the Philippines," 5 Dec. 2002. www.monsanto.com 21 See Anke Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 16 In examining the discursive practices associated with agbiotech transnationalization I hope to explore how, as Ashis Nandy has argued, both science and development are being mobilized as reasons ofstate?2 In his eloquent discussion of development in post-World War II India, Ashis Nandy asks, "What are the sources of such commitment to the development ofscience, and the science ofdevelopment? Can one identify and challenge the philosophical and ideological framework within which the commitment is located?" (Ibid. 1). These questions are equally pertinent to ask in a discussion ofthe implications ofOMOs in Southeast Asia, particularly because OMOs are frequently constituted as a means by which poor southern countries can achieve "food security" and ensure greater viability oftheir agricultural commodities on the world market. OM crops are invoked as a solution to need in the south - need for increased agricultural production, greater economic growth, greater "development." This rhetoric ofneed is deployed by people within agbiotech corporations, multilateral organizations, and state institutions, as well as by scientists, technocrats, and commercial farmers, primarily in the north but also in the south.

Agbiotech and the "Third World" as Object ofEthical Action

Support of, and opposition to, production ofagricultural transgenics is mobilized across divergent discursive and material spaces upon empire-delimited terrain. The consumption, regulation, and trade ofOM food and crops likewise occurs in and through such diverse spaces. These include international relations spheres, in which

22 See Ashis Nandy, Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiemfor Modernity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988: 3. 17 problematizations ofsustainable development, world hunger, and third world poverty are produced by multilateral organizations and bodies such as the UN Food and Agricultural

Organization [FAO], the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

[CGIAR], the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and the World Trade Organization

[WTOD. The spheres in which support of, and opposition to, GMOs are mobilized also includes those juridically-bounded or functioning nationally (such as state agencies regulating import/export subsidies or food safety, national industry or consumer associations, and national NGOs) as well as those defined sectorally (scientists, farmers, food retailers and manufacturers, etc.) - within and across south and north.

Narratives invoked in various discussions supporting the commercialization and transnational production ofagricultural GMOs resemble other narratives of

"advancement," "progress," and "development" in which scientific knowledges, "money valuation ofenvironmental assets,,,23 a rhetoric ofneed, and western (messianic) benevolence are mobilized to fulfill commercial, "humanitarian" imperatives.

Proponents ofthe "benefits" ofagricultural transgenics position themselves as what

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak calls moral entrepreneurs (Spivak 1999, Nandy 1988), promoting what I refer to as a "GE Will Save the World" position, or Missionary Position for short. The Missionary Position, generally speaking, argues that agbiotech is safe (for ecosystems and human consumption), more cost-effective and profitable for farmers than conventional (Green Revolution-era) agricultural practices, higher yield-producing, more environmentally sustainable (as it supposedly requires less chemical inputs), and

23 David Harvey, "What's Green and Makes the Environment Go Round?," The Cultures o/Globalization, eds. F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998:332. 18 therefore will contribute significantly in the fight against hunger and poverty in the developing world.

Opponents ofagbiotech argue that it involves unsafe and unpredictable technologies that have been commercialized too quickly, without adequate study oftheir long-term effects. Agbiotech poses a threat to consumer safety in the form ofthe widespread circulation ofunlabelled GM foods - which resistant food-importing countries cannot refuse to import without threat ofimposition oftrade sanctions for violation ofthe WTO agreement. Agbiotech poses a threat to the environment in the form ofpotential genetic erosion ofbiodiversity, particularly in southern areas where biodiversity is richest. Contrary to proponents' claims, the planting oftransgenics will lead to increased use ofchemical inputs in agriculture. Opponents also assert that agbiotech poses a threat to historic farming and healing practices in the south. The establishment ofintellectual property rights protection for GMO "inventors" through the

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects ofIntellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) leaves populations in southern states vulnerable to bioprospecting, and threatens the national economies ofsouthern states whose agricultural commodities are vulnerable to displacement by "bio-pirated" GE versions on the international market. Indeed, examination ofthe international regimes conditioning the cultural practices, capital and commodity flows, and policy and legislation associated with agricultural biotechnology highlight how, as Nevzat Soguk argues, "international regime practices work to incite, condition, and instruct the trajectories ofviable actions," (Soguk 1999:22), implicitly defining solutions in their definition ofthe problems.

19 Since their inception, biotechnologies involving genetic modification have compelled ongoing popular and academic conversations regarding their

"appropriateness," or the ethics oftheir usage, since their inception, but especially since the Asilomar Conference in 1979.24 These conversations explore and negotiate issues of ethics implicated by the technologies in various ways. They reflect discomfort with the notion ofhumans "playing God" and hubristically intervening in "natural" realms or biological reproductive processes in ways that transcend what humans would or should

"normally" be capable of. The prospect ofhuman cloning, in particular, has been the subject ofintense public scrutiny. Dr. Y. H. Tan, director ofthe Institute ofMolecular and Cell Biology in Singapore, observes, "Genomic science is to biology what nuclear power was to physics. It's an incredible opportunity for discovery. But at the same time, we need to ensure that we are taking the right path ethically.,,25

With regard to agbioetch, those animated by Prof. Yan's injunction to ensure ethical appropriateness passionately contest what this means. This seems to be the case no matter where the contestation occurs, whether within or across north or south. The human safety and health concerns raised by GE resonate globally, and aspects ofthe

24 According to Francis Manning, "modem" biotechnology can be differentiated from "centuries old" biotechnology, which is characterized by the gradual modification ofliving things, as through the selective breeding ofanimals and plants, and in the use ofmicro-organisms to produce commodities such as wine and cheese. The advent ofrecombinant DNA technology in the 1970s catalyzed the development ofwhat Manning describes as "radically different," "modem" biotechnologies such as genetic engineering (the introduction ofgenetic material from an unrelated species into a host organism), DNA fingerprinting (a means ofestablishing or authenticating identity with unparalleled certainty and precision through DNA analysis), and cloning (the production ofan organism whose DNA sequence exactly replicates that of another organism). See "Biotechnology: A Scientific Perspective," The International Politics of Biotechnology, eds. Alan Russell and John Vogler, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000:142. 25 Charles Bickerman, "After Darwin, Ethics Again." Far Eastern Economic Review. Hong Kong: Dow Jones & Company, Inc, March 22,2001:40-41. 20 debate involving environmental safety, particularly the threat of genetic erosion,26 likewise are ofconcern regardless oflocation.

The discourse regarding transgenic technologies' "morality" assumes additional dimensions, however, when the analysis is framed in terms ofsouth-north geopolitical dynamics. As George Tzotzos, Chiefofthe Biodiversity Unit ofthe Environmental

Management Branch ofthe United Nations Industrial Development Organization

(UNIDO), argues:

Agricultural biotechnology is already having a profound impact on agriculture. The all-pervasive nature ofthe technology has given rise to hope and expectations, but also to fear. Two diametrically opposite visions ofagricultural technology have been evoked. A vision ofan omnipotent "benign" science able to liberate farmers from the forces of nature and one in which it is portrayed as an "evil" instrument in the hands ofmultinationals to gain greater control over civil society. The developing world has been used as a centerpiece case-in-point for the furore between the proponents ofthese two opposing visions. The advocates ofthe "benign" vision invoke the impending neo-Malthusian crunch in the poorer parts ofthe globe and the power ofthe dominant role ofmultinationals in supplying seed and the concomitant erosion ofmuch valued genetic resources.27

In many instances, it seems, jockeying over the ethically superior position and resultant policy decisions is animated by "what the science tells us" - so the U.S. Federal

Drug Administration can support commercialization ofGMOs and oppose their labeling in food products because "research" finds GMOs and GM food "substantially equivalent" to non-GMOs?8 Or the U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Mothers for Natural Law can oppose GMOs because "studies indicate" that GM crops result in higher incidence of monarch butterfly deaths. Germany can object to U.S. attempts to open E.U. markets to

26 Genetic erosion is contamination ofconventional crops or related species by GE breeds or "landraces." 27 Tzotzos 1995:17. 28 Manning, in eds. Alan Russell and John Vogler, 2000: 13. 21 GM foods under the auspices ofthe WTO because "studies suggest" a connection between increased consumption ofantibiotic substances (used in the production ofall

GMOs) and increased antibiotic resistance.

The extent to which both proponents and advocates ofagricultural transgenics are able to mobilize science to legitimate their claims ofGMOs' benefits or dangers is truly remarkable. It seems for every study supporting the "GMOs Will Save the World"

Position there is another to counter it from a "GMOs Will Bring Armageddon" Position, though ofcourse these are polemical extremes. Science becomes what Ashis Nandy describes as a justificatory principle (Nandy 1988:4). That the "science" ofGMOs appears inconclusive, or conflicting, and that it can be deployed as a justificatory principle for opposing ethical positions, indicates that analysis on GMOs must be premised on, or animated by, something other than scientific knowledge in order to be tenable. I would like to argue, along with KMP and others, for a shift in the locus of analysis away from competing scientific truths to the issue ofcontrol, regulation, and applications ofagricultural biotechnology. Such a shift in the problematization ofthe ethics ofagbiotech must account not simply for whether transgenics are "good" are

"bad," but who has decision-making power over the technology's commercialization and uses, and who stands to profit or lose from agbiotech transnationalization. Who is audible in the discursive constitution ofagbiotech's ethics? Such a shift in the problematization ofagbiotech is needed within the technocratic policy realms ofIR and the development industry is needed (indeed, it is unevenly underway) ifonly to create

22 more favorable conditions for agency-access29 among what Arturo Escobar reminds us are "actual people" attempting agricultural production within that homogenized, undifferentiated geopolitical "location" known as the third world. Increased agency- access might mean, for example, that pauperized southern farmers such as Lee Kyung

Hae from South Korea, whose self-immolation at the aborted September 2003 WTO talks in Cancun captured world headlines,3o can more audibly constitute themselves as subjects, rather than objects, ofethical action - without having to resort to years of repeated hunger strikes, followed by suicide.

Peddling Development

After all, what we are talking about when we refer to hunger or population is people, human life itself; but it all becomes, for western science and media, helpless and formless (dark masses), items to be counted... the language of hunger and the hunger oflanguage join forces not only to maintain a certain social order but to exert a kind ofsymbolic violence that sanitizes the discussion ofthe hungry and the malnourished. It is thus that we come to consume hunger in the West. .. - Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (1995:104)

In this section, I would like to briefly examine how various entities peddle the

"benefits" ofagricultural GE technology, and the transnational dimensions ofthis peddling. This peddling may occur through contracted use ofproprietary technology (as opposed to the commercial exchange ofseed), international aid (TNC-funded provision of"technical assistance" administered through a multilateral organization) or threats of trade sanctions as a mechanism for intellectual property rights enforcement. Each of

29 By "agency" here I mean what G. Spivak describes as "institutionally-validated action" (Rethinking Marxism 2001 Vol. 21,4). 30 "Farming is Korean's Life and He Ends it in Despair," The New York Times September 15,2003. 23 these exchanges has transnational dimensions. This peddling may also take the form of exhortations that GMOs will "end world hunger" and "improve quality-of-life for farmers" (both largely conceptualized as transnational and national projects, respectively). And I consider "peddling" an accurate description for these activities in the sense that "sellers," "buyers" and "need" are being constituted, in relationship to a profit-making commodity (seed or manufactured food/feed product), a "technological advance" tied to economic development (science has produced yet another way to lubricate export-oriented tomato production - by using a trout gene!), or a way oflife that is coterminous with profit, wealth, progress, advancement, and modernity. Exchanges among the sellers and buyers, too, are generally transnational, although ofcourse the peddling must also occur domestically.

The Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (The ETC Group, formerly RAFI, or the Rural Advancement Foundation International), an "international civil society and research organization headquartered in Canada,,,31 recently reported on concentration in corporate ownership within the closely-related fields ofpharmaceuticals, biotechnology, genomics, seeds, agrochemicals, food and beverage processing, and mega-grocery retailing.32 The ETC Group found that, consistent with the corporate consolidation occurring across virtually all sectors ofthe global economy,

• The top 10 seed firms control 30% ofthe $24.4 billion commercial seed market. • One company's genetically modified seed technology (Monsanto's) accounted for 94% ofthe total area sown to GM crops in 2000. • The top 10 agrochemical corporations control 84% ofthe US $30 billion agrochemical market.

31 See website ofETC Group: www.rafi.org 32 The ETC Group, "Globalization, Inc.," 2001:7. 24 • The 32 leading grocery retailers account for 34% ofthe total global food retail market, estimated at $2.8 trillion. The top 10 grocery retailers account for $513.7 billion - or 54% oftotal sales for the top 32 retailers. (Ibid. 1)

The ETC Group analyzes agricultural biotechnology (along with the seed industry) as a subsidiary industry ofthe agrochemical industry, and publicly-held biotechnology companies (along with genomics and veterinary pharmaceuticals) as comprising a subsidiary industry ofthe pharmaceutical sector. These types of distinctions between sectors seem to be increasingly meaningless, however, due to the effects ofcorporate consolidation. The ETC Group points out, for example, that new corporate configurations (contracts, alliances, and mergers across sectors) and new technologies (including genetic engineering) are blurring the lines between more historically discrete sectors (i.e., pharmaceuticals and seeds) (Ibid.2).

Nature Biotechnology Magazine's annual survey ofpublicly traded biotech companies, published in May 2001, includes 361 firms internationally, ofwhich 76% are

US-based.33 Currently, five major "Gene Giants" dominate the field: Monsanto, Dupont,

Syngenta, Aventis and Dow. The top seven Gene Giants also rank as the world's top seven agrochemical corporations, and five ofthe seven Gene Giants rank among the world's top ten seed corporations (Ibid.). It is this sort ofcorporate "synergy" that makes it difficult to differentiate between pharmaceuticals and biotechnology firms.

This synergy is ofparticular concern as biotechnology research and development continues to move out ofthe public sector ofuniversities and research centers, partly a consequence offears over intellectual property "theft" (with increasingly dramatic financial consequences). The constitution ofhistoric practices ofknowledge- and data-

33 See R. Lahteenmaki and Liz Fletcher, "Public Biotech 2000 - the numbers," Nature Biotechnology, May 2001, Vo1.19, 407-412. 25 sharing among scientists conducting similar research as "theft" reflects the impact that patenting ofresearch processes and materials has had upon agbiotech. As biotechnologies become increasingly privatized the goal ofits development becomes less

"public good"- focused and more exclusively profit-motivated.34

In examining the rhetoric ofagrobiotechnology TNC Monsanto and modern technoscience experts, I highlight the form in which this rhetoric "makes its arguments, establishes its authority [and] constructs the world" (Ibid.), in order to denaturalize professional-technical expert claims regarding, for example, agbiotech's benefits to the developing world - claims that attempt to be "self-evident." The discussion ofsuch discourses ofdevelopment is an attempt at what James Ferguson describes as "mapping the apparatus ofknowledge-power," a mapping which seeks to "view the apparatus of expert knowledge forms and institutions that organize the production ofknowledge and types ofpower, linking one to the other in a systematic manner, as a diagram ofpower.,,35

The remainder ofthis section, then, attempts in a modest way to sketch the apparatuses of agricultural biotechnology, and their mobilization in the name ofdevelopment (as a reason ofstate). I hope to suggest, as Escobar does, how development functions as a

"dominant problematic or interpretive grid through which the impoverished regions of the world" are not only knowable ("rendered intelligible and meaningful,,36), but rendered the appropriate objects of, or an impetus for, the "science" and "benefits" ofagricultural biotechnology.

34 See Vandana Shiva, "Knowledge, Creativity, and Intellectual Property Rights," in Biopiracy: The Plunder o/Nature and Knowledge. Boston: South End Press, 1997:7-17. 35 As discussed in A. Escobar, op. cit., 197. 36 Ferguson, 1. as cited in Escobar, A. op cit., 197. 26 In an AgBioForum37 article entitled, "Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will be

Important to the Developing World," Martina McGloughlin, director ofthe

Biotechnology Program at the University ofCalifornia - Davis, grimly concludes that "in the next 50 years," agbiotech will be critical for the developing world. The challenge transgenics address is "the need to increase agricultural productivity so that sufficient food supplies exist to meet the demand forthcoming from a swelling world population." 38

In the absence ofsignificant productivity gains, or expansion of agriculture into marginal lands (e.g., forests), there will not be sufficient food quantities to feed the projected levels ofpopulation. This simple reality is independent ofincome distribution or the location ofthe population. And hardly anyone... will argue about the pragmatism of population projections. So in the absence ofa good alternative - and in the face ofa proven slow down in the productivity gains from the Green Revolution - biotechnology is by default our best, and maybe, only, way to increase production to meet future food needs.39

It is clear, then, that McGloughlin's argument is moored to the biopolitical technology of statistics - in this instance, population statistics. Here it is instructive to bear in mind

Escobar's observation that, as "techno-representations endowed with complex political and cultural histories," statistics "tell stories" (Escobar 1996:213). Statistics can function

"to entrench the development discourse" (regardless ofthe politics animating their mobilization) or, an analysis ofthe practice ofcounting can involve contrapuntal readings, "examination ofpolitical consequences, the crafting ofsubjectivities, the

37 "AgBioForum publishes articles which enhance the ongoing dialogue on the economics and management ofagricultural biotechnology. The purpose ofAgBioForum is to provide unbiased, timely information and new ideas leading to socially responsible and economically efficient decisions in science, public policy, and private strategies pertaining to agricultural biotechnology. AgBioForum is fmanced by the Illinois Missouri Biotechnology Alliance. AgBioForum is edited at the University ofMissouri-Columbia with the assistance ofadvising editors from all areas ofits intended audience, including, academia, private sector, government and agribusiness media." See www.agbioforum.org.

38 McGloughlin, M. "Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will be Important to the Developing World." AgBioForum, Volume 2, Number 3 & 4, 1999, p.l63. 39 Ibid. 27 shaping ofculture, and the construction ofsocial power - including what ... figures say about surplus material and symbolic consumption in those parts ofthe world that think of themselves as developed" (Ibid.).

McGloughlin, speaking from a locatedness in a part ofthe world that certainly imagines itselfas developed, fashions a future ofimpending food security crisis. "It is not difficult to predict where food shortages will occur," McGloughlin observes, "with the purchasing power and wealth concentrated in the developed countries, and over 90 percent ofthe projected population growth likely to occur in developing and emerging economies.,,4o Notice how purchasing power and wealth exist in "developed countries," but the places where 90 percent ofthe projected population growth will happen "occur in developing and emerging economies."

The cause ofthis crisis, McGloughlin suggests, is the inability ofpeople from the impoverished parts ofthe world to appropriately control their inscrutable compulsion to reproduce. The consequence ofall this unbridled reproduction is a volume ofbodies disproportionate to the available food supply. In the event we remain unconvinced ofthe urgency ofthe problem, McGloughlin's vision comes replete with temporal trajectory she predicts the crisis in overpopulation/food security (as Escobar points out, the two are often coupled [Ibid.]) will occur "within the next 50 years." This mode ofexplanation does not allow for any other accounting ofthe crisis - wealthy people control their reproduction at a disproportionately greater rate than poor people, and wealthy people have more food, land, capital, and resources. End ofstory.

40 McGloughlin 164. 28 By this reading ofpopulation projections, McGloughlin ignores the history ofthe third world's pauperization, and the wildly disproportionate use ofthe earth's resources by those in the industrialized world. Escobar provides a counter-reading:

Countries that were self-sufficient in food crops at the end ofWorld War II - many ofthem even exported food to industrialized nations - became net food importers throughout the development era. Hunger simply grew as the capacity ofcountries to produce the food necessary to feed themselves contracted under the pressure to produce cash crops, accept cheap food from the west, and conform to agricultural markets dominated by the multinational merchants ofgrain. Although agricultural output per capita grew in most countries, this increase was not translated into increased food availability for most people. Inhabitants ofthird world cities in particular become increasingly dependent on food their countries did not produce (Escobar 1996:104).

While McGloughlin concedes that hunger is a "complex socioeconomic phenomenon, tied to lack ofresources to grow or buy food," she argues "how food and other resources (e.g., land, capital) are distributed among individuals, regions, or the various nations is determined by the complex interaction ofmarket forces and institutions around the world.,,41 There is no historicizing or recognition ofthe power relations inhering in the "distribution [ofland, capital] among individuals, regions, or various nations." There are many activists and scholars I could invoke who provide contrapuntal readings to those ofMcGloughlin; as a signpost for these, I turn again to Escobar:

The industrialized countries, with 26 percent ofthe population, account for 78 percent ofworld production ofgoods and services, 81 percent of energy consumption, 70 percent ofchemical fertilizers, and 87 percent of world armaments. One u.s. resident spends as much energy as 7 Mexicans, 55 Indians, 168 Tanzanians, and 900 Nepalis. In many Third World countries, military expenditures exceed expenditures for health... Forty-seven percent ofthe world's grain production is used for animal feed. The same amount ofgrain could feed more than 2 billion people... The world's six largest grain merchants control 90 percent ofthe global

41 McGloughlin 164. 29 trade ofgrain, whereas several million people have died ofhunger in the Sahel region as a result offamines during the 1980s alone (Escobar 1996: 213).

McGloughlin contends that "unless our civic societies can come up quickly with an economic system that allocates resources more equitably and more efficiently than the present one," the food security crisis will hit. The suggestion is that global capitalism operates in a way that is too complicated and distant from the practices ofeveryday life for people to recognize their linkages, or account for the social relations ofcapitalist modes ofproduction, consumption, or accumulation. Capitalism is so impervious and entrenched a totality that any discussion ofnoncapitalism is preposterous, utterly displaced from the imaginary (for McGoughlin, capitalism's environ-ing ofthe world is without exception). McGoughlin surfaces a possibility only to eliminate it completely from the realm ofthe thinkable - she seems to imply that there was a time, in the past, when perhaps civic societies seriously attempted a more equitable and just distribution of resources than that conceivable under late capitalism, but any future possibility ofsuch attempts may as well be foreclosed, because any such major transition in the world system simply will not happen "within the next 50 years."

McGloughlin makes many more claims in this article,.all ofwhich argue the merits oftransgenic crops for various reasons (greater returns for farmers, unprecedented crop yield increases, decreased use ofpesticides, safety to biodiversity, a great supplement to integrated pest management methods, designated by the FDA to be

"substantially equivalent" to conventional crops, and a solution to the nutritional needs of the poor (perhaps as baby formula was supposed to be?). It is worth, however, focusing on what she identifies as foundational to the problematization - overpopulation in the

30 developing world, not capital's extractive and distributive operations. In fact, she bristles at critics' mention of "market and political institutions unrelated to biotechnology." This decoupling ofpolitics from agriculture, technology, and food renders the solving ofthe problem ofhunger a technical, rather than a social, cultural, or political issue. Thus it is professional technical experts - scientists, economists, development experts, and business interests who regulate the technology and provide technical assistance. It is they upon whom the rest ofus must rely to solve the problem ofworld hunger.42 It is precisely this sort ofrhetoric that legitimated the "technological advance" ofthe Green Revolution, a key factor in the third world's neocolonial pauperization.

Historian Susan Wright argues that these sorts ofmoves - the disarticulation of economics, agriculture, politics, and technology (McGloughlin's mention ofthe Green

Revolution's nadir notwithstanding) - are common practices in the recent history of

"legitimating the project ofgenetic engineering.,,43 Ever since the Asilomar Conference in 1979, which established the norms ofU.S. policy for regulation ofthe field and served as an influential precedent for policy-making abroad, Wright argues that a segment ofthe molecular biology community in the U.S. has sought to produce and reproduce an internal "consensus" in order to expunge social disruption and opposition from discussions ofgenetic engineering internal and external to the field. She illustrates how the Asilomar Conference was about elaborating rhetorical and other strategies to

"persuade the American people and their representatives in Congress to allow the community ofmolecular biologists to pursue GE under a system ofself-governance"

42 See Escobar 1996, Chapter One on the constitution of"professional-technical experts." 43 See Susan Wright, "Legitimating Genetic Engineering," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, volume 44, number 2 (spring 2001): 235. 31 (Ibid.236). Rhetorical tactics included diverting attention away from the "difficult social implications" ofgenetic engineering (e.g., military uses ofthe technology), redefining the problem as a technical one, and defining scientists as the "only people who could provide appropriate solutions" (Ibid.241). Wright asserts that this self-interested group of scientists, funded by military and business interests, effectively rendered their preferred solution the "natural" one (i.e., continued research and development ofagbiotech should remain under the control ofthe field itself, since scientists are most uniquely qualified to understand attendant problems and develop effective solutions to them). Further, a rhetoric ofthe "universal good" ofthe technologies was deployed (i.e., everyone will reap the benefits ofagbiotech-as-development). Wright concludes that the strong moves to legitimate GE at Asilomar allowed harmful applications to advance outside the reach ofeither national or international controls (Ibid.). Since the 1970s, then, research agendas and conditions ofconduct ofresearch have been increasingly influenced and dictated by military, pharmaceutical, and agrichemical corporations (Ibid.).

In other rhetorical activity, the homepage ofMonsanto's website44 also reveals the naturalization ofnarratives ofprogress, modernity, and abundance at work in the promotion ofagbiotech by one ofthe largest TNCs in the business. Monsanto's homepage is dominated by the image ofa sprawling field ofyoung, vibrant green crops, contrasted with a mature, golden field of grain visible in the distance. Trees dot the horizon, but the expansive blue, cloud-laced sky occupies halfthe screen. In the middle ofthe foreground, in the center ofthe field ofyoung crops, is a white doorframe. On this doorframe hangs a blonde wood door, slightly ajar. In front ofthe door stands a girl with

44 See website ofMonsanto Corporation: www.monsanto.com

32 long blonde braids in a pair ofoveralls. She is opening the door. The text running beside the door reads: "Welcome to Monsanto. We are a global company committed to opening new doors that can help farmers around the world produce more and better food, care for their land and help protect the environment."

Click on "Science and Technology" for a description ofAgricultural

Biotechnology, and one can read about how plant biotechnology "allows for the desirable transfer ofonly one or a few desirable genes," in contrast to traditional plant breeding, which "involves the movement ofhundreds or thousands ofgenes." Plant biotechnology is thus "the more precise science," allowing breeders to develop crops with "specific beneficial traits and without undesirable traits." The text goes on to discuss the "new beneficial traits in plant varieties," and conclude that "crop improvements like these can help provide an abundant, healthful food supply and protect our environment for future generations."

Imagining/Enacting Noncapitalism

[N]ature can no longer be seen as an essential principle and foundational category, an independent domain ofinstrinsic value and truth, but as the object of constant reinventions, especially by unprecedented forms oftechnoscience. - Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (1995: 193)

Nature may not be the kindest ofmentors: she does not tell you everything at once and penalizes you for wrong actions at unpredictable moments and in unpredictable ways. But neither are humans the ideal students...we are basically simple creatures who respond to quick fixes. For example, we would rather ignore or deny global warming than change our comfortable lifestyles in climate controlled buildings and monstrous cars.

33 - Ipat Luna, Director, Pusocl'5

In the article entitled, "Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will Not Ensure Food

Security, Protect the Environment and Reduce Poverty in the Developing World," co- authors Miguel Altieri (Associate Professor ofInsect Biology, University ofCalifornia-

Berkeley) and Peter Rosset (Executive Director, Food First Institute for Food

Development Policy) represent the opposite polemical pole ofMcGloughlin regarding agbiotech and the developing world. Both the McGloughlin and Altieri/Rosset articles are illustrative ofthe ways in which competing problematizations ofwhat one (agbiotech) means to the other (the developing world) are currently being constituted. Authors of both articles seek to legitimate what are at heart ethical positions on the issue by mobilizing competing scientific truth claims, and by invoking "the developing world" as either beneficiary or victim ofagbiotech. In this sense, even Altieri's and Rosset's article, which strongly contests the claims ofagbiotech proponents, fails in some sense to displace the discourse ofdevelopment.

The reasons Altieri and Rosset provide to oppose agbiotech advocates' claims may be loosely grouped into three categories - criticisms ofthe political economy of agbiotech, criticisms ofthe ecological effects ofagbiotech, and, to a lesser degree, criticisms ofthe human health and safety hazards ofGE foods. (These categories are somewhat artificial, since there are instances in which they bleed together.) Their entire critique, however, is an ethical one, whose intent is to debunk the narratives legitimating agbiotech's transnationalization into the developing world. Because the existing

45 Ipat Luna, "Gambling with God: Tampering with Life's Most Basic Design," call o/nature: reconnecting-culture-ecology-bayan (monthly publication ofPusod). Berkely: Pusod, Autumn 2001 Issue 5, p.8

34 literature addressing the ecological dimensions and implications ofagbiotech for the global south is so vast, and because I wish to focus attention away from the "actual science" ofagbiotech to other narratives legitimizing and critiquing its spread to the third world, I will attend more to the international political economy aspects ofAltieri's and

Rosset's critique. By so doing, however, I am not in any way suggesting that the ecological and "scientific" dimensions ofthis issue are less significant or complicated, particularly in their implications for the biodiversity or food security ofthe global south.

I would in fact argue quite the contrary. For the purposes ofthis exercise, however, such limitations are necessary.

On the attack, Altieri and Rosset critique biotechnology companies, the

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and CGIAR's constellation ofinternational research centers (which include the Philippine-based

International Rice Research Institute) for advocating the position that GMOs - and specifically, GE seeds - "are essential scientific breakthroughs needed to feed the world, protect the environment, and reduce poverty in developing countries.,,46 They argue that this position rests on two faulty assumptions: first, that hunger is due to a "gap between food production and human population density or growth rate," and second, that GE is the "only or best way to increase agricultural production and, thus, meet future food needs" (Ibid.). Their position relies on a direct critique ofcapitalism and the globalization ofagricultural markets, and links the logic of"higher yields" with the logic ofconsumerism and profit.

46 See Altieri, M. and P. Rosset. "Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will Not Ensure Food Security, Protect the Environment and Reduce Poverty in the Developing World," AgBioForum, Volume 2, Number 3 & 4, 1999:155. 35 Altieri and Rosset begin their critique by asserting that no relationship exists between the prevalence ofhunger in a given country and the size ofits population. "For every densely populated and hungry nation like Bangladesh or Haiti," they argue, "there is a sparsely populated and hungry nation like Brazil and Indonesia. The world today produces more food per inhabitant that ever before." The root causes ofhunger, they contend, are "poverty, inequality and lack ofaccess to food and land. Too many people are too poor to buy the food that is available (but often poorly distributed) or lack the land and resources to grow it themselves" (Ibid. 156). Altieri and Rosset make clear from the outset, then, that hunger is a deeply political problem whose root causes lie in the inequities ofdistribution and access to land and food. Immediately, this problematization ofagbiotech is one in which what is at stake is power - power to exert decision-making authority over the circulation and control ofsome ofthe most fundamental resources for human survival, particularly in predominantly rural, agrarian areas ofthe global south.

Further, Altieri and Rosset make a direct connection ofland to food; they counterpose the practice ofsubsistence or small-holder agriculture with the practice ofpurchasing food.

This not only challenges notions that the only or best way to access food is through market mechanisms, it also suggests an imaginary at work in which subjectivities, and economic and cultural practices, challenging those associated with monistic, teleologic understandings ofmodernization are possible.

Altieri and Rosset then criticize the priorities ofthe agbiotech industry, asserting that "most innovations ofagricultural biotechnology have been profit-driven rather than need-driven. The real thrust ofthe GE industry is not to make third world agriculture more productive, but rather to generate profits" (Ibid.). There is a vast literature which

36 argues this very point extensively, highlighting in particular the utter disproportion of agbiotech research and development directed towards, for example, enhancing nutritional content or taste ofcrops,47 so I will not elaborate on this here. Suffice it to say that

Altieri and Rosset echo others' observations that technologies such as herbicide and insecticide resistance in crops leave farmers vulnerable to greater dependence on proprietary products and inflated prices for seed-chemical packages. These technologies give agbiotech companies control over germplasm "from seed to sale." Further, Altieri and Rosset argue that "the integration ofthe seed and chemical industries appears destined to accelerate increases in expenditures for seeds plus chemicals, delivering significantly lower returns to growers.,,48 Altieri and Rosset also contend that in contrast to the purported raison d'etre ofagbiotech, "recent experimental trials have shown that

GE seeds do not increase the yield ofcrops" (Ibid.).

Further, Altieri and Rosset point out that the privatization ofagbiotech has unwelcome consequences for the public sector, and the third world.

As the private sector has exerted more and more dominance in advancing new biotechnologies, the public sector has had to invest a growing share ofits scarce resources in enhancing biotechnological capacities in public institutions... and in evaluating and responding to the challenges posed by incorporating private sector technologies into existing farming systems. Such funds would be much better used to expand support for ecologically based agricultural research... Civil society must request for more research on alternatives to biotechnology by universities and other public organizations. There is also an urgent need to challenge the patent system and intellectual property rights intrinsic to the World Trade Organization which not only provide multinational corporations with the right to seize and patent genetic resources, but will also accelerate the rate at which market forces already encourage monocultural cropping with genetically uniform transgenic varieties (Ibid.).

47 The literature on the profit- vs. needs-driven orientation ofGE generally, and agbiotech specifically, includes: Nelson, G. (ed.), 2001; Nottingham, S., 1998; Keen, B., 1999; Shiva, V. 1997,2000, et al. 48 Altieri and Rosset 156. 37 The sorts ofcriticisms Altieri and Rosset level against agbiotech proponents that focus more specifically on human health and safety considerations include: the lack of adequate research documenting the safety ofGE food, particularly in terms ofallergenic reactions, and the lack oftransparency through labeling offood containing GE ingredients, particularly for food-importing developing countries.

Echoing criticisms found elsewhere in the sizable literature opposing agbiotech,

Altieri and Rosset argue that the ecological hazards posed by transgenic crops are many.

The widespread cultivation ofBt crops "violates integrated pest management principles," and will render this pest-fighting bacteria useless to organic farmers (Ibid. I57). The creation of"broad international markets for single products simplifies cropping systems and creates genetic uniformity in rural landscapes," threatening agricultural biodiversity as farmers replace local varieties cultivated over generations, adapted specifically for local ecosystem conditions, with transgenic seeds (Ibid.). The rapid commercialization of transgenic crops has occurred without sufficient understanding oftheir complex effects on biological processes and organisms in the ecosystems into which they are introduced, meaning that "thousands ofhectares have been planted without proper biosafety standards" in place (Ibid.). This is due to the lack offunds committed for research and environmental risk assessment oftransgenic crops. In the absence ofstringent regulations regarding the field-testing and commercial planting ofGE crops, developing countries are particularly vulnerable (Ibid.158).

In conclusion, Altieri and Rosset argue that food security and environmental preservation can be ensured through increased utilization of"rural development

38 approaches and low-input technologies spearheaded by farmers and NGOs around the world... [which] are already making a significant contribution at the household, national, and regional levels in Africa, Asia and Latin America."

Yield increases are being achieved by using technological approaches based on agroecological principles that emphasize diversity, synergy, recycling and integration; and social processes that emphasize community participation and empowerment. When such features are optimized, yield enhancement and stability ofproduction are achieved, as well as conservation ofbiodiversity, soil and water restoration and conservation, and improved natural pest regulation mechanisms (Ibid.159).

The potential and expansion ofsuch accomplishments, however, is dependent upon institutional validation - "policies, institutional support, and attitude changes on the part ofpolicy-makers and the scientific community; especially the CGIAR, which should devote more efforts to the 320 million poor farmers living in marginal environments"

(Ibid.).

In his discussion ofbiodiversity conflicts in Chiapas, Neil Harvey echoes Altieri and Rosset's conclusions by arguing that

[r]esistance to the Life Industry should be understood in terms ofstruggles to defend and expand autonomous spaces for defining and addressing common problems in culturally meaningful ways. This resistance is opposed not only to the privatization ofbiodiversity resources and indigenous knowledge, but also to the redefinition ofcultural identities and political power which such privatization implies.49

It is with this understanding ofresistance in mind that I would like to discuss the practices ofopposition to GMOs in the Philippines. This abbreviated "ethnography of resistance" is animated by a desire to consider the implications ofthird world, "place"-

49 Harvey, N. "Globalization and resistance in post-cold war Mexico: difference, citizenship and biodiversity conflicts in Chiapas," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No.6, 2001. p.l046. 39 based knowledges and practices that contest "capitalocentrism,,,5o and envision/enact

"noncapitalism.,,51 For this discussion I look at the literature and activities oftwo NGOs engaged in anti-GM campaigns in the Philippines. The first, Kilusang Magbubukid ng

Pilipinas (Peasant Movement ofthe Philippines) or KMP is, "a nationwide federation composed oforganizations oflandless peasants, small farmers, farm workers, subsistence fisherfolk, peasant women and rural youth.,,52 The second is Greenpeace Southeast Asia in the Philippines, or GSAP, a Manila-based office ofa regional entity ofthe international environmental advocacy organization founded in Canada. I argue that these modes ofresistance represent what Leslie Sklair describes as "social movements against capitalism" that "disrupt capitalism locally" and attempt to "find ways ofglobalizing these disruptions.,,53 KMP and GSAP, for example, attempt to disrupt capitalism through uprooting ofcrops, "consumer advocacy," and takeovers ofcargo ships. They attempt to globalize these disruptions through participation in Southeast Asian regional alliances, or what Appadurai describes as "transnational advocacy networks.,,54 These networks are

50 Gibson-Graham discuss "capitalocentrism" as "situating capitalism at the center ofdevelopment narratives, thus tending to devalue or marginalize possibilities ofnoncapitalist development." Anti capitalocentrist discourses, by contrast, "could enable resistance to reduction ofevery aspect ofsocial reality to single principle ofcapitalist determination and reintroduce principle ofmultiplicity and alterity into view ofreality and struggles around it" (Gibson-Graham 1996: 41). 51 Escobar explicates "noncapitalism" (somewhat tautologically) as the "production ofnoneconomic and noncapitalist economic imaginaries in which noncapitalist forms are not seen 1) as the same in relation to capitalism,2) or as capitalism's opposite, 3) or as complementary to it, 4) or as located inside capitalism itself... Transcending capitalocentrism means learning how to see these forms as sources oflife and alternatives practices in and ofthemselves." Examples ofnoncapitalism might include: "certain class processes, market transactions, independent commodity production, household and family production and reproduction, informal economies, resistances to globalization, economic practices ofimmigrants in the North, etc." Escobar, A. op cit., p.201 52 See website ofKilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP): www.geocities.com/kmp ph 53 Leslie Sklair, "Social Movements and Capitalism," The Cultures a/Globalization, ed. F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998:307. 54 A. Appadurai op cit. 9 40 critical for the exchange and sharing ofideas, knowledge, training, materials, and other resources among anti-GM activists regionally and across the global south.

Resistance to GE in Southeast Asia, and the Philippines in particular, represents a vibrant, complex, and overlooked illustration ofwhat may be referred to as "grassroots globalization" or "globalization-from-below" (Ibid.). The vibrancy and breadth ofanti-

OM organizing within the Philippines should not be surprising given the prevalence of

NOGs (non-governmental organizations), particularly grassroots organizations (what

Karina Constantino-David refers to as "POs" or peoples' organizations).55 Anti-GE

NOGs' analyses, self-professed ideological positions, sectors offocus and campaigns vary. My discussion ofthe practices and rhetoric ofKMP and GSAP cannot be generalized across all anti-agbiotech activity in the Philippines.

KMP tends to represent OE as a threat to farmers and peasants, biodiversity, the sovereignty ofthe Philippines, and meaningful agrarian reform. KMP does not separate its campaign against the introduction oftransgenic crops or foods in the country from its agenda for land and agrarian reform, opposition to globalized capital and the exploitive presence oftransnational corporations in the Philippines and elsewhere in the global south, or against government repression. Its analysis ofGE and biotech has always been one component ofa broader struggle, inflected historically by Maoism, in which imperialism, and class and land inequity are understood to be the primary causes for poverty and social, economic, and political disempowerment ofits rural, farm worker membership.

55 K. Constantino-David, "From the Present Looking Back: A History ofPhilippine NGOs." Organizing for Democracy: NOOs, Civil Society, and the Philippine State (hereafter OD), ed. Silliman, G. S. and L. Gamer Noble, Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1998.

41 The KMP has a notable history among Philippine NGOs. It was first formally organized in 1985 as a national alliance ofpeasant organizations, heavily influenced by the Communist Party ofthe Philippines' (CPP's) national democratic orientation. Shortly after Corazon Aquino came to power, when optimism for meaningful land reform was still high, KMP was the first people's organization to submit to the president an extensive plan for agrarian reform. In addition, it was at a KMP-organized protest on January 22,

1987, at which many NGOs concerned with agrarian reform demanded an audience with the president, that the now infamous Mendiola Massacre occurred. Protesters' demands were met with gunfire from police and a contingent ofmarines, and 19 protesters were killed. 56

Currently, KMP's tactics range from physical disruption ofGM crop field trials, to signature campaigns and other community education-orientated activities, to participation in intra-regional conferences and workshops for solidarity-building and resource exchange with anti-GE groups based in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India,

South Africa, and elsewhere in the third world. KMP's position papers, press releases, and protest activities illustrate the cross-sectoral and multi-issue nature ofits anti-GE position. For example, on August 29,2001,800 farmers, church members and students in Maltana, Tampakan, South Cotabato uprooted one-quarter hectare ofGE maize crops, planted in a Monsanto field trial. The fact that students and church groups participated in this action along with farmers highlights the importance KMP places on cross-sectoral alliances.

56 Putzel, 1. "NGOs and Rural Poverty," OD, p. 89. 42 Further, KMP's "multi-issue" analysis ofthe social relations ofagricultural production is apparent in the following excerpt ofthe press release for the South Cotabato demonstration. The first paragraph ofthe press release reads:

We praise with thanks the most militant farmers and mass followers belonging to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) ofFar Southern Mindanao for their on site spontaneous reaction that brought the final end of Bt com in Maltana, Tampakan, South Cotabato. We have proven our worth as defenders ofthe people's cause and other urgent matters where the interests ofthe impoverished farmers, broad consumer public, ecological environment and health safety to humans are highly at stake due to continuing imperialist acts ofplunder now under the framework ofGATT WTO. 57

KMP's rhetoric clearly privileges and honors (its) "grassroots" -- "the most militant farmers and mass followers ofKMP". But "the people's cause" taken up by these

"impoverished farmers" is also immediately connected to the interests ofthe "broad consumer public, ecological environment, and health safety to humans," which are all threatened by "continuing acts ofplunder" - a clear reference to the long history of foreign transnational exploitation enabled largely by trade agreements that privilege foreign business interests over those ofits own citizens or ecosystems. In addition, the press release attributes these "acts ofplunder" to the "framework ofGATT-WTO," explicitly connecting GE crop field trials in a very localized place - Maltana, Tampakan,

South Cotabato - to an international, northern interest-dominated financial institution and regime oftrade policy. KMP opposes this international regime regulating finance and trade as clearly as it does Monsanto's GE field trials, since Monsanto's activity in

Mindanao can be viewed to be a "local" expression ofa "global" dynamic.

57 KMP. "We Dared to Strike the Fiercest Blow to Monsanto," www.geocities.com/kmp-.ph. 43 By contrast, Greenpeace Southeast Asia - Philippines' (GSAP's) anti-GE campaign is relatively narrow in focus, taking an exclusively "consumer safety and right to know" approach. Its focus is on the importance oftransparency and labeling ofGMOs in food, and advocating for legislation and strong government policies to prevent their importation into the country. GSAP's tactics include dissemination ofcommunity education materials, lobbying, commissioning ofnational surveys, and direct protest. Its tactics, and consumer- and policy-oriented focus illustrate GSAP's targeting ofa more urban, burgis or middle-class demographic ofthe Philippines.58 Its goals and expectations are to influence government policy and consumer decision-making; unlike

KMP, GSAP is not transparently "ideologically-aligned," and it does not organize sectorally. Further, while GSAP's anti-GE analysis makes a local-global connection in that it indicts global north exporters ofGMOs which end up in Philippine processed foods, this does not constitute the same sort ofbroad critique ofthe international financial system present in KMP's analysis. While GSAP is aggressively opposed to GMOs, it does not demand fundamental changes in the distribution ofresources in the country, and does not profess any desire to alter anything institutionally or structurally about the

Philippine developmentalist state.

And yet, in its attempts to disrupt both the distribution of GM imports to the

Philippines and the consumption ofGMOs in processed food products by Philippine consumers, GSAP does, however modestly, seek to disrupt capital accumulation through

58 The photographs ofaSAP activists which appear in the glossily designed aSAP website feature activists who look young, urban, burgis, and "hip." Contrast this with the KMP website, which contains no photographs, but reams oftext-exclusive documents, predominantly position papers and press releases. 44 transnational trade and Philippine market access. To wit: On November 1,2001, GSAP launched its True Food Consumer Guide, a listing ofproducts which tested positive for the presence ofGM ingredients by the independent laboratory HK DNA. On November

8, a dozen GSAP activists participated in a "GMO Labeling Patrol," demonstrating at

Shoe Mart Super Sale Club in Quezon City, Manila to protest the absence ofa mandatory labeling policy for GMO products in the country. Protesters placed labels reading "GMO

Contaminated" on popular food products, including several brands ofbaby food, infant formula, hotdogs and other snack items confirmed to contain GM ingredients. Copies of the organization's True Food Consumer Guide were distributed to shoppers.

In another action on January 3, 2002, four GSAP activists chained themselves to unloading equipment at the General Milling Corporation's (GMC's) facilities in

Batangas, Luzon. (GMC is the largest soy processing factory in the Philippines, and manufacturers several popular food products.) Additional GSAP protesters on inflatable rafts then attached a large banner to the hull ofthe cargo ship Qui Gon Jinn, a ship registered in Hong Kong, from which more than 17,000 metric tons ofGE soy from the

US were to be unloaded. This banner read "USA - Stop Dumping GMOs in Asia."

So while GSAP is certainly not calling for a disbanding ofthe international financial system, this media-savvy action clearly recognizes the importance ofimpacting consumption and, in a mode similar to KMP's attack on Bt com in South Cotabato, disrupting the kind oftransnational flows that represent the acceleration ofglobal capital accumulation in the current era. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the rhetoric and activity oforganizations as different as KMP and GSAP illustrate that it is these sorts ofnorth south transnational flows, flows ofagricultural biotechnology and its products, that are

45 perceived to threaten consumer safety, fanners' livelihoods, and biodiversity in the

Philippines.

Conclusion

Anti-agbiotech rhetoric and attempts to disrupt capitalism, such as those ofKMP and GSAP, denaturalize the logic and practices ofdevelopment, and the encroachment of capitalism/democracy/technology, opening up discursive and ontological possibilities that privilege "place-based consciousness" and tactics as alternatives to development. Such discursive and ontological possibilities include examination ofthe practices and effects of agribusiness on ecosystems ofpauperized southern rural communities, the injustices of global systems offood production and distribution, and the dehistoricizing disarticulation ofepistemologies and crops from their historical (often colonially-transformed) and ecological contexts.

To insist that these anti-capitalocentric ways ofmaking sense ofthe social order displace capitalist/democratic/technologic common sense is to repoliticize the deeply mystified processes and operations ofglobal capitalism with regard to agriculture and food (which is, after all, "the world's biggest business,,)59. Further, this move effectively shifts the locus ofanalysis ofdiscourses regarding agbiotech and food production/consumption away from the "scientific" regimes oftruth ofprofessional- technical experts, and squarely onto a discussion ofcontrol and power - what rationalities and subjectivities inhere in the logic ofagbiotech's transnationalization? Who or what

59 See Tansey, G. and T. Worsley. The FoodSystem: A Guide. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1995. 46 institutions regiment agbiotech's flows ofproducts and profits, and by what processes?

Who/what determines agbiotech's agendas vis-a.-vis the developing world?

As we consider the new agricultural technological revolution represented by agbiotech, and its implications for locations in the third world such as the Philippines, it is worthwhile to keep in mind Escobar's observation that, historically, "the strategies implemented to deal with the problems ofhunger and food supply, far from solving them, have led to their aggravation.,,60 Thus it is crucial that agbiotech be understood as a modality ofscience and ofdevelopment, constituting objects ofethical action. In the current agbiotech debates, issues ofgeopolitical domination, history, and the structural injustice ofthe global food system, and not simply "scientific truths," must be constantly surfaced.

60 Escobar 1996:104

47 CHAPTER TWO

TOWARDS AN OVERDETERMINED ANALYSIS OF THE OFW:

"NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT," VALUE, AND

FILIPINA MIGRANT "CARE" PRODUCTION

I may sound like I have no filial piety to you, but I have been serving [my mother in-law] for twenty years! Ifyou want to be a good daughter-in-law, you can no longer be yourself. Fortunately, it doesn't cost that much to hire a Filipina maid these days... - "Mrs. Chang" (a pseudonym), as quoted by Pei-Chia Lan in "Among Women: Migrant Domestics and Their Taiwanese Employers Across Generations," in Global Woman61

In all developed societies, women work at paid jobs... Ifwe want developed societies with women doctors, political leaders, teachers, bus drivers, and computer programmers, we will need qualified people to give loving care to their children. And there is no reason why every society should not enjoy such loving paid child care. It may even be true that [women such as] Rowena Bautista or Maria Guttierez are the people to provide it, so long as their own children either come with them or otherwise receive all the care they need. - Arlie Hochschild, "For Love and Gold," in Global Woman

Though international human rights codes may declare the rights oftransnational citizens, the fate ofmigrant Filipina domestic workers is for the most part dependent on the host society. - Rhacel Salazar Parrefias, Servants oJGlobalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work

Introduction

The social relations ofFilipina migrant domestic work production encompass relations ofbodies, citizens, nations, capital, debt, and desire, not to mention processes of class and gendering. As a particular constellation ofsocial relations, economic migration

(Spivak in McClintock et al: 1997) may be understood as both determined by, and determining of, various identity axes or becomings, including gender(ing), class(-as-

61 In Global Woman, eds. Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002. 48 process), and, variously, ethnicity/nationlrace (as markers ofracialInationaI difference)

(Tadiar 1997). This paper explores how an overdetermined62 analysis ofthe Filipina

Overseas Foreign Worker (OFW),63 or, more specifically, the migrant Filipina domestic worker (MFDW), might indicate the multifarious cultural politics ofboth transnational feminist and Philippine statist discourses ofFilipinas' labor, value, and role in national development. My analysis moves along two uneven trajectories. The first, and more developed, examines recent feminist efforts ofdivergent disciplinary and national origins to constitute as an object ofanalysis the figure ofthe migrant Filipina domestic worker, and to theorize the myriad social relations in and through which her labor is produced.

The second trajectory traces some ofthe ways in which a woman-value coding is elaborated in developmentalist Philippine postcolony64 rhetoric. This rhetoric, for example, explicitly decouples "manpower export" policies from national development

62 The concept ofoverdetermination originates with Freud, in The Interpretation ofDreams (Freud 1899), and was reformulated by Louis Althusser in Pour Marx (Althusser 1969) as a means ofbroadly critiquing economically deterministic readings ofMarx in the work ofmarxist theorists who were Althusser's contemporaries. As a conceptual apparatus, overdetermination is discussed throughout the chapter, but is elaborated primarily in the following section. 63 A preliminary discussion oftenninology is in order. The terms overseas worker, overseas foreign worker, and domestic helper (DH) are more common in the lexica ofmigration within the Philippines and across Southeast Asia. In the literature produced in North America and by multilaterals, the terms migrant worker and domestic worker tend to be more common. I move between both sets ofusage in this paper but am generally sympathetic to the terminology usage adopted by Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Shirlena Huang, and Joaquin Gonzalez (1999), for which they provide the following explanation: "Migrant women who cross international borders to enter domestic service have been called by many terms. As temporary international movement ofworkers usually organized or regulated by governments, employers, or both, they generally fall under the rubric of'contract migrant labor' or 'guestworkers.' In Southeast Asia, the term 'foreign domestic helper' has gained common current use, referring specifically to those who work as housemaids and distinguished from the more inclusive category 'foregin domestic worker' (which may also describe those employed as cooks, gardeners, and chauffeurs)... We use the latter term because the former does not do justice to the labor involved or to the women's status as employees - the women do notjust 'help' around the house but are often employed to bear the brunt ofdomestic work including cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Since domestic service is seen as one all-encompassing category in Singapore, we also felt that it was not helpful maintaining the distinction between 'domestic helper' and the broader 'domestic worker'... and have chosen to use only the latter." See Yeoh, et aI, "Migrant Female Domestic Workers: Debating the Economic, Social and Political Impacts in Singapore," International Migration Review, Vol. 23(1), Spring 1999. 64 For a conceptual elaboration ofthe postcolony, see Mbembe 2001. 49 "strategy," and vaguely applauds the "nation-building contributions" ofwomen OFWs while putting under erasure the specific ways in which their surplus value appropriation and distribution actually "develops" the Philippine economy. Such state rhetoric decries the particular "vulnerability" ofwomen OFWs while "streamlining" bureaucratic processes for their deployment in increasing numbers.

For my purposes, I will focus primarily on the first trajectory, and discuss feminist narratives ofthe social relations ofmigrant Filipina domestic work. This scholarship exists at the intersection offeminist, migration, and alter-globalization studies, and, via ethnography, examines configurations ofwomen, labor, and value, coded through citizenship and "race" in the transnational spaces (Tolentino 2001) inhabited by Filipina (among other) migrant domestic workers. In this largely social science literature, which attempts to document the "macroprocesses" and day-to-day micrology ofmigrant domestic work, the figure ofthe migrant domestic worker (MDW) is, as Freud would have it, "represented in many times and in many ways" (Freud

1899/1999:216).

Since the early 1990s, and especially in the wake ofthe 1995 execution in

Singapore ofFilipina domestic worker Flor Contemplacion, there has been a proliferation ofresearch on migrant women domestic workers and in particular, Filipinas. Book length studies include the 1994 Kuala Lumpur-based Asian and Pacific Development

Centre report edited by Noeleen Heyzer, Geertje Lycklama a Nijeholt, and Nedra

Weeakoon entitled, The Trade in Domestic Workers: Causes, Mechanisms and

Consequences ofInternational Migration,65 Nicole Constable's 1997 Maid to Order in

65 London: Zed Books. 50 Hong Kong: Stories o/Filipina Workers,66 the 1997 anthology edited by Abigail B.

Bakan and Daiva Stasiulis entitled Not One o/the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in

Canada,67 Grace Chang's 2000 Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the

Global Economy,68 Rhacel Salazar Parrefias' 2001 Servants o/Globalization: Women,

Migration, and Domestic Work, and the 2002 anthology edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild entitled Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, andSex Workers in the New Economy.69 To this largely social science literature I would add the work of comparative literature scholar Neferti Xina Tadiar, whose 1997 Soujourn article,

"Domestic Bodies ofthe Philippines" is a crucial intervention within this field of scholarship.

These feminist analyses tend to represent the migrant domestic worker in two ways simultaneously - as a "victim" oftransnational regimes ofcapital accumulation or globalization, and a woman whose subject-ship is marked by both subjection and

"resistance" to various forms ofdiscipline and violence. Macro level analyses which insert the MFDW into narratives ofcapital are crucial in that they situate transnational domestic work, or what Parrefias calls "care" production, within the large, uneven frame ofglobal economic restructuring, postfordist modes ofproduction, "the gendered international division ofreproductive labor" (Parrefias 2001 :61-79), the rise of"global cities and survival circuits" (Sassen 1988, 1998), the feebleness or lack ofinternational or national regulatory regimes, structural adjustment, and the ongoing crisis ofdebt bondage in the so-called "developing world."

66 Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 67 Toronto: University ofToronto Press. 68 Cambridge: South End Press. 69 New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. 51 Feminist analyses which focus more on the micropolitics ofmigrant domestic work production - and these tend to be more numerous - are also important in that they specify the conditions under which Filipinas labor in a given geopolitical place and time, and their "modes ofsubjectivization" (Foucault 1985:28) as laboring beings.

Considerations here include, does the MFDW perform elder care, housework, and/or childcare? Is she a live-in worker, a day worker, or a part-time worker (Parrefias

2001:153)? Is she required, as a condition ofvisa conferral in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Canada, for example, to live with her employers for a minimum oftwo years, or to be single and childless (Constable 1997, Bakan 1997, Yeoh et aI1999)? Is she subject to mandatory pregnancy tests? (Much ofthe literature on live-in domestic work, for example, notes how the particular "fusion ofworkplace and home" [Rio 2000:24] creates conditions leaving workers more vulnerable to violence and higher rates ofexploitation.)

Further, because such analyses seek to discuss the affect and self-inscription70 of

MFDWs vis-a-vis the "disciplining agents" (Constable 1997) ofemployers, employment and recruitment agencies, state juridical apparati, and other domestic workers, they also provide often rich ethnographic portraits that open up opportunities to consider not simply subject-ship, but agency, as institutionally validated action (Spivak 1999,2001). I would argue, however, that some ofthe feminist literature fails to adequately theorize or apprehend how certain ethnographic accounts ofsubject-ship make intelligible or foreclose - particularly in the realm ofagency-access - various transformative political possibilities.

70 Examples ofsuch self-inscription would include those discussed by Parrefias in her readings ofdomestic workers' magazines such as Tinig Filipino (see Parrefias 2001). 52 Before I unpack that argument via the textual analysis which comprises the bulk ofthis paper, I begin with a briefdiscussion regarding the conceptual apparatus of overdetermination. I discuss why I find overdetermination to be a helpful way offraming various readings ofmigrant domestic work and the political projects such narratives implicate. I then move to a discussion offeminist narratives ofFilipina migrant domestic work production. These narratives illustrate how different analytic emphases in the problematization ofmigrant domestic work suggest different possibilities for political transformation. Before concluding, I briefly discuss the figure ofthe migrant woman worker in Philippine statist discourses, observing a failure to acknowledge the role she plays in Philippine "national development."

What is Overdetermination?

The unity [contradictions] constitute in this 'fusion into a revolutionary rupture,' is constituted by their own essence and effectivity, by what they are, and according to the specific modalities oftheir action. In constituting this unity, they reconstitute and complete their basic animating unity, but at the same time they also bring out its nature: the 'contradiction' is inseparable from its formal conditions ofexistence, and even from the instances it governs; it is radically affected by them, determining, but also determined in one and the same movement, and determined by the various levels and instances ofthe social formation it animates; it might be called overdetermined in its principle. - Louis Althusser, Pour Marx (all emphases in original)

This first examination suggests that the elements "botanical" and "monograph" have been admitted into the dream because they are able to show the widest range ofcontacts with the most dream-thoughts, that is, they represent points of intersection where a great number ofdream-thoughts converge; and because they have many meanings with respect to the interpretation ofthe dream. The fact at the basis ofthis explanation can also be put differently: each element ofthe dream-content turns out to be over-determined, to be represented many times and in many ways in the dream-thoughts. - Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation ofDreams

53 As a conceptual apparatus, Althusser's formulation ofoverdetermination

(particularly as it has been elaborated by many neo-marxian thinkers?!) is useful in helping to frame the particular "accumulation ofcontradictions" that characterize the transnational relations ofproduction ofdomestic work by Filipinas, and other others. An overdetermined analysis would consider the various processes, including those irreducible to the economic, that constitute the Filipina overseas worker in different moments and locations, under shifting conditions, as sociological, juridical, national, and self-inscription. Recent feminist analyses help us understand these modes and processes as simultaneously economic, political, and cultural; global-national and national-national in relation; affective, physical, and psychological; and simultaneously constraining and

"freeing."

Althusser's elaboration ofoverdetermination in Pour Marx (Althusser 1969) reads Marx's materialist dialectic against Hegel's idealist dialectic in order to advance a non-teleologic understanding ofhistory (contra the unfolding ofmodes ofproduction narrative) and an understanding ofthe social order not as a "simple unity," but as the non-totalizing "ever pre-givenness ofa structured complex unity" (Ibid. 198-9). Ifthe

"general contradiction" is the contradiction between forces ofproduction and relations of production, "embodied in the contradiction between two antagonistic classes" (Althusser

1970:67), for Althusser, this general contradiction cannot, "ofits own simple, direct power induce a revolutionary situation" or become a "ruptural principle." In order for the general contradiction to become "ruptural," there must exist "an accumulation of circumstances and currents so that whatever their origin and sense,... theyfuse into a

71 See Resnick and Wolff 1987, Amariglio and Callari 1989, and Gibson-Graham 1996, among others. 54 ruptural unity" (ibid). Ifthe general contradiction signals the realm ofthe "purely" economic, "circumstances and currents" signal that which occurs exterior to this realm in a given instance, and "accumulation" suggests the multiplicity ofthese "circumstances and events." The "fusion" ofa given accumulation ofcontradictions describes a social totality in which the economic and the social, cultural, political, ideological - the

"superstructural" - constitute and determine each other in complex, irreducible relation.

Althusser describes Engels' problematization ofthe base-superstructure relation as one in which "the economy is determinant, but in the last instance," since "[h]istory

'asserts itself through the multiform world ofthe superstructures, from local tradition to international circumstance" (Althusser 1970:112). Althusser writes,

it is succificent to retain from [Engels] what should be called the accumulation ofeffective determinations (deriving from the superstructures and from special national and international circumstances) on the determination in the last instance by the economic... This clarifies the expression overdetermined contradiction... This overdetermination is inevitable and thinkable as soon as the real existence ofthe forms ofthe superstructure and ofthe national and international conjuncture has been recognized - an existence largely specific and autonomous, and therefore irreducible to a pure phenomenon. We must carry this through to its conclusion and say that this overdetermination does not just refer to apparently unique and aberrant historical situations (Germany, for example), but is universal; the economic dialectic is never active in the pure state...(Althusser 1970:113).

For Althusser, overdetermination is an explanatory tool that describes the always already noneconomic/economic fusion ofcontradictions that, in a given historical moment, can constitute a "revolutionary rupture" or conjuncture.72 These contradictions may be "radically heterogeneous - ofdifferent origins, different sense, different levels and points ofapplication" but, when they "nevertheless group themselves into a ruptural

72 Althusser discusses this via Lenin's analysis ofthe Russian Revolution. 55 unity," Althusser argues, we are no longer in the realm ofthe general contradiction (69).

This is to say we are no longer in the realm ofthe economic in the "most determining" instance.

But is an overdetermined analysis only applicable in situations ofconjuncture or revolutionary transformation? Althusser argues that accumulations ofcontradictions are, indeed, the rule rather than the "revolutionary" exception to the "abstract, but comfortable and reassuring idea ofa pure, simple 'dialectical' schema" and the

"resolving 'power' ofthe abstract,... beautiful contradiction between Capital and

Labour" (Althusser 1969:104). This understanding ofoverdetermination as rule rather than exception highlights its relevance in even those social formations where the accumulation ofcontradictions is not conjunctural, ifby conjuncture we mean a grand

"revolutionary rupture." Rather, the conjuncture can be read as a generalizable feature

(an "ever pre-givenness") ofthe social totality ("a structured complex unity" (ibid 198-9), a social totality rife with contradictions in varying states of"resolution," a social order in constant rupture.

This reading ofoverdetermination allows us to "theorize the forms and activities ofthe state, the institutions ofcivil society, and the realm ofideas and culture as something other than 'supports for capital,'" as Alain Lipietz argues (Gibson-Graham

1996:30). The analytical project thus becomes the specification, "for particular historical periods," how such structures and processes have nevertheless come to playa role as supports for capital.

One aspect ofan overdetermined analysis is the way in which the notion ofvalue enters an understanding ofsubjectivity. According to Amariglio and Callari, the concept

56 ofvalue should be understood as advanced by a Marx "in confrontation" with classical political economic explanatory models of"the economy" as a "self-regulating market structure" (Amariglio and Callari 1989:43). In this classical account, the economy is understood to be a self-regulating and autonomous process or "subject" that "expresses itselfin culture and politics:"

The classicals produced this subject by making the economic process itself the expression ofthe economic rationality ofgiven individuals and by reducing cultural and political behaviors as well to this given economic rationality (which...functions as an essence in classical discourse).

By contrast, Marx produced a concept ofvalue which is "not the result ofa given economic rationality nor an expression ofa universal law ofvalue nor a sign whose fixed signified is 'the economy,' but a discursive sign ofthe effects ofthe complex relations of overdetermination among economic and noneconomic processes in a capitalist social formation" (Ibid.). Marx thus "developed his own value concept not to replace the economism ofthe classicals with his own, but to dispose ofthis economism and to create the discursive conditions necessary for carrying out a nondeterminist theoretical construction ofthe capitalist social formation" (Ibid. 42).

An overdetermined analysis, therefore, would consider the various processes, including those irreducible to the economic, that constitute the social relations ofFilipina migrant domestic work. Further, an overdetermined analysis helps us to comprehend more fully what is at stake in the term "migrant Filipina domestic worker." Is it her migrancy that constitutes the conditions ofpossibility ofher exploitation? Is it the

"domesticness" ofher work, or that the use-value she produces is "care?" Is it her nationality or non- (what Parreiias calls "partial") citizenship? Is it her gendering? The

57 term "migrant Filipina domestic worker" is a site ofconvergence ofall ofthese determinants (in the 194 states to which this worker is "deployed"). The question for me becomes how to theorize or analytically frame this convergence, or convergences, in a given historical moment/location? This question is significant because the way in which we frame this convergence ofdeterminants in turn frames our feminist approaches to

Women in Development and other types of"policy change," to struggles ofclass transition, to a whole range ofpolitical projects - in short, to struggles ofagency-access for the non-citizen, upwardly-mobile, migrant domestic worker.

I would argue that what is problematic about some ofthe feminist analyses of domestic work under conditions ofmigrancy is their tendency to consider primarily only one or two ofthese determinants - generally the worker's labor conditions and her gender

- while failing to adequately consider how these determinants are always already overdetermined by the MFDW's non-citizenship, "ethnicity"l"race"l"nationality," and particular interpellation into upward-mobility. The transformative political projects that are consequently either made thinkable or unthinkable are thus flawed in the sense that in a particular conjuncture, it is a conjunctural analyis that is required. Such a conjunctural analysis could, for example, consider the ways in which regimes ofcapital accumulation in postindustrial, "newly industrializing" (eg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.), or

"developing" countries are complex gendered and gendering, raced and racializing, nationalized and nationalizing operations which interpellate the Filipina (among very specific others) into migrancy for domestic work. Such a conjunctural analysis might consider the ways in which (contested) socially permissible narratives ofgender and upward mobility in the Philippines also work to interpellate the Filipina into migrancy for

58 domestic work. Analysis ofthe conditions oflabor and migrancy (not simply the fact of migrancy)73 which in part constitute the social relations ofoverseas domestic work allows us to examine the specific biopolitics ofparticular labor markets, such as domestic or

"care" work markets.

Feminist Narratives ofthe Social Relations of

Domestic Work Production by Migrant Women

[This] massive migration is no mere coincidence ofindividual women's choices to leave the Philippines. The Philippine government receives huge sums of remittances from its overseas workers each year. "Host" country governments and private employers welcome the migrant women workers for the cheap labor that they perform. These governments and employers accrue savings not only by paying extremely low wages, but by denying public benefits and social services to these temporary workers. Finally, recruiting agencies and other entrepreneurs on each end ofthe trade route reap tremendous profits from providing employers in "host" countries with ready and willing service workers and caregivers ofall kinds. - Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics (2000: 129)

Overview

How are the conditions ofexistence ofMDWs' emergence as a waged labor category explored in the feminist literature? What are the social relations ofMDWs' production ofwhat Rhacel Salazar Parrefias calls the commodity of"care?" In this section I examine problematizations ofthe Filipina migrant domestic worker in various feminist narratives, highlighting several salient themes. In this overview section, I examine the problematization-via-statistics ofthe feminization ofFilipina labor migration, and consider the implications ofanalyses ofthe migrant domestic worker that

73 I am indebted to S. Charusheela for this insight. 59 focus on her transnational exchange-value. In sub-section B, "Domesticating the

Domestic," I consider the strengths and weaknesses ofa feminist problematization of migrant domestic work by Nicole Constable which focuses on the "domesticness" ofthe worker and her subjection to disciplinary power. In sub-section C, "National Bodies,

Devalued Commodities," I examine narratives ofthe complex processes of"racializing" subjectship and "ethnic typification" associated with migrant domestic work. Here I rely on the work primarily, but not exclusively, ofNeferti Tadiar. In sub-section D,

"'Contradictory Class Mobility' and Other Counter-Narratives," I consider other aspects ofFilipina migrant domestic work to which dominant feminist narratives have paid less attention, particularly class processes and "hidden" causes ofmigration. Here the work ofParrefias is most in focus. My discussion in each ofthese sub-sections is, generally speaking, focused on a particular author's problematization, with supporting examples from additional authors' work as appropriate.

There is a notable history offeminist scholarship connecting women's labor migration, particularly into service work, and the masculinist structuring ofpost-WWII transnational regimes ofcapital accumulation. In the U.S., this scholarship ranges from the work ofCynthia Enloe to that ofSaskia Sassen. The literature on Filipina migrant domestic workers varies significantly in its analytical emphases, all ofwhich are important. For example, Parrefias, Chang, Ehrenreich et ai, and Noble all provide some sort ofanalysis ofthe global labor market for domestic workers and discuss their migration in terms ofthe feminization ofintemationallabor, global economic restructuring, debt bondage and structural adjustment, gender-segmentation oflabor markets, and the rise ofwomen's employment in the postindustrial (and, for Noble and

60 Yeoh, et aI, the "newly industrializing") countries. Chang focuses primarily on the macropolitics ofdebt bondage and how it is connected to xenophobic immigration and welfare policy "reform." Tadiar focuses on the discursive production ofthe domestic helper in Philippine media and the uses ofthe migrant domestic worker by the postcolonial state, contrasting these with how visual and literary artists represent the social relations ofmigrant domestic work. Ehrenreich et al analyze migrant domestic work both from the perspectives ofNorth American employers and migrant worker advocates from both north and south. Constable focuses on the micropolitics of

"household rules and relations," Heyzer et al focus on the policy realm, and Parreiias combines a macro, micro, and "intermediate" level analysis.

The telling ofthe stories ofcontemporary Filipina labor migrants, and the conditions ofexistence oftheir labor, often begins with a problematization-via- statistics.74 Here I would like to both reproduce, and query the analyses mobilized through, this practice. Parreiias makes an observation shared by Chang, Opiniano, Rosca, and Heyzer et al in asserting that "the number ofbodies annually exported" from the

Philippines has steadily increased since the 1970s. While there were fewer than 50,000 land- and sea-based overseas contract workers (OCWs) "deployed" annually in the early to mid-1970s, this number increased to more than 265,000 in 1981, more than 350,000 in

1984, more than 700,000 in 1994, and more than 890,000 in 2002 (Parreiias 2001 :51,

Opiniano 2002:2, PORA 2003). These figures, which only account for legally

74 See Alcuitas, H. "Seven Years after Flor... Conditions ofOverseas Filipino Workers Worsen" Ibon Foundation Report, Manila (2002); Opiniano, J. "Migration and Social Development: Challenges to Return Migration and Reintergration in the Philippines," paper presented at 30th International Conference on Social Welfare, Manila, Philippines (2002); Villalba, M. "Philippines: Good Practices for the Protection ofFilipino Women Migrant Workers in Vulnerable Jobs," GENPROM Working Paper No.8. Geneva: Gender Promotion Programme, International Labour Office (2001); Parrefias (2001), Rosca, N. "The Philippines' Shameful Export," The Nation, April 17, 1995; 61 documented OCWs, do not include the substantial number ofundocumented migrant workers (including many domestic workers) who leave the Philippines with temporary non-migrant visas, such as tourist visas. As ofDecember 2001, the number of undocumented overseas workers is estimated by the Philippine government to be 1.62 million (pOEA 2003). In 2002, nearly 900,000 Filipinos left for overseas work in 194 countries (POEA 2003:4), with the top ten country destinations ofland-based workers as follows: Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Singapore,

Kuwait, Italy, England, and Brunei (with "permanent," "temporary," and "irregular" worker totals aggregated).75

According to Parrefias, the Filipino labor diaspora may be understood to be "both gender and class stratified," and consisting of"two distinct gendered [outmigration] flows" (Parrefias 2001 :37_8).76 She notes that while Filipino men migrate to take jobs in heavy production and construction, and thus comprise the majority ofFilipino migrants in the Middle East, Filipinas migrate to take jobs in service work and "entertainment,,,n and comprise the majority ofPhilippine migrants in most all other destinations (ibid).

Various statistics provide evidence ofthis gendered/gendering migratory flow:

In 1991, Japan Immigration Association statistics indicate that 99,710, approximately 80 percent, of 125,329 Filipinos legally residing in Japan are women. A Philippine government survey shows that in 1996 women

75 POEA, 2003, "Stock Estimates on Overseas Filipino Workers" www.poea.gov 76 This is an observation made by other scholars ofmigration ofother countries' labor diasporas as well. See: Hondagneu-Sotelu, Sassen, etc 77 I will not discuss the relations ofproduction ofoverseas performing artists (OPAs) at all, though I should and hope to in the future, since this category ofoverseas workers was, in 2000, both 96.8% women (Villalba 2001 :24), and because their labor is classed as ''performing art." (In 2000 the state transmogrified the labor classification of"entertainers" into the wildly imaginative euphemism, "professional workers.") Unfortunately I will not be able to discuss here this worker category called OPAs with any ofthe richness such a discussion deserves.

62 composed 83.3 percent ofFilipino migrants in Hong Kong, 77.1 percent in Singapore, and 78.3 percent in Italy (Parrefias 1996:38).

This accelerating flow ofFilipina workers is, notably, relatively recent. Opiniano asserts that Filipinas now "dominate Philippine international migration, as they comprise

70 percent ofthe new hires in 2000, whereas the corresponding figure in 1992 was only

50 percent (Opiniano 2002:2). Chang notes that, remarkably, "[in] 1991, women constituted a larger proportion ofthe country's overseas workforce (41 percent) than its domestic workforce (36 percent)" (Chang 2000:129). Parrefias argues that the "outflow" ofFilipinas over the last two decades represents among the largest and widest flows of contemporary women's migratory movement (Parrefias 2001:1), with more than two- thirds ofFilipina migrants across the globe employed in the "informal" sector of domestic work - domestic work here defined as "the provision ofelderly care, childcare, and/or housecleaning in private homes" (ibid). According to official Philippine government statistics, in the late 1980s, there were fewer than 300,000 migrant Filipina domestic workers worldwide (Heyzer and Wee 1994:39, as cited in Parrefias 2001:39).78

Parrefias argues that by the mid-1990s, based upon more reliable nongovernmental organization figures for a select few countries and regions, "at least 600,000" Filipina domestic workers could be "conservatively" estimated to exist across the globe. This estimate would include 130,000 - 150,000 Filipina domestics in Hong Kong; 200,000 in

Italy; 50,000 in Spain; 36,000 in Singapore; and 200,000 in the Middle East (Constable

78 Parreilas notes, however, that "government statistics cannot provide a reliable account ofthe number of Filipina domestic workers, because they exclude undocumented workers who leave the country with temporary non-migrant visas. There are many more than the official records report. Because undocumented migrants from the Philippines are concentrated in receiving countries with a larger proportion ofwomen than men (for example, Italy, Spain, and Japan), the actual number ofdomestic workers more than likely exceeds official government statistics" (Parreilas 2001:39). 63 1997, Tolentino 1996, as cited in Parrefias 2001:39). This suggests that the number of migrant Filipina domestic workers has, depending on how one reads which statistics, approximately doubled in less than a decade. As has been noted by many scholars, this ever-accelerating movement ofFilipinas is one ofseveral in which women from

"developing" countries migrate to work as domestics in postindustrialized countries such as Canada, Italy, and the U.S., in the "newly industrializing" countries ofHong Kong,

Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, and in Middle East "oil producing" states such as

Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, etc.

Such rapid increases in Filipina labor migration and, specifically, migration for entry into domestic labor, compel scholars such as Parrefias to claim that "care is now

[the Philippines'] primary export" (Parrefias 2003:41). Thus Parrefias and other critics of the feminization ofPhilippine migrant labor (including GABRIELA activist Ninotchka

Rosca in a 1995 The Nation article entitled "The Philippines' Shameful Export") argue that either the Filipina domestic laborer herself, or (the alienated product of) her labor- what Parrefias refers to as "care" - is a "commodity" that is "exported," "traded," or

"exchanged" among states "in the global market." Indeed, as Chang observes, "[such] massive migrations ofwomen have led to public outcries that the Philippine government is selling or trafficking women" (Chang 2000:129).

For feminists such as Grace Chang, Rhacel Parrefias, Arlie Hochschild, Barbara

Ehrenreich et aI, Pei-Chia Lan, and Noeleen Heyzer et aI, the feminization ofmigrant labor - at times more specifically, the "trade in domestic workers" - is problematized as a consequence ofglobal economic restructuring, in which the relocation ofmanufacturing to "developing" countries increases the demand for women's waged labor (or women's

64 increasing entry into the waged labor force) in postindustrial or newly industrializing societies. Such economic restructuring also effects the dismantling ofthe welfare state, and transformations in "gender ideologies" (Parrefias 2002:39) historically compelling women's dutiful performance ofreproductive labor (filial duty), resulting in increased demand for paid reproductive labor. "Receiving" states seeks to meet this demand (what

Heyzer and Vivian Wee call "the transfer ofthe domestic burden" [Heyzer et al

1994:37]) with women ofa specific profile (preferably unmarried, 25-35, childless, a

"new hire" vs. a "finish contract" - in short, a compliant, poorly-informed, temporary, non-citizen worker whose surplus labor can easily be appropriated and to whom the state is accountable for nothing) from societies experiencing a lack ofwell-paying jobs, debt bondage, labor "sex-segmentation," currency devaluation, rising necessary commodity prices and rents, export-orientation ofthe economy, structural adjustment, and general

"underdevelopment" (in short, "developing countries"). This problematization is an important one in that it posits a historical interarticulation ofgendering structural determinants ofFilipina labor migration in both "sending" and "receiving" countries.

(Parrefias asserts this in saying "[Filipinas migrate] from one distinct patriarchal system to another, bound by race and class, in transnational capitalism" [Parrefias 2001 :78].) But this problematization is also significant because it suggests the strength ofthe gendering, nationalizing, and capitalist impulses overdetermining each other in the biopolitical statecraft of"filling" the "labor market demand" for domestic workers. Chang even goes so far as to argue that structural adjustment and other economic development programs not only pauperize women (following from Ester Boserup, among others), but are a major determinant in forcing their transnational (versus merely rural-urban) labor migration.

65 These problematizations approach a critique offinance capital and late capitalist regimes ofaccumulation that Pheng Cheah intuits with the phrase "neocolonial globalization" and Spivak calls "the new imperialism ofexploitation as development."

However in some instances, I would argue, these problematizations ofdomestic work in migrancy could push each other further towards such a(n overdetermined) critique. I will elaborate on this shortly.

To reiterate and expand: the dominant (in part, statistically elaborated) feminist problematization ofthe feminization oflabor migration and thus the acceleration of women's migration into domestic labor is one which, at least as a macro-level analysis, often relies on "commodity" tropology, and figures migrant domestic workers as

"victims," "pawns," or, as in Parrefias' work, "servants" ofglobal capital, "propelled" into migration by their debt-bonded "sending" governments. The migrant Filipina domestic worker is valuated in this problematization for her transnational exchange- value.

Parrefias' analysis is exemplary in this regard. She writes,

[Designated] export-based nations in the global labor market such as the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka do not simply seek investments of transnational corporations and export products or goods that they manufacture in free-trade zones. They also export the bodies oftheir citizens to induce foreign currency into their economies. (Parrefias 2001:51)

Making a similar case regarding causality, Hochschild writes, "women choose to migrate for domestic work. But they choose it because economic pressures all but coerce them to. That yawning gap between rich and poor countries is itselfa form ofcoercion, pushing Third World mothers to seek work in the First for lack ofoptions closer to

66 home" (Hochschild 2002:27). Chang offers yet another illustration ofthe Filipina migrant domestic worker-as-globalization victim:

Third World debtor-nation governments have been unable and unwilling to protect their female citizens abroad, often eager instead to protect relations with the First World. The trade in women from the Philippines and elsewhere has proven immensely profitable to sending countries' governments and entrepreneurs, and highly "economical" to the governments that recruit them and the elite who employ them. When debtor nations export their women as migrant workers in the futile effort to keep up with debt payments, these women live and work in conditions ofdebt bondage, mirroring the relationship between their home and "host" countries. (Chang 2000: 151).

As these quotes indicate, Chang, Parrefias and Hochschild (at least in their macro- level analyses) problematize the transnational "trade" in domestic workers primarily as a product ofnational debt bondage. In this problematization (particularly apparent in

Chang's analysis), the MFDW is figured as national commodity whose own agency, or capacity for agency, completely disappears; that is, the MFDW is not imagined as a woman who has any real decision-making power to sell her own labor-power - she is merely "exported" by sending governments in order to prop up her home countries' debt- bonded economy through foreign currency infusion, and by enabling her family's increased consumption, etc.

Chang's overall analysis in Disposable Domestics is useful in that it focuses on what Sassen and Parrefias discuss as the "opposite turns ofnationalism" under conditions ofglobalization (Parrefias 2001, Sassen 1984, 1998). Chang discusses the

"renationalization ofpolitics" as the resurgence ofxenophobic, racist nativism by illustrating how U.S. anti-immigrant policies and welfare "reforms" such as the 1996

67 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRA),79 the 1996

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (I1RIRA),80 the

Immigration Reform and Control Act (lRCA) of 1986, California's Proposition 187 and similar legislation all seek to "extract the benefits ofimmigrants' labor while minimizing or eliminating any obligations or costs, whether social or fiscal, to the 'host' U.S. society and state" (Chang 2000:11). Although to a lesser extent than Parrefias, Heyzer et aI, or

Ehrenreich et aI, Chang also attends to the much-discussed "denationalization of economies," characterized by demand for women's labor in export-processing zones of

"developing" countries and in secondary tiers ofmanufacturing and service sectors in postindustrial countries, decentralization and deregulation ofthe few remaining manufacturing jobs in the latter, and the political economy ofthe global city (the economic center in which multinational corporations maintain central operations, and in which specialized professional services are concentrated, thus creating a demand for low- wage service labor) (Parrefias 2001 :25-6).

Interestingly, however, Chang posits the "trade" in Filipina domestic workers as one that occurs between "Third World debtor-nation governments" and "First World recruiting governments and elite," eliding the politically inconvenient issue ofthe substantial numbers ofFilipina domestic workers in otherwise ambiguously situated (-- at least within the "globalization script" [Gibson-Graham 1996]--) geopolitical locations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. Indeed, in her problematization-via-statistics, Chang observes that "[ofFilipina] overseas contract

79 The PRA marked the end ofthe US government's 6 I-year history ofproviding cash assistance to poor families with children (Chang 2000:7-8). 80 The IIRIRA reinforced the restrictions on immigrant welfare use embodied in the PRA (Chang 2000:8). 68 workers, approximately 70 percent are women working as domestic servants in middle- and upper-class homes in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, and the

United States" (Chang 2000: 129). While, to Chang's credit, she lists the Middle East and

Japan as among the wealthy "receiving" nations ofFilipina migrants, this statement clearly means to describe a bipolar economic relation (extremely wealthy country- extremely poor country) or cartography as explanation for Filipinas' migratory movement. This particular analysis is far from unique - it is ubiquitous in the literature on migration - but I would argue that what predominantly south-north imaginings of

Filipina economic migration achieve is an erasure ofthe complexities ofmigratory patterns that do not easily reinforce narratives ofnorthern capital accumulation and

"exploitation ofthe third world." It is thus crucial for feminists to consider how our analyses must change when we are forced to acknowledge, for example, that in 2002 (as noted earlier in this section), the ten most popular destinations for new deployments of

Filipino OFWs were (in descending order) Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Japan, United Arab

Emirates, Taiwan, Singapore, Kuwait, Italy, England, and Brunei (POEA 2003).81

I would argue, nonetheless, that the problematization ofthe migrant Filipina domestic worker as a "servant ofglobalization" is a far more robust one than that provided by ILO Gender Program report author and migrant worker/Women in

Development advocate Mayan Villalba.82 Her abbreviated historical account of

Philippine labor migration reproduces a strikingly depoliticized narrative ofcapital that

81 While ofcourse this ranking could (and should) be problematized, since it is based on aggregate (not gender-disaggregated) figures ofPhilippine OFWs, it is probably safe to presume that most ofthe migrants to these Asian destinations are women (whether or not it is precisely "70 percent") since, as Parrefias points out, women constitute the majority ofOFWs outside ofthe Middle East. 82 See Villalba, M. "Philippines: Good Practices for the Protection ofFilipino Women Migrant Workers in Vulnerable Jobs," GENPROM Working Paper No.8. Geneva: Gender Promotion Programme, International Labour Office (2001). 69 naturalizes labor migration as development, and solution, to the labor surplus in the

Philippines. Villalba writes that Philippine overseas employment schemes under

Ferdinand Marcos were "helped in great measure by the OPEC oil boom ofthe mid

1970s, when the revenues ofGulfStates... launched them into massive infrastructure development projects which required the hiring offoreign construction and service workers" (Villalba 2002:5, emphasis mine). Another "favorable" influence on Philippine overseas migration in the mid-1980s under Corazon Aquino was, according to Villalba, the "economic boom in East Asia, when Japan and the NICs ofSouth Korea, Taiwan,

Hong Kong, and Singapore experienced labor shortages" (emphasis mine) (ibid). In such an explanation ofincreasing labor migration, what remains unaddressed is why it is specific foreign women (and men) citizens, and not others, who must be hired (thus available for entry into foreign labor markets), or why it is specific countries, and not others, that experience labor shortages (versus labor surpluses) - in short, what is not considered are the biopolitics oflabor migration, or even, the biopolitics ofglobal capital

(also theorized as the international division oflabor).

The acceleration, since the 1980s, oflabor migration feminization begun in the

1970s is an important topic deserving continued scholarly attention, and the research on

Filipina and other migrant domestic laborers (particularly women from Sri Lanka,

Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan) contributes significantly to this scholarship. I wonder, however, why there has been a relative lack offeminist interest in the social relations ofother forms ofoften highly exploitive professional migrant labor, such as nursing and other health care work. It would seem from these analyses that the feminization oflabor migration suggests only the most dire ofconsequences for women,

70 while the actual experience ofmigration is perhaps more complex, and certainly, contradictory.

Domesticating the Domestic

They constantly reminded me that they sponsored me. Even the most liberal employer treated me like I was an object that she owned... One night she told me how and where to watch the eclipse. When I told her that I would prefer to watch it on television so I could listen to the experts' explanation, shetold me that she had every right to tell me how and where I should see the eclipse and that it was for my benefit. When I told my employer that I've watched eclipses all my life in the Philippines where the view ofthe sky and the moon was not obstructed by tall buildings and other unsightly aspects ofthe city, she got upset. She told me that I was not a Canadian, and therefore that I was an ignoramus about eclipses. - Pura M. Velasco, "founding member ofthe Canadian Coalition for the Defense ofMigrant Workers' Rights and Panday Sindig, a musical collective ofFilipino workers and students," as quoted in interview with Abigail B. Bakan, co-editor ofNot One ofthe Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada83

My interest in Filipina domestic workers began in 1987 when I was conducting research on Hakka Chinese Christian identity. Su-lin [a pseudonym], a friend who lived in the village where I was working, took me to visit her elder sister, Su Ian [a pseudonym] who lived and worked on Hong Kong island. As our double decker bus wound its way along the hilly slopes, Su-lin explained to me that Su Ian and her husband employed a banmui 'Philippine girl' to take care oftheir son and clean the flat while they both worked full-time. "Filipinas," Su-lin stated bluntly and categorically, "are very stupid." She saw my shock but did not retract her statement. Instead, she defended it. Su-lin said these "maids" understood little Chinese, could not follow the simplest instructions, and were "dirty and lazy." She believed, moreover, that Filipinas' morals were questionable. "Why else," she asked rhetorically, "would they willingly leave children and husbands behind in the Philippines?" - Nicole Constable, in Preface to Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workerl4

Nicole Constable's Maid to Order in Hong Kong is an important feminist intervention which, when considered with others, moves us toward an overdetermined

83 eds. Bakan and Stasiulis, Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1997. 84 Ithaca: Cornell University, 1997. 71 analysis ofthe OFW. Constable's work is also a good illustration ofthe kind ofanalysis that fails to adequately theorize the link between certain ethnographic readings ofsubject- ship and the possibilities these accounts make intelligible or foreclose in the realm of agency-access. In her analysis ofinformal interviews with (an unspecific number of)

Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s, Constable attends to the ways in which these workers accommodate, resist, and otherwise interact in complex ways with the disciplinary biopower to which they are subjected. A strength ofConstable's study is her nuanced discussion ofthe kinds of"household rules and regulations" which structure labor conditions for the live-in domestic worker. 85 (Such "household rules and regulations" have long been an abundant source ofgrist for the feminist mill on this issue.) Examples ofthe most extreme disciplinary measures - and these are stories many ofus have heard - include attempts to eliminate the "threat" posed by otherwise

"unconstrained" sociality (by limiting phone access or visitors), mobility (by imposing curfews even on holidays), femininity (by strictly regulating attire), and myriad body- or health-maintaining activities, such as bathing, sleeping, or eating (by dictating when and how to bathe, providing unventilated or nonprivate sleeping quarters, or insufficient food). Such discipline seeks primarily to maintain a social spatial ordering - the domestic helper's "place," a place which the worker herselfis responsible for "knowing" and maintaining at all times, a place constituted by a semiotic ofgendered racial/national subordination and supremecy. It is all the more important that this social spatial ordering be maintained via various disciplinary measures - however uneven their success - because ofthe threat posed by what is often a similar relative "class positioning"

85 Live-in work is the predominant - and, for "newly deployed" MDWs, legally required - arrangement in Hong Kong (Constable 1997:10). 72 (particularly as marked by levels offormal educational attainment) ofboth worker and employer.

One ofthe most interesting aspects ofMaid to Order is Constable's discussions of

MFDWs subtle and overt forms ofresistance. Subtle forms ofresistance include strategic use ofPhilippine language, jokes and humor, strategic emotional displays, and ongoing weekly public gatherings at Central Plaza, in spite ofincreasingly vehement disapproval by Hong Kong Chinese residents. These weekly gatherings allow workers to cultivate and nurture collectivity and sociality, and spaces ofeconomic difference, in various ways. Some ofthe overt forms oforganized, collective resistance Constable discusses include marches, protests, rallies, and petition campaigns demanding higher wages, limits on work hours, and stricter policies against corrupt employment agencies or money lenders. Other organizing efforts oppose policies such as the New Conditions ofStay and the forced remittance program mandated by Philippine Executive Order 85786 (Constable

1997:164).

Constable notes, however, that such collective organized resistance has been largely unsuccessful, and suggests that this is due in part to insufficient worker participation (worker apathy). This move is problematic on at least two levels. First, it too easily glosses the structural impossibility ofcertain kinds ofagency-access available to the MFDW because ofthe conditions ofher migrancy and labor as a non-citizen.

Hong Kong policy makers ultimately have little, ifany, motivation to respond to her demands, particularly because she is so replaceable. Secondly, the suggestion that the

86 Executive Order 857, adopted in 1982, mandated that Filipino domestic workers remit 50 percent oftheir earnings through Philippine banks, under penalty ofnon-renewal ofpassports (thus curtailing eligibility for overseas employment). 73 MFDW should be willing to sacrifice her job - ajob which takes enormous resources to obtain and maintain - too easily dismisses the power ofthe desire for upward mobility and the constraints which preclude this upward mobility in the Philippines. This reading does not consider that agency-access in this context is a structural impossibility, without those who possess the privileges ofcitizenship working to create spaces ofagency-access for the non-citizen MFDW. This is the difference between recognizing "fact" versus

"conditions" ofmigrancy.

Further, Constable concludes that MFDWs "resist oppression in certain ways but also simultaneously participate in their own subordination" (Constable 1997:12) by engaging in "covert and insidious forms ofself-discipline that can undermine and restrict their ability to create fundamental social change" (ibid p.14). Such forms of"self- discipline" include attempts by MFDWs to "maximize their productivity, to get along better with employers, and to 'professionalize' their image, even at the cost ofbecoming ever more obedient and hardworking." This is an interpretation ofsubject-ship - an account ofself-disciplining behaviour whose motivation is uncertain, but whose effects in terms oftransformative social possibilities are clear. She writes:

The problem is not that foreign domestic workers lack class consciousness or an awareness ofthe historical context in which they live and work, of problems with the Philippine economy, or ofglobal patterns of migration... The problem is that despite the important improvements that DW organizations have helped to bring about, the overall structural position ofDWs remains relatively unchanged. Domestic workers may be aware ofcertain structures ofpower, but their protests do not come close to touching or addressing the more pervasive local and global structures. By and large resistance remains on a discursive level, expressed quietly and as a form ofpersonal release... (Constable 1997: 209-10).

74 Again, I would argue that what is missing from this analysis is the consideration ofhow agency-access can happen structurally for the MFDW. Constable's too-narrow focus on the "domesticness" ofthe migrant domestic work production neglects other crucial, structural determinants (her non-citizenship) that, ifconsidered, would open up different possibilities for transformative projects, including alliance- and coalition-building.

National Bodies, Devalued Commodities

Foreign female domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates come from different parts ofthe world; however, South Asian countries, namely India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Indonesia are the major providers... Filipina domestic workers were traditionally most in demand [in the 1980s] among the elite in the United Arab Emirates. At one point, having a foreign female domestic worker from the Philippines was considered a family status symbol. Filipinas were preferred over other nationals because oftheir perceived level ofmodernity, education and ability to speak English. As a result, they were the highest paid foreign female domestic workers. Indians were at the bottom ofthe salary scale and Sri Lankans in the middle... Recently, the trend offoreign female domestic workers from the Philippines and India is receding. Domestic workers from the Philippines are moving up the employment ladder [and becoming] drivers. - Rima Sabban, in "Migrant Women in the United Arab Emirates: The case of female domestic workers"s7

The employers much prefer Filipinos because they see Filipinos as honest and dependable. They much prefer them to other nationalities that are stereotyped as the types who would steal. Here [in Rome], ifa family employs a Filipina, it shows that they are rich because Filipinos get paid a lot more than Bangladeshis and Peruvians, for example. - "Jennifer Jeremillo" (a pseudonym), as quoted by Rhacel Salazar Parreiias in Servants ofGlobalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work88

It is possible to conceive domestic enslavement as part ofan ongoing process of production ofa new "race," which has as yet no discernible collective identity, but exists only as a pool ofworkers fulfilling class, gender, and nationality specifications. We are apprehending a process ofracialization that has not congealed into a fully developed discourse of"race"... The physical as well as

87 Geneva: Gender Promotion Programme, International Labour Office, 2001. SS Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. 75 verbal practices inscribing domestic helpers' bodies as other and less than human (which is itself in the process ofbeing redefined through the terms of global subjectivity) are in this moment inchoate and unsystematic...They are as much acts ofdenial ofgender, class, and sexual sameness (or threat ofequivalence within global terms) as acts of"racial" marking ofdeviation from any particular norm. - Neferti Xina Tadiar, "Domestic Bodies ofthe Philippines"

In her 1997 article, "Domestic Bodies ofthe Philippines,,,s9 Neferti Xina Tadiar analyzes Philippine media reports ofthe abuse and torture ofFilipina domestic workers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, and makes two critical observations. The first is that these reports indicate how Filipina overseas domestic workers are constituted by their employers as "corporeal objects of use," or "bodies without subjectivity" (Tadiar 1997:153). Her second, and equally important, observation is that these media reports also demonstrate how the diaspora of overseas domestic workers (and overseas workers more generally) are constituted as a national body for a Philippine national audience. She argues that these simultaneous moves subject overseas domestic workers' bodies to a discursive repetition ofthe violence perpetrated by abusive employers - the media performs "discursive autopsies" on domestic helpers' violated bodies, using them "as signs and sites for the nation's struggle for subject-status on the global scene" (ibid). Tadiar's analysis is crucial in advancing an overdetermined understanding ofthe OFW, for it works to map the

"contradictions and congruences among several systems ofvalue and differentiation" which "motor the production" ofboth domestic helpers and the nation (Tadiar 1997:154).

Although overseas work is extremely varied (to which a search ofthe hundreds of available overseas jobs on the POEA website will attest - who would have known

89 Sojourn, Vol. 12, No.2 (1997), pp.153-91. 76 Bahrain is currently recruiting for aerobics instructors?90), Tadiar notes that it is the female domestic helper who serves as "the predominant representative figure" ofFilipino

OFWs in Philippine media reports. 91 In these reports, the image ofthe OFW as a

"suffering body" is ubiquitous (ibid). Detailed descriptions ofthe sexual, affective, and other physical violence to which these women are subjected "demonstrate the way in which domestic helpers are considered bodies without subjectivity, corporeal objects at the mercy and for the pleasure ofthose who buy them from the recruitment agency"

(Tadiar 1997:155).

Notably, Tadiar argues that a commodity tropology is useful here because domestic helpers "are paid not for a specific skill," but rather for their gendered, "raced," and classed bodies, as "disenfranchised women from a third world country" who

"embody" a variety offunctions and services expected at the beck and call oftheir employers (ibid). Tadiar makes a useful point here in highlighting that a determinant of the value ofthe Filipina domestic worker's labor-power is the particular ways in which she is simultaneously "raced"/"nationalized" (as the Singaporean, Kuwaiti, et al citizen's non-citizen subordinate other), gendered (since she performs "feminine" labor), and assigned a class position (one that is subordinated both in the employer-worker relation, and in the citizen-to-citizen relation, with the citizen as a metonym for the state ofher citizenship).

This observation echoes that ofCecilia Marie Rio, who makes a similar argument in "This Job Has No End," a study ofthe class transition ofpostbellum African American

90 Visit www.poea.phil.gov 91 With the recent release oftwo dozen Filipino men workers from a Kuwaiti prison, after taking the fall for a phony business deal, perhaps this feminized profile will begin to change. 77 women who moved into domestic work under the conditions ofwaged labor, from conditions ofslavery. In the rapid industrialization and urbanization occurring in the

U.S. during the post-Civil War period from 1870 to 1920, the social relations ofdomestic labor production were shaped by the emergence of"new social meanings attached to race, gender and work," including new models for women and the home (Rio 1999:26):

Against the ideal images ofessentially white homes, white women and unpaid domestic labor were their devalued "others" - representations of the black shanty or ghetto dwelling, the "black/negro" woman and paid labor. With slaves no longer legally defined as chattels but designated as human, a whole new set ofdiscursive hierarchies became part ofthe regulation ofthe strict boundary between black and white. The enforcement ofracial difference centered less upon representations of blacks as animal or subhuman and shifted to other meanings still tied up in a slave semiotic... The rhetoric ofrace was continually drawn on to differentiate unpaid domestic labor (white, feminine, nurturing, and pure) from paid domestic labor (dirty, masculine, physical, and degraded) and hence one group ofwomen (white women) from another (black women). (Rio 1999:27).

While their contexts are ofcourse radically different (with different valences for racialized unpaid feminine labor in particular), these examples illustrate that the valuation ofdomestic work and domestic workers - including the valuation which legitimizes violence, sexual assault, non-payment ofwages, unending work hours, deportation, mobility prohibition, passport theft, and affective disciplinary measures ofall sorts - operates through and effects systems ofgender difference, racial or citizen difference, and class position difference.

The social relations ofdomestic work production by women migrants include the

"inchoate" practices ofnational and citizen differentiation and ordering that characterize a given labor market. Examples ofwhat Parrefias calls "ethnic typification" (Parrefias

2001 :3) ofFilipinas are abundant in the literature on migrant domestic workers in various

78 countries, and the varied effects ofthis practice attest to what Tadiar calls the

"uncongealed" racialization that shape these workers labor conditions. In Hong Kong,

Constable's Su-lin perceives Filipinas to be "lazy and stupid," while in the United Arab

Emirates, Rima Sabban argues that Filipinas are "preferred over other nationals because oftheir perceived level ofmodernity, education and ability to speak English." Such hierarchization effects the determination ofwages in the UAE, as Sabban explains:

The wages offoreign female domestic workers in the UAE vary according to their ethnic background and are not based on their education or previous skills. A college-educated foreign female domestic worker from the Philippines is paid the same wage as a high-school graduate or a middle school-educated Filipina, but earns much more than a foreign female domestic worker from India, regardless ofthe latter's skills (Sabban 2000:24).

Giuseppina D'Alconzo, et al note a similar citizen/race/wage differentiation practice in

Italy, where migrant Filipinas perform domestic labor within the same market as migrant

Albanian, Brazilian, Ghanaian, and other Eastern European, Central and South American, and African women. They write,

The average wage varies according to the modalities ofthe work contract and ofthe geographical area... in the South, the medium wage for a housekeeper who cohabits with the family-employer is around 1 million Lira, but only for Filipino workers, traditionally deemed particularly reliable and honest (D'Alconzo 2000: 11).

These examples ofwage differentials for domestic work based upon racial/ethnic hierarchies highlight that while domestic work is inscribed in relations ofracial/ethnic otherness, this inscription is variegated, both materially (in terms ofwage rate) and ideologically (in terms offeminine otherness narratives). Filipinas earn more than other migrant women because they are coded as "particularly reliable and honest" or relatively

"modem, educated, and English-speaking."

79 Tadiar further elaborates the commodity trope in describing the domestic worker

by arguing that, following Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Filipina domestic helpers are

"labour-commodities" - women who are "[n]ot free to sell their own labour-power but

are instead themselves sold 'as bearers ofthat labour-power' by others (their family, their

recruiters, their government, as well as their employers)." Thus, Tadiar concludes,

Filipina domestic helpers are "new industrial slaves" (Tadiar 1997: 156).

While the domestic worker-as-slave representation is undoubtedly appropriate in

many instances, I would argue that feminists (particularly those born into citizenship in the postindustrialized world like myself) should be circumspect about too-broadly applying this representation ofmigrant domestic work as modem slavery. It is possible, particularly ifwe consider the insights offered by Parrefias and Constable regarding the affective world and self-constitution ofthe MFDW, to read some domestic workers as not

simply unfree "bearers oflabor-power" that are "sold" by "their families, recruiters,

government, and employers." Perhaps we can advance additional feminist analyses of postcolonial gendering ifwe take into account the ideological operations at work in the

decision-making processes ofthe Filipina migrant domestic workers in Parrefias' or

Constable's study, for example, who clearly are sellers oftheir own labor-power. I say this not to undermine the "modem day slavery" insight where it fits, only to suggest there

are moments when this fit is unclear. Other research suggests that there are, indeed,

many ways in which Filipina domestic workers attempt to negotiate, and exert more

control over, the conditions under which they will labor. Such attempts include decision

making and other social and affective practices which clearly render them, in their own

80 understanding ofthemselves, as sellers oftheir own labor-power, and independent producers ofthe commodity ofcare.

"Contradictory Class Mobility" and other Counter-Narratives

In the Philippines, I have maids. When I came here [to Rome], I kept on thinking that in the Philippines, I have maids and here, I am one. I thought to myselfthat once I go back to the Philippines, I will not lift my finger and I will be the signora. [Laughs.] My hands will be rested and manicured, and I will wake up at twelve 0'clock noon. - Gloria Yogore (a pseudonym), as quoted by Rhacel Parrefias in Servants of Globalization (Parrefias 2001: 173)

When I go back [to the Philippines from Los Angeles], I want to experience being able to be my own boss in the house. I want to be able to order someone to make me coffee, to serve me food. That is good. That is how you can take back all of the hardships you experienced before. That is something you struggled for. - Joy Manlapit (a pseudonym), as quoted by Rhacel Parrefias in Servants of Globalization (Parrefias 2001: 173)

Through interviews with forty-six migrant Filipina domestic workers in Rome and twenty-six in Los Angeles, Rhacel Salazar Parrefias' Servants ofGlobalization compares these workers' experiences ofmigration and settlement in the two cities with the largest populations ofFilipino migrants in Italy and the U.S. Parrefias combines the ethnographic approach ofConstable (though methodologically Parrefias is more rigorous) with a more substantial discussion ofglobal structural determinants ofFilipina migrant domestic work. Rather than focusing primarily on the micropolitics ofthe production of care or the labor conditions ofFilipina MDWs per se, Parrefias examines these workers' experiences "through the lens" offour key institutions ofmigration - the nation-state, the transnational family, labor market conditions, and the migrant Filipino community. An animating question ofParrefias' study is, why do migrant Filipina domestic workers in

81 cities with different "contexts ofreception" encounter similar dislocations, or, following from Stuart Hall, narratives ofdisplacement? Her short answer is: because oftheir shared role as low-wage laborers in global capitalism, as servants ofglobalization.

I would argue that Parrefias' work - when considered along with the insights of

Tadiar - pushes us in new ways toward an understanding ofthe overdetermined social relations ofmigrant domestic work production. This is due less to Parrefias' basic argument that the MFDW is a "servant ofglobalization" or propelled into migration as a consequence oftransnational regimes ofcapital accumulation (an argument feminists such as Ehrenreich et al and Heyzer et al also make), but because Parrefias is able to make this argument in innovative ways by introducing an "intermediary" level ofanalysis that feminists have largely left unexamined. This level ofanalysis focuses attention on migration institutions such as the transnational family and the migrant community, complicating both macro and micro (what Parrefias calls "subject" level) analyses.

Indeed, what makes the work ofParrefias unique is her particular understanding of

MFDWs' dislocations, which involves a kind oftheorizing ofsubject-ship with provocative possibilities when considering Filipinas' struggles for agency-access.

Parrefias argues that the performance ofdomestic work by Filipina migrants should be understood as "a process ofsubject formation" characterized by various

"dislocations" (Parrefias 2001: 150; 23-36). By dislocations she means "the positions into which external forces in society constitute the subject ofthe migrant Filipina domestic worker" (Parrefias 2001 :3) and "the challenges that Filipina domestic workers encounter as they navigate through social processes ofmigration" (ibid p.31). Parrefias explains,

82 [dislocations] are the segmentations embodying [MFDWs'] daily practices in migration and settlement. As such, they are the stumbling blocks and sources ofpain engendered within social processes of migration. Dislocations define the experience ofmigration from the perspective ofthe migrant subject. They are the 'conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions ofthe individual, her sense ofself, and her ways ofunderstanding her relations to the world' ... Dislocations stem specifically from the structural location inhabited by the migrant. In the case ofmigrant Filipina domestic workers, they emerge from their structural location as racialized women, low-wage workers, highly educated women from the Philippines, and members ofthe secondary tier ofthe transnational workforce in global restructuring (ibid).

Here I would suggest, following Spivak, that perhaps we must be more circumspect about our abilities as social scientists to fully apprehend and "accurately" transcribe "the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions" ofthe migrant - no matter how thorough our interviews are or how forthcoming our interview subjects. This is, in fact, why Spivak continually differentiates in her work her concern with agency, as institutionally-validated action, rather than subject-ship, as that which exceeds the borders ofthe intending subject (Spivak 1999,2001,2003). So while I would agree that migrancy must be understood as a process of"subject formation," I would also argue that the complexity ofsuch a process, and our inability to fully access or apprehend it, cannot be underestimated.

Nonetheless, ifwe are concerned with the politically transformative possibilities ofcollectivity and agency, a discussion ofdislocations as undertaken by Parrefias can be invaluable in helping us frame some ofthese possibilities. The dislocations Parrefias elaborates include MFDWs' experience of"partial citizenship vis-a.-vis the nation-state;" the pain offamily separation and the maintenance oftransnational households; the pain of"contradictory class mobility" experienced as "deskilling" and the inability to enter

83 overseas jobs commensurate with their education and professional experience; and finally, "social exclusion and feelings ofnonbelonging" vis-a.-vis "the dominant society" in Rome and "middle-class members ofthe Filipino migrant community" in Los Angeles

(ibid p.3). Since there exists substantial scholarship regarding the pain offamily separation in migration (see Ehrenreich et aI, Heyzer et al), the kinds ofchallenges Asian migrants face in racist and xenophobic "host" societies (see Takaki 1990, Chang 1991,

Lowe 1998, Zia 2000 ad nausem), and the violence ofclass processes in Philippine societies (see Francisco 1987, Constantino 2000, et al) I will focus my briefdiscussion here on Parrenas' analyses ofthe dislocations of"contradictory class mobility." (A brief discussion ofParrenas' take on politics ofthe transnational family occurs in the following section ofthis paper.)

Parrenas posits that migrant Filipina domestic workers "define their sense ofself and place in the global labor market from the subject-position ofcontradictory class mobility," which refers to their simultaneous experience ofupward mobility (through

"increase in financial status") and downward mobility (through "decline in social status") as a result oflabor migration (Ibid. 150). Notably, Parrenas asserts that the women she interviewed spoke "with much greater bitterness" ofthe pain ofunderemployment and decline in social status than the pain associated with the inability to "properly" mother their children because oftheir migration (Ibid.151).

It is widely observed in the literature on migrant women domestic workers, and particularly those from the Philippines, that the majority are not, in fact, the poorest ofthe country's poor, but are college-educated, with professional career experience (many in education and health care). The majority are ofPhilippine middle-class backgrounds, and

84 enter into migrancy for domestic work in order to maintain an upwardly-mobile trajectory for their family, which includes becoming propertied and providing higher education for their children, siblings, or extended family members (Parrefias 2001, 2002; Ehrenreich

2002; Constable 1997; Bakan and Stasiulis 1997).

Parrefias argues that for the Philippine labor migrant, "financial resources... determine the likelihood and destination ofmigration" (Parrefias 2001:40). Other structural considerations the Philippine labor migrant faces in determining both a

"deployment destination" and "mode ofmigration,,92 include immigration policies

(particularly visa requirements), recruitment agency and transportation costs, the potential for earnings, and the extent of"social networks" which allow prospective labor migrants "to gain knowledge ofthe opportunities for and process ofmigration" (Parrefias

2001 :41). Because ofthe higher costs ofmigration and extremely restrictive visa requirements, the most sought-after destination countries, such as the U.S. and Italy, are out ofreach ofmost prospective labor migrants. Parrefias observes that since most prospective labor migrants are ineligible for permanent immigrant visas,93 many enter the

U.S. on temporary nonimmigrant visas. Temporary nonimmigrant visas are frequently only granted to those who can demonstrate a certain level ofcapital accumulation, since the application requires proofofproperty, investments, and savings in the Philippines

(ibid). The point here is that while it can be generally argued that the majority of

MFDWs are ofmiddle-class backgrounds, it should be understood that this "middle-class

92 Modes ofmigration include tourist visa, family reunification, clandestine border crossing with or without the help ofan illegal "travel agency," or direct hire (Parrefias 2001:265). 93 The primary eligibility requirement for immigrant visas to the US remains a filial tie (eg., a child under the age oftwenty-one, a spouse or "intended spouse,") to a US citizen or a "lawful permanent resident" who is a US government employee or member ofthe armed services. That is, unless one is a professional athlete. See the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1990, Section 204 - Procedure for Granting Immigrant Visas (www.immigration.gov). 85 mobility" is not the same for all migrants, particularly those who, in spite ofpooling family resources or borrowing money, can still only afford to migrate to the less costly work destinations (in terms oftravel expenses, Philippine agency, recruitment agency or illegal "travel agency" fees, etc.) ofHong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia or the Middle

East. (In this sense the MFDWs in Parrefias' study can be considered relatively more wealthy than those in Constable's study in Hong Kong, Lan's study in Taiwan, or Yeoh et aI's study in Singapore.)

The dislocation ofcontradictory class mobility, Parrefias argues, is an effect of structural forces ofglobalization, including "the unequal development ofregions, the nation-based hierarchy ofeducational qualifications, the lesser accreditation granted degrees from the Third World, and the limits ofmobility in the Philippines" (Parrefias

2001: 151). Parrefias notes that her respondents observe that they both gain and lose from the limited options ofremaining in the Philippines or migrating for domestic work (ibid).

Like other scholars ofdomestic work, Parrefias argues that the absence ofregulation, unequal relations ofpower between domestic workers and their employers, workers' migrant status, and the emotional labor (smiling, in particular) required in domestic work all work to exacerbate the pain ofcontradictory class mobility. Interestingly, she argues that MFDWs "do not passively acquiesce to the emotional tensions wrought by contradictory class mobility... but attempt to subvert the pain inflicted by their decline in social status in numerous ways" (ibid p.172). These include, "surprisingly enough,"

"accepting the racialization ofdomestics, embracing the setting ofintimacy in the workplace, and incorporating 'immediate struggles' [to improve their working conditions] in the performance ofdomestic work" (ibid).

86 The most prevalent means of"subverting the pain" ofcontradictory class mobility dislocation, however, occurs through a "fantasy ofreversal" (ibid pp.172-4). According to Parrefias, MFDWs emphasize the gains oftheir upward mobility not simply in terms of wages but also due to their increased social status in the Philippines by dint oftheir employment "abroad" (ibid). They do this by stressing that their status is higher than that ofpoorer women in the Philippines, and by fantasizing about "someday having and being personally served by their own domestics once they return to the Philippines" (ibid).

Parrefias argues, "by basing their identities within the discursive terrain of transnationalism, [MFDWs] are able to resolve the discrepancy in class status enforced by migration with the assurance ofthe greater standing that they will have in the

Philippines" (ibid).

I am not able to do the kind ofnuanced psychoanalytic reading ofthis "fantasy of reversal" that I would like to here, other than to suggest how such a fantasy indicates the incredible power ofnarratives ofupward class mobility for the Philippine burgis.94 I am interested in Parrefias discussion ofMFDWs' "fantasy ofreversal" as a means of

"reconciling" the pain ofcontradictory class mobility not because I want to encourage righteous judgement ofthese workers as "class-privileged" and thus deligitimize their

struggles or pain, but because I believe that in surfacing such a class relation, Parrefias

opens up possibilities for reconsidering what transnational feminist struggles for domestic

workers' agency-access might involve. Consideration ofthis class relation complicates

the macro problematization ofthe MFDW as a "victim" oftransnational capital or a

"commodity" that is "traded" among states in the global market, a problematization that

94 For an excellent and entertaining discussion ofthe making ofthe Philippine bourgeois class, see Francisco, Mariel et al. 1987. The History ofthe Burgis. Quezon City: GCF Books. 87 offers few, ifany, salient possibilities for political intervention, collective change, or alliance-building.

But first, some context. Parrefias makes an observation shared by other scholars ofmigrant domestic workers, which is that the international division ofreproductive labor95 (what Parrefias calls the "international transfer ofcaretaking" [Parrefias 2001 :2]) is three-tiered:

While class-privileged women purchase the low-wage services ofmigrant Filipina domestic workers, migrant Filipina domestic workers simultaneously purchase the even lower wage services ofpoorer women left behind in the Philippines. In light ofthis transnational transfer ofgender constraints..., the independent migration ofFilipina domestic workers could be read as a process ofrejecting gender constraints for different groups ofwomen in a transnational economy (ibid).

This analysis is significant in two ways. First, it acknowledges that what might be called a Philippine "sex/gender system" (Rubin 1987) (as can be observed in many other

"sex-gender systems") usually demands a transfer ofreproductive labor from woman to woman, in this case, transnational migrant domestic worker to non-migrant domestic worker (many ofwhom can themselves be considered rural migrants to urban areas in the

Philippines). In other cases, as Parrefias notes, it is often a woman family relative ofthe transnational migrant worker who is enlisted to assume the burden ofreproductive labor in her absence, rather than a husband (ifshe is married) or other male family member.

This analysis is also significant, however, in that it acknowledges something generally

95 Reproductive labor as Parrefias discusses it refers to the labor needed to sustain the productive labor force (Parrefias 200 I: 1), although the category ofreproductive labor has been elaborated in other ways by contemporary neo-marxian thinkers. 88 not mentioned in feminist narratives ofthe social relations ofmigrant domestic work production, which is that while MFDWs can certainly be considered oppressed economic migrants, they also maintain hierarchical relations with other Filipinas who are too poor to migrate:

Because migrant Filipina domestic workers are usually in the middle ofthe hierarchical chain ofcaretaking, they maintain unequal relations with less-privileged women in the Philippines... Migrant Filipina domestic workers surely take advantage of...differences in wages [to] maintain a hierarchical relationship with the domestic workers whom they hire... In the international transfer ofcaretaking, domestic workers hired by families ofdomestic workers abroad are the truly subaltern women.

This reading ofdomestic workers in the Philippines as "truly subaltern" resonates with Spivak's recent reformulation ofthe "subaltern" to mean someone "without lines of access to social mobility" (Spivak, in a lecture at the "Marxism and the World Stage

Conference," Amherst, Massachusetts, November 10, 2003).

As Parrefias analysis suggests, Filipina migrant domestic workers' desire for upward mobility can be read as contradictory in its coding power. This desire is not exactly the desire to escape poverty, nor is it unproblematically a desire to fulfill gendered/gendering filial duty to one's children and other family members (as I argue below). In Parrefias' interviews, migrant workers articulate this desire as a need - as

Parrefias asserts, "the need to accumulate capital." Despite the "disturbingly painful" dislocation ofcontradictory class mobility, Parrefias argues that migrant Filipinas "are willing to suffer a decline in labor market status, because in the developing country ofthe

Philippines... the middle class does not have and cannot achieve financial security"

89 (Parrefias 2001: 152). As Parrefias explains via a quote from Lorna Fernandez, an elderly care provider for ten years in Rome:

You have to understand that our money has no value. It is very low. In the Philippines, I was making almost 10,000 pesos a month [U.S. $400], and that was even in the provinces. I lived with my parents, and I had no housing expenses, but still I was not able to save any money. If! had not left the Philippines, I would not have been able to have a house built for my parents. You might be able to save 2000 or 3000 pesos [U.S. $80 or $120] here or there but still goods are very expensive in the Philippines (ibid).

Ifthe "economic insecurities ofthe middle class in the Philippines" (ibid p.172) should not be too-easily coded as "poverty" compelling migration into domestic work, neither can such insecurities be too-easily dismissed as productive ofmerely burgis desires.

There is a liminal space here between need and desire for upward-mobility, one that is considered in important ways in postmodernist feminist economic critiques ofmodernist feminist arguments for women's "liberation" through employment, or entry into capitalism.96 Parrefias does well to remind us that "in the Philippines, where at least 70 percent offamilies live in poverty, a middle-class status does not constitute a comfortable and secure lifestyle" (Parrefias 2001 :63).97

Another issue emerging from Parrefias' analysis that I would like to briefly mention here is that while the MFDWs Parrefias interviewed stated their primary reason for migrating was economic, their discussion ofwhat Parrefias calls the "hidden causes" ofmigration also suggest a desire to escape constraints imposed by a Philippine sex/gender system. For example, migration as a gendered "strategy offamily

96 See Charusheela, S. 2003. "Empowering Work? Bargaining Models Reconsidered" in Barker, Drucilla and Edith Kuiper, eds. Toward a Feminist Philosophy o/Economics. New York and London: Routledge. 97 Parrefias further argues that the middle class in the Philippines took an especially sharp downturn in the mid-1980s with the further devaluation ofthe peso by the IMF (Parrefias 2001 :64).

90 maintenance" (which Parrefias points out is different for men than for women) can be deployed as a "covert strategy to relieve women ofburdens in the family," since Filipinas otherwise might not "have the means to relieve themselves ofthe double day, or the

'second shift'" ofreproductive labor including child care, elder care, and housework

(Parrefias 2001 :64). Further, in Rome, Parrefias notes that fourteen ofthe twenty women respondents who were legally married at the time oftheir migration sought to leave an abusive or philandering husband, partners who were otherwise "irresponsible" as providers, or partners who had abandoned them, leaving them alone to raise their children. Thus, Parrefias argues, "while on the surface, women who are abandoned by their husbands seem to be motivated solely by the economic benefits ofmigration, their... motive cannot be situated solely in the overarching world-system ofglobal capitalism. It must also be placed in the context ofgender inequalities that have shaped their experiences and positions as single mothers" (Ibid. 68). Motive must also be situated, Parrefias argues, within the context ofa highly "sex-segmented" Philippine labor market which limits the job opportunities available to Filipinas. These "hidden causes" ofmigration disrupt and move us away from more common narratives of causality that are not only capitalocentric (MFDW as pawn ofglobal capital), but pityingly figure Filipinas as self-sacrificing "mother martyrs" willing to suffer the humiliations and violences ofdomestic work for the good ofthe family (I would argue this figuring is at work in some feminist gendering practices that posit the migrant domestic workers' "underdeveloped" gendering against the superior western sovereign feminist subject ofrespectable bourgeois paid employment).98 Parrefias' discussion of

98 For an excellent discussion ofsuch practices of"imperialist feminism," see Meyda Yogenoglu's 91 these hidden causes ofmigration also works to destabilize nationalist developmentalist narratives interpellating Filipinas into labor migration by valorizing their sacrifices while refusing to acknowledge the economic and other violences women (and men) face due to the operations ofa Philippine sex/gender system.

I have discussed previously how the problematization ofMFDWs as "victims" or

"servants ofglobalization" can, when situated strictly within a macro-level analysis, be read as denying the migrant Filipina domestic worker any capacity for agency. Because, however, Parrefias does not exclusively situate the "servant ofglobalization" within a macro-level analysis, she opens up the possibility ofimagining structurally possible, politically transformative projects based on a potential transnational collectivity of

MFDWs (and conceivably, I would argue, other migrant domestic workers). This collectivity would be constituted by what Parrefias argues are the common dislocations faced by MFDWs. She writes, "[MFDWs'] shared experiences ofdislocations are the tropes ofalliances among them. They may draw cross-national alliances on the basis of these dislocations and consequently perceive themselves as part ofa global community of workers dislocated into low-wage labor by the economic turmoil cause by global restructuring in the Philippines" (Parrefias 2001:4). This collectivity, I would argue, is the potential basis for a "ruptural unity" that, when instantiated by organizations of

MFDWs and their allies, can work to transform the social relations ofdomestic work production. Further, Parrefias' attention to the "third tier" domestic workers in the international transfer ofcaretaking suggests that feminist struggles for agency-access for domestic workers should include not simply transnational migrants, but those whose

Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading ofOrienta/ism, 1998, Cambridge University Press. 92 working conditions are also characterized by absence ofregulation, hierarchical power relations, low status, and low wages in the Philippines.

"National Development," Care Crises, and the Overseas Woman Worker

[Government shall] continue the overseas employment program as an alternative source ofemployment opportunities, provided that this does not result in an undue drain in scientific/technical expertise and locally needed and middle-level skills. -1993-1998 Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan

While recognizing the significant contribution ofFilipino migrant workers to the national economy through remittances, the State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development. .. - Section 2c, Philippine Republic Act 8042, a.k.a. the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act, 1995

Government shall... engage in employmentfacilitation [emphasis original] which refers to developing and improving access ofFilipino workers to employment opportunities and alternatives, whether locally or abroad [emphasis mine]. Overseas employment remains to be a legitimate option for the country's work force. As such, government shall fully respect labor mobility, including the preference ofworkers for overseas employment. Protection shall be provided to Filipinos who choose to work abroad and programs to effectively reintegrate them into the domestic economy upon their return shall be put up. Better employment opportunities and modes ofengagement in overseas labor markets shall be actively explored and developed, consistent with regional and international commitments and agreements. -1998-2004 Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan99

The Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act, excerpted in epigraph two

above, was passed in haste in 1995 amidst Philippine "public furor" over the Singaporean

state execution ofFlor Contemplacion (Villalba 2001:13). Abigail Bakan and Daiva

Stasilulis, in their study ofmigrant domestic workers in Canada, write that "[i]n the face

ofoutrage expressed by political groups ranging from the extreme left to the Christian

99 See the Philippine National Economic Development Agency website at http://www.neda.gov.phlmtpdp2001/Chapter02/chapter2.htm 93 right, President Ramos hailed Ms. Contemplacion a national heroine. His wife, Amelita,

was present at the Manila airport to join supporters awaiting the return of

Contemplacion's body. The incident prompted a diplomatic crisis between the two

Southeast Asian neighbors as both countries withdrew their ambassadors" (Bakan and

Stasiulis 1997).

The full title ofthe law declares the law's intended purpose: "An Act To Institute

Policies OfOverseas Employment And Establish A Higher Standard OfProtection And

Promotion OfThe Welfare OfMigrant Workers, Their Families And Overseas Filipinos

In Distress" (ibid). A reading ofboth the title and excerpt ofPR Act 8042 should indicate that the Philippine statist imaginary, in no uncertain terms, disarticulates

"national development" and overseas employment ofPhilippine nationals. This

("economic") non-relation is emphasized even as the law acknowledges two particular responsibilities ofthe Philippine state to its citizens working overseas. The first responsibility is to "institute policies" regarding overseas employment (suggesting, hitherto, an insufficiency of"instituted policies"). The second need is to "establish a higher standard ofprotection ofthe welfare ofmigrant workers, their families, and [those

migrant workers] in distress." This distinction between welfare protection and promotion recipients, too, is interesting. There are Filipino migrant workers, migrant workers'

families, and migrant workers in distress. Not all migrant workers are in distress, but all

migrant workers need "a higher standard ofprotection and welfare promotion" - as do

their families.

Republic Act (RA) 8042, signed by Fidel Ramos, is the first Philippine law to

address the "protection" and "welfare" ofwomen overseas workers in the twenty-six

94 years since overseas employment promotion first became an official state policy. Lifting language from RA 7192, The Women in Development and Nation-Building Act of 1992, the Migrant Workers Act reads, "The State affirms the fundamental equality before the law ofwomen and men and the significant role ofwomen in nation-building" (Section

2d). The forms of"protection" and "welfare promotion" ofoverseas women workers provided for in the act are noteworthy: "Recognizing the contribution ofoverseas migrant women workers and their particular vulnerabilities, the State shall apply gender sensitive criteria in the formulation and implementation ofpolicies and programs affecting migrant workers and the composition ofbodies tasked for the welfare ofmigrant workers" (ibid).

In essence, this has meant the creation ofaffirmative action-oriented bureaucracy and training, and the redirection ofexisting bureaucracy, to make overseas worker deploymenta more professionalized, data-gathering, and "gender-sensitive" state- controlled process - one that seeks to contain the excess ofillegal recruitment, and constrain deploymentto only those countries where bilateral agreements or existing labor laws "protect the rights" ofmigrant workers. There is nothing in the law that asserts as a desire or policy objective the reduction in overseas employment, much less the overseas employment ofFilipinas, despite "their particular vulnerabilities."

State infrastructure tasked with administration and protection ofoverseas worker programs is expanding, however notoriously ineffectual. 100 The Department ofLabor and Employment (DOLE) oversees the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration

100 Villalba notes that the state bureaucracy is moving towards full implementation ofthe Migrant Workers Act of 1995, however, "lack offunds and personnel and bureaucratic red tape hamper the effectiveness of the law. The sheer size ofthe migrant populations overseas and the complexity oftheir problems require much more than the law can provide. Up to now, important provisions ofthe law remain unimplemented" (Villalba 2002: 16-7).

95 (POEA), which monitors the deploymentofworkers, and the Overseas Workers Welfare

Administration (OWWA), which provides services to migrants in "receiving" or

"destination" states. The OWWA aids migrants in various countries by providing free legal assistance and counseling, assistance with "repatriation," insurance coverage, and

"loan programs for housing and microbusiness enterprises." However, the assistance that

OWWA can offer is limited by its lack ofpower to override the laws and jurisdiction of

"receiving" nations (Parrefias 2001 :53-54).

At the time Ferdinand Marcos signed the 1974 Labor Code (Presidential Decree

442) establishing the Philippine's first Overseas Employment Program (OEP), he stressed that promoting overseas employment was simply a "temporary measure" with which to address rising unemployment (Villalba 2001 :5, et al). As suggested, however, by the language ofthe 1998-2004 Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan regarding government's "facilitation" ofemployment "abroad," overseas employment no longer seems to be considered a "stop-gap" measure because, as seemingly every scholar/advocate ofFilipina migrant workers points out, "[r]emittances - mostly from migrant domestic workers - constitute the economy's largest source offoreign currency, totaling almost $7 billion in 1999" (Parrefias 2003:41). Or, as Jeremaiah Opiniano writes,

[t]he Philippine government values these migrants because oftheir remittances, the value ofwhich has risen from a low ofUS$1 03 million in 1975 to a high ofUS$6.794 billion in 1999. In 2001, amid the uncertainties provoked by the events ofSeptember 11, Filipino migrants sent home US$6.234 billion - thus buffering the Philippine economy from the effects ofthe economic crisis, in the same way that remittances made the Philippines one ofthe least affected in Southeast Asia by the 1997 Asian financial crisis (Opiniano 2002:2).

96 Other statistics round out this structural portrait: the largest remittances are from North

America, Europe, and Asia (Villalba 2002:7). Thirty-four to fifty-four per cent ofthe

Philippine population is sustained by remittances from migrant workers, roughly two thirds ofwhich are women (Parrefias 2003:39).

As can be guessed from statistics documenting increasing numbers ofoverseas workers during the past three decades, Marcos' successors Corazon Aquino, Fidel

Ramos, Joseph Estrada, and the current Philippine President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, have all actively pursued policies of"manpower exportation." Indeed, a central contradiction ofstate discourse regarding Philippine overseas labor can be expressed as the apparent desire to both acknowledge the role migrant labor plays in "stabilizing" the debt-bonded Philippine economy while simultaneously denying the state's role in actively pursuing a policy oflabor exportation.

In the wake ofthe execution ofContemplacion, however, Ramos issued several statements explicitly stating that his administration "had no program for overseas employment," (Candazo 1998:2). Interestingly, he also called for initiatives to "keep migrant mothers at home" (Parrefias 2003 :40), declaring, "we are not against overseas employment ofFilipino women. We are against overseas employment at the cost of family solidarity" (ibid). As Rhacel Salazar Parrefias observes, "government officials and journalists denounce migrating mothers, claiming they have caused the Filipino family to deteriorate, children to be abandoned, and a crisis ofcare to take root in the

Philippines" (ibid). Parrefias argues that "sensationalist media reports on the suffering of children in transnational families ... tend to vilify migrant mothers, suggesting that their children face more profound problems than do those ofmigrant fathers" (ibid). The kind

97 ofnationalist gendering animating "care crisis" rhetoric and state and media exhortations for a "return ofmigrant mothers" ignores that the Philippines has grown "increasingly dependent on their remittances" (ibid:41). According to Parrefias,

To acknowledge this reality could lead the Philippines toward a more egalitarian gender ideology. Casting blame on migrant mothers, however, serves only to divert society's attention away from children's needs, finally aggravating their difficulties by stigmatizing their family's choices (ibid).

Conclusion

Legal recognition ofa collective organization ofdomestic workers [in Canada] would require new and different laws, whose very implementation would mark both a change in the balance ofpolitical forces and the reconception ofthe value ofdomestic labour provided by immigrant women workers. Judy Fudge, in "Little Victories and Big Defeats: The Rise and Fall of Collective Bargaining Rights for Domestic Workers in Ontario"10 I

We would close down the city. Ifwe didn't go to work, the mothers would go crazy, and they'd drive their husbands crazy, and no one could work. Ifthere's a garbage strike, the trash just lies there. Ifthere's a postal strike, the mail doesn't get delivered. But ifthe nannies were to strike it would be different. You can't just leave a baby around until there's someone ready to take care ofit. -- Anonymous "Global Woman," quoted in Global Woman (Ehreneich et al2002: 35)

To argue that one's citizenship or gender are among many determinants ofone's waged labor possibilities is not a new insight. 102 What has interested me in this exercise is the particular alignments (or "accumulation ofcontradictions," ifyou like) of citizenship, gendering, and class-as-exploitation that (over)determine the waged labor of overseas Filipina domestic workers in a given conjunctural moment and in particular

101 In Not One o/the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, eds. Bakan and Stasiulis, Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1997. 102 See Charusheela's excellent analysis ofthis in her critique ofneo-classical theoretical bargaining models and the raced and nationalized tracking ofwomen into "unskilled" paid employment (Charusheela 2003). 98 locations. These analyses make important arguments - that the (under)paid reproductive labor of"care workers" enables economic growth in their "host" countries and prevents economic collapse in their "sending" countries, that labor migration into domestic work involves different "modes ofsubjectivization," that MFDWs are an unstably racialized

"pool ofworkers fulfilling class, gender, and nationality specifications" (Tadiar 1997), and that MFDWs themselves employ "servants ofglobalization."

These analyses move us towards an overdetermined analysis ofthe OFW and a feminist politics that continues to critique global economic restructuring and economic development as determinants ofthe upwardly-mobile Filipina's entry into capitalism via migrant domestic work, while simultaneously recognizing that - just as for the upwardly- mobile laboring woman in postindustrial societies who also "must" enter into paid labor - these are perhaps not the only, or always dominant, determinants (which is how they tend to be depicted in feminist "juggernaut" narratives ofcapital expansion and globalization). Keeping in mind Marx's argument that subsumption into a particular regime ofcapital accumulation can be viewed as nonsubsumption's less worse alternative, perhaps continued movement towards an overdetermined analysis ofthe

OFW will allow us to consider (as Marjolein van der Veen does in her study ofsex

103 workers ) that what makes the migrant domestic worker a "victim" ofglobal capital in some ofthe feminist literature I examine is not so much her entry into capitalism, but her

103 See "Beyond Slavery and Capitalism," in Gibson-Graham, J.K. et al., eds. Class and its Others. Minneapolis, London: University ofMinnesota Press, 2000. In this article, van der Veen describes prostitution as independent commodity production, which "involves a class process in which the individual worker both produces and appropriates his or her own surplus labor" (van der Veen 2000: 132). She posits that the same class relation in independent commodity production "may at times yield prosperity and freedom and at other times danger and repression for its participants, depending on the context' (emphasis mine, ibid p.134). Some indpendent commodity producers may flourish, accumulate, or even move into another class relation... others may suffer from the effects ofcompetition, the lowering ofprices and earnings, deteriorating working conditions, and constant physical danger. 99 deviance from "acceptable" liberal or modernist feminist models ofentry into capitalism. 104

The class processes constituting and being constituted by migrant women domestic workers are contradictory and overdetermined "symptoms" ofthe socially permissible gender narratives (Spivak 1999) that "inscribe women in the gift imaginary, all over the world, but differently" (Spivak 2000). In the move to represent the

(southern) migrant domestic worker primarily as "victim of(northern) global capital," we may overlook inconvenient contradictions that, ifapproached without sororal benevolence (Spivak 1999) or biopolitical statist explanatory models, might allow us to work more effectively toward institutionally-validating her action. This work is heterogeneous and highly contingent. Agency-access in some instances might mean struggles to increase the ambit ofstate regulation ofwages, reducing the ambit ofstate regulation regarding work visas for non-citizens, voluntarily increasing the wages and improving the working conditions ofdomestic workers (versus quibbling about whether or not it is a violation offeminist practice to hire such workers), and working to make efforts ofdomestic workers to unionize structurally possible. These are all massive examples ofthe work that might be done, though real-world examples remain relatively few. Nonetheless, it is such projects that feminists must consider, as called for by domestic workers themselves, ifwe are to effectively advance feminism within decolonization rather than gender and development (Spivak 1988).

104 In addition to van der Veen, I am particularly indebted to S. Charusheela for this analysis. 100 CHAPTER THREE

"FILIPINIZING" CULTURE, MILITARIZING DEVELOPMENT:

MUSIC, TIME, WAR, MINDANAO

You are not a Filipino ifyou are against the peace and progress being offered by the Balikatan 2002 (US-Philippine military "anti-terrorism exercises"). You are not a Filipino ifyou are against the help being offered by a friend. - Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, 9 February 2002105

On the mountain there is no citizenship. There is no nationality. There is only belonging to the earth. - Joey Ayala, 13 August 1994106

Ang dagta ng mga puno't halaman/ay ang dugong nanalaytay sa ating katawan. The sap coursing through the trees and plants is the blood flowing through our veins. [translation modified] - Lyrics of"Yayeyan" by Grace Nono, comprised of''translated excerpts from Chief Seattle's 1852 letter to the U.S. President" (from Gpo/Affirmation, 1995)

Introduction: Entanglement

The sublime dissonance ofthe utterances above highlights a central concern of this paper - the remarkable contestation ofmeaning and affect associated with projects of national belonging and collective attachment in the contemporary Philippines. Gloria

Macapagal-Arroyo's (GMA's) utterance - fevered, flush-faced, an accusation and threat.

An assembling ofdesire: the desire to be Filipino attaching to a desire to receive

105 See Joel San Juan et al. "Balikatan Kinks Ironed Out, Says Government," The Manila Times, 31 January 2002. 106 See Eric Caruncho, Punks, Poets, Poseurs: Reportage on Pinoy Rock andRoll, Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, 1996, p.l37. 101 American assistance. The desire to discipline Filipino-ness attaching to what Vicente

Rafael calls white love. 107

This histrionic official nationalism involves a double coding. First, there is the developmentalist coding ofU.S. military "advising" and "training" ofArmed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the waging ofvirtuous war against Muslims or Moros.108 This is how the erosion ofPhilippine "sovereignty" becomes coded as "help from a friend" and

"peace and progress" - militarized development. Indeed, presidential spokesperson

Ignacio Bunye declared that Balikatan-03 would be "a peace and development initiative as much as a training exercise.,,109

GMA's statement, unsurprisingly, also involves the coding ofPhilippine citizens' support for U.S. "assistance" as a metric by which belonging to a properly national community can be gauged. In an era ofU.S. "Global War on Terror," support for

Balikatan becomes a marker ofintelligibility. Ifone does not suspend one's disbeliefin

107 "White love" is Vicente Rafael's re-reading ofthe U.S. colonial policy of"benevolent assimilation:" "Colonization as assimilation was deemed a moral imperative, as wayward native children cut offfrom their Spanish fathers and desired by other European powers would now be adopted and protected by the compassionate embrace ofthe U.S. As a father is bound to guide his son, the U.S. was charged with the development ofnative others. Neither exploitive nor enslaving, colonization entailed the cultivation of 'the felicity and perfection ofthe Philippine people' through the 'uninterrupted devotion' to those 'noble ideas which constitute the higher civilization ofmankind.' Because colonization is about civilizing love and the love ofcivilization, it must be absolutely distinct from the disruptive criminality ofconquest. The allegory ofbenevolent assimilation effaces the violence ofconquest by construing colonial rule as the most precious gift that 'the most civilized people' can render to those still caught in a state ofbarbarous disorder" (Rafael 2000:21). I would argue that U.S. military assistance and foreign development aid are post-independence examples ofwhat can still, in many ways, be considered a form of"white love." See "White Love: Census and Melodrama in the U.S. colonization ofthe Philippines," in White Love and Other Events in Filipino History, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Another way in which such attachments can be demonstrated via economic policy is GMA'S privileging ofbilateral agreements with the U.S. over regional trade agreements ofASEAN (see "Proposed RP-US Free Trade Pact: Reinforcing Colonial Relations, Expanding Globalization," in Ibon Facts andFigures, Vol. 25, No. 15 & 16, August 2002). 108 The Spanish referred to the Muslims ofthe region as Moros, after the Moors ofMorocco and Mauritania, who occupied Spain from 711 to 1492 (Kaspar 2002). In the last three decades the term "Moro" has been appropriated by movements seeking self-determination and autonomy for Muslims in Mindanao and Sulu. 109 "Palace insists no combat for U.S. troops," The Philippine Inquirer, 21 Feb. 2003 102 GMA's overcoding ofmilitarization as peace, ofU.S. intervention as "progress" and

"help from a friend," then one is not only disqualified from state-authorized national belonging, one is rendered unknowable, unintelligible. Let us extend the GMA quote above: "You are not a Filipino ifyou are against the help being offered by a friend. If you are not a Filipino, then what are you?" The question is a closure. In the desperate rhetoric ofGMA, there can be no alternative to the not-against-Filipino, the citizen who supports U.S.-Philippine military collaboration to crush undying jihad. (Ofcourse I am engaging here in a bit ofliterary license, because GMA does eventually answer her own question - ifone is anti-Balikatan, and thus non-Filipino, then one is a "terrorist-lover."

Such an impoverishment ofthe imagination - there is only either love for the "friend," or love for the terrorist.)

The models ofbelonging ofJoey Ayala and Grace Nono, however, can be considered lines offlight from those ofGMA, and work to deterritorialize the assemblage

"Filipino." The desiring-machine11 0 assembling Ayala's utterance is one that links belonging not to white love, or development love, but what is territorialized as the earth.

110 In their critique ofthe "arborescent" image ofthought animating the study ofpsychoanalysis, linguistics, and capital, respectively, the work ofDeleuze and Guattari elaborates what Paul Patton calls a "machinic theory ofsociety," in which social formations are defmed by abstract (or virtual) machines of desire and power (Patton 2000:88). These abstract machines differentiate and distribute material flows, establish chains ofsignification, and differentiate social subjects and the "consumption" or uses ofsocial identity or subjectification (ibid). While Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between different types of abstract machines, they note that "[e]very abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines, not only because they are inseparably political, economic, scientific, artistic, ecological, cosmic - perceptive, affective, active, thinking, physical, and semiotic - but because their various types are as intertwined as their operations are convergent (Deleuze and Guattari, 1997,A Thousand Plateaus [hereafter ATP], p.514)." Elsewhere, they argue that abstract machines are "singular keys that open or close an assemblage, a territory...[they] are in operation in the emergence ofmatters ofexpression, in other words, in the constitution ofthe assemblage and in the vectors ofdeterritorialization that ply it from the start" (ATP 334). One type ofabstract machine discussed in A Thousand Plateaus is the "axiomatic or overcoding abstract machine," which "perform[s] totalizations, homogenizations, [and] conjunctions ofclosure" (ibid). This is the "order-word machine [that] overcodes language, [the] faciality machine [that] overcodes the body and even the head, [and] a machine ofenslavement that overcodes or axiomatizes the earth" (ibid). 103 Notably, this belonging is contingent upon a relation to, or location upon, the mountain.

This "on the mountain"-ness, an open-ended relation rich in potential connections, is a condition ofpossibility for Ayala's disavowal ofstatist citizenship and national belonging.

In the musical utterance ofGrace Nono, any difference between plant, tree, and human is effaced altogether; there is only a becoming-plant for the human, a becoming- human for the tree. Further, Nono's utterance is a difference and repetition - her lyrics are Filipino translations ofwords ostensibly attributable to a Susuquamish nation leader for whom the city ofSeattle, Washington is named. These excerpts from Seattle's text comprise the verses ofNono's song, but the chorus is "an adaptation ofa traditional Iraya swaying song," from which Nono's song derives its name: Yayeyan. The Iraya or

Mangyan are indigenous people ofnorthern Mindoro, which is south ofLuzon in the

Philippine archipelago. Nono's adaptation ofSeattle's words, then, can be read as a movement ofaffiliation and connection ofthe struggles ofindigenous peoples in

Mindoro and in the Americas. This is a radically different move than that ofGMA, who enunciates a desire for affiliation with the U.S. state, the primary apparatus of colonization offirst nations in "America."Ill

Nono's transcoding - "the manner in which one milieu serves as the basis for another, or conversely is established atop another milieu, dissipates in it or is constituted

III It is fascinating to note that the Seattle letter/speech upon which Nono's translations are based is a subject ofintense academic controversy, since there exists no verbatim transcript or originary document, rendering its many reproductions "fictional" to historians (though they could be viewed as simulacra, too). This infamous "ChiefSeattle Speech" and the uses to which it has been put is a complex subject which, unfortunately, I cannot address in detail here; however, see RudolfKaiser, "ChiefSeattle's Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception" in Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, University ofCalifomia Press, 1987, and David Buerge's article "Seattle's King Arthur: How Chief Seattle continues to inspire his many admirers to put words in his mouth," Seattle Weekly, July 17, 1991. 104 in it"- is a "coordination between heterogeneous space-times" (Deleuze and Guattari

1997: 313). The space-time of 1852, the Susuquamish nation, a letter regarding a treaty between the Susuquamish and the U.S., land figured as kin. The space-time of 1995, the

Philippines, a Grace Nono recorded song, an adapted Iraya song, Mindoro - island of development programs involving gold, copper, and barite mining, and site ofintense deforestation by transnational timber companies (CCA-URM 1988: 18-9).

Nono's musical coordination ofheterogeneous space-times resonates with Achille

Mbembe's spatio-temporal model ofthe African postcolony, which "encloses multiple durees made up ofdiscontinuities, reversals, inertias, and swings that overlay one another, interpenetrate one another, and envelop one another: an entanglement" (Mbembe

2001: 14). This plural, entangled time is not serial, linear, or sequential, each passing moment "effacing, annulling, and replacing" its predecessor, but rather "an interlocking ofpresents, pasts, and futures that retain [the] depths ofother presents, pasts, and futures, each age bearing, altering, and maintaining the previous ones" (ibid). Entanglement time is comprised of"disturbances, unanticipated events, fluctuations and oscillations"

(though these do not necessarily result in "anarchy"). Finally, entanglement time is not irreversible, but "on the move" and multidirectional- all "ebbs and flows," "sharp breaks," and "sudden and abrupt outbursts ofvolatility" (ibid).

In order to think this time ofentanglement, this "time ofAfrican existence and experience," requires "abandoning conventional views that perceive time as a current that carries individuals and societies from a background to a foreground, with the future emerging necessarily from the past and following that past" (ibid 16). Entanglement challenges the "hypothesis ofstability and rupture underpinning social theory, where the

105 sole concern is to account for either Western modernity or failures ofnon-European worlds to perfectly replicate it" (ibid). Mbembe's chronotope112 thus serves as a way to think against what I will refer to as development time. Development time contrasts with entangled time in its linearity, sequentiality, and unidirectionality. Animated by organicist notions ofgrowth and evolution,l13 development time moves only forward, teleologically; this movement is "progress." Development time can account for

"progress" at different rates or speeds, e.g., development can be "slowed," "overly rapid," or "frozen" (Escobar 1995); in a given context, it is a matter ofdiscovering just the appropriate rate at which development must occur. In the Philippines, development time marks movement towards the never-arriving telos ofa built nation, modernization and prosperity by western standards, and a future for which citizens must be willing to sacrifice in the "short-term." Development time is an apparatus ofovercoding or capture in that it attempts to subsume, evacuate, or render invisible alternative spatio-temporal worlding practices - in a time ofunparalleled "underdevelopment," development time supersedes all others.

In this chapter, my concern is to demonstrate how, in an era of

"underdevelopment," neo-imperialist war, and neocolonial globalizing flows, statist management ofdifference in the Philippines operates through the interstratic articulation ofstate violence with economic development, as well as cultural governance. My analysis highlights the various modes ofbelonging at work in the rhetoric ofthe state,

1I2 In his "Forms ofTime and ofthe Chronotope in the Novel," M. M. Bakhtin writes, "[w]e will give the name chronotope (literally, 'time-space') to the intrinsic connectedness oftemporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature... [I]t expresses the inseparability ofspace and time." See M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1981. 113 See Michael Watts, '''ANew Deal in Emotions:' Theory and practice and the crisis ofdevelopment," in Jonathan Crush, ed., Power o/Development, London and New York: Routledge, 1995. 106 cultural agencies, and musicians, with particular attentiveness to their spatio-temporal models. If, as Michael Shapiro argues, nations can be understood as imaginaries -

"abstract domains ofcollective coherence and attachment which persist through a complex set ofinstitutionalized practices" (Shapiro 2004:60) - my interest here is in examining some ofthe institutionalized practices, including those ofwar, economic development, and cultural governance, used to mobilize the abstract domains of

Mindanao and Sulu, as well as the Philippines.

Militarizing Development: War on Development Time

The damage from Abu Sayyaffis not to the military. What is more damaging is the damage to economic climate, investments, tourism and trade. That's the reason we have to finish them off. - Angelo T. Reyes, Philippine Secretary ofDefense, 28 February 2003 114

I am saddened by the displacement ofpeaceful families, but sometimes this is the price we have to pay for long-term peace and order. liS - Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President ofthe Philippines, 1 March 2003, regarding the roughly 38,000 people displaced in North Cotabato and Maguindanao, Mindanao as a result ofArmed Forces ofthe Philippines offensives against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front

We must take into account a "materialist" determination ofthe modem State or nation-state: a group ofproducers in which labor and capital circulate freely, in other words, in which the homogeneity and competition ofcapital is effectuated, in principle without external obstacles. In order to be effectuated, capitalism has always required there to be a new force and a new law ofStates,.on the level of the flow oflabor as on the level ofthe flow ofindependent capital. .. so States are not transcendent paradigms ofan overcoding but immanent models ofrealization for an axiomatic ofdecoded flows. - Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1987:455)

114 See "Plan for US troops in Philippines hits snag," The New York Times, 1 March 2003 liS "Macapagal orders MILF camp converted," The Philippine InqUirer, 1 March 2003 107 The U.S. "Global War on Terror" has occasioned a warming ofUS.-Philippine relations unprecedented since the 1992 Philippine Senate rejection ofa proposal to renew

U.S. access to Clark air and Subic naval bases. 116 After the events ofSeptember 11,

2001, GMA moved quickly to support the US. war effort by offering blanket over-flight clearance and landing rights, as well as medical assistance, to coalition forces during

Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. She also offered U.S. forces access to

Philippine military installations for staging and transit operations related to the invasion and occupation ofIraq.1l7

Her efforts have been richly rewarded. In May 2003, GMA became the first

Asian head ofstate, and one ofonly three total, to be feted by the Bush Jr. administration with a state visit. The aid package negotiated during this visit involves "$4.856 billion in economic and military aid, covering $2.045 billion in bilateral economic assistance, $341 million in bilateral defense and security assistance, $1.389 billion in corporate transactions or investments by private companies and $1.081 billion in multilateral assistance"1l8 (see Appendix B for details ofthis aid package). Bush also designated the

R.P. (Republic ofthe Philippines) a "major non-NATO ally," making the Philippines, like countries such as Israel and Australia, eligible to receive excess military equipment and supplies from the U.S. for the "modernization" ofits armed forces (ibid). According to GMA, U.S.-Philippine bilateral relations are "more mature than ever" (ibid), a good sign ofdevelopment time's forward march. Apparently sensitive to Congressional

116 U.S.-Pakistan love is also at an unprecedented high thanks to the "War on Terror." See BusinessWorld Manila, 13 September 2002 117 "American action is held likely in Asia," Tim Weiner, The New York Times, 10 October 2001; Rahim 2003 118 See "Weekender," BusinessWorld Manila, 4 July 2003 108 opponents' accusations that the aid package represents U.S. "puppetry" ofher administration, rather than a "maturing" ofbilateral relations, GMA responded, "The

Philippines is receiving this aid simply because ofthe respect ofthe U.S. for our long and proud partnership, our fight against terror, and the greatness ofthe Filipino worker, including the Filipino soldier" (Ibid). This staggering attribution signals the "distinctive style ofpolitical improvisation, tendency to excess and lack ofproportion, and ways in which identities are multiplied, transformed, and put into circulation" (Mbembe

2001 :102) in the Philippine postcolony.

While this bilaterallovefest continues, the prospects for a negotiated settlement ofthe twenty-five year armed conflict between the Armed Forces ofthe Philippines

(AFP) and the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) appear more distant than ever, and the "security" situation for the general population ofMuslims, lumad,119 and Christian settlers in Mindanao and Sulu continues to deteriorate. 120 A 2001 cease- fire between the R.P. and MILF has broken down, and Malaysia-brokered peace talks, which have been rescheduled twice, have yet to resume. In January 2002, using the juridical framework provided by the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty and the 1998 Visiting

Forces Agreement, U.S. and Philippine officials finalized plans for implementation of

Balikatan ("Shoulder to Shoulder"), a joint Philippine-U.S. counter-terrorism mission

119 A term meaning "grown from the place" in Cebuano (the dominant language ofthe central Philippine islands and, because ofChristian resettlement, also spoken widely throughout Mindanao and Sulu), the use ofthe term "lumad" to refer to indigenous peoples in Mindanao and Sulu can be either insulting or celebratory, depending on the context and speaker. Since the 1980s indigenous groups in the region have increasingly utilized the identity "lumad" in their political organizing. In 1986 the Congress on Mindanao Indigenous Communities' delegates adopted the term "lumad" as the "collective name ofnon-Muslim/non Christian IPs in Mindanao" (locano 1998: 17). See Landa Jocano, Filipinio Indigenous Ethnic Communities, Quezon City: Punlad Research House, 1998; and Albert E. Alejo, Generating Energies in Mount Apo, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000, and Karl Gaspar, The Lumad's Struggle in the Face oJGlobalization, Davao City: Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao, Inc., 2000. 120 See "Attacks on civilians intensifying in southern Philippines," The New York Times, 20 Feb. 2003 109 held in Zamboanga, in western Mindanao, and on the island ofBasilan in the Sulu archipelago. Balikatan 2002 (BK02) involved more than 1,000 U.S. troops, including

160 Special Operations soldiers, whose mission was to provide training, equipment and intelligence to 4,000 AFP troops in their campaign to eradicate the kidnap-for-ransom

Abu SayyafGroup (ASG).I2I The exercises were to last six months, though more than

100 U.S. troops remained after the formal end ofBalikatan, in order to continue in their

"advisory" role. 122

Plans for Balikatan 2003 (BK03) in Jolo were dropped in the face ofdiverse opposition.I23 However, the R.P. blamed a series of2003 bombings and kidnappings in various Mindanao towns on the MILF, who vehemently denied responsibility, prompting the R.P.'s abandonment ofthe peace process and renewed AFP attacks on MILF camps.

These military offensives have displaced more than 100,000 Muslims, lumad, and

Christian settlers in Mindanao since February 2003. In February ofthis year, Balikatan

2004 (BK04) exercises took place on the island ofPalawan, as well as in Batanes (the

121 The Aby SayyaffGroup ("Bearer ofthe Sword") is the smallest ofthe Muslim secessionist groups in the region, and is best known for a series ofkidnappings ofwestern nationals and Filipinos, for which it has received several large ransom payments. Size ofthe ASG ranges in news and official reports from 200 to 800. Both the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the oldest ofthe Moro secessionist groups, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which split offfrom the MNLF in 1977, have condemned the ASG's activities. The ASG split from the MNLF in 1991. See "Guide to the Philippines conflict," BBC News, 30 March 2004. 122 See "U.S. counter-terrorism mission ends 'a success,'" The Philippine Inquirer, 31 July 2002. 123 This opposition included Muslim leadership on Jolo who invoked community resistance, due to the memory ofthe massacre ofthousands ofTausug Muslims on Jolo during U.S. colonial rule between 1903 and 1913. In addition, Philippine legislators raised issues ofconstitutionality regarding the terms of reference (at issue was whether or not U.S. troops would be in front-line, combat positions, and whether Filipino or U.S. officers would be in command). This in addition to widespread opposition from the extensive NGO community worked to force a change in location ofBalikatan to Palawan, Batanes and Luzon, although holding military exercises in Batanes, in close proximity to the Spratly islands, raised concerns that the U.S.-Philippines military venture would antagonize China. Tens ofthousands of protesters have rallied against the joint exercises. (See "Fighting Terror in the Philippines," The New York Times, 5 March 2003; "Left, Right unite for peace rally," The Philippine Inquirer, 1 March 2003; "U.S. Unwelcome in Southern Philippines," BBC News, 17 March 2003. 110 northernmost province ofthe Philippines), and in parts ofLuzon, involving more than

2,500 U.S. troops and 2,300 AFP personnel.124

Philippine human rights NGOs such as KARAPATAN (Alliance for the

Advancement ofPeople's Rights) have reported that BK02 resulted in deaths and casualties ofcivilians in Zamboanga and Basilan, and the escalation ofhuman rights violations such as illegal searches ofMoro homes and increases in disappearances and

"salvagings" (murders) ofmembers of"legitimate, peaceful" organizations opposing the remilitarization ofthe region. Philippine AFP ChiefofStaffRoy Cimatu, however, declared that, "Balikatan 02 brought an enhanced trained soldier and an improved peace and development [environment] in Basilan.,,125 In the aftermath ofthe AFP operations against the MILF in Pikit, Cotabato, Mindanao, GMA mourned the displacement ofsome

38,000 civilians, but, deploying one ofmany "constant references to the future" 126 that mark the developmentalist postcolony's temporal trajectory, she observed that

"sometimes this is the price oflong-term peace and order." GMA went on to express excitement that the "pacified" area (a former MILF camp) could now be converted into a development site with the help ofMiddle East investors interested in establishing a palm oil plantation.127 But perhaps Amado Valdez, executive director ofthe Presidential

Commission on the R.P.-U.S. Visiting Forces Agreements, expresses the R.P.'s military- development imperative most succinctly: "We are trying to refocus the Visiting Forces

124 "Balikatan set in Palawan," BusinessWorld Manila, 11 February 2004 125 "Shooting casts shadow on Balikatan's closing," The Manila Times, JuI. 31,2002 126 See Mbembe 2001: 118. 127 "Macapgal orders MILF camp converted," The Philippine Inquirer, 1 March 2003 111 Agreement as a tool for development. We cannot have economic development without security."128

One ofthe ostensible goals ofthe Balikatan exercises has been to eradicate the

Abu Sayyaff, a small group with little popular support.129 The ASG's kidnap-for-ransom tactics have been condemned by the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front

(MNLF), who have fought for Moro self-determination for the past three decades.

According to former Philippine Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, however, the primary threat posed by the ASG is not to the Philippine military, but to "economic climate, investments, tourism and trade.,,130 Since Balikatan 02 failed in its objective to eradicate the ASG - superior training, equipment, and advice ofthe U.S. military notwithstanding

- perhaps it is unsurprising that in February 2003, GMA gave her armed forces an ultimatum to "finish off' the ASG "within 90 days.,,131 While estimates ofthe dead and wounded from this campaign are still being compiled, it is safe to say that the ASG, regrouped in Sulu Province (including Jolo island), is still very much alive. 132

Sometimes war on development time faces setbacks, after all.

Since at least the Cold War, the provision ofeconomic and military aid has been a common means by which to achieve geopolitical ends and is thus an entrenched feature ofinternational relations. However, the ability ofthe U.S. to "purchase" alliance

(compliance) with strategically situated southern countries such as the Philippines and

Pakistan appears particularly pronounced in the post-9f11 era of structural adjustment

128 "Reyes, Rumsfeld groping for answer for US troops in Sulu," The Philippine InqUirer, Mar. 1,2003 129 Estimates ofthe ASG's strength have never topped 800 soldiers, compared to the 12,000 estimated troops ofthe MILF. See "Guide to the Philippines conflict," BBCNews, 3 March 2004. 130 See "Plan for US troops in Philippines hits snag," The New York Times, 1 March 2003 131 "Arroyo orders end ofAbu Sayyaf," BBC News, 28 Feb. 2003 132 See "U.S. combat force of 1,700 is headed to the Philippines," The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2003; and "Fighting Terror in the Philippines," The New York Times, 5 March 2003. 112 failure. (Perhaps this has always been the case; 133 however, while much critical development literature decries the violences ofstructural adjustment or more overtly biopolitical education, health, population, and nutrition development programs, the literature more infrequently observes a connection between outright militarization and economic development projects.) Since the events of9/11, the R.P.'s economic development imperative has been articulated more vociferously with the "eradication of terror" as an alibi.

Indeed, the "war on terror" in its Philippine iteration "facilitates" development in two ways. First, the war serves to justify massive amounts offoreign military assistance and development aid. Secondly, military operations in Mindanao and Sulu actually allow the state to "clear" or "create" new development project sites. While the forced relocation ofcommunities for purposes oflogging, mining, hydroelectric, or cash crop agribusiness operations have historically been justified in the cold and abstract rhetoric of long-term prosperity and imminent need, the "war on terror" provides a morally

I33 According to Patricio Abinales, from 1900 to 1913, infrastructure development and hemp cultivation by current and former U.S. soldiers helped successfully accomplish what centuries ofSpanish colonization elsewhere in las islas Filipinas had not - the "pacification" and establishment ofnon-Muslim rule ofMoro Province (Abinales 2000:20). Four times larger than any other province in the colony at 38,888 square miles, Moro Province was sparsely populated by people. The 1903 census reported that ofa total population of395,000, 275,000 were Muslim, 80,000 were of"non-Christian tribes," and 40,000 were Christian. The U.S. army rose to the challenge of"governing" this widely-dispersed, potentially hostile population by constructing a network ofroads, telegraph lines, military outposts, and naval patrols which facilitated "brutal campaigns against resistant Moros, a limited campaign ofdisarmament against others, and the judicious use of ,divide-and-rule' tactics among the disunified Muslim communities generally" (ibid 19). This same infrastructure made possible "Moro Exchanges," a provincial trade system designed to discourage Muslims from rebellion by ensuring their token participation in circuits ofexchange without interference by Chinese or northern settler intermediaries. This internal trade supplemented merchant capital flows from regional trade with Manila, Cebu, Iloilo, Borneo, Singapore, and Australia. Port towns such as Cotabato and Zamboanga grew fat on customs revenues from exports produced by settler-based agriculture. See Patricio Abinales, Making Mindanao: Cotabato andDavao in the Formation ofthe Philippine Nation-State, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000. 113 unassailable excuse to depopulate and disfigure terrain "for security and development" purposes.

Ifone considers the modem nation-state a "territorially based group ofproductive sectors among which labor and capital circulate freely, without barriers to the homogeneity ofcapital or to the conditions ofcompetition between capitals,,,134 then we can see how the war against Moro secessionists ensures the acceleration of deterritorialized flows of(finance) capital into the "least developed" part ofthe country - the frontier south - in addition to securing a population ofdocile bodies, weary of evacuation centers and the constant state ofviolence, who are willing to sell their labor power. The presence ofresistant Muslims, indeed, obstructs "development." But the militarization ofdevelopment allows capitalism to continue its axiomatic operation. As

Deleuze and Guattari observe, "the worldwide axiomatic, instead ofresulting from heterogenous social formations and their relations, for the most part distributes these formations, determines their relations, while organizing an international division of labor" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:455).

Philippine Biopolitics: The Uses ofEthnicity

The machines ofpost-colonial, anglophone Philippine social science connect and detach indigeneity, culture, ethnicity, and the national in remarkable assemblages of collective enunciation. 135 My objective in this section is to map some ofthese linkages

134 Patton 2000: 103. 135 The concept ofan assemblage ofcollective enunciation comes from Deleuze and Guattari, whose work is characterized by critical engagement with semiology and a critique ofboth Saussurean and post Saussurean "linguistics ofthe signfier" (Genosko 1998: 176). In A Thousand Plateaus (ATP) they write that "[t]he social character ofenunciation is intrinsically founded only ifone succeeds in demonstrating 114 and disarticulations, which I will later consider within the context ofofficial cultural policy and Philippine "world music."

Unlike many colonial or formerly colonial countries whose ethnoscapes are characterized by "racial" multiplicity, the Philippine ethnoscape is generally not coded in terms ofracial difference, since, given the formations ofcontemporary (western) racial discourse, it is populated primarily by the race constituted as Asian (immigrants included, for the most part). In a relatively "racially" homogeneous social order, then, "ethnicity" has historically served as a mechanism by which to differentiate bodies and, indeed, culture. In such a socius, valence is evacuated from a marker ofexceptionalism such as

"indigeneity" in ways that would not be the case in a racially hierarchized or supremecist social order.

Studies that attempt the problematization of"ethnicity" in the Philippines generally code it as a marker oftwo kinds ofdifference. Ethnicity functions on the one hand as the pedestrian anglophone technology for "national origin validation,,,136 and is deployed, for example, in studies which discuss the experiences ofimmigrant populations from China, South Asia, the U.S., etc. Often, the problematization ofethnicity in these how enunciation in itselfimplies collective assemblages. It then becomes clear that the statement is individuated, and enunciation subjectified, only to the extent that an impersonal collective assemblage requires it and determines it to be sO...a collective assemblage result[s] in the determination ofrelative subjectification proceedings, or assignations ofindividuality and their shifting distributions within discourse." (ATP 80). The concept ofa collective assemblage ofenunciation depends upon a blurring of the rigid distinction between sign and referent operative within signifying semiologies, and presumes a more fluid relation between the semiotic and the material. Ofthis concept, which explodes the notion of representation, Bruno Bosteels writes, "[c]ollective assemblages... effectuate diagrammatic conjunctions between semiotic and material flows, between machines ofthe real and machines ofsigns; they make sense without the ready-made mental representations necessary to assure signification and designation" (Bruno Bosteels in "From Text to Territory: Felix Guattari's Cartographies ofthe Unconscious," in Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in PolitiCS, Philosophy, and Culture, eds. Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon Heller (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1998). Or, as Deleuze and Guattari write, "collective assemblages ofenunciation function directly within machinic assemblages; it is not impossible to make a radical break between regimes ofsigns and their objects" (ATP 7, 22-3). 136 See Spivak 1999, "Teaching for the Times." 115 instances has to do with how well, or how poorly, immigrants and their descendants

"assimilate" or "acculturate" to something coded as "Philippine society" or "the

Philippine mainstream," which I will shorthand for now as the fictional unitary culture of the post-independent Philippine national imaginary.137 This is one way in which

"ethnicity" links (once) national difference with cultural difference. (The nomenclature is ethnicized, but not necessarily racialized, per se.)

More remarkable, however, is how ethnicity also functions as a marker of"intra- national" otherness, an otherness that, within the semiotic regimes ofsocial scientists and state policymakers, cannot be constituted as deriving from "national origin" (much less internal colonization). This is because "ethnicity" and "ethnic" here become ways of marking those who are juridically Philippine citizens, however "unassimilable" or resistant to "integration" - specifically, Muslims and indigenous peoples (IpS).138

Scholars ofthe Philippines offer varied analyses ofits ethnoscape, demonstrating divergent ways ofmobilizing "ethnicity" and the "ethnic." Benedict Anderson argues that "ethnicity as such has played only a minor role in Philippine politics.,,139 R.J. May

137 See Ethnography ofindigenous religion and culture: selected bibliography (Trinity College ofQuezon City, Trinity Researach Institute, 1982); Ethnic attitudes inflVe Philippine cities (Rodolfo A. Bulatao 1973), Ethnicity and education: gaps andlinks (Julian Abuso 1987), Ethnicity, economic choice, and inequality in a Philippinefrontier community (W. Thomas Conelly 1990), Ethnohistory, ethnicity, and the problem ofFilipino identity (Heidi K. Gloria 1985), Ethnicity andIslam in the Philippines (MajuI1988), Politics, ethnicity andreligion: the role ofexternalfactors in a southern Philippine migrant village (Masami Mori 1998). 138 It is this second system ofdifference that resonates with the Greek term "ethnos," from which "ethnicity" is derived, which was used by Jews and Christians to refer to non-practitioners ofJudaism or Christianity. 139 Benedict Anderson, "Introduction," in Southeast Asian Tribal Groups andEthnic Minorities: Prospects for the Eighties andBeyond, Cultural Survival Report No. 22 (Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival, Inc., 1987), p.9 116 concurs with this assessment, but only ifone excludes Moro secessionist movements. 140

The difference in these two evaluations is contingent upon the relation ofMuslim to ethnic. For Anderson, they are delinked, while for May, they presuppose each other.

In May's typology (which, although slightly anachronistic, is still quite representative ofthat commonly reproduced in the academic literature), there are four predominant "ethnic cleavages" in contemporary Philippine society. There are "Filipinos or Christian Filipinos" (emphasis mine), who constitute a "cohesive super ethnie" in that they comprise 92 percent ofthe total population. There are "indigenous cultural communities" or "tribal Filipinos," 141 who share the same "ethnic stock" as May's Malay

Filipinos/Christians, and "resisted Christianization and colonial rule and largely maintain their traditional (pre-Islamic, pre-Hispanic) cultures." Then there are "Muslim Filipinos

(or Philippine Muslims)," who are also ofthe same "ethno-linguistic stock [sic] but differentiated over several centuries by religion and the impact ofIslamic social institutions." May notes that "Chinese Filipinos (Filipinos ofethnic Chinese ancestry)" and "Philippine Chinese (citizens and non-citizens ofthe Philippines who identify with

China rather than the Philippines) comprise a fourth broad group," but have "enjoyed a high degree ofintegration" and thus do not constitute a line of"cleavage." He concludes

140 R.I. May, "Ethnicity and Public Policy in the Philippines," in Government Policies andEthnic Relations in Asia andthe Pacific, eds. Michael Brown and Sumit Ganguly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), p.349. 141 "Indigenous people" or IP, and the Tagalog and Cebuano variants katutubong tao and lumad, respectively, are now commonly accepted identity markers in the Philippines not only among those who identify themselves and others using these terms, but also among advocates, cultural workers, and NGOs. This terminology is becoming increasingly common in official usage as well, although IPs have historically been referred to as "hilltribes," "national minorities," "cultural minorities," and "cultural communities," prior to the adoption of"indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples" as the official terminology ofthe Indigenous People's Rights Act of 1997. See F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Indigenous Ethnic Communities, Quezon City: Punlad, 1998, pp.l7-9 and CCA-URM, Minoritized and Dehumanized, Quezon City: CCA-URM, 1983. 117 that "the main lines ofethnic cleavage in the Philippines [are] defined by religion" (May

1997:321-2).

May's work contains useful accounts ofcolonial and post-independent state practices ofcapture and disciplining of"ethnic" multiplicity, including Spanish and

American colonial population typologies,142 and institutions such as the 1901 Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes,143 the 1957 Commission on National Integration,144 and the 1968

Private Association for National Minorities,145 etc. However, the reciprocal presuppositions in his work regarding ethnicity, culture, and difference are painfully illustrative ofsocial science in the statist interest. "Tribal Filipinos" and "Muslim

Filipinos" cannot be merely (or) "Filipinos" (though, because oftheir degree of

"integration," the Chinese ostensibly can). In a clear instantiation ofhegemony, the only

"ethnic cleavage" for which May permits the possibility ofan unmitigated or non- contingent link to Filipino-ness is Christian Filipinos. By dint oftheir numerical dominance, they serve as the standard-bearers ofFilipino national identity, into whose

culture national others must assimilate, their identities inscribed as appendages to, or

qualifiers of, this standard: e.g., Tribal Filipino, Muslim Filipino.)

142 For an excellent discussion ofSpanish and American colonial population classifications see Benedict Anderson (1998: 246-7, 39-40) and Vicente Rafael (2000: 68, Chptr. 1), respectively. 143 The Bureau ofNon-Christian Tribes (BNCT) was a U.S. colonial institution whose purpose was benevolent assimilation: "to investigate the boundaries, languages, social organizations, beliefs, manners, and customs" ofthe "pagan and Mohammedan tribes" so as to determine "the most practicable means for bringing about their advancement and material prosperity" (May 1997:331). 144 The Commission on National Integration (CNI) was created by the "to effectuate in a more rapid and complete manner the economic, social, moral, and political advancement ofthe Non-Christian Filipinos or National Cultural Minorities and to render real, complete and permanent the integration ofall said national cultural minorities into the body politic" (May 1997:334) 145 The Private Association for National Minorities (PANAMIN) was a Ferdinand Marcos-era agency responsible for policy regarding "non-Muslim minorities" (IPs) whose director, Manuel Elizalde, was a cabinet-level crony widely known for providing access to ancestral domain lands ofindigenous peoples to logging, mining, and agribusiness companies. PANAMIN was also responsible for the forced relocation of Muslims and the employment ofindigenous peoples' organizations in counterinsurgency operations (May 1997:334-5). 118 Further, May's understanding of"tribal Filipinos" as having "resisted

Christianization and colonial rule" and who "largely maintain their traditional (pre-

Islamic, pre-Hispanic) cultures" is problematic for at least three reasons. First, many indigenous peoples in the Philippines have long since syncretized the practice of

Christianity with animist practices.146 Secondly, to assert that katutubong tao or lumad

"largely maintain their pre-Islamic, pre-Hispanic cultures" is to posit a static, rather than dynamic, model ofculture and cultural change, one that fails to consider the profound transformations indigenous societies have experienced as a result ofcolonial encounter

(including myriad sorts ofcultural "contamination," adaptation, hybridization, or IOSSI47), as well as "nation-building" practices and markers of"modernization" (these include

"logging, grazing leases and permits, industrial tree plantations, agribusiness plantations, power generating projects, mining, and government reservations [made worse] by government counterinsurgency,,148). Finally, to posit that current indigenous peoples signal a "link" with the Philippine pre-modem is to mobilize an evolutionary science and temporal frame that relegates the katutubo's or lumad's proper place to a deep past, not a contemporary scene.

146 See Angelo J De Los Reyes, ed., Igorot: A People Who Daily Touch the Earth andSky -- Cordillera Schools Group Series Volume 1: Ethnographies ofMajor Igorot Tribes and Volume 3: Contemporary Life andIssues, Baguio City: Cordillera Schools Group, 1987; June Prill-Brett, "A Survey ofCordillera Indigenous Political Institutions," Cordillera Studies Center Working Paper 5, Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Center, University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, 1989; Rogelio B. Salibad, The Cordillera in Transition, Baguio City: Tribu Publications, 1989; and William Henry Scott, History on the Cordillera: Collected Writings on Mountain Province History, Baguio City: Baguio Printing and Publishing Company, Inc., 1975. 147 Albert Alejo, author ofGenerating Energies in Mount Apo (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000), conducted ethnographic fieldwork from 1995-1997 with a Manobo (IP) community organizing against the Philippine National Oil Company's Mount Apo Geothermal Project in southern Mindanao. He notes that a Manobo tribal council elder, Apo Ambolugan, asked him, "Why do you still want to study us? We have no more culture here... Why not the T'boli ofLake Sebu? Or the Matigsalug ofBukidnon? They still have agongs there. They still wear our native clothes. We have nothing." 148 See Alejo, pAl. 119 Scholars ofindigenous peoples and Muslims in the Philippines who utilize this frame assert that because oftheir resistance to Spanish and U.S. colonization, the cultural practices ofIPs and Muslims have remained "intact;" however, this framing fails to acknowledge the complex and contingent ways in which various IP and Muslim communities experienced and interacted with Spanish and U.S. colonialism. Further, this frame fails to apprehend that IPs and Muslims have been subject to internal colonization in the post-independence period, e.g., through resettlement programs for landless

Christians from Luzon and the Visayas who relocated to Mindanao in the 1950s, or through economic development policies ofthe post-independent state. A framing of difference that works to historicize not simply the persistence of"ethnic" culture but the survival struggles ofIPs and Muslims (as originary practitioners) could help displace the dominant assimilationist problematization ofethnicity with one that recognizes the violence ofinternal colonization, and works towards its undoing.

The aura and uses ofthe "ethnic," as evolutionarily linked to the pre-modem

Moro (in some cases) and indigene (in most cases), cannot be underestimated in the current era ofnational culture-building in the Philippines. The writings ofNicanor

Tiongson, perhaps the Philippines' most prominent cultural critic, illustrate some ofthese uses. Tiongson has served in the highest levelsofadministration ofthe Cultural Center ofthe Philippines, edited the first encyclopedia collection on Philippine art, served as chair ofthe Philippine Movies and Television Review and Classification Board, and has published and lectured extensively regarding Philippine culture and nationalism. In a

1995 conference paper entitled, "Ethnicity and National Culture," Tiongson defines

"ethnic culture" in the Philippines as "a way oflife of'minority' communities... who

120 have not been substantially Hispanized or Americanized" (Tiongson 1995: 16). While

Tiongson lists IPs ofthe Cordillera, Mindoro, Palawan, and Mindanao as examples of

"ethnic culture" practitioners, he, like Anderson, delinks the "ethnic" from the Moro, in a divergence from May's social science approach. He does, however, concede that "ethnic culture" could also include "some aspects ofso-called 'folk' lowland culture found among the Tagalog, and Ilokano, etc., who, in spite ofChristianization, continue to uphold customs, beliefs, and practices which are almost purely autochthonous" (Tiongson

1995:16).

"Filipinization," or How to Produce a National Aesthetic

Ifit is to survive and prosper as a modem nation, the Philippines has no choice but to develop its own cultural identity through the arts. Such a task is not easy, because, unlike Japan or Spain, the Philippines does not have a single, monolithic culture with a centuries-old history. Rather, it is heir to separate cultural traditions that still have not merged or adapted to each other... As the country moves towards full independence and democracy in economy, politics, and education, it should also try to define its cultural identity through the performing, visual, literary, and media arts, whether these be traditional or modem, oral or written. The importance ofsuch a national identity in the arts cannot be underestimated, for it provides nothing less than the soul ofthe nation, the core of being that provides both the anchor and the rudder to all our efforts for a better life in society. It is this core ofarts and history that will provide the face and features ofa nation, that will unite the people against forces that may overwhelm them. - Nicanor G. Tiongson, 1994, CCP Encyclopedia ofPhilippine Arr49

The two components ofthe "nation-state" can be understood separately as signaling territorial fixity (the state) and cultural cohesiveness (the nation). Cultural governance, then, according to Michael Shapiro, is statecraft that seeks to "support a state's claim to contain a coherent or unitary national community" (Shapiro 2004:60).

149 Tiongson 1994: 22. 121 Cultural governance is statecraft that seeks to "complement coercive monopolies of power with diverse modes ofcultural containment" (Shapiro 2004:3). In the Philippines, these diverse modes ofcultural containment can include: establishment ofa national language despite a plurilingual social order; ISO the official narrativizing of"national" histories ofcultural production, in which the Cultural Center ofthe Philippines is actively engaged;I51 the creation of"national artist" and "national living treasure" programs that attempt to "merge" the forward-moving trajectory ofmodem art with the backward- moving trajectory ofindigenous folk;I52 and the instigation ofpublic debate regarding issues ofnational culture and national identity.

150 According to Vicente Rafael, "[u]nlike other Southeast Asian and Latin American countries, the Philippines does not have a national language. Instead, it has a history ofstate and elite attempts to institute a national language based on Tagalog in the face ofthe persistence ofa linguistic hierarchy, where the last colonial language, English, continues to be hegemonic" (Rafael 2000:9). 151 The Cultural Center ofthe Philippines (CCP) and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) are the two state agencies responsible for the formulation ofcultural policy and arts promotion in the Philippines. The CCP's 1994 publication ofthe country's fIrst encyclopedia ofnational art is the ambitious attempt to document the history ofnational cultural production in the Philippines, and contains volumes on music, theater, literature, architecture, visual arts, fIlm, and dance - the "western" arts. The encyclopedia illustrates how Philippine cultural historians "have developed consciousness of [Philippine culture's] historical depths and trajectories," such that a cultural history can be composed "as a sign ofthe modem." See Nicholas Dirks, "History as a Sign ofthe Modem," Public Culture: Bulletin ofthe Center for Transnational Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No.2. Philadelphia: Center for Transnational Cultural Studies, Spring 1990. p.25 152 The National Commission on Culture and the Arts administers both ofthese award programs, which mark a fascinating disjunction between "national art" and "national folk." The National Artist Award (Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining), created in 1972, is "the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made signifIcant contributions to the development ofPhilippine arts; namely, Music, Dance, Theater, Visual Arts, Literature, Film, Broadcast Arts, and Architechture." The objectives ofthe National Artist Award include: "to give appropriate honor to Filipino artists who have made signifIcant contributions to the cultural heritage ofthe country" and "to recognize Filipino artistic achievement at its highest level and to promote creative expression as signifIcant to the development ofa national cultural identity." What are the award criteria? Eligible artists must: "have been Filipino citizens for the last ten years," be artists "who have helped build a Filipino sense ofnationhood through the content and form oftheir works," and have received "prestigious national and/or international recognition" (see www.ncca.gov.phlorganization/nccanational-arts.htm). By contrast, The National Living Treasure Award (Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan), created twenty years later in 1992, celebrates "the folk and traditional artists [who] reflect the diverse heritage and cultural traditions that transcend their beginnings to become part ofour national character (emphasis mine). As Filipinos, [these artists] bring age-old customs, crafts and ways ofliving to the attention and appreciation of Filipino life (sic). They provide us with a vision ofourselves and ofour nation." To become a "National Living Treasure," candidates must be "an inhabitant ofan indigenous/traditional cultural community 122 It is this last mode ofcultural containment that can be at seen in the work of

Tiongson. He writes:

An issue that concerns most ofthe developing countries ofthe world today

is that ofethnicity and national culture. While the majority ofcitizens

believe that every nation should develop its own national identity in

culture, academicians and bureaucrats still have to agree on how that

national culture is to be formed vis-a-vis the many and more ancient ethnic

cultures that flourished or continue to flourish in the modern state. 153

Tiongson makes clear here that the challenge is not whether the Philippines, as a

"developing country," should aspire to "develop its own national identity in culture," since this is a project in which "the majority ofcitizens believe," but rather, the challenge lies in achieving "agreement" regarding "how that national culture is to be formed," particularly given the multiplicity of"ancient ethnic cultures" that persist in spite ofthe contemporary Philippine nation-state's modernity. The meta-question of"why/how the need for a national culture?" is displaced by the more "pragmatic" inquiry into "how (to agree upon) a national culture?" National identity and national culture production in the

anywhere in the Philippines that has preserved indigenous customs, beliefs, rituals and traditions and/or has syncretized whatever external elements that have influenced it." In addition, potential National Living Treasures must have "engaged in a folk art tradition that has been in existence and documented for at least 50 years," "consistently performed or produced over a significant period, works ofsuperior and distinctive quality," "possess a mastery oftools and materials needed by the art, and a reputation in the art as master," and "passed on and/or will pass on to other members ofthe community their skills in the folk art for which the community is traditionally known." National Living Treasure Awards are given in each ofthe following categories of"traditional folk arts:" "folk architecture, maritime transport, weaving, carving, performing arts, literature, graphic and plastic arts, ornament, textile or fabric art, pottery and other artistic expressions oftraditional culture" (see www.ncca.gov.ph/culture&arts/profile/gamaba.htm). 153 See Nicanor Tiongson, "Ethnicity and National Culture," in Cordillera Studies Center University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, ed. Culture o/Nationalism in Contemporary Philippine Society: Conference Proceedings. Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Center, 1995, p.l4. 123 Philippines are thus articulated as projects in agreement-building, involving diminution ofmultiplicity and an accounting for the ancient in the modem.

The passionate desire for "a national identity in culture" enunciated by Tiongson appears animated by a particular sort ofpostcolony anxiety, an anxiety ofsimulacra - a panic generated by the suspicion that there is no authenticity to legitimate what is national, that all referentials ofindigeneity have been liquidated and "artificially resurrected in a system ofsigns... which lends itselfto all systems of(cultural) equivalences, all binary (cultural) oppositions" (Baudrillard 1994:2,6). Tiongson, in a discussion ofPhilippine theater, demonstrates this simulation anxiety in his lament ofthe

"chameleon mutability ofthe Philippine performer whose talent lies in the unconscious imitation ofthe original" (Diamond 1996:141). This "talent," according to Tiongson,

"reveals the Filipino's own lack ofcultural identity and the culture's lack ofa core tradition." He contrasts this with the enviable "strong, unbroken, classical tradition" of

Indonesian performers, who, in encountering foreign artistic movements and ideas,

"assimilated [them] into their own stylistic structure" and "made them identifiably

Indonesian" (ibid).

This problematization renders the obstacle to national culture and national identity production in the Philippines as lack or absence, specifically, the absence ofa "core tradition," a lack ofartistic practice that is not mindlessly mimetic, and an inattentiveness to the Filipino's "ethnic roots." The solution to this problematization? Filipinization, which sets to work the "aura" ofPhilippine "ethnics." As we saw in the previous section, the perceived temporal and cultural continuity ofthe Philippine "ethnic" with the

Philippine pre-modem and pre-colonial produces this "aura," which is an aura of

124 indigeneity, and inspires hope in the possibility ofa national cultural practice that is both modern/Christian/colonized (like the National Artist) and "ethnic"/non-

Christian/uncolonized (like the National Living Treasure).

Filipinization, then, can be understood as movement "from native to national," as described by Tiongson:

What, then, are the art works that can be considered as Filipino in sense and sensibility, in depth ofconcern and breadth ofvision? To our mind, the Filipino national arts will be created and are being created I) by artists who deeply understand their ethnicity, 2) but who are able to enrich that ethnicity with relevant artistic influences from the outside, 3) in order to create art that expresses and grapples with contemporary Filipino realities, 4) within the perspective ofthe general welfare . [T]he search for artistic roots got a boost when scholars and artists [in the nationalist movements ofthe 1970s] started studying precisely the very forms that were considered illegitimate, the forms dismissed as "folk" and "ethnic" and not worth a second look by "sophisticated" artists. In theater, the komedya, sinakulo, sarswela, drama, and bodabil were studied within their own context and on their own terms. In music, the study ofthe indigenous aerophones, chordophones, membranophones, and percussion instruments, as well as the vocal forms ofthe cultural communities revealed musical principles and aesthetics which could produce a "Filipino sound." Today it is accepted by almost everyone that the Filipino artist who is interested in creating Filipino art must start by going back to his/her ethnic roots, whether these roots be in the cultures which were not substantially westernized, such as those ofthe Cordilleras and certain Mindanao groups, or in the lowland Christian cultures which, in spite ofHispanization and Americanization have retained their indigenous worldview and aesthetics. [C]ommonalities ofartistic expressions in the various traditions may lead the sensitive artist to identify the possible foundation ofa national aesthetics (Tiongson 1995: 25-6).

Thus Filipinization, as proscribed by Tiongson, can be read as the simultaneous decolonization (primarily from Spanish and American cultural imperialism) and nationalization ofthe arts.

The term "Filipinization" has marked different movements in different historical moments. For example, from 1913 to 1935, Filipinization was the name ofthe U.S.

125 colonial policy ofreplacing American municipal officers in the colony with "popularly-

I54 elected" Filipinos (comprising a class Anderson aptly describes as cacique ), who were required to take an oath of"absolute and unconditional loyalty" to the United States. 155

More recently, Filipinization has been used to describe Tiongson-esque musical movements and cultural governance. For example, Jose Maceda et al write that

"Filipinization ofpopular music was realized in the 1970s and 1980s, first through the vernacularization ofthe texts and later in the production oforiginal compositions" (CCP

1994:25). Filipinization in this instance refers to attempts to counter the commercially dominant American pop and rock found on Philippine radio stations from the 1950s to the present day, with Filipino-language versions ofAmerican songs, as well as with compositions oforiginal music by "Filipino" musicians using the Filipino language (a genre later dubbed OPM, or Original Pilipino Music). The Broadcast Media Council, governing body ofPhilippine radio in the 1970s and 1980s, attempted to nurture the

OPM genre by requiring all radio stations to play at least one OPM song per hour in

1975; this was increased to three in 1977, and finally, four in 1987 (CCP 1994: 109, 113).

Maceda notes that Filipinization on this order, however, was limited, in that, while "vernacularized," musical styles "remained faithful to or were somehow influenced by their foreign models - from country western, broadway rock, punk rock, heavy metal, folk and rap" (ibid). Ifmodalities ofPhilippine musical cultural governance as

Filipinization include the nationalizing ofmusic publics (e.g., the production ofa national listening audience for the OPM genre), they also include the nationalizing or

154 See Benedict Anderson, "Cacique Democracy in the Philippines," in The Spectre a/Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World, London and New York: Verso, 1998. 155 See Peter Gowing, Mandate in Moraland: The American Government a/Muslim Filipinos 1899-1920, Quezon City: University ofthe Philippines Philippine Center for Advanced Studies, 1977. 126 domestication, so to speak, ofspecific musical artists mobilized to constitute a national music tradition. The official celebration of, and critical response to, the music ofJoey

Ayala and Grace Nono signal this latter modality ofcultural governance.

Tiongson, for example, considers the music ofAyala and Ang Bagong Lumad

(The New Native), Ayala's band, an "outstanding example ofnational art" due to its use ofthe "instruments ofthe Bagobo" (an IP ofsoutheastern Mindanao) and its attentiveness to contemporary problems such as "the destruction offorests, pollution ofrivers and seas, and the hamletting ofvillages" (Tiongson 1995:29).

On the Cultural Politics ofNew Nativeness

In the Philippines, where they have inspired countless advocates for the imperiled environment and indigenous cultures ofthe country, Joey Ayala and Grace Nono have become cultural icons, role models, and best-selling musicians. [They are] exemplars ofwhat one may call Filipino "Eco-Ethnic Soul Music." - Ed Maranan, Philippine music critic, 2002156

The name New Native (Bagong Lumad) embodies many ofthe group's aspirations, blending the old with the new, presenting artistic and cultural alternatives, encouraging a "tribal attitude" in modem man - an attitude of oneness with and respect for the world we live in. We aim to spread the idea that we're all natives, and should therefore treat the world environment as such. 157 - Joey Ayala, in 1994 interview with music critic Eric Caruncho

Music has always sent out lines offlight, like so many "transformational multiplicities," even overturning the very codes that structure or arborify it; that is why musical form, right down to its ruptures and proliferations, is comparable to a weed, a rhizome. - Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1987:12)

Joey Ayala was born in Camp Philips, Bukidnon, in the mid-1950s. Grace Nono was born in Bunawan, Agusan del Sur, in the early-1960s. Born in neighboring, land-

156 See www.skyinet.net/~taomusic/index.html. 157 Caruncho, op cit. 127 locked provinces in northern Mindanao, both are descendents ofChristian settlers to the island. Both Nono and Ayala's fathers are "gentlemen farmers;" Nono's mother is a school administrator, Ayala's mother, a poet. 15S

There are other ways to contextualize the lives ofAyala and Nono. Their births were contemporaneous with R.P. subsidized resettlement programs to Mindanao by landless Christians from Luzon and the Visayas who desired agricultural land no longer available in the north. 159 The presence ofAyala's and Nono's families on Mindanao is likely a product ofthese or earlier resettlement programs. Both Ayala and Nono were born more than three hundred years after the first migrants from the Visayas began settling in northern Mindanao,160 about a hundred years after Spanish Jesuit missionaries began moving from the surrounding lowland coastal areas ofMisamis into the mountains ofBukidnon,161 more than sixty years after outbreak ofthe Revolutionary War against

Spain, roughly fifty years after the U.S. Senate voted to annex the Philippines, about twenty years after a U.S. army officer established the first U.S. gold mining operation in

Mindanao (Siana Mining, in Surigao) [Ibid.], more than fifteen years after the first campaigns ofthe Hukbalahap,162 more than ten years after the Philippines' independence from the U.S., within a decade ofthe passage ofthe Laurel-Langley Agreement

(guaranteeing U.S. businesses "parity" with Filipinos to invest in all areas ofthe

158 See "Joey Ayala," Cultural Center o/the Philippines Encyclopedia o/Philippine Music, Vol. 6, Quezon City: CCP, 1994, p.291 and Eric Caruncho, Punks, Poets, Poseurs: Reportage on Pinoy Rock and Roll, Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, 1996. 159 Abinales, p.160. 160 www.bukidnon.com. 161 Karl Gaspar, The Lumad's Struggle in the Face o/Globalization, Davao City: Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao, Inc., 2000, p.63. 162 The Hukbalahap was a WWII guerilla army that fought against Japanese occupation. See Benedict 1. Kerkvliet's The Huk Rebellion: a study o/peasant revolt in the Philippines, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 128 Philippine economy), and a few short years after the founding ofthe League ofFilipino

Composers "to promote the cause ofnationalism in Philippine music as a conscious and concerted effort.,,163

Both Nono and Ayala relocated from Mindanao to Luzon as children. Nono moved to Mount Makiling, in southern Luzon, at the age oftwelve, after winning a theater arts scholarship to attend the fledgling Philippine High School for the Arts.

During his grade school years, Ayala relocated with his family to Cubao, a neighborhood in Quezon City, Manila. Both Ayala and Nono also returned to Mindanao later in life;

Ayala, at 17, when his family relocated to Davao to help an uncle run a plantation, and

Nono, in her early twenties, a University ofthe Philippines-Baguio humanities dropout and single mom.

Both Ayala and Nono were involved in other musical and political projects before achieving critical, and a modicum ofcommercial, success much later in their careers. 164

Ayala has recorded six albums; four with a back-up band named Ang Bagong Lumad

(The New Native). His discography includes: Panganay ng Umaga/Morning's Firstborn

(1982), an independently-produced cassette that was re-released in 1989 with funding from a Canadian environmental institute; MagkabilaaniDichotomies (1987); Mga Awit ng

Tanod-lupa/Songs ofthe Earth-Guardian (1990), which was supported in part by the

Philippine Department ofEnvironment and Natural Resources; a 1991 reissue ofhis first

163 J. Maceda et ai, "Historical Essays: Philippine Music," CCP p. 24,50 164 Between 1973 and 1985, Ayala composed the music for, performed in, and/or directed half a dozen rock operas and musical theater productions. Three ofthese were produced by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) -- May-i, May-i (1979), Nukleyar I (1983), and Nukleyar II (1985) - and all, including Sa Bundok ngApo (On Mount Apo, 1977), Lasangan (Streets, 1978), and Sampung Dekada (Ten Decades, 1983) dealt with critical social issues such as the deforestation ofMount Apo, nuclear weapons, urban poverty, and the founding ofthe Augustinian order. See "Joey Ayala," CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Music, 1994. Nono was the lead singer ofa critically acclaimed rock group called The Blank in Baguio, northern Luzon from 1987 to 1990. See Caruncho, op cit. 129 three releases by Wea (now Universal) Records, marking the entry ofhis "alternative" music into the Philippine music mainstream; Lumad sa Siyudad/A Native in the City

(1992); and Lupa't Langit/Earth and Sky (Universal, 1997). Nono's discography includes: Tao Music/People Music (Record Plant, 1993), Opo/Affirmation (1995), Isang

Buhay/One Life (1997), and Diwa/Soul (2002). In addition, along with Bob Aves, Nono wrote and performed the music for Hulagpos/Breaking Free (1999), a collaboration with nine Filipina poets addressing violence against women to benefit a survivors' advocacy

NGO, Arugaan ng Kalakasan (roughly translated as "Cradle ofPower") (Ruiz 1998:2).

Finally, Nono also co-founded a cultural organization, the Tao Music Foundation for

Culture and the Arts, which produces albums ofrecorded music by indigenous and

Muslim "master" musicians, and sponsors a scholarship program for indigenous and

Muslim youth musicians. 165

165 Not content simply to make "her own" music, she also works to proliferate the recording ofmusic by indigenous peoples in the Philippines. In 1994 Nono launched an "independent, all-Filipino" record label, Tao Music, with Bob Aves, her Berklee school ofmusic-trained jazz musician husband and collaborator, "in cooperation with friends from different Philippine cultural communities, the private sector, and government and non-government agencies involved in cultural work" (See www.skyinet.net/~taomusic/index.html). The Tao Music "vision" is "two-fold:" I TRADITION: to help address the dearth ofmaterials and professional recordings available to the general public on Philippine traditional musics (one reason for the prevailing ignorance and lack ofappreciation among Filipinos ofthe timeless relevance and beauty ofsuch musics); and 2 INNOVATION: to create a home and venue for the release ofinnovating recordings, as well as those that advocate various socio cultural and environmental issues. (ibid) Tao Music produces and distributes all ofNono's and Aves' albums, and the music ofother (non indigenous, non-Muslim) "ethnic"/world musicians such as Bayang Barrios and the percussion ensemble Pinikpikan. In 1994 she founded Tao Foundation for Culture and the Arts, whose objectives are: I To research, document, promote and help develop the various indigenous cultural and artistic traditions of the Philippines, 2 To disseminate and make available to the public the fruits ofresearch through education, publications, and the mass media, 3 To develop art-forms and cultural implements that strengthen the Philippine cultural identity, 4 To establish linkages between artists, cultural workers, cultural communities, government and non government agencies, the private and business sector, 5 To encourage fellow-Filipinos to preserve cultural traditions while assisting them with tools for survival through education and various community initiatives. There are three programs ofthe Tao Foundation. One is production ofThe Philippine Indigenous Music Series, distributed by the Tao Music label. This series includes Kahiumunan: Cultural Music ofthe Manobo, Higaonon, andBanwaon ofAgusan del Sur (2002), featuring the ritual music ofan annual gathering ofthree northeastern Mindanawon IPs; Tudbulul Lunay Mogul: T'boli Hero ofLunay, The Place 130 Nono has received more than twenty annual Katha music industry awards, including "Album ofthe Year" (Opo/Affirmation, in 1996), "Best World Music Album"

(Opo/Affirmation, in 1996), "Best Folk Song" (HAlay"/Ojfering, from Opo), "Best Jazz

Vocal Performance" (Isang Buhay/One Life in 1998), and "Best World Music Song"

(Isang Buhay/One Life in 1998). Ayala's work is also highly decorated, and includes awards from the Philippine Recording Industry Association for "his significant contributions to the propagation ofFilipino culture" (Zalvidea 2002:32). Most recently, his song Pag-uwi/Coming Home, a "homecoming anthem for Filipino expatriates and overseas workers," won the 2002 Metro Pop songwriting festival (ibid). Nono and Ayala perform frequently both in the Philippines and at international music festivals together

(where they "represent the Philippines").

As a multiply-colonized archipelago, the Philippines boasts a rich history of resistance-oriented cultural production, which includes the now official genre of"protest music." The music ofAyala and Nono is often placed upon this trajectory, while continually attracting additional genre designations from critics: "ethnic pop," "neo- ethnic folk," "folk rock," "eco-ethnic soul," "world," and "Indi, as opposed to indie,

[which] means not only independent but also based on indigenous sources" (Ruiz

1998:2).

a/Gongs andMusic (2002), which includes a chanted recitation ofan abbreviated version ofan epic of T'boli, an IP based in southern Mindanao; Marino (Beautiful): Hanuno Mangyan Music and Chanted Poetry (1998), featuring the music and chant ofHanunoo IP based on the Visayan island ofMindoro; Pakaradia-an: Maranao Epic Chants andInstrumental Music (1997), featuring the music ofMaranao Muslims ofLanao, Mindanao; and Maguindanao Kulintang (1995), featuring kulintangl65 master Aga Mayo Butocan and Maguindanawon Muslim musicians ofwestern Mindanao. Other Tao Foundation programs include The Asian Arts Workshop, which "mounts lecture-demonstrations on Philippine music and arts" (see www.skyinet.net/-taomusic/index.html). and the Scholarship Program for Youth ofCultural Communities. 131 Nono and Ayala are celebrated by fans and critics for two primary reasons. First, their music is heralded for its "political- and ecological-consciousness" (Caruncho 1996,

Francia 1994, Zalvidea 2002, CCP 1994). The thematic resonances in their work are striking. Both engage issues around which various social movements have organized for decades - the rapid destruction ofPhilippine ecosystems; militarization and displacement; urbanization and deepening poverty; migration and the forced severing of filial ties. Ayala's lyrics are almost always written in Filipino, the national language;

Nono writes in Filipino, Cebuano, and English (but Filipino primarily).

Both artists' work is considered even more significant, however, for what is often referred to as their compositional innovation. Ayala and Nono are recognized for being among the first Philippine musicians to attempt infusing folk/rock-oriented music with the use ofindigenous instruments such as gangsa (gongs), buzzers, and lutes. It is this fusion ofstyles and instruments that prompts critics to claim that the music ofAyala and Nono "forges Filipino identity" in an unprecedented way. What makes their music intelligible as "ethnic" and "Filipino" is the ways in which their music diverges from the

American pop ubiquitous on Philippine airwaves. Thus the power oftheir music is that it marks the Filipinizing ofPhilippine culture. The impulse to "Filipinize" the music of

Nono and Ayala - to figure it as national- speaks to a desire for cultural formations in which autochthonous idioms embed in the imposed, vernacular language interarticulates colonial genres, and a clear divide between markers ofFilipino ethnos and its others must be constantly reproduced, ifonly in order to be undone again. The celebration ofAyala's and Nono's music illustrates this operation - identification ofdiscrete boundaries

132 marking offwestern and indigenous formations, collapsing them, then constituting what is produced in that collapse as "Filipino."

But does this Filipinization also celebrate statist models ofbelonging and the disciplining ofdiverse types ofaffiliation?

Ayala's Becomings

Joey Ayala's music works to create affiliations primarily at the level oflyrical expression. While Ayala incorporates instruments indigenous to native and Muslim communities in his music, he uses them to very different effect than Nono. Rather than interlocking with the lyrical content in a way that overtly "coordinates heterogeneous space-times," as with Nono's instrumentation and melodic adaptations, Ayala's use of

"ethnic" instruments often occurs with few other place-time markers to help identify their origins or inflect their usage for more specific or overt purposes ofpolitical affiliation.

The sometimes problematic result is a more generalized "ethnic" sound, with non- western instruments functioning as "flourish" or decorative accent. 166

This is not consistently the case, however. For example, Ayala's Panganay ng

Umaga/Firstborn a/the Morning, the first song on the 1991 album which bears the same name, features koratong (a bamboo percussion tube), ostenato rhythmic guitar, and bamboo mouth harp, all ofwhich are, according to ethnomusicologist Ricardo Trimillos,

"sliding signifiers" ofmusical styles throughout Southeast Asia. What is most notably

"non-western" about the song, Trimillos observes, is the absence ofchords, marking an absence ofwestern harmony (a harmony which is otherwise prominently featured in

166 I am indebted to ethnomusicologist Ricardo Trimillos for this insight. 133 Ayala's oeuvre). Further, the song has no shifting rhythm, which resonates with the rhythmic style ofkulintang or brass bossed gong ofMuslim communities in Mindanao,

Sulu, and throughout Muslim Southeast Asia. At the level ofinstrumental composition, then, Panganay ng Umaga affiliates with an Islamic, Southeast Asian musical aesthetic while flouting affiliation with the west.

While the spatio-temporal imaginary ofthe developmentalist state sacralizes geopolitical borders and territorial boundedness in order to constrain and discipline flows internal to its territory, Ayala sings ofa spatial order in which origins are astral, and affiliations are plural and ever-expanding. In this spatial order, humans are merely

"lumps ofsoil in the palm ofthe earth" (Pasasalamat/Song ofThanks). It is the natural environment that is sacralized, not the nation, or capital. Ayala's structures ofattachment emphasize not relations between "citizens," but the interrelation (Magkaugnay) of everything - "Earth, sea and sky/are interrelated/animals, plants, people/all interrelated/All things are interrelated." At the level oflyrical expression, Panganay ng

Umaga/Firstborn ofthe Morning situates the vocalist in strikingly non-statist relations of nature, space, and time: "Firstborn ofthe morning/Peeks through my window/I open my eyes and am startled/By the vastness ofthe world." The vocalist contrasts the unending view ofhills, mountains, and sky - "lovers trysting" - with himself, "a tiny speck amid the universe."

Ayala's cathexis ofthe natural, as in Walang Ibang Sadya/No Other Purpose

"watch, listen, taste, inhale, caress, notice the world" - often effects an eroticization of relations between humans and nature: "What for these eyes ifnot to see the dance in the swaying ofthe grass/What for these ears ifnot to hear the song ofwind in the trees/What

134 for these lips ifnot touched by rain or kissed by a river.. .IThe river stone, smooth, offers you its cheek." Ayala sometimes structures nature-human attachments as erotic, but usually, as filial. Ayala thus constitutes belonging primarily in terms ofkinship ties to lupa't langit (earth and sky) and all their inhabitants (some with perverse origins). Street children are "fallen from the sky" or "born ofmud and earth" (Bata-batutaiChild), turtles are brothers (Manong PawikaniBrother Turtle), eagles are kings (Haring IboniKing of

Birds), and humans are earth (Tayo ng LupaiWe are the Earth).

This constant movement towards the other, and becoming-other, is effected in multiple ways. In an inversion ofthe human-earth relation signaled by property ownership, Ayala's Tayo ang LupaiWe are the Earth asserts that people belong to the earth, are the earth, the voice ofthe earth. The lyrics are an adaptation ofa speech by

Macli-ing Dulag, Kaigorotan leader murdered in the late 1980s for his opposition to the

Chico Dam development project in the Cordilleras: "The voice ofthe earth is our voicelWhat the earth might say is ours to utter/Ifthe earth were to judge it would side with us/We belong to the earth/We are the earth."

Ayala's chronotopes are likewise anti-statist. Time is generational or genealogical as well as seasonal: "Ancestors in the forest/Guide your people.. .lIn search offreedom, happiness and peace/Thousands ofsummers gone by" (Mga

NinunofAncestors), fostering an understanding that "what we leave behind/is greater than its source" (Awit ng MortalfA Mortal's Song). Time is also agriculturally seasonal, in spite ofwar: "Rain comes to the sowing ground/to wrench life from death again, blood runs in the veins ofthe field.. .Ithe harvest waits for your return" (Wala ng Tao sa Sta.

FilomenaiNo One Left in Santa Filomena). Temporality and affect structure each other:

135 "Raindrops keep time for tears" in times ofwar. And, in songs such as Awit ng Mortal/A

Mortal's Song, Ayala posits a kind ofbio-time, temporality structured by biological processes, by living, in which "the heartbeat is the meter oflife," "life is a moment," and

"life is a finite song."

Nature, however, serves as ultimate rhythm keeper and historian, moving time. It is the sensual interrelation of"Lake, river, ocean/Cold, salty, sweet/Rain, current, wave" that marks movement, a "caressing [of] the cheeks oftime," while "eagle and hawk/whisper the song ofthe breeze/and the scream ofthe tornado" (Panganay ng

Umaga/Firstborn ofthe Morning). In the songs Usok/Smoke and Mirasol/Sunjlower, the north wind is a messenger "bearing lessons from history" (Usok/Smoke), the sunflower is

"a witness to the suffering ofthe south" (Mirasol/Sunjlower), and the kilyawan (oriole) beckons people back to their villages, deserted by war.

Ayala's music maps the island ofMindanao, and "earth" generally, as an assemblage ofsacralized, violent and besieged sites, but also sites ofhealing and hope.

In the song Davao, for example, Davao city, Mindanao is represented as an "earth-bound star, shining on the plain! [whose] light is just as bright as those ofthe stars above/[whose] streets are home to orphans, [whose] canals are sown with hope.. .lIn your twists and turns, in your workplaces, the future is nurtured."

Notably, this optimism occasionally lapses into an ahistoricizing, idealized view ofhistoric conflict in Mindanao. In the 1991 song Mindanao, Ayala maps the island as a site of"a uniting ofpeople... a movement towards freedom." Connecting struggles in

Mindanao with those elsewhere in the Philippine archipelago, the vocalist sings, "from north to south, people are standing up for their rights/and taking control oftheir lives."

136 While this connection could be read as a powerful affiliating ofdiverse movements, such as Muslim secessionist movements and leftist movements throughout the archipelago, the song concludes, problematically, with an injunction to "come to Mindanao... join

Mindanao... in the sowing ofpeace." In the early 1990s, when this song was written and released, the peace process between the Moro National Liberation Front and the RP. had not yet begun to fully unravel. However, given the historic dispossession ofland and diminishment ofpolitical and economic power ofMuslim and lumad populations effected by northern migration to the island, an exhortation to "come to Mindanao" is certainly problematic.

There are other ways in which Ayala's music effects exactly the kind oferasure of alterity and diminution ofmultiplicity that animates state imperatives to establish a unitary and coherent national culture. To claim, as Ayala does in

Magkaugnay/lnterrelated: "we are ofone origin/one destination/all present on earth/all relatives ofone tribe" is to affirm the "one world" liberal multiculturalism that evacuates historicized analyses ofthe subordination ofnational others in the Philippine ethnoscape.

The song Tignan Nyo/Bear Witness similarly narrates a kind oforigin myth in which the nation and its people were once whole and united on a single stone, before the stone was shattered into an archipelago of7100 islands. While a powerful spatial metaphor, the suggestion that the "nation" was ever "united," or even to posit this as an ideal, risks the overcoding ofcontentious cultural, linguistic, spiritual, and other kinds ofmultiplicity that characterize the Philippine past and present. Finally, in the song /log/River, the vocalist sings, "my life is a river/flowing to the sea/your life is a river/flowing to the sea/we meet along the way/and now flow together, we shall create a new path/carve

137 history in the rockslbreach all obstacles/as we flow together." While this can be read as a potent spatio-temporal figuring ofpeople uniting in collective resistance, it resonates uncannily with a metaphor for unitary national culture invoked by Nicanor Tiongson.

Tiongson argues, "[i]fhistory offers a heterogeneity oftraditions, the present can work towards a unification ofthese traditions... The separate streams ofculture running down from the past can be made to come together to form one river ofcontemporary national culture."

Ayala's music, then, both subverts and affirms its recruitment into a statist national culture-building project. This is not in any way to diminish Ayala's important work as an environmental advocate or his obvious talent as an artist. It is instead to highlight questions bound up in both the problematization ofa unitary national culture- as-goal, the developmentalist narratives animating this problematization, and the ethics of artistic production as "cultural translation" for a public sphere in which radical alterity is intelligible primarily as a pre-modem or terrorist other.

Nono's Maps

Writing and music can be war machines. 167 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987:513)

167 Another abstract machine elaborated in ATP is the "war machine," which, perhaps "counter-intuitively," is characterized by its exteriority to the State apparatus. Deleuze and Guattari argue that while it is a habit of(particular) thought to confuse the "irruption ofwar" with "the line ofState domination" (ATP 354), the State in fact "has no war machine ofits own; it can only appropriate one in the form ofa military institution" (Ibid. 355). Patton thus describes the war machine as a "metamorphosis machine," since its concern is not war, but the production oflines offlight, "the conditions ofcreative mutation and change" (Patton 2000: 110). This is why, for Deleuze and Guattari, cultural production such as music can be a "war machine."

138 Like Ayala's, Nono's music generally effects lines offlight from statist modes of belonging constituted as strictly or primarily national. These lines offlight constitute alternative modes ofconnection and affiliation among indigenous peoples in the

Philippines and beyond. Nono's work is exemplary ofworld music that, as Michael

Shapiro observes, "when linked to indigenous political intitiatives, constitutes a counter force to contemporary neo-imperialism rather than serving as an ecumenical, border effacing aesthetic" (Shapiro 2004:112).

The lines ofaffiliation drawn in Nono's music may be described as the product of a rhizomatic method. According to Delueze and Guattari, a rhizome "ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations ofpower, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles" (ATP 7). Unlike

Ayala's music, which posits alternative structures ofbelonging primarily at the level of lyrical expression, Nono's music creates rhizomatic assemblages through "adaptation" and other forms ofintertextuality.

The song Batang Lansangan/Child ofthe Street, for example, begins with a sustained juxtaposition ofsounds: street traffic, and an Andean pan flute. This interlocking creates at least two types ofencounter. It brings mountain and city together within the same spatio-temporal frame, indeed, in rhythm. In addition, the pan flute reverberates historically, and geopolitically, evoking the "original" indios in the

Americas who, centuries before those in the Philippines, were colonized by Spain.

Two verses. Synthesized ambience, synthesized rhythm, synthesizing foreboding.

The vocalist ostensibly addresses one ofthe millions ofchildren who comprise the

139 Philippine urban poor. The verses (whose lines are rhyming couplets in their original

Filipino) are a series ofquestions addressed to "Child," "Nene," and "Bundoy:" "Where will you go when darkness comes?/Do you have a place, parents to go home to?/Who will cook you supper?/Make you a bed?/Before you lie the streets that have reared you/Are they the same streets that will claim you?" The vocalist's voice is singular in the first verse, but in the second, the pan flute joins her, intensifying the melody.

Crescendo to the refrain. The song opens up, the heaviness lifting. The vocalist's voice multiplies into a choral harmonic call, followed by a single-voiced response.

According to the liner notes, the "Bagbato refrain" is an "adaptation of a traditional Ibaloi children's rhyme." The Ibaloi are indigenous to Benguet, in the southern Cordillera area ofnorthern Luzon. The Ibaloi, along with other Kaigorotan indigenous peoples whose ancestral domain are the valleys along the Agno River, have experienced decades of displacement due to the construction ofhydroelectric dams, such as the Ambuclao,

Binga, and San Roque dams. 168 A very briefgangsa or flatgong "bridges" into the final verse, punctuating the "adaptation" ofan Ibaloi children's rhyme with an instrument used across the Cordillera region by Kaigorotan communities. After the last refrain, the song returns to the city, closing with the sound ofshakers and street traffic.

Batang Lansangan/Child ofthe Street, then, connects city to child to poverty to mountain to the Americas to the Cordillera in an indeterminately signifying, non-linear

168 See Agno (Alcantara 2003); Carino, Jessica K. and Procopio S. Resabal, Jr. "Study ofthe Displaced Families in Apugan, Loakan, Baguio City," Cordillera Studies Center Working Paper 17, Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Center, University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, 1990; Tolentino, Delfin, ed. Resistance and Revolution in the Cordillera. Baguio City: University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, 1994; Vinding, Diana, ed. Indigenous Women: The Right to a Voice. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 1998.

140 fashion, suggesting open-ended possibilities for social critique and affiliation. The batang lansangan could be a displaced Ibaloi migrant, or the Ibaloi children's rhyme could evoke an idealized image ofhappy, well cared for children to contrast with the terrifying image ofthe child whose life is claimed by the street. The combining ofIbaloi oral culture and flatgong could be read as affiliating one indigenous community in the

Cordillera to a larger multiplicity ofindigenous communities in the region whose cultural practice also includes the flatgong, and who have also been displaced by the land- grabbing ofstate and private mining and hydroelectric companies.

While songs such as Batang Lansangan use musical instrumentation as well as intertextuality or multitextuality to open up possibilities for affiliation, songs such as

Yayeyan and Mangmang 'Iyan/Ignorant Ones rely primarily on the latter technique.

"Formally" speaking, the song Mangmang 'Iyan/Ignorant Ones contains elements of

1980s era rock, such as heavy guitar, as well as pop, such as programmed synthesizer. 169

Mangmang 'Iyan, which Nono dedicates in the liner notes "to all indigenous peoples fighting for Ancestral Land Rights and Self-Determination," is a fairly straightforward attempt to focalize internal colonial encounter from a native positionality.

The vocalist inverts the colonial coding ofnative as ignorant and uneducated by asserting indigenous knowledge: "our dream, our dance, our poem, our song/all lie buried beneath the balete tree." This wisdom is enacted in relations ofearth, ancestors, and time (the

"only witness" to the people's land claim), components ofindigenous legal mechanisms such as ancestral domain, that establish a people's connection and "rights" to dwell in a

169 Since Nono does not "acknowledge" her instruments, and I am not a musicologist, I am not sure ofthe identity ofsome ofthe musical instruments. I have consulted with Dr. Ricardo Trimillos, who is an ethnomusicologist, on much ofthe Ayala-related material, however. 141 particular place. 170 The truly ignorant foreigners, by contrast, establish connection to

land through its territorialization as property to be owned and occupied via "a piece of

paper dangling from the hand."

Further, Nono does not simply focalize from a native's position, she also includes

native voices in Mangmang 'Iyan. The song contains a briefexcerpt of, according to the

liner notes, an "Original Mangyan patag Ambahan171 or chanted poem" recited by Laki

Masiyong. The Mangyan, as I noted earlier, are indigenous to the island ofMindoro. 172

The poem thus serves as an illustration ofthe kind ofnative wisdom that the colonial

land-owner, out ofignorance, cannot properly valuate: (as translated) "Wherever you

go/My thoughts stay with you/Just like a pillow/Just like a mat/Just like my hand." This

poem is located in the song immediately before a screeching guitar solo. The

instrumental composition and Filipino lyrics (with the exception ofthe chanted poem),

constitute the song in a way that makes it accessible or consumable by, for example, an

urban, middle-class, Filipino-speaking audience that can "read" the genres ofrock and roll and electric pop. It is this "demographic," embodied as northern settler, corporate

investor, or state bureaucrat (in addition to other "foreigners" primarily from the U.S.),

that have been responsible for the colonization ofnative peoples such as the Mangyang in

170 For discussion ofancestral domain and other indigenous legal land claim mechanisms, see Prill-Brett, June. "A Survey ofCordillera Indigenous Political Institutions," Cordillera Studies Center Working Paper 5. Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Center, University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, 1989; Prill-Brett, June, "Indigenous Experience ofAutonomy in the Cordillera." Cordillera Studies Center Working Paper 10. Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Center, University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, 1989; Prill-Brett, June. Pechen: The Bontoc Peace Pact Institution. Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Center, University ofthe Philippines College Baguio, 1987. 171 According to Philippine ethnomusicologist Jose Maceda, "Ambahan verses are older texts consisting of seven syllables per line...These songs are passed from one village to the next through script inscribed by young boys on bamboo betel-nut or lime containers. These songs are sung for recreation, but they are especially heard during festive gatherings in religious feasts (panludan), when all kinds ofinstruments can be heard - gongs, jaw harps, flutes, bamboo zithers and percussion sticks" (Maceda 1998: 46). 172 The term Mangyan is one used to refer to the seven IPs ofMindoro island collectively. See F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Indigenous Ethnic Communities, Quezon City: Punlad, 1998. 142 Mindoro. Though Filipino, as the national language ofa polyglot archipelago, is

certainly a mechanism ofhegemony to which non-Filipino speakers are subject, here it is used to address hegemony in its own language.

While the Philippine state territorializes Mindanao as a series ofsites of

insurrection and potential surplus-value expropriation, a frontier to be disciplined for nation-building purposes, the music ofNono (or a film such as Marilou Diaz-Abaya's

Bagong BuwaniNew Moon) creates lines offlight that deterritorialize Mindanao, assembling it instead as sites oflove, affiliation, pain, peace, complexity, and beauty.

Nono's song Buntag Na/Morning 's Here, whose music is an "adaptation ofa traditional

T'boli melody," can be considered an homage to the T'boli, an IP ofsouthern Mindanao, and T'boli music. Unlike nearly every other song on the album Opo, Buntag Na involves no synthesizer or electric instruments, only voice, clapping, and a hegalong

(T'boli version ofa two-stringed lute used by indigenous and Muslim communities throughout Mindanao and Sulu). Sung in Cebuano, a language spoken throughout the central and southern archipelago, the vocalist exhorts her lover to awaken and join her in

greeting the day. The lyrics celebrate the landscapes ofa rural dawn, here figured as a

liminal time-space-affect between, on the one hand, "the dark gaze ofnight," "silence,"

"pain and numbness," and "the footprints ofthe past," and, on the other hand, "the new

day," "the tickle ofthe moment," "perfumed land bathed in dew," and "the fields and

pastures that summon."

Nono's music creates an alternative mapping ofthe Philippines, deterritorializing

the statist geopolitical cartography which produces the islands as a unitary nation that

must mobilize against or assimilate its internal others, with all the animation ofaffect this

143 reqUires. Instead, she proliferates and rhizomatically (non-hierarchically, non- sequentially, anti-foundationally) assembles a map ofaffective affiliation ofthe "nations" and "musics" ofindigenous and Muslim peoples ofthe archipelago.

Conclusion

When u.s. and Philippine officials announced that the island ofJolo, in the Sulu archipelago, was being considered as a location for Balikatan 03 joint military exercises, members ofits nearly exclusively Tausug community did not mince words in declaring their opposition. "Any foreigner that will come to invade us," stated Insi Tubjil, "my advice to them is that ifthere are three Tausug killed, three hundred ofthem will be killed.,,173 Tausug collective memory ofthe American colonial era, a century past, apparently has not waned. It took nearly thirteen years ofbrutal assault for u.s. troops to eviscerate the island's sultanate, including infamous massacres at Bu Bagsak and Bud

Dahu. And Jolo's local radio station reminds its listeners every day ofthis bitter war, airing ballads on decades-old vinyl records that narrate how Jolo's Muslim warriors killed u.s. troops in pitched battles on the island's volcanic mountains (ibid). In an era ofanti-Muslim state violence, Jolo radio illustrates the power ofmusic as "war machine," in its ability to keep histories and contemporary movements ofanti-colonial resistance alive.

The coding practices ofthe Philippine state territorialize Mindanao as a series of sites ofahistoricized insurrection and potential surplus-value expropriation, a frontier to be disciplined into the unity ofthe nation. The state sacralizes the lines it draws between

173 "U.S. Unwelcome in southern Philippines," BBe News, 17 March 2003. 144 capital and white love, between development and nation. The music ofAyala and Nono, along with Jolo radio, disrupts these statist practices, serving as counter-conduct to the rigid disciplining ofcollective identity for the purposes ofnation-building. We are invited instead to imagine alternative, plural Mindanaos. In this time ofwar and debt, such an invitation could not be more relevant or necessary.

And yet Ayala's and Nono's music is celebrated for forging Filipino in new ways, in ways that fulfill the postcolony's needs for cultural formations that are "authentic"

(coded as "ethnic"), transportable (pry-able from their historical and place-based generation), and intelligibly "national" (coded as Tagalog-transcendant). The music of

Ayala and Nono is heralded precisely because it is read as an exemplar ofwhat contemporary Filipino national culture should be, given the archipelago's particular colonial legacies and cultural polymorphism. The "Filipinization" oftheir music is a response to perceived lack, a mourning ofthe loss ofpre-encounter Philippine culture.

The irony ofthis "Filipinization" is that it celebrates markers ofthe "ethnic" without celebrating the ethnic herself. And while Ayala's and Nono's music revaluates

"ethnic" culture and epistemologies, this must not be optimistically mistaken for eliciting a revaluation ofactual Muslims and indigenous peoples in state policy, or necessarily prompting greater institutional legitimation and support oftheir day-to-day struggles.

There is a difference in affective and policy response to a nose-flute playing rock star and an Igorot woman who removes her clothes and places her body before a bulldozer. The danger of"Filipinizing" cultural governance is that it ultimately works to supplement coercive measures to assimilate "the ethnic" within a larger national "unity."

145 Tiongson's impulse to create a national culture via "incorporation" and "merging" ofdifference (which, as cultural governance, supplements the coercive monopolies of power that over the last two years have displaced more than 100,000 people in Mindanao and Sulu) can certainly be read as a mourning ofthe loss ofcultural identity. But this

"mourning" should be understood as what Renato Rosaldo calls imperialist nostalgia - a mourning ofthe passing ofwhat we ourselves have transformed or are transforming

(Rosaldo 1993:69). In this sense, Tiongson's lament over cultural lack illustrates an internal imperialist nostalgia, a mourning ofthe loss ofthe kinds ofcultural practices being decimated by economic development and war. There are many in the Philippines, I would argue, that can ill afford such nostalgia.

146 CONCLUSION

UNMAKING DEVELOPMENT?

Instead ofthe kingdom ofabundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourse and strategy ofdevelopment produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression. The debt crisis, the Sahelian famine, increasing poverty, malnutrition and violence are only the most pathetic signs ofthe failure offorty years ofdevelopment... The "Third World" has been produced by the discourses and practices ofdevelopment since their inception in the early post-World War II period. - Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (1995: 4)

It is my beliefthat a training in a literary habit ofreading the world can attempt to put a curb on ... superpower triumphalism only it ifdoes not perceive acknowledgement ofcomplicity as an inconvenience. - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1999: xii)

This thesis has been an attempt to cultivate the sort oftransnational literacy that allows us to re-write, as Spivak exhorts us, "Women in Development" as "Feminism in

Decolonization." Although its provenance has not been "women in development" projects per se, and it does not elaborate what feminism in decolonization could mean in the Philippine context, the thesis considers different ways in which development can be re-written, contested, contextualized, and imagined in the Philippines.

Arturo Escobar observes that, historically, "development has been debated without questioning its ontological status" (Escobar 1991: 195). Therefore, an undoing ofdevelopment must most fundamentally occur at "the philosophical level," according to

Eiman Zein-Elabdin. By "uncovering the philosophical roots ofthe development paradigm in economics," she seeks to "critique the fundamental assumptions that underlie concepts ofeconomic and social being and becoming" (Zein-Elabdin 1998). For it is not,

Zein-Elabdin points out, necessarily the problem that development is "a European idea or

147 phenomenon" - the problem is rather "that it has been enshrined as the universal path for all societies" (Ibid.121). Such ontologic assumptions "rob Africans oftheir ability and privilege to live their own lives and dream their own dreams" (Ibid.116). The challenge is thus not to reify "Africa" and "West," or "extricate" them from each other, but to

"redefine the relationship between the two so as to put an end to its chronic paternalism"

(Ibid.121).

Eurocentric paradigms, Zein-Elabdin argues, constitute the "choice" for Africans as either "following the 'universal path ofcivilization' or remaining primitive."

Recognizing the impossibility ofthese "options," Zein-Elabdin's critique resonates with

Spivak's analysis ofthe subaltern's inaudibility:

There is no conceptual or political framework in which Africans may question the very premise ofdevelopment and still appear to maintain a sense ofsanity; or in which African economic systems are recognized as equivalent modes ofsocial organization rather than inferior aberrations in a global political economy. In this order ofthings, Africans must prove their capability for development; until then, they are forced into an apologetic, justificatory mode (Ibid).

What is needed, according to Zein-Elabdin, is a shift in the discourse which allows Africans to "confront development at its ideological level and scrutinize the

Occidental philosophical order without apology" (Ibid. 120). The critical question would thus be not whether Africans, Filipinos, Mindanaowans, or other others can achieve development, but "development to what end?" To this end, Zein-Elabdin suggests an alternative imaginary to development, one of"propitious change:"

This is a broad conceptual framework that should avoid teleological determinism while leaving room for hopeful tendencies. Most importantly, it should free Africans' imagination from the grip ofthe development imperative. The contours ofthis framework must be fluid enough to accommodate the diversity ofAfrican experience and

148 consciousness. This can be realized only ifthe criteria for what may be considered a propitious condition are defined primarily - not necessarily exclusively - by Africans, living in Africa. In this framework, Africans may bring about change in their living conditions on scales and in configurations subject to their own principles, approaches and valued meanings; they may also choose not to take any measures for change. That is the most that can be said about a future direction (Ibid).

This thesis has argued that a re-writing ofthe development enterprise as propitious change is needed, but also that, given the persistence ofneocolonial relations, "Filipinos in the Philippines" defining what propitious conditions might be is hardly cause for optimism. The models ofpropitious change offered by anti-agbiotech guerrillas, feminist critics ofFilipino labor migration into domestic work, "unassimilable" national others, and Ayala and Nono are potentially disruptive ofregimes ofaccumulation in the contemporary Philippines - but only ifthey problematize the "cultures ofclass" that motor these regimes, and only ifthe difficult issues ofagency as institutionally validated action are taken into careful, patient account. I cannot conclude with such problematizations, but the thesis has been an attempt to gesture towards them.

The institutions and effects ofeconomic development - "the lofty postwar project oftransforming the Third World from 'backward,' agrarian societies to 'modem,' industrialized ones" (Zein-Elabdin 1998: 1) - have peripherally structured my family's trajectories in ways I had not considered until this thesis was well underway. Two of these odd development stories were never meant to be told, and have come to me over the years in conversational asides and seemingly inscrutable fits ofrage. I code them as narratives ofresentment and shame. How my mother's family "lost land" in suburban

Manila: my grandparents "sold their plot" for a pittance to the city for a highway

149 construction project. And, the story goes, my mother's parents were not "educated enough" to consider taking alternative action.

There is also a once (and only once)-told story about my biological father, whom

I have never known. In my fuzzy (and not-to-be-trusted) recollection it goes something like this: shortly after her post-1965 emigration to Washington, D.C., the city ofmy birth, my mother gets a job as a secretary at the World Bank. She falls in love with my biological father (the nature ofhis labor I do not know), and becomes pregnant with what will become me. She then discovers he has a wife in the Philippines. The relationship ends dramatically with my mother having my biological father deported from the U.S. before my birth.

There are also family "development" stories that, for me, were not associated with shame or bitterness. Indeed, they naturalized labor migration. In any given year during my childhood and adolescence, there were extended family members living in my parents' house whose legal status was undocumented. They were all ofurban middle class background - one a bank worker, one a dentist, one a teacher. Two ofmy older, single cousins were fortunate enough to find jobs as live-in nannies with employers who were willing to sponsor them in their citizenship "naturalization" process. They would regale me with stories ofthe children they cared for, but about other aspects oftheir work situation, they spoke very little.

Because these are stories about the economic migrant, they are stories about "the hope for justice under capitalism" (Spivak 1997:470). As the child ofan economic migrant, I cannot pretend to disavow this hope. But ifI am able to let the lessons of structural adjustment failure and labor exportation "success" guide my political thought,

150 perhaps I can continue to learn, along with other "emerging dominant" teachers, how to

"acknowledge our part and hope in capitalism [in order to] bring that hope to a persistent and principled crisis," thereby "setting ourselves on the way to intervening in an unfinished chapter ofhistory" that remains the project ofdecolonization (Ibid. 474).

151 APPENDIX A: MAP OF THE PHILIPPINES

152 ·.. ... Philippines - IntImatlonII boundllY J '-. I '6 UrAN * N~t capital OUNOS -R.~ Luzon ~l " --R.... ----If- - Pan-f'hUlppl.... HI&\'IW'Y I Strait Philippine I ¥' up 1?0 Mx-. Sea i ill 160 J.o ... l.Mo6fot CMflltoN(Olde ~S1' 7H""" - " , Luzon South China Sea

SemIJ' " - - " , - oj>·

,._-- ..,

...... Celebes .. - MAlAYSIA ·Sea - ... • ",1IOl103 lflOOl~ 10.113 APPENDIX B: DETAILS OF 2004 U.S. AID PACKAGE TO THE R.P.

Bilateral Package:

A. Economic Assistance: 1. General System ofPreference, duty-free market access, including carageenin, $1 billion 2. Credit lines (Overseas Private Investment Corp. special line ofcredit and 40% of Eximbank allocation for Southeast Asia), $527 million 3. 3. Overseas Filipino workers remittance cost savings (Based on Department of Finance estimates), $300 million 4. Poverty alleviation, including 25% ofFood for Peace budget for foreign countries, $218 million

B. Defense and Security Assistance 1. Peace Process Assistance (MILF, ex-MNLF peace process and engineering training), $95 million 2. Counterterrorism (FMF and other trainings), $80 million 3. Veteran benefits (Administration bill and veterans member hospitalization), $77 million 4. Balikatan 03-1 (estimate), $47 million 5. Military modernization(30 helicopters; 30,000 M-16s; 15% ofpresidential drawdown for foreign countries), $42 million

II. Corporate Transactions 1. Seven individual projects $1.105 billion 2. Market Access Project $150 million 3. Initial Iraq projects $108 million 4. Healthcare Job Commitments $26 million

III. Multilateral Assistance A. World Bank $934 million B. International Finance Corp. (IFC) $147 million [TE]

Source: "WEEKENDER," BusinessWorld Manila, Ju14, 2003

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Mutlimedia

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