HIMAGSIK KAYUMANGGI

HAHAMAKIN LAHAT, MASUNOD KA LAMANG? Sa pagkakataong ito, Pebrero 14, 2009, Tamuneneng ko, habang bumabagsak sa bangin ang imperyalistang pamamanhik ng mga tumitingala sa iyo: “Dini sa dibdib ko na nahihilahil… nasa aking puso’t doon humihimbing” Ngunit bakit pa itatawid itong kapalaran “At lahat ng hirap pag-aralang bathin” Kung anumang layo, “kung ating ibigin daig ang malapit na ayaw lakbayin”? Gayundin ang sugat na kung tinanggap di daramdamin ang antak Ngunit kung umayaw o di payag galos o gurlis lamang ay magnanaknak— Ay, d’yos ko, ay, Tamuneng ko, tanggapin ma’y sukdulang nagnanaknak! --Ni E. SAN JUAN, Jr.

RE-VISITING THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC IMAGINATION IN PHILIPPINE WRITING by E. SAN JUAN, Jr. Inaugurated by the United Nation's bombing of Iraq for occupying the territory of another nation (Kuwait), the post-Cold War era we inhabit today may be as far removed from the Enlightenment vision of a cosmopolitan world culture (expressed, for example, in Goethe's notion of a Weltliteratur) as the years when this century opened with the Boer Wars in South Africa, the Boxer rebellion against foreign incursions in China, and the Spanish-American War. Our postmodern conjuncture is in fact distinguished by ethnic particularisms and by the valorization of the aleatory, contingent, and heterogeneous. Indeed, the ideal of internationalism presupposes a plurality of nation-states asymmetrically ranked in a conflict-ridden global market. It thrives on national differences since "world interdependence has diffused balance of power considerations and transformed them into a ba...