An Empty Signifier and a Bloody Vessel
“I can’t squander my life tending these faded flowers, these shadows, the legacy of past crimes.” — Duong Thu Huong, “Paradise of the Blind”
“The past is never dead, it’s not even past.” — William Faulkner
Where does the current age leave the National Artist Award?
It can be disconcerting at times to indulge in these brief moments of contemplation to see where culture has taken us, or where we have taken our national culture after all these decades. 2018 was a year of gratitude for many new National Artists, including the venerable lady of theater, Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio (National Artist for Theater), Ryan Cayabyab (National Artist for Music), and literary historian Resil Mojares (National Artist for Literature).
While there is certainly much to celebrate when it comes to the prodigious and culturally significant corpus of works of many National Artists, the order itself, which was created not too long ago by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos through Proclamation №1001, s. 1972, must necessarily come under constant, critical scrutiny because of its origin and supposed raison d’être, which is to “embody the nation’s highest ideals in humanism and aesthetic expression.[1]” The National Artist Award represents the highest form of institutionalization of cultural production on a national level, and it encompasses multiple domains of production, from the visual arts to music, and of course, literature.
The main problem with the institutionalization of culture is that it feeds the mechanisms that allow for much more violent components of the symbolic order to hold sway over the nation itself. Think along the lines of the state vis-à-vis the artist (a most unfortunate binary), bourgeois ideals of beauty and acceptability, the divine submission to the normalcy of cultural hegemony, and so on. It would appear that in the age of social media, which can also be described as the era of the erosion of truth (or the apparent lack of need for it, as is our postmodern condition), the National Artist Award remains firmly entrenched in a position that can only be described as anti-people. While it would be unjust and nonsensical to cast a blanket accusation of complicity to its recipients, it is necessary to rearticulate its role and continuing legacy in light of the current predicaments created by the Duterte regime.
The anxiety of artistry
It was the questionable literary critic, Harold Bloom, who posited that all existing literatures, in their indomitable death drive toward glorious perfection and the sublime, are actually just the products of anxiety, or of fear of the greatness of predecessors. Such is the nature of the stubborn academic champions of the Western canon. We are no better back here, as we continue to reproduce the conditions that effectively relegate artistic and literary production to the backburners of the free market. How can we, in our supposed understanding of culture and liberation, not understand that in order to be truly free, that we have to stop fearing the peripheries and the margins? It is undeniable that many still find comfort in the cold, empty recesses of institutionalization, and for the most part, this happens because what is “out there” seems shapeless and frightening. But what could be more frightening than being trapped and categorized, shackled by expectations and the reputation of the institutions that allow only a modicum of representation and validation to artists and writers in general, who, through no fault of their own, are physically and symbolically starved of capital?
The righteous combat of arts and letters
It has always been the perfect time to unite, not with institutions, though they may try to learn from us, but with each other — the ones who are responsible for the continuation of the “world republic of letters.” Combative French literary critic Pascale Casanova highlights the material importance of literary production in the context of the evolving nation, and in the face of the countless challenges brought about by the juggernaut of transnational capital: “Once aristocratic, literary capital now became national and popular, its acquisition and accumulation supposedly open to all. Carried out by a means of comparative history of peoples, this apparently egalitarian revolution also involved a tacit struggle against the legitimacy of the aristocracy, based as this was on a hitherto unchallenged monopoly of antiquity.[2]” Casanova also aptly reveals the eternal battle for cultural legitimacy, as old structures give way, and newer ones are created in their wake. Not to oversimplify, but each era shuffles and ‘recreates’ old rules to accommodate capital’s evolution.
In this context, the National Artist Award serves only as a fast-emptying signifier, a bloody, dusty, historical marker that reminds us constantly of how much militant blood is still required to bring the arts and literatures to their rightful place: above tyranny and capital, and well beyond the clutches of the murderous state and its cohorts. Make no mistake: the existing conditions for artists and writers are nothing less than impossible. And yet there is a frenetic energy that runs across the tattered margins of society, where the disenfranchised and vulnerable await their fate to this day. This energy, as Herbert Marcuse discovered, is rooted in human nature itself: “…Moreover, the aesthetic dimension is also the medium in which nature and freedom, meet.[3]”
The glaring fracture that continues to separate institutions from the people is their inability to revolt and to separate themselves from the instigators of violence against the nation itself. While institutions attempt to inscribe sublimity on artistry and literariness, they are unable to comprehend their role in the reproduction of the very same conditions that literature and art denounce. And while one may argue that this may be so because some writers and artists are comfortable with their institutional affiliations, it is fortunate that beyond the ideological influence or power of centrally-positioned English departments and government commissions for the arts/literature/language, there are people who dare to dream — and create, well away from this ossified madness. This ecosystem of creators, dissenters and thinkers are the nation’s organic intellectuals, and their worldviews are tied not to the institutionalization of their works, but to the immediate crises and the on-going struggles to liberate culture, the nation, and its people.
[1] The Order of National Artists | GOVPH. (2019). Retrieved 10 December 2019, from https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/the-order-of-national-artists/
[2] Casanova, P. (2011). Combative Literatures. New Left Review November-December 2011, (72).
[3] Marcuse, H. (2015). Eros and civilization (p. 163). Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press.
Marius Carlos, Jr. is a storyteller, essayist, and journalist. He is the current editor-in-chief of Revolt Magazine and Creative Director at Vox Populi PH. He is also the English editor of Rebo Press Book Publishing. He is an independent researcher focused on transnational capitalism, neocolonialism, empire, and pop culture. Contact him for writing projects.
