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Al Francis B. Villegas
2018-06089
BA English Studies (Language) CAL
Dr. Mary Grace Concepcion
CL 151 THU
December 17, 2021
Selected Poems by Edith Tiempo and the Phantom of American Imperialism
​
It was Renato Constantino in “The Miseducation of the Filipino” who pointed out
the harrowing truth of American education as a means to conquer the minds of the
Filipino people (3). It would make sense that Philippine literature in English as a means
of cultural representation, could not escape being imitative of American models of
writing especially during its period of apprenticeship. Among the key figures of this
period was one of the founders of the first writing workshop that inaugurated the
institutionalization of creative writing in the Philippines, Edith Tiempo. Cruz states this
irony of how the Filipino writer has become inculcated with American—hence,
anti-nationalist, ideologies that insidiously align with the American imperial project (20).
Although Abad claims that Tiempo’s efforts in Filipino poetry have re-colonized
English because of a native clearing that provided new modes of expressions/Filipinisms
(175), our arguably paradoxical preference for Western modes of thinking poses an
undeniable matter in question in our local literary landscape. These efforts he mentions
have been rendered vague when we look at the bigger picture concerning our attitudes
towards the American-imposed standards in our society. This ambivalence with our
colonial masters despite our history may be an issue of collective amnesia and
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interpellation through some of our local works that perpetuate attitudes towards
imperialism that border on apologism. Hau in Necessary Fictions had laid out the
ideological links between literature and nation in the discourse of nationalism and
nation-building (3), which I will attempt to provide another dimension to the paradigm of
Philippine postcolonial literary studies.
Gayatri Spivak in her essay, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of
Imperialism” mentions how recognizing imperialism within the period in which the texts
were written could make sense of how the colonized space becomes “worlded” to the
colonized people. These things among many others, camouflage themselves through
inscription as if to naturalize the demotion of the native Other (243-244). It is in this
context that I will attempt to examine Edith Tiempo’s poems: “The Pestle,” “Lament for
the Littlest Fellow,” and “The Return,” through an analysis and deconstruction of her
poetics to see how they may have been channels for worlding and other
imperialist/neocolonial axioms.
It is important to preface that I do not mean to discredit the genius of Edith
Tiempo by any means, nor should her works be reduced or labeled as imperialist texts. If
anything, this should prove how various logics of imperialism constituted themselves
within every aspect of our collective psyche. Tiempo’s works are a definitive part of our
time, and Tiempo herself even pointed out some of the major considerations of using
English in Filipino poetry (Veric 271-272). However, it is important to remember that
interpretations are political and never neutral. Thus, although the New Criticism
movement which Tiempo is a principal figure in, is known for being self-referential, one
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cannot deny the political consequences of such works that lie beyond the texts themselves
because of how they may have been conditioned by imperialism.
Spivak’s concept of “Worlding” in postcolonial discourse is a specific kind of
othering designed to maintain hegemonic control over territories under conquest. It is the
process of cathecting the domain of the native Other, as the potential 'imperial' domain of
the West. Colonizers take over the major modes of representation, such as in the case of
writing about the colonized space through the lens of the dominant One. This, in turn,
produces rhetorically a common belief in the inert inferiority of native subjects and
cultures (“The Rani of Sirmur” 254).
The first poem, “The Pestle,” best captures the idea of worlding that Spivak
mentions because of how the poem tries to retell the creation story through the English
language. Though worlding is originally intended to look at the texts of the dominant
group, there must be some merit in looking at the subjugated people’s texts as well. I
quote this poem in full to illustrate my point:
THE PESTLE
...in the beginning the sky hung low over the earth...and the woman took off her
beads and her crescent comb and hung them up on the sky, the more freely to
work. As her pestle struck the blur arch again and again, it began to rise, rise...
– The Origin of the Moon and the Stars, A Philippine Myth
…the bamboo split and out stepped Malakas [Strong] and Maganda [Beautiful],
the first man and woman.
– The Story of the Creation, A Philippine Myth
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On the bank the wash-stick is beating out time,
Time and wise words and riddles in a wooden rime;
Why should he listen, just to cross its dark message! If he,
A good smith beating his tempered muscles into plows,
And she (in prayers), folding her mildewed safety between bleached vows,
Once wrought for Beauty and Strength, if they be
Splinters from the cracked bamboo,
They shouldn’t listen to that crude tattoo!
To grapevine its heresies through some crumbling bole –
Why should they?–they, the divine stems? Yet strange, he stokes the fires,
Burns himself in a thousand spots. He is not done.
And she?–he sees her rinsed-out fears a whole
White line slacked, flopping through the mire.
Old woman, best leave the wash-stick in the sun;
(The pestle pushed the thigh-bone comb
And the beads of clay high, too high)
Our tough hands shake and our sweaty lips smirk and lie,
We had stored our treasures in a maggoty home.
The poem references the folk stories and affirms the worlding of the Philippines
by virtue of approximating the Filipino tradition through English. This forced translation
of the native conceptual thinking of Filipinos seeks to produce a version that is endowed
with sufficient virtue to represent or even replace, the original. Hence, this shows how the
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Filipinos conception of their identity as rooted in their tales or legends is not an inert fact
of nature because of the inscriptions of the colonizers that infect and ultimately dictate
how Filipinos navigate their space.
Though Vitug argues that Tiempo’s poem has strong traces of anti-imperialist and
nationalist sentiments, that does not necessarily mean that worlding does not occur. He
provides a reading from this poem that is framed in terms of the issues brought about by
industrialization and class struggle as in the case of the Philippines as an agricultural
country that slowly becomes subsumed in the affairs of the First World (155). Worlding,
in this case, happens when the Philippines as part of the “Third World” is rendered “as
distant cultures, exploited but with rich intact literary heritages waiting to be recovered,
interpreted, and curricularized in English translation” (243). This act of writing about the
Philippines in such a manner further abets in naturalizing the existence of the Third
World. Hence, areas presided over and inscribed are transformed with irreversible
changes. Through worlding, colonized natives and territories are defined in colonial
terms, translated through the colonial language, and designated as subject to colonial
authority.
This, I believe, is among many ways how worlding manifests in the works of
Filipino writers. The conditions that allow the narrative in the text to make sense are
influenced/dictated by Anglo-American modes of thought. It is important to note that
while there are conceivable efforts of resistance, worlding as a process is something that
manifests behind underlying ideologies that surreptitiously seep through and influence
the way Filipinos make sense of the world.
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The second text, “Lament for the Littlest Fellow” delves into themes like
repression and a person’s inevitable search for release. Yet I argue that it also becomes a
channel for a metaphorical representation of the axiomatic “Imperialism as a social
mission.” Spivak describes this through the dichotomy of the enlightened colonizers and
the brutish natives in which imperialism is glorified through a mission of assimilating the
colonies into civilization (243). “Lament for the Littlest Fellow” draws on the
characterization of the persona hinged on the binary opposition between the rational man
and the wide-eyed animal. The parallelisms between the marmoset and the Filipinos as
alienated subjects cannot be ignored, especially through the eyes of the “enlightened”
humans as a way to justify conquering lesser nations. This can be observed in the lines,
“... took my arm and set / my fingers around the bars, with coaxing mimicries / of squeak
and twitter” (Tiempo, “Lament” 3-5).
However, this distinction becomes blurred as the similarities between the persona
and the encaged marmoset become emphasized in the latter part of the poem, thus
triggering some sort of emotional response from the persona. This is particularly evident
in the lines “ … now he thinks you are / another marmoset in a cage. A proud denial / sets
you to laughing… “ (5-7). I see this as an allegory of colonial insecurity that has been a
driving force of many colonial empires. The persona’s recognition of such similarities
between herself and the marmoset also becomes a realization of the fragility of her
presence and/or her reality. Therefore, the poem highlights at a fundamental level, the
recognition of the fragility of the colonial presence itself.
​
This becomes a motivating factor in which imperialism becomes a social mission
to expand their conquest and transform natives into quasi-Anglo-Americans, as an
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overarching attempt to effectively shatter traditional social structures and transplant
within them new colonial systems. It would also then be an avenue to disseminate
oppressive tools to demoralize and neutralize the natives lest they pose a threat in the
future. This imperialist axiom of soul-making is subdued behind a veneer of sympathy as
observed in the persona of the poem.
The persona, acquiring anxiety on which the readers can draw resemblances,
becomes a way for readers to conflate benevolence/generosity/soul-making and
imperialism. Hence, the poem may inadvertently have a forgiving attitude to such things
as it sympathizes with the persona who feels overwhelming repression concerning her
married life. This emphasis on forging the reader-character connection allows for a
channel in which colonial missions are justified by identifying/antagonizing the anxiety
that pushes forward their desires and coming to terms with their individual needs and
interests. I feel it is important to preface again that glorifying imperialism is something
that we have been made to act upon and not a conscious effort of the author or the text
themselves. Therefore, it should be expected that even within realms that, on the surface,
do not seem to have an inkling of any political agenda, still require constant reevaluation
especially in terms of the conditions of the text that allow them to be plausible in the first
place.
It is worth noting how the last poem, “The Return” is connected to the first two
poems discussed above. For the most part, after successfully worlding the Philippines
into the Third World through an infiltration under the pretense of a social mission, “The
Return” ironically talks about the departure from the nostalgia of old glories. The text
talks about the human ability to travel back to the past through a contemplative journey in
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one’s memory. The poem is told from the point of view of a decrepit old man
remembering his earlier life experiences when he was a young sailor and adventurer as a
juxtaposition to his current corporeal state. I would like to focus on the emphasis on
themes like regret and anguish which seem to be connected to the act of remembering.
The poem suggests how remembering brings more pain and anguish because of
the irreversible consequence of time. This is especially evident in these lines, “He, too,
stopped in the doorway, chagrined. / He would go among them but he would not tell, he
could be smart, / He, an old man cracking the bones of his embarrassment apart” (“The
Return” 14-15) where there is a connotation of shame and hopelessness by remembering
the past. Hence, the poem advances “moving on” as the most necessary course of action
lest one languish in the bitterness of self-reproach. The poem relates to the native Others
whose histories were obscured and denied by colonialism. This notion of forgetting
conveniently ties in with the colonizers, who wish to retain some sort of political and
economic grip on their subjects long after colonialism had changed its form through
neoliberal means.
While it is precarious to aggrandize the nativist/crystallized history of our
pre-colonial roots, claiming outright that suppressing the past as a means to move
forward runs the risk of reverting to more colonial and outdated modes of thinking and
shows how imperialism as a logic had intercepted the minds of people. At the same time,
it reinforces the power relations and hierarchies that ultimately view Western thinking as
superior. One can see how this corroborates with Constantino’s argument that colonial
education’s goal of nipping anti-imperialist radicalism in the bud was a way to cripple the
nationalist movement (1). Hence, the poem pushes for a consequentialist and defeatist
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attitude that naturalizes colonialism as merely part of the past while implicitly ignoring
the existence of neocolonialism.
It could be noted that there are certain similarities between the current state of the
persona and the Philippines, particularly in the poem’s depiction of frailty and weakness.
The persona’s old age, being the cause of difficulty for mundane activities like walking,
requires supervision and assistance, the same way the Philippines had to be scaffolded by
America for a brief period after receiving independence. I believe this is one reason that
causes the Philippines to experience a collective amnesia and internalization of
conflicting ideologies regarding our colonial history.
Under hundreds of years of colonialism, it is not difficult to think that
subservience itself is an interpellated trait that we have acclimated to as a means of
survival. Through an analysis of the inner workings of imperialism, we can see how we
have been conditioned by such logic to rewrite our world through the political alignments
of our colonial masters. I feel it is important that we unpack things that help the
narratives to be formed that we as a society understand and believe without a second
thought. It would have been inconceivable that Edith Tiempo, a literary giant behind the
New Criticism movement and a national artist for literature, would even be remotely
complicit in propagating such ideologies. On the surface, Edith Tiempo’s poems would
give the impression of sophistication and substance. However, it is important to note that
interpretations occur because of invisible logics we assume as natural. This proves how
insidious imperialism is at regurgitating to us the values that have been naturalized in the
process of hundreds of years. Hence, our situation calls for a constant reevaluation and
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even deconstruction, of one’s motivations, desires, and beliefs for they are ultimately
influenced by dominant discursive practices and political ideologies.
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Works cited
Abad, Gemino H. "Filipino poetry in English: a native clearing." World Englishes 23.1
(2004): 169-181.
Constantino, Renato. “The Miseducation of the Filipino.” Foundation for Nationalist
Studies, 1987.
Cruz, Conchitina. "The (Mis)education of the Filipino Writer." Kritika Kultura 28 (2017).
Hau, Caroline. Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980.
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "The Rani of Sirmur: An essay in reading the archives."
History and Theory 24.3 (1985): 247-272.
—. "Three women's texts and a critique of imperialism." Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985):
243-261.
Tiempo, Edith. "Lament for the Littlest Fellow." Poetry (1952): 275-275.
—." Poetry (1957): 223-223.
—. "The Return."
Veric, Charlie Samuya. "The Formal is Political: Revaluating Edith L. Tiempo."
Philippine studies (2003): 256-283.
Vitug, Niccolo R. "Irog-Irog: Making Space for Contributions and Critique of the
Tiempos and the Silliman Workshop." Silliman Journal (2020): 129.