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Abstract
This article interrogates how both visual culture and queer futurity can be made visible in and through the Philippine archive as a case in point. It begins by problematizing a paradoxical specter of futurity that seems to haunt more the Global North. But despite such haunting, the Philippines in the Global South continues to have thin to nil (i.e., nearly absent) envisioning toward a queer futurity, for most Filipino LGBTQIA + scholars seem to still be engaged in recovering “lost histories” from the archives and “thick descriptions” of the present, while focusing more on the textual than the visual. The article then proceeds to discuss mobilizing ekphrasis and representation as main conceptual tools in bridging the temporally opposite projects of queer archiving and queer futurity. It analyzes through ekphrastic re-reading the various LGBTQIA + representations from the Philippine archive – that is, a “palimpsestic site” of colonial confrontations, national (re)construction, and potentially global queer critique. These re-readings along the archival grain juxtapose the archival representations as historically authentic vis-à-vis their more present-day representations as visual proxies. Yet more crucially, the potency of these ekphrastic re-readings – in lieu of visually actual – lies in their capacity to reverberate queer possibilities, re-awakening them from their sleep within the archives, and thus re-mobilizing them toward becoming a useful part of academics, activists, and artists’ “shared arsenal” in re-envisioning and, hopefully in time, reifying such past possibilities into future queer actualities anew.
Acknowledgements
My sincerest gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the earlier version of this paper. I also thank my colleagues and friends: to Jesus “Led” Villafuerte (PUP’s Center for Creative Writing/Ateneo de Manila University’s School of Humanities) for introducing me to and thereby correcting some of my articulations concerning the theoretical conversations on futurity; to Rancho Arcilla (Intramuros Administration) and Jeremiah So Adriano (De La Salle-College of St. Benilde) for inviting me as a resource speaker on LGBTQIA + history before their respective institutions, through which I formulated my earlier ideas for this paper; and to Gregg Alfonso G. Abbang (National Museum of the Philippines) and Rafael Pamplona (PUP) for their comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The terms queer and LGBTQIA+ shall be used interchangeably here, because in Global South context queer often operates simultaneously as an umbrella term for LGBTQIA+, on one hand, and a critical term for practices distrubing heteronormativity, on the other hand. See Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow, eds., Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012).
2 See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and Interpretation of Culture, ed. Carl Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 276–7.
3 Reading “along the archival grain” is a phrase coined by Ann Laura Stoler, pertaining to an approach where historians must unload themselves of both the “received historical narratives” and “ready-made synthesis.” Instead, historians must follow the actual mobilities of categories’ variations of use and being useful. See Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 205–08.
4 Franco “Bifo” Berardi, After The Future (Edinburgh and Oakland: AK Books, 2011), 13. However, although Berardi coined the phrase, it was the late Mark Fisher who further popularized it in his own problematizing of the hauntologies (or specters) of lost futures. See Mark Fisher, Ghost of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (Winchester and Washington: Zero Books, 2011).
5 Hito Steyerl, “A Tank on a Pedestal: Museums in an Age of Planetary Civil War,” e-flux 70 (February 2016), 9, http://worker01.e-flux.com/pdf/article_9005341.pdf
6 Although Frederic Jameson mostly conceived of futurity as somewhat incubated in the conditions of the present (as amplified by Neferti Tadiar in her book Things Fall Away, 2009), Ian Buchanan poetically captured how Jameson would articulate how historicizing is always already implicated in the dialectics between present and future; that is, “history for Jameson is a living thing, and it is the task of the critic to show how its beating heart animates all forms of cultural production.” See Ian Buchanan’s “Preface” in Frederic Jameson, Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), xv; and Neferti X.M. Tadiar, Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2009).
7 This anti-social thesis, which was later termed anti-relationality, can be summed up with this question: “Why must a gay beast of burden perennially undertake the work of anticipatory progress?” See Robert L. Caserio et al., “The Anti-Social Thesis in Queer Theory,” PMLA 121, no. 3 (May 2006): 819–28, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25486357
8 A formulation Tadiar amplified based on Frederic Jameson’s earlier articulations of the same. See Tadiar, Things Fall Away, 10–11.
9 See Neferti X.M. Tadiar, Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University [ADMU] Press, 2004); Bliss Cua-lim, “Queer Aswang Transmedia: Folklore as Camp,” Kritika Kultura 24 (2015): 178–225, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3mj1k076; and Bobby Benedicto, “The Haunting of Gay Manila: Global Space-Time and the Specter of Kabaklaan,” GLQ 14, nos 2–3 (2008): 317–38, https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2007-035
10 See Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2006).
11 The field that has become “Philippine studies” is continuously being reshaped, rebranded, and reimagined by various competing schools of thought within and outside, resulting in their respective “versions” of Philippine Studies. Besides the U.S. imperial and Cold War-invented “Philippine studies” and the counter-colonial indigenization version “Pilipinolohiya,” a third alternative emerged that in the mid-2010s became “Filipino studies.” The latter considers the growing Filipino diasporia, which is likewise queered and often un-belonged by geographically normative Philippine studies. See Dada Docot, Stephen B. Acabado, and Clement C. Camposano, eds., Plural Entanglements: Philippine Studies (Quezon City: Bughaw Press, 2023).
12 Ali Behdad, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham and London: Duke University Press,1994), 2–8.
13 For examples of intellectual labor exhibiting such simultaneous critique and recuperation, see J. Neil Garcia, “Philippine Gay Culture: An Update and a Postcolonial Autocritique,” in Philippine Gay Culture: Binabae to Bakla, Silahis to MSM: The Last 30 Years (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008), 420–56; and Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar, eds., Globalization and the Decolonial Option (London and New York: Routledge, 2009).
14 For an overview of the current state of Philippine LGBTQIA+ scholarship, see Mark Blasius and Richard T. Chu, eds., More Tomboy, More Bakla Than We Admit: Insights into Sexual and Gender Diversity in Philippine Culture, History, and Politics (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2021).
15 “Texto-centrism,” a concept introduced by Dwight Conquergood, pertains to the privileging of text over non-textual realities, like performances, speech, and visualities. See Dwight Conquergood, “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research,” The Drama Review 46, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 147, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1146965
16 Mobilizing the utility of ekphrasis are the articles of Jan L. de Jong on re-discovering “chain reactions” between descriptions and depictions by Renaissance writers and painters, and Kathryn N. Benzel on re-reading Virginia Woolf’s own reformulation of ekphrasis onto a more open-ended aesthetic technique. See in Visual Resources 19, no. 4 (January 2011), https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gvir20/19/4. For a more detailed genealogy of the term, see Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham and Vermont: Ashgate, 2009).
17 See Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” 276–7.
18 Most historians rely, almost exclusively, on textual evidence, while treating images as merely secondary materials. In some instances, historians avoid using imagery altogether – whether due to a lack of skills in interpreting visual resources, on one hand; or, on the other, the belief that analyzing images can go beyond the facts, hence invoking the danger of fictionalization. See Katharine Martinez, “Imaging the Past: Historians, Visual Images and the Contested Definition of History,” Visual Resources 11, no. 1 (1995): 21–45, http://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.1995.9658317.
19 See David J. Stanley, Historical Imagination (London and New York: Routledge, 2021).
20 See Luciana Duranti, “Reliability and Authenticity: The Concepts and Their Implications,” Archivaria 39 (Spring 1995): 5–10, https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12063
21 While this study consulted the major archival theories by Cook, Duranti, Henchy, MacNeil, Stoler, and others, it is nonetheless crucial to weigh their theories vis-à-vis the trenchant critique raised by Arondekar. That is, does an archival aporia (i.e., subjectivities deemed to be actually obvious yet archivally elusive, such as homosexuality, etc.) instead “mandate a different order of archival reasoning?” [italics added]. See Anjali Aronjekar, “Without a Trace: Sexuality and the Colonial Archive,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 14, no. 1 (2005), https://doi.org/10.1353/sex.2006.0001. Also see Terry Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms,” Archival Science 13 (2013): 95–120, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9180-7; Judith Henchy, “Tracing a Cosmopolitan Subject: Dislocation and Haunting in the Southeast Asian Archive,” in The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship, ed. Megan Browndorf, Erin Pappas and Anna Arays (Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2021), 71–110; and Heather MacNeil and Terry Eastwood, eds., Currents of Archival Thinking (Santa Barbara and Denver: Libraries Unlimited, 2017).
22 Henchy, “Tracing a Cosmopolitan Subject,” 88–90.
23 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press), 12. Also consider how Derrida compared desire to the Greek notion of khora, hence explaining desire as a never-ending cycle, in Niall Lucy, A Derrida Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 160.
24 “Shadow archive,” a term coined by Allan Sekula, pertains to what he regarded as a “general, all-inclusive archive [that] necessarily contains both the traces of the visible bodies of heroes, leaders, moral exemplars, celebrities, and those of the poor, the diseased, the insane, the criminal, the non-white, the female, and all other embodiments of the unworthy.” See Allan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive,” October 39 (1986), 10, http://www.jstor.org/stable/778312.
25 Berardi’s futurability is regarded here as “most helpful” because it is simple yet demystified enough, because most queer scholarship tends toward mystification, such as Muñoz’ notion of potentiality. Although helpful, Muñoz’s imagining of potentialities is unlike Berardi’s more grounded mapping of how alternative futurities can strategically be actualized. See Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility (London and New York: Verso, 2019).
26 David Carr, in his review of Reinhart Koselleck’s book, clarified that the meaning of futures past points to “more precisely past possibilities and prospects, past conceptions of the future: futures past.” See David Carr, [Review of Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, by R. Koselleck & K. Tribe], History and Theory 26, no. 2 (1987), 198, https://doi.org/10.2307/2505122
27 Before delving into the Philippine archive, two points need to be clarified here. Firstly, Philippine history is often dissected into this tripartite periodization, namely Precolonial (ca. pre-1600s), Colonial (ca. 1565–1946), and Postcolonial (ca. 1946–present) periods. Yet this ekphrastic sleuthing for LGBTQIA+ figures along the grain of the archive will not touch on the postcolonial period, because visual representations for queer figures were already starting to be available by that period, mostly via television and film. Secondly, and most crucially, this survey of queer or LGBTQIA+ representations (in this case, of the historically authentic) may appear mostly “uneven,” representing more queer males-at-birth than queer females-at-birth. For, across the five centuries of the Philippines’ recorded history, significantly few, almost nearly nil, records have been tracked about gender-nonconforming figures who would resonate with today’s categories of lesbian, queer females, trans men, etc.
28 See Manila Manuscript (a.ka., Boxer Codex), ca. 1590, 59v, http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/metsnav3/general/index.html#mets=http%3A%2F%2Fpurl.dlib.indiana.edu%2Fiudl%2Fgeneral%2Fmets%2FVAB8326; Pedro de San Buenaventura, Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala (Pila, Laguna: La Noble Villa de Pila por Tomas Pinpin y Domingo Loag, 1613), http://sb.tagalogstudies.org/
29 Francisco Ignacio Alcina, Historia de Las Islas E Indios de Bisayas [1668] (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2002), 256, 260, 533.
30 Francisco Combés, Historia de Mindanao y Joló [1668], ed. Wenceslao E. Retana and Pablo Pastells (Viuda de M. Minuesa de los Rios, 1897), 514–16, https://archive.org/details/aqn8199.0001.001.umich.edu/page/514/mode/2up. See the English translation as “The Natives of the Southern Islands (1690),” The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, trans. Emma Blair and Alexander Robertson (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1911), 40: 162–3, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/afk2830.0001.040/166?page=root;rgn=full+text;size=100
31 William H. Scott introduced this approach, which in Philippine historiography became known as finding the Filipino within and through the “cracks in the parchment curtain.” See William H. Scott, Looking for the Pre-Hispanic Filipino and Other Essays in Philippine History (Quezon City: New Day, 1993).
32 Isaac Donoso, ed., Boxer Codex: A Modern Spanish Transcription and English Translation of 16th-Century Exploration Accounts of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2022), xlvii–xlix. As to how the manuscript came into the hands of Professor Boxer, as well as his initial historical criticisms, both external and internal of the compendium, see Charles R. Boxer, “A Late Sixteenth Century Manila MS,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1 (1950): 37–49.
33 Donoso, Boxer Codex, 81. For the digitized copy of the manuscript, see Boxer Codex (ca. 1590), 59r. http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/omeka/lilly/items/show/93
34 Of historiographic interest, perhaps, is how the anonymous author of its section about the Tagalogs contradicts himself when describing the relative position of the bayoguin vis-à-vis the cis women shaman-priestesses called catalonan. Initially, its author mentioned that the trans woman bayoguin’s role was merely “to help” the cis women catalonan. Yet, on a later passage, the text asserts that the bayoguin appeared more moving for performing “with more pomp, ceremony and authority.” See Boxer Codex [MS], 59v; also in Donoso, Boxer Codex, 81.
35 American scholars Emma Blair and Alexander Roberston secured a copy of Chirino’s Relacion directly from the Jesuit Pablo Pastells, who at the time was already in Barcelona after his 18-year assignment as superior of the Jesuits in the Philippines. Hence, Chirino’s Relacion became a crucial component of Blair and Robertson’s 55-volume compilation of Spanish primary sources translated into English for the purpose of U.S. imperial rule over its new colony in the early 1900s. See Blair and Roberston, The Philippine Islands, vol. 12 (1601–1604), 9–10.
36 Pedro Chirino, “Relations in the Philippine islands,” in Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands, vol. 12, 260–61, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/afk2830.0001.012/264?q1=magdalen&view=text&size=100. See the original Spanish in Pedro Chirino, Relation de las Islas Filipinas (Manila: Imprenta de D. Esteban Balbas, [1604] 1890), 72, https://archive.org/details/relaciondelasis00chirgoog/page/n80/mode/2up
37 See Carolyn Bewer, “Baylan, Asog, Transvestism, and Sodomy: Gender, Sexuality and the Sacred in Early Colonial Philippines,” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context 2 (May 1999), http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue2/carolyn2.html
38 Gromyko Semper, “The Alchemy of a Babaylan,” 24 × 36 inches, ink and acrylic on canvas, 2013, currently owned by a private collector based in London, UK, photo uploaded to DeviantArt, https://www.deviantart.com/gromyko/art/ALCHEMY-OF-A-BABAYLAN-358907967
39 See the works representing the babaylan, mostly in cis woman form, by Filipino National Artists Fernando Amorsolo, The Burning of the Idols, 50 ½ × 33 ½ inches, oil on canvas, undated, reprinted in Alfredo Roces, Amorsolo, 1892–1972 (Quezon City: Vera-Reyes, Inc., 1975), 185, https://issuu.com/filipinasheritagelibrary/docs/amorsolo__1892-1972?e=18015266/13603178; and Carlos “Botong” Francisco, Pag-unlad ng Panggagamot sa Pilipinas [The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines], Panel 1 of 4, 9.6 × 9.1 feet, oil on canvas, 1953, https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/5-4.jpg
40 See Gromyko Semper’s profiles in Saatchi Art, https://www.saatchiart.com/Gromyko; Symbol and Aesthetics, http://www.symbol-and-aesthetics.org/gromyko-padilla-semper.html; and in Katherine Alamares, “Up And Away: Gromyko Semper’s Artistic Journey, From Cabanatuan To The Moon,” Lifestyle Asia, 12 May 2021, https://lifestyleasia-onemega.com/gromyko-semper-artistic-journey-cabanatuan-moon/
41 Gromyko Semper, chat with the author via Facebook Messenger, 17 June 2023, 10.38pm (GMT +8).
42 English translation by Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 40: 193–5, 343. See the original Spanish in Juan Francisco de San Antonio, Cronicas de la Apostolica Provincia de S. Gregorio de Religiosos Descalzos de N.S.P.S. Francisco en las Islas Philipinas, China, Japon, &c. (Manila: Impressa en la imprenta del vso de la propria provincia, síta en el Convento de N[uest]ra. Señora de Loreto del Pueblo de Sampaloc, extra-muros de la ciudad de Manila: por Fr. Juan del Sotillo, 1738), 156–7, https://archive.org/details/chronicasdelaapo00sana/page/156/mode/2up
43 Likewise, an ongoing study by Danilo Gerona, a foremost Magellan historiographer, uncovered an ecclesiastical inquiry document, dated 2 March 1577, detailing how babaylans in fact practiced potion-making, including the particular local ingredients they used for concocting specific forms of potions and charms. See Danilo Madrid Gerona, “Witchcraft in Cebu: Myths and Politics in the First Decade of Augustinian Evangelization in the Philippines (March 1577),” Magellan-Elcano Studies Center – Partido State University, “You are all invited to our Center Director's talk,” Facebook, 29 October 2022, 8.38am, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=495881982555590&set=pb.100064013775502.-2207520000
44 See scenes at 00:06:30, 00:13:55, and 01:11:45 in Kamakalawa, directed by Eddie Romero (1981, Manila), uploaded by Ian Rosales Casocot, YouTube, 9 July 2022, 02:37:50, https://youtu.be/yexSnm6ru60?t=390
45 See “Order of National Artists: Eddie Romero,” National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/national-artists-of-the-philippines/eddie-s-romero/
46 Andrew Leavold, “Strong Coffee with a National Treasure: An Interview with Eddie Romero,” Cashers du Cinemart, accessed 8 July 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20160731133006/https://www.cashiersducinemart.com/details/issue-18/article-518/strong-coffee-with-a-national-treasure-an-interview-with-eddie-romero
47 Rene Javellana, Weaving Cultures: The Invention of Colonial Art and Culture in the Philippines, 1565–1850 (Quezon City: ADMU, 2017), 180.
48 Juan Jose de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar, Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala: Compuesto por Varios Religiosos Doctos y Graves, y Coordinado (Manila: Imprenta de Ramirez y Giraudier, 1860), https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=PTIOAAAAIAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
49 Gaspar de San Agustin, Compendio de la Lengua Tagala (Sampaloc [Manila]: Imprenta de Nuestra Señora de Loreto, [1703]1787), 84, http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000112265&page=1
50 See Garcia, “Philippine Gay Culture,” 168–74; also Blasius and Chu, More Tomboy, More Bakla.
51 An example is the widely referenced phrase “cun nagpupuit, ò cun napapuit caya, ò cun nagcasala sa hayop” [if you are anally inserting, anally receiving, or committing bestiality]. See Gaspar de San Agustin, Confesionario Copioso en Lengua Española y Tagala, Para Direccion de los Confesores, y Instruccion de los Penitentes (Manila: Convento de Nuestra Señora de Loreto, 1787).
52 See “Anatomical drawing of the uterus,” Guido da Vigevano, ca. 1345, Chantilly, Muse´e Conde´ Ms. 334, folio 281v, reprinted in Karl Whittington, “Medieval intersex in theory, practice, and representation,” Postmedieval 9, no. 2 (2018), 231–47, https//:doi.org/10.1057/s41280-018-0085-3
53 Karl Whittington explained that from the ancient Greeks up to the medieval period, Europeans would imagine the uterus as having seven lobes: three on the right, three more on the left, and one odd lobe at the center. When the male’s sperm rested on the right, it was believed to produce a male child; if on the left, a female child; and if in the center, a hermaphrodite would be born. See Whittington, “Medieval Intersex,” 232–3.
54 See Henrick van Bilderbeke, Belägerung der Statt Ostende: Journal, Tagregister und eigentliche beschreibung aller gedenckwurdigsten Sachen, handlungen und geschichten (s.n., 1604–5), Appendix, fol. 4r, https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=v61YAAAAcAAJ
55 François Soyer, Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal: Inquisitors, Doctors and the Transgression of Gender Norms (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 7–8.
56 Soyer, Ambiguous Gender; also see Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinities (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998), 55.
57 Combés’ Historia was similarly selected to form part of the Blair and Robertson volume on 1690–1691 Philippine colonial life, which succeeding generations of historians and scholars have consulted and critiqued since. See The Philippine Islands, vol. 40, 11–13.
58 Francisco Combés, “Natives of the Southern Islands," in Blair and Robertson, eds., The Philippine Islands vol. 40, 160–63, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/afk2830.0001.040/164?q1=tuto&view=image&size=100
59 See Garcia, “Philippine Gay Culture,” 151–97.
60 Combés, “Natives of the Southern Islands,” 163.
61 It is worth noting that the periodization of this bloody chapter in Philippine history has been the subject of ongoing debates. While most historians point to 1902 as the end of the war, thus signalling the formal beginnings of American imperialism in the Philippines, there are some historians and scholars who would stretch the periodization up to the Battle of Bud Bagsak in June 1913. This stretch is, in a way, a gesture to recognize the Moros’ (i.e., Muslim Filipinos) historical agency independent from the (as if)monotonous chronological framing of the “nationalist” history, where the Moros remain peripherally discoursed. See Teodoro A. Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 8th ed. (Quezon City; Garo Tech Books, 1990), 258–9.
62 See the website of ADMU’s Old Rizal Library in http://rizal.library.ateneo.edu/
63 “An Insurgent Spy Disguised as a Woman Captured near Mariquina by the 24th Infantry,” The Manila Times, 6 August 1899, Microfiche, Microform and Digital Resources Center, Old Rizal Library, ADMU, Quezon City.
64 At 07:15, in News5Everywhere, Lourd's History, Ep. 002: Bakla sa Katipunan [Video file] (30 November 2013), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHBBt8uS_o4
65 John Silva, A Token of Our Friendship: Philippine Photos of Male Affection, First Half of the 20th Century (Manila: Ige Ramos Design Studio, 2011), 8, 78, https://artbooks.ph/products/a-token-of-our-friendship
66 Besides the Ateneo’s Old Rizal Library, the UP Diliman’s Main Library also holds a vast collection of microfilmed sources from the prewar Philippines. See https://mainlib.upd.edu.ph/
67 “Lumakad ang panahon ay para namang ni-yayari ni Tadhana ang ginintuang lubid ng dalisay na pagsasama, na itatali sa dalawang damdaming tungo sa iisang mithi; kaya’t suma-pit ang araw na ang dalawang damdaming iyon ay nagkatagpo at yumari nga ng isang kasunduan.” See “Mga Anunsiante Namin,” Ang Wika 1, no. 2 (Manila: Imp. Ilagan, 1920 [1 November]), 10–11, Microfilm, Multimedia Collections, Main Library, UP Diliman, Quezon City, MCF 10533 (1920–1922).
68 See Reyes’ critique of Cornelio’s 1945 novel Doktor Satan, where Reyes points out how the novel clearly carries the influence of using mad scientist characters from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. See Soledad S. Reyes, Nobelang Tagalog, 1905–1975 (Quezon City: ADMU Press, 1982), 122, 203.
69 The original Tagalog goes as follows:
—Kura. Merong rarake?
—Wala po.
—Ikaw rokoroko. Hindi ba iyan rarake? Kura …
—Hindi po lalaki iyan … Iyan po’y binabae!
—Binabae? Hano ibig sabe binabae? Hindi rarake?
—Hindi po. Iyan po ay pinagkamalan ng Diyos. Nagdalawa siyang loob nang kanyang gawin iyan. Hindi niya malaman kung gagawin niyag [sic] babae o lalaki …
—Marame sarita ikaw … Kura … at binaltak si Sianong magpuputo.
—Susmariosep. Babae ho ako eh … Dahandahanin naman nniyo [sic] ako, por Diyos.
—Ano pangarang?
—Sianing po!
—Ano Sianing po … Roko!
—Itu kitemo dasune, (itanong mo kung bakit siya malandi), — anang opisyal.
— Hondo no kure ti ami kiyo (mang-yari po’y binabai ito). — sagot naman ng interprete.
—Honte kone dasoka kokuryu, (bimbangin mo).
— Hai!—at sumaludo ang interprete. Ipinadala sa isang sundalo si Sianing upang bimbangin.
70 See Robert G. Diaz, “Queer Undoing in Markova: Comfort Gay,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 17, no. 1 (2017), 150–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700701246448; Ronald D. Klein, “Markova: Wartime Comfort Gay in the Philippines (Interview with Walter Dempster, Jr.),” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context 2, no. 13 (2006), http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue13/klein_interview.html
71 In his essay, Philippines’ foremost World War II historian, Professor Dr. Ricardo T. Jose, expressed his reservations as to filmic representations, such as Markova: Comfort Gay and Aishite Imasu 1941. That such “movies venture into themes not take [sic] up by formal commemorations or histories.” See Ricardo T. Jose, “Remembering World War II in the Philippines: Memorials, Commemorations, and Movies,” a paper presented at Globalization, Localization, and Japanese Studies in the Asia-Pacific Region: Past, Present, Future, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 30 September–4 October 2005: 134, https://nichibun.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=pages_view_main&active_action=repository_view_main_item_detail&item_id=1278&item_no=1&page_id=41&block_id=63; also see a parallel historical gay–queer–trans history of Crispiulo Trinidad Luna, known as “Lolo Pulong,” in J. Neil C. Garcia, “Lolo Pulong,” Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 4, no. 1, 169–83, https://journals.ateneo.edu/index.php/budhi/article/viewFile/624/621
72 See Peter Drucker, Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anti-Capitalism (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Jan Gabriel Castañeda, “Grindring the Self: Young Filipino Gay Men’s Exploration of Sexual Identity Through a Geo-Social Networking Application,” Philippine Journal of Psychology 48, no. 1 (2015), 29–58, https://www.academia.edu/14333544/Grindring_the_Self_Young_Filipino_Gay_Mens_Exploration_of_Sexual_Identity_Through_a_Geo_Social_Networking_Application; Paul Ryan, Male Sex Work in the Digital Age: Curated Lives (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).
73 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991).
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Gregorio R. Caliguia
GREGORIO R. CALIGUIA III is a researcher specializing in Philippine LGBTQIA + history. He is a faculty member of the Department of History at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and formerly the Senior Research Specialist at the auction house Casa de Memoria. He received his Bachelor of Arts (History) from PUP and his Master of Arts (Philippines Studies) from the Asian Center of the University of the Philippine Diliman (UPD). He is currently working on the historiography of the Philippine queer archive.