The Father, the Son, and the Aswang: Uncolonial Ontologies in Philippine Literature

Abstract

This paper proposes the “uncolonial” as an alternative Philippine ontology to the traditionally dualistic terrain of coloniality often associated with the archipelago. While much traditional research has provided insight into the ways in which colonial governance, bolstered by Catholicism introduced by the Spanish upon their arrival on the islands, outlines a stark material contrast between the colonial and noncolonial, this paper articulates a theorization of immateriality and hybridity of uncolonial literature and cultural practices. By offering a triptych framework through which to articulate the uncolonial—an apt metaphor for the immense impact Abrahamic religion and the spiritual have had on the Philippines—this paper argues that the heterogeneity of a Philippine colonial, pre/postcolonial, and uncolonial structure enables an analysis of the historical trajectory of the Philippines without strictly reducing it to a totalizingnationalism. Utilizing Philippine folk creatures and monsters as vehicles through which to articulate an uncolonial indifference to colonial governance, this paper envisions a radical alterity of Philippine cultural and knowledge production, intentionally or not, unintelligible to the archipelago’s historical colonizers. Under the umbrella of the aswang, a cultural figuration of different forms of supernatural creatures, as well as the more conventional spiritual manifestation of the ghost, the construction of an uncolonial Philippine ontology renders Philippine cultural production as something that cannot, and perhaps should not, be totally and completely understood