The Philippines as tool-forged nation: Revisiting Nick Joaquin’s use of Marshall McLuhan’s Medium Theory to reconstruct colonial history
Article
In his 2004 essay, “Culture as History,” the late National Artist for Literature, Nick Joaquin, retold the colonial history of the Philippines through Marshall McLuhan’s medium theory, framed in the famous aphorism “the medium is the message.” Joaquin followed McLuhan’s thought by positing that technology is behind the metamorphosis of the Philippines. Accordingly, this metamorphosis occurred between the 16th and 17th centuries with the arrival of tools, like the plow, from Spain that enabled the colonized subjects to improve their lot and forge their identity as Filipinos.
Joaquin and McLuhan’s thoughts, conjoined in the former’s essay, steered colonial history away from nationalistic currents, via objects, artefacts, or technology, towards a narrative of a tool-forged nation.
This paper examines Joaquin’s suppositions on Philippine history by inquiring into the central role of technology in colonization and its contestation. By revisiting Joaquin and McLuhan’s theories on technology, this essay delves into the challenge of understanding colonial history and the opportunities they offer for theorizing technology and society.
Screening Place: Regional and Vernacular Cinemas in Cebu
Article
The history of autonomous cultural production in the Philippines has been both blessed and cursed with a series of significant but contentious debates largely stemming from the nation’s historical battles with colonialism and how that experience problematized the concept of an easily definable national identity. Using geographical concepts surrounding place to open up new approaches to understanding local cultural production, this essay turns to Philippine cinema as a propaedeutic for this contested history and traces the emergence and difficulties of vernacular and regional cinemas in Cebu, Philippines.
