SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JAN 2014 N5

SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JAN 2014 N5
Or, re-rerereading 'Nikita' one more time in the context of the Philippine condition. 

THERE IS THAT trope in 'Nikita' about the creation of doubles. 

One of the means, of the complex and complicated means, is the complete erasure of the past lives of individuals, and from the ruins of that act of erasing would rise a new individual, but not necessarily a person.

One of the things that is gone in the double is his capacity to reach out to others and the capacity to reach the past, that past-qua-present that is as important as the present-qua-present.

In the double, the continuum of time, of the spaces in the memory, and of the contiguities of our individual worlds--all these are erased, and in it stead is a palimpsest of ruses, lies, deceptions.

In effect, shadows, literal and figurative.

This erasing of the past is an act that is a tyrannical as the erasing of the past of a people in a plural society by making them speak the same language, parrot the same memorized words, and recite the same oath of allegiance to the unquestioned premises of our collective lives.

There is so much erasure that happens when we do not question how we are taught how to look at the world, how we understand the world, how we make sense with ourselves.

And to that, we need an honest language, literal and symbolic, to mediate that understanding that is productive, and it is productive because it permits us to explore the meaning and truth of our life.

It is language it is that we need.

It is language whose context is a world that is plural.

It is language that respects other languages, other ways of seeing things, other ways of understanding things.