May L. Mojica x Randy T. Nobleza 3rd Term 2014-15 AFL 762d: Postmodernismo x Kulturang Pilipino

1. FERDINAND
BLUMENTRITT X THE
PHILIPPINES:
INSIGHTS AND
LESSONS FOR
CONTEMPORARY
PHILIPPINE STUDIES
May L. Mojica x Randy T. Nobleza
3rd Term 2014-15
AFL 762d: Postmodernismo x
Kulturang Pilipino

2. ABOUT THE BOOK
 This book reconstructs the intellectual stature of Blumentritt by
positioning him as a milestone in Philippine Studies, a discourse
which until now is still trying to soul search for its methodic and
ideological niche in the sphere of local knowledge production.

3. PHILIPPINE DISCOURSE
 Spanish colonizers
 Other European ethnographers and travellers
 American imperialists
 American-trained Filipinos
 Nationalist Filipinos
 Filipinos of the diaspora

4. PROSPERO COVAR, PHILIPPINE
STUDIES VS. PILIPINOLOHIYA
 Philippine Studies – Euro-American generated
knowledge about the Philippines, an
exogenous discourse that has the tendency to
distort its object, and a colonial discourse that
has a tacit motive of producing knowledge in
order to gain tighter politico-economic control
over its object.

5. (PRISCELINA PATAJO-LEGASTO)
 I suggest that Philippine Studies or studies on the Philippines
produced by Filipinos as well as non-Filipinos which have the
Philippines/ the Filipinos’ interest at heart be underpinned by a
postcolonial perspective which critiques how we have been and
continue to be constructed or represented as Europe or America’s
ontological other.

6. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
 to disentangle Blumentritt from the shadow of Rizal
 to critically explore and revisit Philippine studies
 to be able to glean both positive and negative lessons
 to mainstream his method and style of doing Philippine Studies

7. CHAPTERS
 Blumentritt’s intellectual biography
 His works prior to his correspondence with Rizal
 His works during his correspondence with Rizal
 His works after the death of Rizal and upto end of the Spanish
Colonial period
 His works during the American period
 The lessons that can be gleaned for contemporary Philippine
Studies

8. INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY
 Blumentritt has after been referred to as a German, other times as
an Austrian, or a Bohemian, or as a Czech.
 born in 1853, in the city of Prague, the capital of territory of
Bohemia, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire
 the bohemia of Blumentritt’s time happened to be inhabited by
people of Czech and German ethnicities and Blumentritt’s
paternal and maternal families were of German extracts.

9. INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY
 After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Bohemia
became part of Czechoslovakia which in 1993 split into two
independent countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
 Bohemia is now part of the Czech Republic which the city of
Prague standing as the capital of this new state
 This territorially speaking he was a Bohemian, ethnically and
culturally, he was a German, politically and historically, he was an
Austrian and politically and currently, he could be loosely referred
to as a Czech.

10. INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION
 the Pre-Rizalian Period 1879-1886
 the RIzalian Period, 1887-1896
 the Post Rizalian Spanish Period 1897-98
 the American Period 1899-1913

11. POST RIZALIAN SPANISH PERIOD
 When you receive this letter, I shall be dead by then. Tomorrow at
seven I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I
am going to die with a tranquil conscience. Adieu, my best, my
dearest friend and never think ill of me!
 - Rizal letter to Blumentritt
 29 December 1896
 From this day on, a new era on the history of the Philippines has
dawned, quoted by Sichovsky

12. POST RIZALIAN SPANISH PERIOD
 Again, these media suggest that Blumentritt continued to write to
a diverse readership consisting his German specialists in Oriental
Studies and his Spanish sympathizers and adversaries, as well as
some Hispanophone Filipinos who were either in Spain or in the
Philippines.

 If we also are to take a cursory look at his 13 titles and non-
exclusively classify their main themes into economic, educational,
ethnographic, geological/ cartographic, historical, international
relations, linguistic/ literary, descriptive political and polemic
political.

13. POST RIZALIAN SPANISH PERIOD
 Blumentritt claimed that Rizal’s life is aptly symbolized by the terra
Cotta sculptures that latter made and gifted to the former:
“Prometheus in Chains” which alluded to Rizal’s incarceration
after giving the Filipinos the light to see other conditions. “Triumph
of Death over life” which alluded to the Spanish iron hand that
scuffed out of the life of this noble Filipino; and “Triumph of
Genius over Death,” which alluded to the lasting triumph of Rizal
even after his death.

14. POST RIZALIAN SPANISH PERIOD
 Blumentritt called Rizal
“the greatest man the
Malayan race has
prdocued” and
prophetically stated,
”his memory will never
perish in his
fatherland, and the
future generations of
Spaniards will yet
learn to suffer his
name with respect and
reverence.”

15. ON THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION
 These essays are interesting in the sense that they document
Blumentritt’s knowledge of and reflection on the unfolding
revolution. These three essays mark his paradigm shift from that
of being a reformist to that of being a separatist, and there a true
revolutionary and farther to that of being a supporter of Philippine
independence against the over arching threat of American
imperialism.

16. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON
BLUMENTRITT’S PHILIPPINE STUDIES
 During his Post Rizalian Spanish Period
 Blumentritt’s critique of Spanish colonization reached its peak
during his Post Rizalian Spanish period not only in the sense that
his polemical discourses amounted to 62% of his total textual
production, but more so in the sense that it was during this period
that he eventually supported the more radical separatist ideology
of Filipino revolutionaries

17. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON
BLUMENTRITT’S PHILIPPINE STUDIES
 It is during his Post Rizalian Spanish Period that Blumentritt
categorically revealed his conviction about the superiority of his
non-Spanish Filipiniana materials as compared to the ones
produced by the Spaniards.

 It is noticeable that Blumentritt’s Orientalism had further founded
during his Post Rizalian Spanish Period. The formerly recurrent
exoticization and sensualistion of his subject matter, the desirous
gaze on the economic potentials of the archipelago, the othering
of Islam and Eurocentric and Occidentalist discourses are no
longer tangible in as far as the seven examined texts are
concerned.

18. BLUMENTRITT’S AMERICAN PEIORD
 During this time, Blumentritt remained
writing predominantly in German but
slightly increased his articles in
Spanish, and started to write in
English. These media suggest that
Blumentritt returned back to his
journalistic style of writing and scatted
his works in a number of newspapers,
many of which were publication on the
Philippines.

19. BLUMENTRITT’S AMERICAN PEIORD
 Thus, his readership became even more diverse, for aside from
his former Spanish and German audience, he was able,
theoretically speaking, to reach more Hispanophone Filipinos as
well as the political leaders and concerned citizens of the United
States of America.

20. ON THE AMERICAN COLONIAL RULE IN
THE PHILIPPINES
 Among Blumentritt’s American Period texts that are accessible to
the readers in Metro Manila, two are directly critiquing the
American occupation of the Arhcipelago: “the sosts of the
Philipine War” which was published in August 1899 and “America
and the Philippines” which was published in November 1899.

21. A SUMMARY ON PHILIPPINE
ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND
POLITICS
 The main content of the pamphlet tacked the geography,
demography, political hsitroy and the on-going American
colonization of the Philippines. The first appendix is composed of
some extracts from the revolutionary constitution that was framed
in Malalos, and the second appendix is composed of an extant
from the Peace Protocol that was used in Washington 12 August
1898. Some extract sfrm the Treatu of Paris, and an extant from
the Bcon Resolution that did not make it into the Senate of the
United States.

22. PHILIPPINE GEOGRAPHY
 Island grouping
 Luzon with the Babuyan and Batas Islands
 Mindanao
 The Visayan islands
 The Palawan and Sulu Islands

23. PHILIPPINE DEMOGRAPHY
 Taxonomy that he sued during his previous periods that
categorized the Filipinos:
 negritos, which their most common name “Aestas”
 Christianized Malays, who were called “Indios” by the Spaniards
 Islamized Malays, who were called “Moro” by the Spaniards
 Pagan Malays who were called “infieles” by the Spaniards
 The few Chinese merchants and their mestizo offsprings
 Evenr fewer Japanese merchants
 Few Spaniards, Creoles and their mestizo offsprings
 Almost negligible Mexican, Peruvian, Indians

24. HISTORICAL EXPOSITION ABOUT THE
PHILIPPINES
 the early period
 the last century of the Spanish rule
 some recent events

25.  Blumentritt concluded his discussion on the American occupation
with the statement, “may the dice fall as they will, one thing is
certain, the Filipinos have won the sympathy of all who reject the
principle threat Might is Right and consider the sentiment Dulce
est pro patria mori as something more than a copy set up for
students to translate.

26. CONCLUSION
 In as far as the researchers and scholars in Metro Manila are
concerned, Blumentritt proved to be a not-so-accessible author.
The following table shows that despite his being one of the early
leading experts of Philippine Studies, only less tan half of his
works can be physically or virtually accessed by Filipino
researchers and scholars: table 6

27. 9 MAJOR THEMES:
 descriptive political
 economic
 educational
 ethnographic
 geological/ cartographic
 historical
 international relations
 linguistic/ literary
 polemical political

28. AT LEAST SIX OF KEY CONCERNS:
 critique of racism
 critique of the colonizer’s superiority complex
 diagnosis and remediation of the inferiority complex of the
colonized
 diagnosis and rectification of Spanish colonialism
 justification and legitimation of the Philippine revolution
 critique of the American colonization

29. POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
INSIGHTS
 the formal, methodical and theoretical lessons
 the material and thematic lessons
 pitfalls that modern-day Philippine studies should avoid repeating

30. FORMAL, METHODICAL AND
THEORETICAL LESSONS
 second level anthropology and Philippine studies
 remarkable manner of seeing patterns and organization beneath
raw data
 recognition of the hermeneutic value of the contextualizing the
Philippine sin the bigger parameter of Malayo-Polynesian studies
 benchmark with the major European languages, German, French,
Dutch and Italian Filipiniana
 comprehension of the significance of interdisciplinary approach

31. FORMAL, METHODICAL AND
THEORETICAL LESSONS
 significance of the versatility of purposiveness of linguistic
expression
 flexibility in shaping thoughts to suit the varying demands
 analytic strategy of making international comparisons that exploit
vast bibliographic materials about Europe and the Americas
 perceive the value of postcolonial hermeneutics
 agenda of national building and better Philippines

32. CONCLUDING REMARKS
 the project has revealed the value of studying and revisiting his
thoughts as thse would certainly enrich any modern-day Filpino’s
knowledge about his or her culture and history. Furthermore the
project has revealed that there are indeed formal, methodical and
theoretical lessons, material and thematic lessons as well as
pitfalls and negative lessons that modern-day Filipinologists may
glean from a thorough encounter with Blumentritt’s texts.
