ISSN : 2092-738X
The entry of the logging industry in the once heavily forested riverine middle Agusan Valley where aboriginal Manobos live meant the entry of the material practice of wage labor into this out-of-the-way place. Wage labor converted the once relatively isolated, subsistence animist Manobos into laborers of the expanding capitalist regime. A symptom of modernity, this wage labor also accompanied the coming of Visayan settlers (also loggers paid by wage) who introduced indigenous Manobos the compadrazgo social relationship. This friendly relationship across ethnic identities legitimated social ties and is a social material practice represented in recent bilingual Manobo possession rituals where the Visayan spirit is incarnated along with Manobo spirits. To understand the idea behind spirit embodiment, I explore Manobo ritual as mimesis or poeisis. This representation is shaped by concrete material realities as much as these realities, in turn, are reconfigured by ritual practice. In the older Manobo cosmology, which is based on subsistence economy and dependent on the forest and rivers, individuals have an externalized self (as manifest in the idea of twin soul), in which the inner vital principle is co-extensive with a spirit double in cosmos. Manobos imitate the perceived workings of nature in ritual so as to control them in times of illnesses. In contrast, the mimesis of the Visayan spirit is based on a different political economic set up with its attendant asymmetrical interpersonal relationship. By symbolically representing the Visayan patron as friend, Manobos are able to negotiate the predicament of their subalternity in local modernity.
Buenconsejo, Jose. 2002. Songs and Gifts at the Frontier. New York and London: Routledge.
Buenconsejo, Jose. 2007. Spirit of the Act: On Indicating Presences in the Agusan Manobo Ritual Language. (Re)making Society: The Politics of Language, Discourse and Identity in the Philippines. T.R.F. Tupas, ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Buenconsejo, Jose. 2008. The River of Exchange: Music of Agusan Manobo and Visayan Relations in Mindanao. ASIN B003BEE7EC. Available at <www.amazon.com>.
Buenconsejo, Jose. 2013. Causation and the concept of agency in Agusan Manobo Ritual. Paper Presentation in the Conference on Philippine Indigenous Peoples, Musee du quai Branly Museum, 25-26 April 2013, Paris, France.
Garvan, John M. 1941. The Manobos of Mindanao. Memoirs of the National Academy of Science 23. Washington: United States Government Printing Office.
Huggan, Graham. 1997-98. (Post)colonialism, Anthropology, and the Magic of Mimesis. Cultural Critique, 38: 91-106.
Matthews, Paul. 1994. Compadrazgo: Culture as Performance. Cultures and Texts: Representations of Philippines Society. Raul Pertierra and Eduardo Ugarte, ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Mauss, Marcel. 1902, 1907. A General Theory of Magic. Robert Brain, trans. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Salazar, Zeus. 1977. Ang Kamalayan at Kaluluwa: Isang Paglilinaw ng Ilang Konsepto sa Kinagis nang Sikolohiya. In Ulat ng Ikalaw ang Kumperensya sa Sikolohiya ng Pilipino. Quezon City: Pambansang Samahang sa Sikolihiy ang Pilipino.
Schreurs, Peter. 1989. Caraga Antigua: the Hispanization and Christianization of Agusan, Surigao, and Davao. Cebu City: University of San Carlos Press.
Seligman, Adam et al. 2008. Ritual and its Consequences: on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Severino, Howie. 1996. The Rise and Fall of a Logger's Political Empire. In Patrimony: 6 Case Studies on Local Politics and the Environment in the Philippines. Sheila Coronel, ed. 20-43. Manila: The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
Sörbom, Göran. 2002. The Classical Concept of Mimesis. In a Companion to Art Theory. Paul Smith, ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.
Viacrucis, Dante Luz and Jamil Maidan Flores. 1996. While Others Slept: D. O. Plaza, Biography. Cebu City: University of San Carlos Press.