A month ago, I received an e-mail from one fellow law student, bemoaning the continuation of classes notwithstanding the torrential floods that hit Manila. In his words, he branded those who sought to push through with classes as having “exceptionally screwed up priorities.” The day after, another law student sent an e-mail, declaring that it is better to carry relief goods than read books, because we are “men for others” and not “men for books.”
No question, I admire the valor of these two individuals. They also walk the talk, having volunteered with relief operations for the entire week. Yet, their statements have also exposed the violent discourses attending the greater historical narrative of heroism pervading the Philippines.
First, there is something inherently violent with the dialectic brought about by the heroism narrative. This is exposed by juxtaposing the “hero-as-self” and the “hero-with-regard-to.” The former, “hero-as-self,” is the classical ascription of heroic status post-mortem, where the entire aura of the person is colored with heroic status. While this is also undoubtedly problematic, mostly because this branding silences divergent emanations of the self and simply focuses only on the “heroic,” the prevailing “hero-with-regard-to” notion of heroism is even more violent.
The present heroism narrative (“hero-with-regard-to”) places the hero relationally: we are heroes to the needy, heroes to the helpless, heroes to the downtrodden. Specifically, heroism is manifested in the specific act of going out of one’s way to assist with relief operations. Now, the act in itself is unproblematic–when done with full volition. But in the end, this concept of heroism creates an artificial moral compulsion because it is inherently an exclusionary discourse. Since the hero is the student who decides to help with relief operations, it carves a “heroic space” that excludes the non-hero: the one who decides to do anything else. And in fact, this is where heroism is seemingly quantified: the one who did relief operations for five days stayed in this temporally fleeting heroic space longer, and therefore is “more of a hero.”
The fault of this brand of heroism is that it silences alternatives, and carves out one heroic path to be followed, lest one become unheroic. There is a violent binary created: heroes on the one side, everyone else on the other. Shades of gray are silenced, as people are placed on one side or the other. In the extreme, those who celebrate lavishly or exploit the situation by placing their faces on relief goods are located on one side of the binary (possibly, rightfully so), but they are also lumped together with those who stay at home and read a book, watch television, or eat a hearty meal–all these, “unheroic.”
This is even exacerbated when the socially-tagged heroes ascribe concepts of heroism upon themselves. In response to the second e-mail I received, that person sent me the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible. By sending this, further analogous binaries are created: the Good Samaritan on the one hand, and the Pharisees and Sadducees on the other. This blindly reinforces the “hero-with-regard-to” narrative by artificially flattening out historical space, and feigning continuity of this discourse. When in fact, the Good Samaritan narrative was a parable told more in reaction to xenophobia against Samaritans in that day and age, it is historically transported to reinforce Ondoy heroism: relief volunteers are Good Samaritans, those who desire to study are Pharisees.
Second, the narrative of heroism is further colored by nationally-assumed notions of the heroic simpleton. This is exhibited in another e-mail I received after I questioned the first two e-mails in a public group. The e-mail sender said that now is not the time to argue about “what is good,” now is the time to volunteer in relief operations because a lot of people are still dying.
Two things jump out from this e-mail: one, she subscribes to the exclusionary discourse of the heroic narrative–time spent e-mailing could have been used to carry sacks of rice. Second, she creates a false presumption that to sit back and think is unheroic; that to discuss the good when one could physically be there is unheroic; and that one should suspend cognitive faculties and rational debate in a “time for heroes.” Clearly, this thinking is historically rooted– and precisely, one needs to expose historical rootedness, positionalities, and socially-buried assumptions that color discourses. This stems from the aversion to the Filipino intelligentsia in the Spanish era: where the passionate simpleton of Andres Bonifacio (although historically inaccurate) is preferred to a propagandist like Graciano Lopez-Jaena.
In fact, even Jose Rizal only completed his heroic act by being physically purged, as society does not ascribe the mere writing of a book with heroism. In the same way, the current mentality is that every moment not spent hauling rice sacks or delivering relief goods is time spent being unheroic, and that to achieve heroism, faculties of intelligence must be suppressed because theoretical discourse pales in front of physical labor.
To conclude, there is nothing wrong with helping out with relief operations–in fact, it is admirable. What is disturbing is the pervading dialectic that goes with it, and the historically unrooted discourse that follows. To solve this, one need not stop doing charity work. That is unreasonable. Instead, one must examine positionalities, assumptions, and historicities behind the “hero talk” and expose what it is, and what it is not. As a suggestion, a friend of mine sent a similar e-mail, where she shared stories of relief work in Muntinlupa. The sharing of the narrative was without binaries or comparisons of “the heroic” and the “unheroic”–instead, what followed was an invitation to help, not out of castigation or compulsion, but out of awe.
Glenn Tuazon graduated magna cum laude in 2007. He was team captain of the Ateneo Debate Society from 2006 to 2007, and is now a junior in the Ateneo School of Law.
