The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines

by Vicente L. Rafael

In The Promise of the Foreign, Vicente L. Rafael argues that translation was key to the emergence of Filipino nationalism in the nineteenth century. Acts of translation entailed technics from which issued the promise of nationhood. Such a promise consisted of revising the heterogeneous and violent origins of the nation by mediating one’s encounter with things foreign while preserving their strangeness. Rafael examines the workings of the foreign in the Filipinos’ fascination with Castilian, the language of the Spanish colonizers. In Castilian, Filipino nationalists saw the possibility of arriving at a lingua franca with which to overcome linguistic, regional, and class differences. Yet they were also keenly aware of the social limits and political hazards of this linguistic fantasy.Through close readings of nationalist newspapers and novels, the vernacular theater, and accounts of the 1896 anticolonial revolution, Rafael traces the deep ambivalence with which elite nationalists and lower-class Filipinos alike regarded Castilian. The widespread belief in the potency of Castilian meant that colonial subjects came in contact with a recurring foreignness within their own language and society. Rafael shows how they sought to tap into this uncanny power, seeing in it both the promise of nationhood and a menace to its realization. Tracing the genesis of this promise and the ramifications of its betrayal, Rafael sheds light on the paradox of nationhood arising from the possibilities and risks of translation. By repeatedly opening borders to the arrival of something other and new, translation compels the nation to host foreign presences to which it invariably finds itself held hostage. While this condition is perhaps common to other nations, Rafael shows how its unfolding in the Philippine colony would come to be claimed by Filipinos, as would the names of the dead and their ghostly emanations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Willow · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 lang kasi stress so much

[Yesenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

bla bla bla bla bla bla.

ok, it wasn't that bad. the introduction was actually very entertaining and interesting. the way a chess game is entertaining and interesting to chess players (i imagine. i am not a chess player. i am easily bored by it and cannot, for the life of me, remember which piece does what because, deep down, i think it's all a bit silly, the strategizing for a game like that. i am unconvinced that it is anything but strategizing for a game, strategizing to win a game. which is fine if you enjoy playing that game, and watching it. but it is not a marker of intelligence in and of itself, not all-around human intelligence. which, in my own personal definition, means being able to live intelligently as a human being. which, again in my own personal definition, means being able to live successfully as a member of the human species. which means, being able to relate to other humans in ways that secure your survival, your metabolic fitness, and, if you desire it, your reproduction. so i will just leave that there... noting that i am not a successful human in every way, and am, in fact, a total failure in some ways. but i am very intelligent in ways that are, like the intelligence of chess, not the most significant or relevant in terms of overall Human Intelligence.)

This book is, again, like a chess game played by a very bright strategist and a very advanced computer. Lots of flashy moves (no clue if there are flashy moves in Chess, but that Netflix mini-series seemed to suggest that there were), lots of sentences (moves) that make you go, ooooh, that's interesting, hadn't thought of that, or, aaaaaah, that's interesting, never thought of combining words that way! Etcetera.

And then you get to the parts that are supposed to be more historical, or where reality (real books, real events, real people) is analyzed, and it's more strategizing chess moves. I mean, more sentences that suggest interesting analyses and that look at words from every angle (I love that aspect, I love looking at words, even under the skirts of words), BUT, reality is not words and words, despite being real, cannot stand in for reality. Cannot stand in for people or the cultural products people make or consume, not even for the beliefs that people held or didn't hold. Words are just words, which is a lot, that. Words are powerful, and words are amazing. Language is, come on, language is the single most important human technology that made the world what it is today. But language is not reality, it is a reality, it is a real thing.

And so I gained little access to knowing or understanding something other than the bright word games and interesting linguistic analyses (and I use linguistic very freely, here, as "linguistic turn of [insert a field]")... which is fine, but sort of pointless.