"As the content of the question ‘Who?’, Filipina subjectivity consists of modes of experience - that is, modes of understanding, feeling, and relating - through which women make themselves into Filipinas. In its idealized and therefore commodifiable form, it consists of practices of caring for others, of extending oneself to others, of serving and accommodating others. But even within that form, it also consists of longing for better things, better worlds for oneself and for one’s own and of bravely venturing out into the world with little or no guarantees of safety in search of new possibilities for life. Filipina subjectivity consists of those practices of dreaming in action that are indispensable to the work and commodity identity that Filipinas are called upon, as Filipinas, to perform […] Just as imprisoning images of Filipinas both result from and contribute to the conditions of war in which they live, so is the identity function of Filipinas as ano (what) constituted by their subjective agency as sino (who). That agency is the capacity of Filipinas to determine and exercise will and desire over the conditions that appear to rule, regulate, and transcend our lives."
—
Neferti Tadiar, “Filipinas ‘Living in a Time of War’”
i like the move from “their” to “our.”
(via sapagitan)
