AKDANG BUHAY - RESIL MOJARES

Akdang Buhay 2019 | Resil Mojares| Interviewer: Charles Dominic P. Sanchez and by Bea Yap Martinez

“Do you believe all art is inherently political?” I croak the first time I ask this, and after seeing his brow furrow, straining to hear what I said, I repeat the query.

“Yes,” he answers without a second’s hesitation. He loosely cites a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre from his collection of essays “What Is Literature?”—a quote I’m grateful enough to have
found and which I’ve reproduced below:

Why have you spoken of this rather than that, and—since you
speak in order to bring about change—why do you want to change
this rather than that? In other words, the mere act of bringing a certain thing to an audience’s attention is political, for it asks them to focus on that one specific subject, to dedicate a moment of their time, and afterward reassess their relationship with the current order, often at the expense of
other topics we could otherwise be bringing to the fore.

Why are we talking about, say, the construction of a potentially disruptive dam and how it relates to an ongoing water shortage, when this feud involving a celebrity love triangle is more entertaining? Why are we talking about police brutality, instead of celebrating the booming economy that business magazines report on a daily basis? Why are we yammering on about American imperialism, neoliberalism, and globalization, when a new Starbucks we can hang out in just opened at this commercial complex where an old ancestral house once stood?

In drawing the public’s attention to issues that would otherwise be drowned out in the noise of everyday discourse, art—so long as it’s wielded by a deft, ethical hand—helps shape public perception, alter public opinion, and hopefully even affect public policy for the better.

With Dr. Resil Mojares, I have no doubt that the works he’s given us, and the works he continues to put out, will stir something in us as long as we have ready access to them. And it’s great that Anvil Publishing is reprinting copies of some his older books in the wake of his National Artist conferment, so that newer generations of readers, born or coming of age in an especially precarious epoch, can learn to situate themselves within a greater historical context. If I may delve into the personal, Dr. Mojares’s writings have given me a better sense of how we’ve arrived
at where we are, as Cebuanos in particular, but also as Filipinos in general, in ways the textbook history I was educated in can’t even come close to matching. I sincerely hope this better understanding of our place in a postcolonial, capitalist, globalized order—how we fit in, how we
stand out, how we are represented, how we are oppressed or are complicit in the oppression ourselves—seeps its way into the sentiments and lenses of other readers down the line. Armed with this knowledge courtesy of one of the most sublime, articulate minds of our time, we can then be better informed on how we choose to move forward, preferably toward a world that
hews as close as possible to our own imaginings of an ideal."

-Excerpt from "Dr. Resil B. Mojares: National Artist for Literature 2018",
Article by Charles Dominic P. Sanchez