Abstract. This essay proposes an alternative regard to suffering, as depicted in Franscisco Balagtas’s poem Florante at Laura, that moves from the frequent reliance on the figure of Christ as the primary locus of understanding, and toward a wager on “pre-colonial” folk wisdom, as embodied by dalít, a species of folk poetry. In doing so, a decolonized articulation on the phenomenon of the wound, particularly in its the vernacular renditions as sugat and sakuna, is initiated. What shall emerge then is an ideation of a Philippine folk traumaturgy or trauma-work that is most tropical in its modus: capable of turning any given moment to whichever direction, and hence harnessing of an ambivalence that could permit even the deepest of woundings to transform, as if thaumaturgically, to an instance of the erotic. This procedure is nominated as pagdalumat, a gesture which is at the cusp of “understanding,” “suffering,” and “adorning.”
Keywords. Florante at Laura, Philippine poetry, trauma studies, tropicality, súgat, sakuna, dalumat
Bionote. Christian Jil Benitez teaches at the Department of Filipino, Ateneo de Manila University, where he obtained his AB-MA in Filipino literature (2016/2018). Hailed as Poet of the Year 2018 by the Commission on the Filipino Language, his critical and creative works have been published in Katipunan, Kritika Kultura, eTropic, and Philippine Studies, among others. Presently, his critical engagements primarily move around Philippine time, as perceived through the tropical, the mythological, and the material.
Day 3 – (May 29, Sat HK/SG time)
Panel 8: Cold War Traumas
11am-12:30pm HK/SG / 4-5:30am BST / 5-6:30am CEST / 11pm-12:30am EDT / 8pm-9:30pm PDT