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Narrative Conflict and The Elite
During the past few weeks, I was faced with a challenge over at a writing-gig/sideline to write about the “ultra rich,” as our creative head put it. He’s having me and my co-writer imagine their life. Of course, with the lack and impossibility of social practice, i.e. my class disposition, I am slumped to take…
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Between Representation and Visualization
Concerns over “proper” representation has been hot cake since liberal academics weaponized semiotics away from its concern over information and/or data towards a less scientific concern for sentimentalism. There really isn’t any contradiction between the two before this weaponization happened. However, more recent developments on the production of images makes looking at visualization more urgent…
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DMRTLW 3: “Everything is connected” / “Everything is political”
I once subscribed to the thought. But now when I think about it, I could hear Joey Ayala singing “ang lahat ng bagay ay magkaugnay/magkaugnay ang lahat” with his “lumad” voice. The thought that “everything is connected” brought comfort to my younger self who was trying to get involved with politics. But to acknowledge Marxism…
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Overhauling Identity (part 0)
I’ve been going back and forth to this problem of identity. At first, there seem to be a real issue concerning this problem: that indeed, there are unrests seemingly caused by conflicts brought about by differences on this category of identity. Francis Fukuyama himself, on his latest book, framed contemporary political and economic problems in…
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Dialectical Materialist Responses to Liberal Wokeness (No. 1)
Today, I’m trying to start a serial again, hopefully something which I can sustain. Still, something non-cinematic in focus. I’m trying to address in this series what the title says: responding to liberal “hot takes” through abstracting them with dialectical materialism. The method takes from the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line which abstracts phenomena in social practice. Mao…
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New Age Maoist Aesthetics
A trend seems to be happening among young, urban activists and allies: they get easily fascinated and responsive of positive representation of politics, rebels and activists on any platform, especially on popular capitalist art. Cultural representation seems to be the name of the game. What is formerly subversive has now become a default setting. Cultural…
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Fragmented notes on Materialism, Ethics and Anti-Capitalist Praxis as a result of a Friday-night conversation over beer which I never really drank
For Mike Esteves, Vic Teaño and Adrian Mendizabal In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx differentiated what he sees as the “old” Materialism and his then “new” Materialism. The old Materialism, Marx defined as inattentive of “human sensual activities.” Terry Eagleton would later thread into Marx’ categorizations as materialisms which coexists with different projects. A…
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Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino in Dialogue
submitted as a paper for Media 220 – Media Literacy under Prof. Nathan Rondina
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Two Ways of Alienation
on TBA’s I’m Drunk, I Love You
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History Lessons
on Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna