by Ivan Emil A. Labayne
the international arena:
In boxing, we have Manny’s
you know, Pekyaw…
Until he decided to run
for the Senate, and became,
you know, someone
conflating public servants
with celebrities.
At least no longer DH,
domestic helpers,
or servants, level up
‘da Pilipins, coping up
with laughter, carabao
english, and beauty
pageants.
Speaking of, we had other
major major wins:
Catriona and Pia, half-
Australian, half-
German, representing
the Philippines, you know.
It’s our hybrid legacy,
Morena and mestiza
and chinita, beautiful all over.
Look at our faces, pretty,
flat nose and all.
Look at our tongues,
Cussing and mussing—
like our president
during a pandemic—
“tarantado” in Spanish
Dazed, at a lost,
A “bad word” or person
in our archipelagic home.
Ivan Emil A. Labayne: As with anything linguistic, the meaning, efficacy, and function of the expression “you know” oscillates on a savvy spectrum, depending on the site, the situation, the speaker, or the one listening. It might express a desire for confirmation—Gets mo ‘di ba? You get it, right?—or trust in the sentiment being shared, understood—it’s not a question, I know you know. Or it’s just a filler, in the same league as uhm, or erm, a substitute for mumbling.
The poem “You Know” plays around and uncovers how things are “pregnan[t] with its opposite,” to borrow from Marx. It recognises the value of visibility and becoming-visible, but borders on ridiculing the processes of making-visible: mainly following the Hollywood entertainment complex, typified here by the spectacles of boxing and beauty pageants.
In a globalised world, borders have become less about physical spaces than the way we pronounce things, the ways we seek approval or validation, the various venues where we place our bodies to work: dodging jabs and uppercuts, parading on the runway, cleaning a foreigner’s toilet. A globalised world that is “one and unequal”, to appropriate Franco Moretti’s description of the world republic of letters.
While we—the abstract collective called “Filipinos”—try to prove ourselves to the world, make ourselves visible in the world stage, we also deal with the affairs “at home”. Hopefully this is done with the appreciation that the “nation”, more than effaced and rendered obsolete by world affairs, is precisely influenced by them, giving it various concretisations and chances for contestation. The Philippine president speaks bad words on national television, goes MIA at international summits, and gets investigated by the International Criminal Court for his infamous Drug War. A pretty way of being recognised, you know?
Published: Thursday 21 October 2021[RETURN TO AUDITORY CORTEX 2021]
Ivan Emil A. Labayne is part of the art collective Pedantic Pedestrians. As a group, they have held a Book Launch without a book, released four folios, a Torture Manual, a psychogeographic work on Magsaysay Road in Baguio City, a Speculative Botany Project, Ngayon ay Buwan ng Wika, This Is a Working Zine, among others. Ivan’s own works have appeared in journals and online platforms including Kritika Kultura, Daluyan, Cha, Jacket 2, The Cordillera Review, Katipunan, and Cosmonaut. He has an MA in Language and Literature from UP Baguio and he is currently pursuing a PhD in Philippine Studies in UP Diliman in addition to teaching in UP Los Baños. Visit his blog to learn more.