Virtual Nation Insights into Contemporary Philippines

This anthology focuses on the sustained critique of the forms by which masculinity is imagined, intuited, and instrumentalized in the contemporary postcolonial space of the Philippines, by analyzing and reflecting upon the political economy of visual culture. By “visual culture” we reify the anthropological basis of culture as a series of daily, regulated interactions and relationships of power between individuals, subgroups, and classes within a community or society, focusing on the peculiarly modern conventions by which visuality (the manner by which “seeing” becomes a means of knowing and feeling) has become a primary means of encoding these relations. Through the massified application of modern technologies and methods of popular dissemination … visual culture becomes part of the general problematic by which ideas of nation, affect, progress, and happiness are encapsulized into specific representations that are calculated to produce consumptive desire and the indefinite deferral of actualized material fulfillment. These are achieved through the propagation of ever-newer images of desire … What constitutes the intellectual promise of the study of masculinity in this context is the long history of practices and widespread range of manifestations by which male representations and agency intersect, and which gives the field an empirical archive from which to extract, analyze, and critique.

About the Author

Reuben B. Ramas Cañete, PhD (b. 1966) graduated with a degree in B Fine Arts (BFA), major in Painting, from the College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Santo Tomas; an MA in Art History at the Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters (CAL), University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman; and a PhD in Philippine Studies at the Tri-College Program, also in UP Diliman. He is currently Associate Professor at the Asian Center, UP Diliman. He has written articles and art reviews for The Philippine Star (1997–2002); Pananaw: Journal for Philippine Visual Art (1998–2006); Mabuhay Inflight Magazine (1999–2010); Lifestyle Asia (1999–2004); Bulawan: Journal for Philippine Criticism (2003–2004); Cebu Star News (2004); Business Day (2004–2006); World Sculpture News (2005); The Manila Times (2006); The Philippine Daily Inquirer (2008–2009); The Manila Bulletin (2008–2009); Contemporary Art Philippines (2009–2010); Asian Art News (since 2010); BluPrint Design Sourcebook (since 2001); and Condo Living (since 2010). He has written numerous catalogues and monographs on various Filipino artists since 1996. He has written the following books: Pasyal: Walking Around UP Diliman, 2004; Philippine Heart Center: 30 Years of Heart Care and Compassion (with Charleson Ong), 2005; Homecoming: the Buncio Collection of Philippine Art, 2007; Pulilan: The Blessed Land, 2011; The Global Paisano: Manuel Baldemor’s Folk Modernist Vision, 2011; Art and Its Contexts: Essays, Reviews & Interviews, 2011; and Sacrificial Bodies: The Oblation and the Political Aesthetics of Masculine Representations in Philippine Visual Cultures, 2012;. He is the editor of Ginto: The Art Association of the Philippines Compendium (2000), and Suri Sining: The Art Studies Anthology (2011). He served as officer and president of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) from 1997–2002. He was awarded the Leo Benesa Award for Art Criticism in 1996. He lives and works in Quezon City.