Dr Marlo De Lara is RACE.ED Stuart Hall Foundation Fellow 2022-23.
My IASH project investigates and complicates the ways one understands subjectivities and multiple homes beyond simplistic verbiage. 'Displanting Routes: Sounding Philippine Diasporas' seeks to foreground the continuing connections between diaspora and coloniality, by bringing into view less discussed accounts of the colonization and occupation of the Philippines. The histories of the Asian archipelago are not of one but many peoples with hundreds of islands that were erased by conquest and then assembled into a previously non-existent single nation. Where then is the Philippine diasporic location today, and where does it feature in the lexicon of current cultural identification that has extended beyond the homeland to those who migrate to other countries? A diasporic conundrum applies to Philippine populations living abroad, a condition emblematic of postimperial transnational cultures that goes beyond previous normative Western monolithic understandings of “exotic” cultures.
The work explores the sensorial, specifically the aural. The ways nationality often is discussed leads to a repetition of dated colonial terminology and uncomfortable regressive notions. Expanding beyond current knowledge forms about diasporas and postcolonial nationhood requires a shift out of the indexical. If we were to solely listen, what knowledge could be gained about this culture and how is what is not heard meaningful? Working within sound and collecting recordings goes beyond the constraints of language. Migration is a universal phenomenon, a timeless human experience of movement across land and water. Sound is limitless and the listener often operates from frames of reference. This approach aims to disturb the tendency to revert to simplistic labels. My project aims to both focalize the complexity of Philippine histories while remembering that human bodies are what constitutes a population.