Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
CULTURAL theory has provided a space for several strategies where marginalized voices, or the weak, can transgress and openly challenge the establishment and the dominant. These strategies find expression in the politics of everyday and ordinary lives. Michel de Certeau talked about using the venues of domination, even the language of the abuser or oppressor, as the domain for resistance. We could, for example, see this manifested in malls that are seen as sites of capitalism being colonized by shops selling counterfeit materials, acts which effectively undermine capitalist profits.
James Scott spoke of weapons of the weak where instead of openly contesting the establishment, the oppressed would bask in the anonymity of rumor and gossip, sabotage and pilferage, and the passive resistance offered by feigned ignorance, or even deliberate laziness, to undermine and subvert, even if for a moment, the power and authority of the oppressor. It is in this context that Juan Tamad should not actually be imaged as a symbol of indolence but of resistance by the colonized to refuse to be industrious, knowing that the fruits of Juan's labor will benefit only the colonizer.
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