The peasant movement and great refusal in the Philippines: Situating critical theory at the margins

Abstract

This paper picks up on a dimension of Herbert Marcuse's model of critical theory that is greatly underdeveloped, and so much so that-particularly in the light of postcolonial theory-it is almost an embarrassment that what I refer to as "the margin," that is, a semicolonial periphery that is economically exploited, politically dominated and culturally hegemonized by imperialist powers, did not have a more important place in Marcuse's own work, and has not been far more the focus of Douglas Kellner and others who had fastened onto the Marxist Marcuse. In fact, Marcuse made only scattered statements about the nature of struggles in the society at the margins of the global system, and, when he did reference their plight and potential, he did not develop clearly how his theory could help in analyzing this context. This paper will look into the possibility of making Marcuse's notion of the Great Refusal relevant in the Philippines today, in an attempt to signal the possibility of redemptive alternatives to the struggle for emancipation. My main aim in this paper, therefore, is to show that the Filipino peasants in their plight, but also in their organization and indeed in their struggles, point to a way of life that escapes the apparently inescapable logic of technological domination. To that extent at least, they thus point to the possibilities of emancipation.