Duterte as a quintessential trickster—hubris, phallus, and the consequence of words
Author Vicente L. Rafael states early in The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte, originally published by Duke University Press and reprinted locally by Ateneo de Manila University Press:
“This book offers a kind of prismatic view of the age of Duterte, and so, as with a prism, it is ‘a medium which distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it.’ Rather than provide a clear, unified account of his regime and its historical precedents and global variants, it weaves together a set of topics ranging from the drug war to neoliberal citizenship, from the presidential phallus to the photographs of corpses killed by the police, for example, distancing these then bringing them up close for scrutiny. I am much less interested in determining what Duterte is—a fascist, a populist, a warlord, a trapo (traditional politician), or all of the above—as what he does—the technics of his rule, the rhetoric of his humor, his administration of fear, and the protection of his masculinity and misogyny.”
The contents are dictated by the process and progress of how they came about—as separate long essays rendered as chapters, interspersed with “a series of shorter pieces, which I refer to as sketches.” Some of the latter were written as contributions to local publications.
The five major chapter-essays are Electoral Dystopias; Marcos, Duterte, and the Predicaments of Neoliberal Citizenship; Duterte’s Phallus: On the Aesthetics of Authoritarian Vulgarity; The Sovereign Trickster (followed by four sketches: Comparing Extrajudicial Killings; Death Squads; On Duterte’s Matrix; and Fecal Politics); and Photography and the Biopolitics of Fear: Witnessing the Philippine Drug War. The concluding sketch is titled Intimacy and the Autoimmune Community.
Historical backgrounding—sharp, pithy—eloquently establishes the serial contexts ushering the subject’s inception, while cannily foreshadowing his eventual Janusian features with those of the broader swaths of global developments inclusive of isms imperial, colonial, and neoliberal. Biopolitics plays a central role within this matrix.
All these are brought up as documented stories and fantasies issuing from Duterte’s own, often incoherent narrative voice.
Rafael’s scholarship is buttressed by his awareness and relevant mention of visual media that highlight our country’s social problems, such as the anti-drug film in support of Duterte by noted filmmaker Brillante Mendoza, and the 2017 film documentary Motherland by Ramona Diaz. These are cited in relation to the “predicaments” brought about by neoliberal citizenship, which Rafael sees as the prelude to Duterte’s rise to power.
Chapter 3 will likely prove to be the page-turner for both scholars and laymen readers. An excerpt:
“Duterte is widely known for his irreverence and bawdy humor, which constitute important elements of his governing style. His stories reveal a reliance on invective and an obsession with obscenity. He is given to generously sprinkling his speeches with cuss words… at times accompanied by a middle finger directed at his critics. He also makes frequent references to genitalia—his own as well as those of his critics—to the delight of his listeners. He revels in what Achille Mbembe calls an aesthetic of vulgarity, which has the effect of establishing a relationship of ‘conviviality’ between himself and his audience. What results is an ‘intimate tyranny,’ much of it centered on the tales of his phallus as it encounters the world.”
Quoted are the familiar Duterte jokes on Viagra use and wishful or wistful opportunities for, as well as condonation, indeed exhortations, of rape—both of which also establish the president’s undeniable misogyny. The whole nine yards include his explicit order to the military as to what part of the bodies of NPA Amazons to target, his humiliation of Sen. Leila de Lima with threats of a videotape, and his sexually loaded tirade against former senator Kit Tatad. Such manifestations of his “phallocentric politics” can’t be said to be topped by his lengthy narrative about a foreign Jesuit priest to whom he recounts his finger’s dalliance with a housemaid.
All these are brought up as documented stories and fantasies issuing from Duterte’s own, often incoherent narrative voice. They all lead to the central theme that Duterte is a “sovereign trickster.” Well, either that, or a buffoon by choice and circumstance who luckily came in at the right time, that is, for his horde of adherents, whose vulnerability for a populist leader who spoke their language explains his enduring hold on their one-dimensional imagination.
This book is about a Philippine president as a quintessential trickster, and how his hubristic role-playing and posturing gained him additional popularity and power.
Rafael’s academic exercise of invoking Foucault and Mbembe will satisfy his fellow scholars who ever need to buttress arguments much like any self-respecting lawyer would have to quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, an atheist from Christopher Hitchens, and a televangelist from the Bible (plus the devil from Scripture). Like the top hits in a playlist, their lyrics, familiar or not, round off all the premises and examples put forward.
But we can be generous and also allow that it all expands on the prefigurement of this character, who in simplest terms arrests attention with his “macabre sense of humor.” Besides biopolitics, there is also necropolitics. What to Foucault is the barbarian’s sense of freedom is likened to Duterte’s “barbarian notion of justice.”
Operation Tokhang recalls Foucault’s citations on “punitive justice” in 16th-century Europe, and his summation: “It is not just the offense that is visible on the scar or the amputation, it is the sovereign” (here referring to supreme power).
As for Duterte, “His sovereignty is reassured by the death of those he thinks have access to another realm. Duterte thus appropriates the very excess he attributes to addicts.” Also, “(W)hen Duterte jokes and cusses, he engages in a form of extended, recurring dissipation.” That’s another term from Foucault.
These are pointed out as the two aspects of his governing style. Remember Janus?
“He is the sovereign who decides on the exception, setting aside law and putting certain groups to death. But he is also the trickster who, in disarming his critics, endears himself to his supporters as the dissipator, one whose performative excess gives expression to what is at once forbidden and desired.”
Just as brilliantly, Rafael then applies his own homegrown equation. As a trickster, Duterte “plays the role of the pusong, a staple figure in traditional komedya and folktales… (who) makes fun of those in power while managing through deceit or humor to gain power himself.”
Chapter 5 provides sobering details on the traumas resulting from EJKs. “Such gruesome scenes of nightly killings have been amply documented by photographers and journalists, both local and foreign.” Chillingly, this dedicated group gets to be called “the night crawlers.” Very simply, they’ve compiled countless “photos of extrajudicial killings (that) provide evidence of their occurrence.”
Some readers might wonder about the exclusion of Marawi’s devastation, or alleged instances of corruption apparently fostered from a version of cronyism. But this book is about a Philippine president as a quintessential trickster, and how his hubristic role-playing and posturing gained him additional popularity and power.
It’s not the clear-eyed writing that will make the subject infinitely more liable. Nor should we regret gaining some understanding—from Rafael, Foucault et al.—on how certain characters are actually spawned.
While Duterte’s verbal pyrotechnics, of sheer outrageousness, have projected him onto the world stage, it’s the consequence of his words—inchoate except when they echo “Kill!”—that may thrust him further into history.