The Myth of the Barangay and Other Silenced Histories by Damon L. Woods (review)

Damon Woods's The Myth of the Barangay and Other Silenced Histories attempts to establish an "autonomous history" of early Philippine society through the lens of early colonial Filipinos and rescue the "silenced" voices of Philippine history from the myopic assumption that "all that can be known is known, or even worse, that all that is worth knowing is now known" (267). The dominance of institutional history in Philippine historiography has led to the dismissal of indigenous sources perceived as inconsequential to the narrative of the nation, but Woods calls for a reengagement with these sources as their neglect has hindered the reconstruction of Philippine life prior to and during the early stages of colonial rule. Adopting New Philology, a framework developed by James Lockhart in his ethnohistory of colonial Mexico, Woods "re-centers" the native voice and fleshes out indigenous concepts such as literacy, gender, time, and belief by utilizing and contextualizing sources written in their own languages.

The book builds on Woods's contributions to the reconstruction of early Philippine history using native sources. Composed of nine chapters, it contains revised versions of previously published articles, including Woods's research on Tomas Pinpin's life and seminal work, Librong Pagaaralan nang mga Tagalog nang Uicang Castila (1610), which Woods edited and published, along with his dissertation, in 2011 to mark the four-hundredthyear anniversary of Pinpin's book. The initial chapter provides the religiopolitical conflicts of the Spanish empire as a backdrop to the discourses on precolonial literacy and early Filipino responses to colonial rule that are discussed in subsequent essays, while the final chapter concludes with an argument for the reevaluation of Philippine historiography.

For Woods, two movements in Philippine historiography contributed significantly to the project of "autonomous histories" or histories that move away from colonial frameworks and centers: bagong kasaysayan (new historiography), through the project of indigenizing Philippine history, and local/regional history, promoted by regional studies centers. However, both frameworks have limitations. On the one hand, although bagong kasaysayan, which is part of the pantayong pananaw ("for-us" perspective or indigenization from within) framework, forwards an "internal discourse among the people as the basis of national history" from a "perspective retrieved from our cultural experience in earlier times" (277), its rigid requirement of discourse in the Filipino language hampers its own project of inclusive history by dismissing non-Filipino works and excluding those unable to communicate in Filipino (282). On the other hand, aside from facing budgetary considerations, regional research centers often contend with scholars who assert that "it is the center [Manila] from which all thinking and activity flows" (286). Although Woods does not address directly the limitations of both frameworks, he proposes an inclusive Philippine history built on previously ignored sources written in Tagalog, such as notarial documents and Pinpin's work, to "trace out the evolution in various aspects of Tagalog society, based on how the Tagalog used words in their writing, often over a period of time" (290). Woods's project is in line with New Philology's objective to study concepts, thoughts, actions, and phenomena reflected in the nuances of indigenous languages.

Woods's use of Tagalog notarial documents and Pinpin's text presents the conflicts and contradictions that occurred under colonialism as well as the natives' perceptions of and responses to the Spanish conquest. Like William Henry Scott and John Leddy Phelan, Woods contends that hispanization and conquest were neither linear processes nor one-way transmissions based on submission, but were defined by negotiation, adaptation, and survival. The first chapter shows that the exclusion of natives from the clergy (later reduced to membership in the mendicant orders) through the policy of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) reflected the "ecclesiastical struggles" between the Spanish crown and the friars. The 1665 and 1678 petitions of the men of Naujan for the retention of the Jesuits in Mindoro, written in Tagalog and signed by influential...