Social Memory and Philippine Electoral Politics: Contests of Masa Narrative and the Nostalgia of Walang Magulo

This paper traces a series of mnemonic regimes in Philippine electoral politics as a method of capturing current political discourse in the Philippines. The argument is that there are competing strategies being used to legitimize narratives—from the discourse of masa (masses) to one that re-memorializes walang magulo (orderliness) that the Philippine nation once enjoyed. Orderliness has become a new public commons introduced by Duterte.