To Build a Nationalist Culture Filipino people have liberated themselves from U.S. imperialist domination and that the people have been able to effectively constitute themselves as the authentic seat of political power in the country. National freedom will give the people a sense of self-worth essential in assessing their colonial experience and drawing from such a process insights on the basis of which they can build their future. Once national freedom has been secured, a two-fold task will begin: (1) to eradicate vestiges of debilitating colonialist culture in the minds of both artists and audience, and (2) to build a new, truly Filipino culture that subsumes unto itself whatever is progressive from the culture of the past and of other countries related by history and similarity of experience to the Philippines. Democracy will allow the oppressed majority to discover a sense of genuine power which they can effectively employ to change themselves and their society to benefit themselves and their posterity. The knowledge that they are shaping their own destiny will give thrust to the task of (1) eradicating authoritarian feudal content in art and literature, and (2) building a culture of, by and for the people, a culture that will affirm the dignity, resourcefulness and wisdom of men and women in effective control of their lives as individuals and as members of society. More concretely, the building of a nationalist culture will involve institutions and organizations that have a direct hand in the production, distribution and consumption of art and literature. The school has a key role in reorienting the teaching of art and literature and in fostering the growth of a liberative and democratic new culture. For the general student populace, stress in the study of lite: ; works ought to be on values rather than on the exem) Tica net language usage. This would require from teach hn ‘ate discriminate between what is progressive and are _ a se reactionary in literature y o talk of building a nationalist culture is to assume that the€ Bienvenido Lumbera + Writing the Nation/Pag-akda ng Bansa and to imbue the students with a sense of complex dialectic between. specific literary works and the realities they refer to. re ot Regarding education of specialists—scholars, teac oe writers—literary criticism ought to be able to account for the aes' ic value of the literary work and show its dynamic intercourse with hy social, political and economic milieu. To ensure the development oO new works with a nationalist orientation, institutions and organizations must be set up to provide writers with direct subsidies, numerous new outlets (magazines, publishing houses, etc.), theaters for drama and training workshops. The education of young people on the arts—music, dance and the fine arts—ought to give them the opportunity not only to create it but also to express themselves or comment on their environment. Thus, in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic, attention might be given to imparting the content and objectives of social studies through arts. The study of the arts in the academe should demolish the elitist concept of art which has confined the use of the term only to those forms that had been sanctioned by the ruling classes in the history of the West. To accomplish that, criticism of the arts ought to explore indigenous forms and artistic methods in the Philippines, both in the past and: in the present. Exhibition halls easily accessible to the masses, workshops, lecture-demonstrations and art fairs are means whose employment should be carefully programmed for the creation and propagation of nationalist music, dance and fine arts. In a liberated and democratic Philippine society, the condescen- ding attitude of the elite toward popular culture would be discarded. Such an attitude has facilitated the total capitulation of artists in the recording industry, movies, comics, and radio and television to the commercial interests of their producers. Against the view that the forms of popular culture are inferior because they are used to cater to the taste of a broad audience, a policy guided by national freedom and democracy would see in these forms vessels that could be made to hold new content that, once transmitted, could generate a new consciousness in a people emerging from the deprivations and distortions of a colonial and feudal past. Statement prepared for a forum on Nationalism organized on the Pages of Philippine Panorama (Supplement of the Manila Daily Bulletin), 10 June 1984.