Orientalism and President Duterte

DURING the gala dinner at the Asean summit, President Rodrigo Duterte broke into an unrehearsed and impromptu song number to oblige a request from visiting US President Donald Trump. His vociferous critics immediately labeled him a little brown monkey for doing what the leader of our former colonial master had asked him to do.

Days later, pro-Duterte blogger and a columnist of this paper, Sass Rogando Sasot, justified her confronting a BBC journalist as a form of resistance against a colonialist form of orientalism.

Orientalism is a theory pro- pounded by Edward Said, a noted Palestinian post-colonial writer.

And while it may appear incongruous to the image of a singing Digong obliging the “command” of Trump, I would argue that Said’s orientalism has created a space upon which people like the President could thrive, not as propagators, but as disruptors of a mindset which Said has clearly criticized.

Said, as a post-colonial theo- rist, joined other noted scholars like Franz Fanon in problematizing and examining the impact of the remnants and legacies of the colonial experience when Western countries imposed their will and world view on other lands, peoples and cultures. The core construct of this critical examination is the deconstruction of the mindset where Western human agents and social