Pantayong Pananaw and Bathala’s 90th birth anniversary
APRIL 29, 2024 will be the 90th birth anniversary of Zeus Salazar, the brains behind the highly influential “Pantayong Pananaw” discourse in the social sciences. Born on April 29, 1934 in Tiwi, Albay, Salazar finished his bachelor’s degree in history at the University of the Philippines (UP), summa cum laude. He then went to France to pursue his doctorate. After his training in Europe, Salazar emerged a scholar’s scholar in the social sciences. Returning to UP in the late 1960s, Salazar forged a career as the leading light and founder of the Pantayong Pananaw (“Pantayo”) discourse.
According to Mary Jane RodriguezTatel, Pantayo was an integral part of the movement to “Filipinize” or “indigenize” the scholarly study of the Philippines (by Filipinos) in the 1970s. Virgilio Enriquez (psychology), Prospero Covar (anthropology) and Salazar (history) were the moving force in the Filipinization/ indigenization movement of the social sciences to challenge the dominance of Western (colonial/imperial) discourse.
Pantayo is more accurately a civilizational discourse. However, as Salazar’s home unit with UP was the Department of History, Pantayo flourished under the disciplinary umbrella of history. Nevertheless, the Pantayo-history relationship is not a mere accident. The problem of Western cultural imperialism in the Philippines, which Salazar’s Pantayo (also Enriquez’s “Sikolohiyang Pilipino” and Covar’s “Agham Tao”) seeks to overturn is deeply rooted in the history and historiography of the archipelago. Thus, for Salazar, it is imperative to first set straight Philippine historiography and sense of history.
Owing to the potency of Western cultural imperialism in the country, Salazar endeavored to redefine the meaning of kasaysayan as “salaysay hinggil sa nakaraan na may saysay para sa isang grupo ng tao.” Affectionately called “Bathala,” Salazar broke down history and historiography into three parts: the subject, the historian and the audience. For Pantayo to exist, the historical narrative needs to satisfy several requirements:
1. The narrative needs to center around the subject themselves and not relegate them into an object affected by the actions of an external actor (for example: Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines talks not about the Filipinos as subject of Philippine history but transforms the Filipinos into the object of Spanish agenda in the Asia-Pacific region).
2. The historian and the audience of the narrative both have to belong to the same culture/civilization as the subject.
3. The historian needs to explore the linguistic and cultural depths of the historical phenomenon under study and narrate it back to the audience using the same linguistic and cultural depths second nature to the audience, bearing in mind that an external language and culture does not capture the true essence of the language, culture and history of the subject.
Thus, it becomes a completely problematic proposition for some of Bathala’s students and self-confessed Pantayo adherents to endeavor to steer Pantayo away from its original roots and into the selfish embrace of their universalized political agenda. Some of these adherents profess affinity to the universality of left-leaning ideology, whether officially as socialists or clandestinely as communists.
Marrying Pantayo with the universalizing socialist or communist ideology endangers Pantayo’s raison d’etre, which is to explore and explain the world using categories and ways of expression internal to Filipino language, culture and civilization. Whether socialism or communism, they fall outside of the Pantayo world as ideologies (or even philosophies) begotten by an external (Western) language, culture and civilization.
It is true that certain aspects of socialism or communism intersect with the inner workings of Pantayo. For instance, the notion of the pre-colonial economy being state-led or state-driven makes it similar in certain respects to socialism. Nevertheless, Pantayo cannot be forced to marry ideologies (or philosophies) that are in its entirety a spawn of the West, especially when in the resulting marriage, the outside is expected to dominate the inside. That is inconsistent with, and counterintuitive to, the Pantayo discourse and initiative. Any notion of a socialist or communist
Pantayong Pananaw is thoroughly absurd on so many levels.
What more sensible products of the Pantayo scholarship like Dr. Efren Isorena, Dr. Vicente Villan, Dr. Jose Rhommel Hernandez, and others, have wisely done is, in accordance with the Pantayo way, introduce new concepts like “datu politics” to capture the essence of specific historical and cultural phenomena that otherwise would not be conceptually embedded inside Filipino culture and civilization.
I was lucky enough to have been a student of Bathala and that historiographical training has indeed been life-changing. While I do not regard myself a Pantayo adherent, I understand what Pantayo is and how it should be, thanks to Salazar. I know when Pantayo is being bastardized or selfishly exploited.
With Salazar celebrating his 90th birthday, I worry that certain elements with ulterior motives unabashedly use Pantayo for purposes other than what it emerged for.
Maligayang bati, Bathalang Zeus Salazar. Mabuhay kayo!