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org/stable/29792580
RECONSTITUTING THE MENTAL LIFE OF SIXTEENTH- AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PHILIPPINES
Resil B. Mojares
Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society
Vol. 34, No. 1, SPECIAL ISSUE: THREE BY MOJARES (March 2006), pp. 1-10 (10 pages)
Published By: University of San Carlos Publications

Problem: “collective being and consiousness” (mentality, ideology), a dimension of history, difficult to access and trace.
Approach ni Mojares locating ourselves in the culture, to see it “within” instead from outside. Ex ng kategorya : buot (“selfhood) at gahum (“power)

Iungnay nya ang mg katanungan nyang: How does one reconstitute the mental and emotional life of the past? What sources can one examine or study? What are the difficulties,
Dangers, and possibilities in the examination of these sources-kay
Lucien Febvre -histories of mentalities. The French have distinct advantages in this project. They are aided by a deep literate and archival tradition which has made possible for instance such
undertakings as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's reconstitution of peasant worldview in southern France in the 14th century or the detailed reconstruction of a provincial Mardi gras festival
in the sixteenth century, using a wealth of village-and municipal level archives of court depositions, Inquisition records, cadastres, tax registers and other documents. (2)
After all (as Febvre himself remarked) history can be fashioned even without written documents if none are available. One can turn in a diverse range of sources-speech,
paintings, tools, food, plants, landscapes, "anything which, belonging to man,depends on man, serves him, expresses him and signifies his presence, activity, tasks and forms of existence." (3)
Our cultural history - in particular, the intervention of succesive colonialism--has left us with sources perhaps more complex than those Febvre and Ludurie dealth with: fugitive, heavily layered, discontinuos,
and mediated by complex mga materyales noong ika 16 at ika17siglo,
historical changes which have compromised not only these materials but the ways that we (ourselves products of these changes) read them. Hinalimbawa ni Resil ang wika. Dahil sa kakulangan ng mga sanggunian
Noong ika-16 at ika-17 siglo, ang namayapang si William Henry Scott ay gumawa ng isang remarkable na gawain sa pagmimina ng lumang mga misyunerong dikyunaryo tungo sa pagbuo ng imahe ng ika-16 na siglo.(4)

Scott largely limited himself to the "practical" world of the 16th century (economy, technology, social organization) but his example can be followed by investigating mental, moral and aesthetic concepts.
we need to go beyond dicrete words or sets of words to the study of living speech in clearly defined cultural and historical settings. this can be done through the analysis of larger units of
discourse in popular and folk traditions, such as songs, tales and epics. this is the value of such studies as Reynaldo Ileto's work on the tagalog pasyon or Michelle Rosaldo's finely articulated ethnography
of Ilongot verbal forms (11). Through the well-contextualized analysis of discourse, such studies have provided us with important knowledge about power and person hood in local societies

-IT is quite problematic when one begins to theorize about a “collective” loob or gahum at the level of larger units like “the people” and “nations.”
---we need to map and examine a much wider geography of meaning. Let me illustrate this by outlining a project.
A founding act of Spanish colonialism was the establishment of churches and the enthronement of Christian images in local communities. This act was a point of intersection between old and new, native and foreign
elief systems. I
-The promise and perils of this endeavor can be illustrated by recalling the example of the First filipino intelectuals to attempt the recovery of native systems of thought:
Pedro Paterno (1857-1911) and Isabelo de los Reyes (1864-1938) and their attempts to reconstitute "ancient Filipino religion" or "ancient Tagalog civilization" (14) . They were engaged in work on the same subjects
That fascinate scholars today and native systems of thought. Like many scholars today, they located and deployed their work within the larger project of national identity-formation. Titutulan nila ang karakterisasyon ng
Mga Kastilang misyunero. Ang mga Pilipino ay may isang relihiyon lamang at ang relihiyong ito ay monotheistic; may sariling ideya ng kaluluwa, impyerno, buhay pagkatapos ng kamatayan at ng Banal na Trinidad at
Ang paniniwala sa mga anito ay katumbas lamang ng paniniwala ng Katoliko sa mga santo.
Bilang nakaposisyon sa unang yugto ng pagbuBbuo ng nasyon, inimagine nila Paterno at de los Reyes ang nasyon mula sa kanilang sariling partikular na sosyal at heograpikal na lokasyon.(6)
Si Paterno bilang Manilenyo, ay nilikha (conceived) ang nacion tagala na pumapapaloob ang Luzon at Visayas (excluding MIndanao) na may relihiyong tinatawag na Tagalismo at ang ilog Pasig bilang duyan ng sibilisasyon
 Ng mga Tagalog.
Ang Ilokanong si de los Reyes (less parochial kay Paterno) ay naconceived ang sibilisasyong Filipino na nakapokus sa pangunahin (main) Malayanized coastal comunities at nagteorize na ang relihiyong Filipino
(Bathalismo) ay nageexist sa isang “purong” (“purer) estado sa Ilocos kaysa sa Islamized Mindanao, Visayas at Maynila. (ito ang nagtulak upang di makatarungang markahan nila Jose Rizal at M.H. Del PIlar siyang
“excessive Ilocanism)sobrang makaILokano.
Like Jose Rizal, de los Reyes privileged the “native pt.of view,” saying: “Only the Filipinos…have the exclusive right to fathom the ancient Filipino religion inasmuch as they are the only ones who can penetrate into the
Secrets and traditions of their own homes.”
It is not a new project. We need to learn from examples of people like paterno and de los Reyes to see the limits as well possibilities of this important undertaking.

1.Lucien Febvre, “Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional LIfe of the Past”A new Kind of History from the Writings of Lucien Febvre, ed P.Burke (New York:Harper & Row, 1973) pp. 12-26.
The essay 1st appeared in Annales d ‘histoire sociale, III (1941).

2. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promise Land of Error, trans. B. Bray (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Carnivals in Romans, trans M Feeney (New York: George Braziller, 1979); The Peasants of
Languedoc, trans. J. Day (Urbana:University of Illionois Press, 1974

3. Febvre, “A New Kind of History,” New Kind of History, p.34

4. William Henry Scott, Barangay 16th Century
5. Jose M. Cruz, S. J. “Preface, “Barangay, p.ix
6.