Identity and consciousness : Identity and consciousness : / Renato Constantino

Includes notes.

Professor Constantino combines his talents as historian and social critic in this paper which was one of the principal works discussed in Syposium 3 of the VIII World Sociology Congrss held in Toronto, Canada in August, 1974. The following excerpts from Sociology Abstracts, Inc. summarize the essence of the work: "The paper attempts a study of Filipino consciousness and in the process postulates the particularity and peculiarity of the Philippine experience...The author traces the slow emergence of a national identity as the product of the consciousness that developed through the many struggles of the people against their Spanish oppressors and through the evolution of a national market...The writer points out that iddentity and consciousness reached their highest development and became a unity during the Philippine Revolution. He then proceeds to describe how a separation between identity and consciousness subsequently developed to the point where, although the Filipinos were still aware of their national identity, they actually regressed in their aspiration due to the erosion of national consciusness...Separated from consciusness that was its dynamic content, national identity was reduced to little more rhan a geographic category... For this analysis he utilizes the concepts of partial or limited consciousness which, he argues, becomes activated during times of stress to assume the proportions of counter-consciousness... In the process of developing his thesis, the author is able to preste the unifying thread of the history of his people, a summary of his own concepts of revisionist historiography for his country... Using the same source materials utilized by orthodox scholars, the paper is nevertheless an attempt to contribute to a reinterpretation of Philippine reality."