Orag and Dunong in Tigsik: Theorizing Paghurophurop

Abstract

The tigsik, a traditional oral literary form, carries indigenous poetic elements that reflect communal values, storytelling, and ritualistic speech. It follows a performative poetics in which the paratigsik (poet) observes in every tigsikan (toasting, roasting, or jousting). Originated as exclusive for males (known Bikol poets) but has transcended to females and various tigsik enthusiasts (teachers, students, and the like) who welcome inclusivity in transmitting culture, identity, and collective memory. The negotiation between locations of culture is guided by Homi Bhabha’s Third Space, which is grounded in the struggle for power, and Virgilio Almario’s argument on nativist-structuralism, which liberates the indigenous philosophy of Bikol folks’orag (wit and creativity), dunong (wisdom), and paghurophurop (open rationality). These tigsiks posit the possibilities for subalterns to speak and be heard in an attempt to maintain indigenous practice despite their received Western consciousness and the influence of modernity, and to reconstruct the disavowed sensibilities, memory, and consciousness, thereby creating a negotiation between the indigenous and the modern Self/Other. This becomes the moment in which the demand for identification takes the form of a response to other questions of signification, currency, culture, and politics..