BOOK REVIEWS 227

SALOME SAMOU

University ofHawaii at Manoa

Contracting Colonialism: Translationand Christian Conversion in TagalogSociety under Early Spanish Rule, byVicente L. Rafael. Ithaca and London:Cornell University Press, 1988. ISBN 0­

8°14-2065-2, xiii + 230 pp, illustra­tions, notes, bibliography, index.us$26·95·

There are also flaws in the referenc­ing style used. It is frustrating whenarchival material and other publishedworks are cited without full references.It would have been useful to haveincluded individual reference lists foreach chapter. Finally, the volumewould have been better served by morecareful editing. In this way, misspell­ings of personal names and places, andinconsistencies in grammar, could havebeen avoided.

My complimentary copy of VicenteRafael's Contracting Colonialism is agift that has already put me in great"debt." Answering more questions thanit asks, covering more theoreticaldomains than those on which itfocuses, Contracting Colonialism spillsout of the boundary of early Tagalog­Christian colonial society to establishitself as an authoritative model for anyhistorical and political inquiry intocolonialism, Christian conversion, andthe local, indigenous responses to theseprocesses.

For Rafael, who is himself a nativeTagalog speaker, the consolidation ofSpain's imperial order and Tagalogconversion in the Philippine lowlands

are best understood in terms of a seriesof translations between the agents of aCastilian Catholic regime and variousclasses of Tagalog society. To conceiveof colonialism and conversion "fromthe perspective of translation," Rafaeldirects the reader to the semantic rela­tions among the Spanish terms traduc­cion 'translation', conquista 'conquest',and conversion 'conversion'. Suchaffinities, according to Rafael, "reflectas much as they are reflected by theirhistorical configurations" in the Span­ish Imperio (x).

Rafael argues that translation's"configurations" reveal the Spanishintent and desire to identify, relocate,and reorder pagan (read Tagalog)ideas, words, and bodies back to theirpresumed positions under the hierar­chy of God's Word and Kingdom. Buttranslation also describes how variousclasses of Tagalog society (maginoo'elites,' maharlika 'commoners') soughtto appropriate external or novel thingsof value with which to guard againstthe shock or anxiety of threatening(colonial) impositions. Here transla­tion simulates conversion in the veryprocess of subjecting or submittingoneself to external, foreign systems inorder to "inoculate" oneself againsttheir possible threats. But for Spaniardand Tagalog alike, the history of colo­nialism entailed the translation orconversion-what we might call the"restructuration"-of threatening lin­guistic or political conventions intosafe spaces from which to speak andtherefore register one's involvement ina constantly shifting social world. As apredicate of colonialism and conver­sion, translation, or, as Rafael prefers,"mistranslation," denotes a political

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228 THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. SPRING 1991

interest in both "rendering the 'other'understandable" and "reading into theother's language and behavior possibil­ities that the original speakers had notintended or foreseen" (211).

The confluence (and the method­ological and political import) of suchSpanish and Tagalog desires is in thetitle of Rafael's book, ContractingColonialism. For it is in the nature ofboth the expansive and repressive colo­nial order and the local interest (toappropriate, guard against, and evadethe former's full reach) to formalizespecific types of authoritative relation­ships with one another: "contractingcolonialism" names various modes ofbargaining and stakes involved in itthat took place in the spaces betweenSpaniards and Tagalogs.

For the Spaniards, conversion andtranslation served the consolidation ofcolonial power. All served an evangeli­cal imperative-the understood obliga­tion to disseminate the Word of God­which in turn was seen to be the onlylegitimate means by which to justifySpanish expansion. In the Spanish Cas­tilian fiction, God is viewed as thedetermining source of power, the final"Author," the "Eternal Creditor" fromwhom and to whom all actions, words,and deeds (here figured as "gifts")would originate and return. Withinthis legitimizing commerce, the priestwould serve as privileged administra­tor, mediator, or broker, whose holytask was to translate Christianity intoTagalog, and Tagalog in terms ofChristian origins and eschatology.Through a metaphorical "office ofLanguage," colonialism contracted theTagalog by "reducing" them to a bene­ficiary of God's Word, in a transac-

tion of indebtedness to an "EternalCreditor."

Contracting Colonialism juxtaposesSpanish and Tagalog interests andstakes under what can be called, inRafael's terms, the "common patron­age" of language and discourse. This isprecisely why he insists on "close read­ings" of various missionary and nativetexts, which themselves foreground theposition of language and its agency inthe conversion and the consolidation ofSpanish Castilian empire and nativenotions of self and society. Beautifullyand playfully written, brilliantly lay­ered, and, I might add, historically cor­rect, Contracting Colonialism providesenabling commentaries on missionarystakes and positions as registered intheir preoccupation with artes 'gram­mars' of the vernacular (modeled onLatin via the Castilian) and vocabula­rios 'dictionaries' (which sought toindex which divine referents could andcould not be translated into the Taga­log vernacular). Rafael also examinesthe composition of devotional manualswhose intent was to ensure the properadministration of various sacraments(ie, proper confession, administrationof last rites).

But what Contracting Colonialismnames best is a field of local transac­tions and ramifications traditionallyneglected in modern studies of coloni­alism and cultural confrontation. Forin showing the different layers andstakes that constitute Tagalog re­sponses to, or localizations of, SpanishCatholic desires, Rafael's analyticmodel-straight (dust) jacketed as "anapplication of post-structuralism"­provides a full sounding of a coloniallegacy without reducing the native to a

BOOK REVIEWS

simple "converted" object of that his­tory. Identifying and explaining discur­sive links between such "responses"and the colonial order, ContractingColonialism discloses a set of politi­cized relations between colonizer andcolonized that furnished the vocabu­lary and syntax for the emergence of aPhilippine "nationalist" consciousnessthat persists today.

Contracting Colonialism reveals,first, that the Spaniard did not haveexclusive claims to translation, conver­sion, and political consolidation, andsecond, that such processes on theTagalog side of the political-linguisticledger were also qualitatively differentfrom Spanish intentions and concep­tions of language and authority. Or­dered on different notions of languageand authority-a cultural preoccupa­tion, for instance, with the play of"tendentious" or "random" meanings(present, too, in Rafael's own analyti­cal style)-an amorphous Tagalog ver­nacular alternately submitted to,evaded, or resisted the attempt to "sub­late" Christian ideas into its ledger. Anexample is found in Tagalog transla­tions of terms such as Dios, Santos,Jesus, Maria, Jose, which were deemedby the Spanish priests to be "untrans­latable." Such terms were dutifully keptin the Castilian by the priests to institu­tionalize a preferred hierarchy ofmeaning under God, to ensure thesemantic integrity of what was per­ceived to be their incontrovertiblereferents (God the Father, Litany ofSaints, Jesus, and so on), and, finally,to guard against slippage into nativeabusos 'superstitions'. Yet suchuntranslatable terms are shown to havebeen not only localized, but recon-

229

tained in such a way as to evade the fullpolitical and religious force and inten­tion of the Spanish mission while defer­ring to those very colonial conventionsand practices. "Jesus, Maria, andJose," for example, becomes trans­lated, converted, into magpajesusma­ria and further "contracted" into sus­maryosep. Rafael then points out thatsusmaryosep "to this day [remains] acommon Tagalog expression to registershock or signify amazement." Anotherexample-and one that holds a dearplace in my own childhood recollec­tions-is the translation of Viatico'host'. Where viatico as transsubstan­tiation of Christ the Son is understoodby the priest to guarantee the commu­nicant's return to God's Kingdom, inthe Tagalog's hand (or tongue) it isinstead translated and converted intobauon, a snack or a lunch that onetakes along as nourishment on one'stravels. Though eternally hungry, I hadalways known it improper to bringbauon to Mass.

Always with a gifted feel for thepolitical tactics of language, Rafaelreveals other modes of Tagalog conver­sions as evidenced in various Castiliantexts written by Tagalogs for Tagalogs.For instance, in Tomas Pinpin'sLibrong, Rafael shows how the com­position of various auit (short Tagalog"verses") had the effect of, among otherthings, converting the Castilian into a"syncope" of Tagalog. Syncopated inthe rhythm of these short playful Taga­log verses, Castilian could be struc­tured through the sensations of a pecu­liarly Tagalog protocol of address(described as "anticipatory" by Rafael)that would ensure recognition andfamiliarity and serve to guard against

230 THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· SPRING 1991

the possible shock and threat of being Tagalog translations, conversions, andsuddenly confronted by the Castilian (re)consolidations ranged from evasion(speaker). and elision, to outright submission to

If one type of translation-conversion Spanish intentions and interests. Theseparadoxically consisted of evading were always figured both as ways towhile employing the force of the Casti- protect oneself from sudden dangerslian Catholic political and linguistic and as ways to bargain or contractmachinery, -another mo·de-ohransla- . _. ·with similarly contracritrgsystemsoftion amounted to sheer "opportunism." colonialism.An example is how certain elite natives Contracting Colonialism has certain-maginoo or principales-discovered costs. The preface, afterword, and sixa host of advantages in "shuttling" chapters teem with riveting, sometimesbetween the institutionalized colonial forced, sometimes elusive readings oforder and the Tagalog society. Rafael the historical record, giving the book arightly points out that such instances of tendency to exhaust, at times, over­elite opportunism were less syncretism whelm even the most interested reader.than an active separation of two differ- If being overwhelmed is a condition ofent worlds to secure a mediating and confronting the new, the unfamiliar, asthus powerful position from which to Rafael suggests, it arises preciselygain political and material benefits because Contracting Colonialism suc-from either side. cessfully juxtaposes seldom under-

Commoners, too, have a history stood, yet often marginalized (alien)that converges with and diverges from "native" stakes and positions with acolonial and elite desires or interests. still unfamiliar analytical preoccupa-They are the site of what Rafael calls tion with language and discourse. It is\\real" conversion, orsustainedatten- asif the-book-and the reader are con-tion to the preferred meanings as im- demned to reverberate among what toposed by the Spanish. Rather than many would be a flurry of unfamiliardescribing a simple, unproblematic sounds and echoes, twists and turns, ofsubmission to Catholic tenets, Rafael the Castilian, Tagalog, English anddemonstrates how such deference to \\post-structural" vocabularies andthe semantics and intentions of the grammars. But we should be so con-mission system also was a form of demned, particularly because suchindigenous appropriation and transla- anxious, theoretical, and discursivetion: in deferring to Spanish reinven- soundings are what predicate and con-tions of, among other things, the solidate the colonial legacy to beginmeaning of Tagalog notions of self with. What remains overwhelmingly(loob), shame (hiya), and death, the clear is that Contracting Colonialism\\real" convert also saw the possibility itself begins to provide the very feel forof anticipating and thereby containing the pleasures by which the displeasura-the real threat of death. In this way ble might be surmounted.could the real interest in \\real" conver- VICENTE DIAZ

sion be understood: securing entry into University ofCalifornia at Santa Cruza Christian paradise for one's soul.