In Search of Subaltern Consciousness: Histories in the Life Stories of the Mindanawon People
GYSF Exchange Professorship Report (May 2023–May 2026)
Speaker
Kisho Tsuchiya (CSEAS Kyoto University)
Abstract
Recent Philippine history has repeatedly startled observers: the transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1986, the resurgence of authoritarian practices under Rodrigo Duterte, and most recently the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to the presidency. The roles of over 16 million Mindanawon voters have been pivotal to recent shifts, shaping national discourse most visibly through majority support for Duterte—the first president from Mindanao—but also through political expressions using social media and street demonstrations. Yet, despite their significance, broadly conceived ordinary Mindanawon people (including indigenous groups, more recent settlers and overseas workers) remain repeatedly marginalized in scholarly and journalist discourses. They are often stereotyped as the country’s periphery or confined to elite portrayals of ordinary citizens as “ignorant,” “forgetful,” or victims of authoritarian regimes. With the subaltern setting of Mindanawons, writing their histories solely based on documents remains highly problematic.
This research reconsiders history—both the discipline and the knowledge it produces–by foregrounding conversations with Mindanawons through their life stories. Before and during my exchange professorship at Ateneo de Davao University (2023–2024), I conducted roughly 300 life-history interviews across diverse ethnic, class, gender, regional, and occupational backgrounds. These revealed varied on-the-ground experiences, perceptions and thoughts that, taken together, form widely shared sentiments about national and international history and political-economy. By listening closely to ordinary Mindanawons, this project seeks to unsettle historical narratives and reconsider the historian’s craft in writing history of Southeast Asian subaltern groups.
Bio
Kisho Tsuchiya is assistant professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. He earned PhD in History and M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies both from the National University of Singapore. He also served as international exchange professor for Ateneo de Davao University (2023–2024) with the support of the GYSF program. His recent book, Emplacing East Timor: Regime Change and Knowledge Production, 1850–2010 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2024) won the 2025 Mishima Kaiun Academic Award (best book in Asian Studies).