Organizer: Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program

Type/Location: In-Person / Ithaca, New York

Description:

President Rodrigo Duterte's term ended in May 2022 amid a violent drug war and the hardships of the COVID pandemic. Yet, surveys indicated that the president’s astronomic popularity did not suffer significantly. His job approval rating remained high—as much as 91% according to one poll--even as the majority of the people had become increasingly pessimistic about the state of the country.

Why this massive popularity amid the most catastrophic of conditions? How was it that a mass murderer continued to register such highly positive ratings? Why did his governance by fear meet with such widespread approval? Or is it the case that by focusing on Duterte, we’ve missed something much more fundamental, namely the persistence of structures of power that envelop and enable the survival of sprawling urban communities where his support was most evident? How did his authoritarian imaginary circulate and reinforce existing notions of community? That is, how did a certain fantasy about sovereign power—the power to decide who shall live and who shall die—oscillate between ruler and ruled? Indeed, is there something about the construction of community that preceded and will continue beyond Duterte’s regime-- something about the logic and logistics of living together--that also create the conditions for cultivating violence and spreading death?

Speaker:

Vicente L. Rafael, Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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