The Gift Poems of Leona Florentino: Decolonial Feminism of the 19th Century, Precarious Archives in the Northern Philippines, and the Craft of Folk Print Production
Lecture by Jose Mari Cuartero
Moderation by Renan Laru-an
Date: Tuesday July 15, 2025
Time: At 6pm
I premise my lecture by raising the following three questions: who are the women of the Philippine colony at the height of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines? What does it mean to be a woman during such a particular period in Philippine colonial history? How does a woman perform a kind of making, which enabled their visibility in history by the late 19th century? Having such inquiries, my lecture will, at the onset, introduce the mother and son relationship of the town poet of the northern Philippines, Leona Florentino, and the transnational anticolonial polymath thinker, labor union leader, and theologian, Isabelo de Los Reyes. By doing so, I proceed with my discussion by locating the presence of these two figures within some of the existing Spanish chroniclers who have defined the chronicling of the history of the Philippines in which they have predetermined what can be considered historical, and at the same time, acceptable perspectives in terms of representing the lifeworld of the indigenous. Through this encounter, the lecture will situate the chronicles in a counterpoint with these two characters, Florentino and De Los Reyes, to foreground the decolonial feminism of the late 19th century, which expands the ground on which the unacknowledged feminist practice of Florentino, on the one hand, revitalizes the role of nature, and at the same time, looks at nature as a poesis. By having such a method of decolonial feminism, Florentino allows us to realize that print, books, pamphlets or what I call, “gift poems,” had radical contributions at the turn of the 20th century, which must be supported by global feminist solidarity. By doing so, I eventually foreground decolonial folklore where we envision a multispecies ecology in which the articulation of such historical figures also foment a way to view possibilities of living and dying in a world being eroded, stormed by crises, and at the same time disasters, which eventually advances further the value of our kin, whether with them, animals, folk creatures, and in fact, soil.
Jose Mari Cuartero is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. His research work focuses on the folklore archive of Isabelo de los Reyes, and he engages in an interdisciplinary conversation by theorizing the archive’s contemporary cultural translation and permutation in the fields of comparative literature, anthropology, visual culture, and curatorial practice. Recently, he served as the research associate for the upcoming Philippine Pavilion, Soil-beings / Lamánlupa, at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale Architettura 2025, under curator Renan Laru-an and artist Christian Tenefrancia Illi. Some of his writings have appeared in Suvannabhumi, Kritika Kultura, and Philippine Studies. He is also a contributing writer for an online newspaper, CoverStory. https://josemaricuartero.wordpress.com
Renan Laru-an is a curator and theorist based in Berlin. He is the Curator of Soil-Beings, the Philippine Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2025.