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Critical Essay

Excavating the Trauma: Notes on the Teng Mangansakan’s Forbidden Memory

If the emotional is too on-top of the speaking voice, surrendering to a guiding thought ? an idea, a proposition, a question ? can pass as urgent.

In watching the premiere of Gutierrez ?Teng? Mangansakan?s Forbidden Memory last 2017, I had to quell a kind of rage gearing to erupt in the wake of a reopened rupture ? its closure is a delusion ? that has rapped the country?s memory for decades.

When we speak of Martial Law, we speak of the human rights violations; we speak of the infrastructural progress that birthed international debtswe are still paying today; we speak of Imelda?s lavishness, we speak of the Marcoses? theft; we speak against the temptation to just forget or move on.