Homo Tropicus: A Yearning

• Main Author: Jacobo, J. Pilapil
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: anachronistic space; autochthone; homotropy; Manila; time of the Other; tropology
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss16/5; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1203/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n16_2011_5D_202.4_Article_Jacobo.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Variations on the theme of the tropical diptych suggest a temporality whose percussion presents a counterpoint to the habit of symphonic time, that is, temperate time, one premised on a quadruple measure of exuberance (summer), descent (autumn), cessation (winter), and nascence (spring). What I am trying to introduce here is a sense of a choreography that may be akin to a primal fort-da —a kinesis that elicits at the same time that it donates an attunement to the earth that is more displaced than located. Hence I begin the utterance, even an ululation, of a desire to seek out what remains from this movement—what could be that creature of stasis that may as well be a worldling, an indigene, a subject whose promise is a species whom we name homo tropicus.