Pulo: A Metonym

• Main Author: Benitez, Christian Jil R.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: archipelago; essay; island; metonym; pulo
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss40/27; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2037/viewcontent/KK_2040_2C_202023_2027_20Forum_20Kritika_20on_20Critical_20Island_20Studies_20__20Benitez.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

As an attempt toward a preliminary understanding of the islandic in its Philippine rendition, this study navigates with and through the Filipino pulo and its associations in various Philippine languages. In its recourse to linguistic and philological paradigms, the study relies above all on some creative invocation of the archipelagic form through the quintessential prose form of the essay. The commonly perceived isolation of islands in kapuluan is intuited here to be simultaneously relational (as kapuluan is also the Filipino assemblage of the pulo). In the process, the pulo is found, through a Tagalog lullaby examined here, to delineate in the island its tropicality, that is, its insistent turning that permits a reimagination of the islandic “pulling away” as concurrently the islandic pushing toward and with an other.