EDSA as State of Mind and as History from the Top and Center

(Second of a series on ‘Retaking EDSA’)

Historians label EDSA as a revolution not for its being one, but for how it was named.

Thus, the act of naming became what constituted as a factual event, regardless of whether what transpired was factually a revolution.

The reality is that the power to name is a product of power politics. There was no consensus, and if we go by numbers, the people who went to EDSA and the parallel protests held in several urban areas, did not constitute a majority.

It is also a fact that the only movement that can rightly claim being revolutionary was even absent from EDSA. The forces of the armed Left opted out of what has been called a “revolution.”

This only strengthens the argument that the writing of history is determined by the perspectives of the elites, from the top and center, and that most of it are not actually about facts but about states of mind, or what the Annales historians referred to as “mentalities.” These are the general mindsets by which collective experiences of everyday life, such as EDSA, are mapped, configured and given meaning by a significant number of people. And “significant” doesn’t even have to be a majority.

And in a society controlled by post-Marcos elites, EDSA has become a narrative that is told from the perspectives of how intellectual and political elites mapped, configured and gave meaning to the events associated with the period. Thus, it is a partisan reading that has acquired the character of a fact, and any attempt to correct its misrepresentations would be considered as historical revisionism.

To continue reading Antonio Contreras' article for the Manila Times, click image above.