Jose Rizal

This chapter situates the life of Jose Rizal. First, it examines the origins of Philippine liberalism in the creole intellectuals of the late eighteenth century/early nineteenth century. It explains how these creoles, inspired by the French Revolution and other liberal movements in Europe, articulated the broad contours of the propaganda movement that Rizal would lead in the nineteenth century. Second, it provides an overview of the political and economic changes in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. It was a period of economic growth and political stagnation, creating a revolutionary atmosphere that would form not only the ideas of Rizal but also the Philippine Revolution of 1896. It ends with a brief biography of Rizal.

This chapter outlines the key ideas of Rizal’s liberalism, drawing mostly from his essays and collected letters. Although Rizal believed that Spanish liberals were better than the reactionary friars whom he held in contempt, he felt that many of them had become hypocritical in the Philippines, turning their back on their principles. In opposition to this liberalism, Rizal sketches a form of liberalism born through the pain and suffering of the colonial subject.

This chapter is an introduction to and a liberal interpretation of Rizal’s first novel, Noli Me Tangere. It provides an overview of Rizal as a novelist, explains Rizal’s notion of audience, and moves to a discussion of the Noli’s themes. In the novel, Rizal uses the skills of a journalist to reproduce nineteenth-century Philippine society with fidelity. He then uses this setting to test the viability of liberal reformism in the country. The novel’s main character, the creole/mestizo Juan Crisostomo Ibarra, tries to build a progressive school in the European mold. For his efforts, the friars brand him a subversive and frame him for inciting rebellion. Ibarra’s failure stems not only from his naiveté but also from his misunderstanding of how liberalism should be cultivated in the colony.

This chapter examines Rizal’s second, more incendiary novel, El Filibusterismo. If the Noli was an experiment in liberal reformism, the Fili is an experiment in revolution. Using the character of Simoun—the radicalized Ibarra who goes home to the Philippines to foment an insurrection—Rizal tests the viability of revolution in the Philippines. Like Ibarra’s school, Simoun’s revolution is a failure. This chapter concludes that the Fili is an intentionally ambiguous novel—a novel that refuses to make recommendations about revolutionary violence, but rather poses Socratic questions about how a people should earn their liberty.

This conclusion asks what Rizal’s vision of liberalism means for postcolonies and the Global South today. It critiques the tendency among postcolonial scholars to treat liberalism as the “Other” of their radical project from the margins. Their writings fail to acknowledge the contributions of postcolonial liberals like Rizal in forming independent political communities. Finally, it contends that a renewed liberalism is necessary amid the rise of global populism and illiberal democracy.