Archives of memory

There are moments when the end of a life gives birth to a moment that is precious because it is so rare: the passing of Resil B. Mojares was one such moment. We, who have pigeonholed ourselves as a crab-mentality culture, instead of pulling him down, raised him up; and by 'we,' I mean Filipinos from all walks of life who share an affinity for the written word. Mojares wrote many things about many topics, covering both past and present but also voyaging far and wide by means of his imagination, refusing to be bound by things so mundane as categories of writing: he would be an essayist, a philosopher, a historian, a fictionist, a poet; but in each and every genre he excelled, was respected, even revered. For an interview by Caroline Hau, he was described as a 'most amiable and unassuming man,' a man of kindness and civility, with a generous nature—the gift of friendship. A biographical note that touched me was the recollection shared by some that Mojares had never quite recovered from the loss of his wife in 2022—a devoted husband, beloved of his children. He once addressed a gathering of scholars in his honor—a living festschrift, it would seem—to make three points. The first point he made was that the conference itself represented a 'plurality of discourse and topics,' something impossible in the more doctrinaire past (before the 1980s, in his recollection) with an 'opening up to the rich diversity in topics.' His body of work—marked, as so many have pointed out, both by volume and consistent quality, not to mention language that makes for pleasurable reading, whatever genre he attempted—revealed a mind far- and wide-ranging, unwilling to be bound by orthodoxy, conceiving and conceding, as he did, the freedom of the individual to be many things at once. Can such a healthy respect for the intellect—one of his most profound topics of interest—survive in the present? The second, according to Mojares, was the contrast between contemporary gatherings of Philippine studies scholars and those in the past where the distinguished were 'old, white, male Americans.' He said he felt hope seeing the current crop of Filipinists. I'd like to think he felt the same way about the many other kinds of gatherings—symposia, workshops—he attended, where he left his mark on younger writers simply by being there, listening, and encouraging: from short, often random encounters to more structured interactions, Mojares was a mentor to many in a country already blessed by so many of our best and brightest unselfishly sharing what they have with the aspiring writers of tomorrow. Here, however, a cautionary note: who, in turn, will become the mentors of tomorrow? Are the avenues, the opportunities, still even there? As for the third, he focused on the word 'archive.' He recalled his work on Isabelo de los Reyes, to whom he attributes the creation of the first Filipino archive; he asserted that archives are meant to be a 'collective project to which people contribute.' A place both dynamic and hospitable and not some sort of isolated refuge for reclusive scholars; instead, an archive is an aspect of the community, to which scholars belong, and an endeavor with an eye to the future since the longer it exists, the richer an archive can become. Aside from the grandeur of a state funeral to which Mojares will be fittingly entitled as a National Artist, it is in terms of archives that I think the best opportunity to honor him lies. When I was with the Ayala Museum, our then-director Florina Capistrano-Baker shared a dream of hers: while impressive in their own ways, the collections amassed by the wealthiest Filipino families each had their limitations, but collectively, they could constitute a truly impressive and mutually-reinforcing collection. She dreamed of those families coming together to bequeath to the nation an institution like the Metropolitan Museum in New York—formidable because of being collectively endowed by those with the means to think truly philanthropically. It may be a generation or two before the names Zobel, Lopez, Que, Ortigas, and more can unite. At least for art and objects, the collections are already housed, often magnificently; the same cannot be said for Mojares' dream: what archives seem to exist have reached their limits; some have even started to decline offerings of papers and books because of lack of space. He himself has a monument in the Studies Center he created at the University of San Carlos, which nurtured him and gained acclaim by its association with him; his papers will be safe for future scholars to explore. But the grim truth is that Mojares is only one in a cohort of scholars and other public and even private figures passing from the scene, many unheralded, but whose papers are deserving of preservation. With their demise will come the destruction of the tangible manifestation of their lives, their thoughts. There is no place endowed with the means—the space, the facilities, the endowment and the staff—to preserve, digitize, and catalog. And with the dispersal of each collection, there will disappear the community of connection and memory that life once represented. —————- Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3