Cebuano Studies center founding director and USC’s lone professor emeritus Dr. Resil Mojares launched yesterday his latest intellectual work entitled “Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo delos Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledge”, at Buttenbruch Hall. The event capped the SEPHIS International Forum on Rewriting History, which gathered together over twenty renowned historians from the
“This is really a book about us”, Mojares declared in brief remarks during the ceremony, referring to Filipinos as intellectuals, people engaged in the production and distribution of knowledge. The 525-page tome is a seminal work on the beginnings of the Filipino intellectual tradition, born amidst the heat of the Propaganda Movement and the 1898 revolution. Mojares traces this to three men, two of whose pioneering intellectual works have been obscured, totally forgotten and unread due to the accidents attending politics and history.
Left photo: Mojares holding a copy of the book. Right photo: Mojares answers a question from the audience during the SEPHIS public forum with NHI director Ocampo (second from left) as moderator.
Ambeth Ocampo, director of the National Historical Institute and an Inquirer columnist, heaped praise on Mojares for continuing the work, albeit singlehandedly, of tracing the genealogy of Philippine history which was started by Jose Rizal. He compared Mojares’ work to that of Rizal who annotated Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos delas Islas Filipinas, some three hundred years after it was written. Rizal painstakingly copied by hand the Sucesos at the British Library while at the same time writing down copious footnotes correcting or commenting on it.
The book is Mojares’ fourth in a line of works on Philippine society, culture and history published by Ateneo Press, copies of which can be purchased at local bookstores and at
Author: J.E. R. Bersales
03 / February / 2007
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