ABSTRACT
This chapter is part of a wider-ranging investigation into the cultural construction of the public sphere in the Philippines, or what and how people think about it. 1 We shall examine why contemporary thinking about this sphere is so negative and why Filipinos indulge in ‘self-flagellation’ and ‘Philippines-bashing’ (as it is popularly referred to in the Philippines). While some may hold that people the world over tend to be critical about their government and the political process, and others maintain that an inner discourse of self-debasement may function as a pleasant assertion of we-feelings, the sheer frequency and quantity of negative evaluations of self and country in the Philippines are so baffling that they strike both foreign observers and Filipinos themselves as extraordinary. While this may be a characteristic that has especially come to the fore since the Aquino assassination of 21 August 1983, it does warrant a search for deeper reasons while tracing the evolution of the public sphere in the Philippines.
