ABSTRACT
How could the same society that expelled the Marcos family through the 1986 People Power Revolution elect the dictator's son to the presidency in 2022? This introduction argues that Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s victory reflects a deeper transformation in Philippine historical memory, one shaped by material infrastructure, regional identity, generational dynamics, and digital mediation working in concert. Drawing on memory studies scholarship, the chapter develops a four-dimensional framework that treats memory as actively constructed rather than passively stored, examines the institutional architecture that anchors competing narratives, traces memory's circulation across communities and platforms, and attends to the power relations underlying all memory work. The volume's chapters apply this framework to diverse empirical sites: war memorials, cemetery politics, museum curation, textbook production, transitional justice mechanisms, Ilocano loyalist communities, Moro collective memory, social media nostalgia, and contemporary policy revivals. By mapping these sites, the volume demonstrates that the Marcos political restoration succeeded through the strategic mobilization of memory itself, revealing how struggles over the past can enable authoritarian values' return within democratic frameworks.
