Stereograph: School Girl in Native Dress, Upper Garment Made of Hemp Gauze, Philippine Islands, 1907., and: The Captions Are Handwritten

Abstract

Stereograph: School Girl in Native Dress, Upper Garment Made of Hemp Gauze, Philippine Islands, 1907., and: The Captions Are Handwritten Michelle Peñaloza (bio) To be a pupil of household industries: what it means to be a proper wife: the meaning they give me. I sit with my embroidery. They enter with great fanfare. Direct me to sit here. They say docile to each other and not to me, thinking I will not know such a word. Know any words. Native maid. I know not to look at them straight on. I know to sit here and exude the equanimity of an alien flower. I watch their shoes, the wool and whisker of them, as they shuffle and bid me to be as still as possible. I set myself to rigor as they disappear behind the camera, beneath the cloth. I hold a closed fan in my hands, which hold all my wishes to slap these men, strike this fan across their faces. When they shoo me away, I leave my broken fan, twice. [End Page 175] The Captions Are Handwritten Insurgent prisoners guarded by American soldiers bearing insurgent dead. North of Malinta, Bulacan Province—1899. In an unplanted rice field, each insurgent prisoner holds a shovel. One soldier holds nothing, another leans on his rifle, another sits in the foreground. A soldier is a person who serves in an army. To soldier (on) is to persevere. A soldier leans forward, his legs a legible figure four; his elbow meets his knee as his sneer meets the camera, as if he might say, "Why take a picture of this?" A few feet from his feet, an insurgent dead's hat sits intact, a few feet from his faceless head. Insurgent prisoners are prisoners rising in active revolt who have been caught. Insurgent dead are dead people in active revolt. The crown of the dead insurgent forms an eye that meets the camera's gaze. His torso bloats taut. His hands make no sense relative to the location of his head and his feet. The etymology of insurgent is "into, towards" and "to rise." The photograph's handwritten caption seems to hold a sad pun. Did the writer consider the wide differences between enduring and deliberately forgetting? Writers seem to utilize etymology when they are at a loss for words, as if the origin of a word will provide more meaning. One can bear burdens, fruit, a hand, someone ill will, someone malice, a relationship to, a resemblance to, the stamp of, witness to. One can bear away, bear down, bear in on, bear off, bear on, bear out, bear up, bear with. One can not bear to think. What did the writer of this caption know about language, about puns? [End Page 176] The same soldiers who rounded up and drove Indians onto reservations are the same soldiers who drove Filipinos into reconcentration camps. To bear the burden of massacre twice over, what do you think you must bury? Maybe that is the wrong question: can you bury a burden if it is named service? The US invented and perfected the "water cure" and psych warfare in the Philippines. The passage of time, the shifting of context reflects the nuances of language. Take "squatter" and "pioneer." "Colony" and "territory." "Subject" and "citizen." "Amigo" and "insurecto." One can hear nuance in tone: "So, where are you from?" and "Yeah, where are you from?" Is this caption proof a perpetrator can access sympathy—even empathy?—in subconscious slippage? Does this line of questioning ring in the register of wistful revision? Every one of the US Army's first twelve chiefs of staff served in the Philippine War. The University of Michigan owns 2,141 photographs in an archive—The United States and Its Territories 1870–1925: The Age of Imperialism—which features many photographs and stereographs (so you can see twice and with the right equipment in primitive 3D) of dead Filipinos in rice paddies and dirt trenches. I've been down the rabbit hole of this archive many times. There is a photograph: an enormous trench filled with dead Filipino men, women, and children. American soldiers stand over them, surveying the...