Recently, the resurrection of authoritarian tendencies in the form of populist movements has conscripted the fascistic aesthetic for its purposes. The rise of populism coincides with the rise of the digital world with its rapid mobility of images and text. Consequently, this has offered an effective platform for the dissemination of a new populist aesthetic. In a specific Philippine post-colonial context, how might we reflect and look at the aesthetics of populism? In this paper, we examine Rodrigo Duterte’s deployment of spectacle, sign, and symbol drawing from the critical resources of psychoanalytic and semiotic theory. Our position is that hegemonic masculinity is able to repackage itself depending on the contingencies of the historical moment. Furthermore, we argue that the new aesthetic of populism in the Age of Duterte reformulates the old iterations of masculinity to maintain its dominance over the Philippine socio-cultural present.

The ongoing pandemic has undeniably propagated an atmosphere of paranoia and discontent in both the West and the East, and it is in this context where Giorgio Agamben wrote a brief but controversial article where he argues that this pandemic enables governments to opportunistically decree a state of exception that will lead to tyranny. Critics have generally responded negatively to Agamben’s views, given that this is not the case in the West. It is becoming apparent, however, that the very thing Agamben feared is happening in post-colonial states. In this paper, I look at how the current pandemic enables a postcolonial state like the Philippines to define (or redefine) the notion of life through authoritarian measures as it claims a strong democratic mandate. My reflections on Agamben takes off from Rodrigo Duterte’s national speeches during the pandemic. I aim to show that his manifestly militarized response is a manifestation of the sovereign exception that politicizes and separates zo? (which is mere biological life) from bios (which is livable life that can participate politically), as Agamben might put it. Finally, I offer reflections on how the postcolonial legacy of the Philippines could potentially complicate how we might think about the notion of bare life—a figure that is neither zo? nor bios.

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