Nakatago sa Mata ng Publiko ang Makinarya ng Pag-Tokhang: Kolateral’s Protest Music as an Affective-Discursive Practice against Duterte’s War on Drugs

Nakatago sa Mata ng Publiko ang Makinarya ng Pag-Tokhang: Kolateral’s Protest Music as an  Affective-Discursive Practice against Duterte’s War on Drugs

by Jonathan Robert A. Ilagan, PhD in Psychology Candidate

ABSTRACT
The act of protest through music has been theorized in various ways within the discursive realm: a performance of dissent, a propagandic tool, and an educational text for adult learners. However, the discursive elements in protest music, which are the lyrics of protest songs, are only one aspect of this phenomenon. Protest music also has the power to elicit emotion on the end of its audience and it is through emotions that social movements are able to organize stories and ideologies to create moral outrage against oppressive forces. Despite the centrality of both the discursive and affective elements of protest music to fully understanding this phenomenon, these elements are often studied independently from each other; thus, making it undertheorized using an affective-discursive lens. In this study, I aim to show how the protest music in the Kolateral album, a hip-hop album created to speak out against the extrajudicial killings carried out in President Duterte’s bloody regime, articulate, organize, and mobilize the affect and discourse surrounding the war on drugs through uncovering five different affective-discursive practices present in the music: threatening, immersing, memorializing, critiquing, and inciting. All of these practices served the functions of eliciting different emotions from the listener, some of which include fear, sadness, anger, pity; coming together to disturb the listener. Theoretical implications to the affective-discursive lens are also discussed, along with methodological implications on how to treat music as a data source within this lens.

3:00pm Thursday, July 6, 2023 (Online)

Adviser:

Mira Alexis P Ofreneo, PhD

Panelists:

Nico A Canoy, PhD

Christopher Franz Carandang, PhD

Ma. Elizabeth J Macapagal, PhD

Jocelyn M. Mayoralgo-Nolasco, PhD

Keywords/Key Phrases: Protest Music, Affective-Discursive, War on Drugs, Duterte