Nakatago sa Mata ng Publiko ang Makinarya ng Pagtokhang: Kolateral's Protest Music as an Affective-Discursive Practice Against Duterte's War on Drugs

Date of Award

12-1-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Physics

First Advisor

Mira Alexis P. Ofreneo, PhD

Comments

Protest, as a speech act, has been theorized as a public expression of dissent against oppression in a community. In repressive regimes, however, state powers tend to clamp down on social movements and censor any forms of utterances against the status quo. It is under these circumstances that art, such as protest music, becomes viable spaces for alternative politics to proliferate. Thus, the affective-discursive practice of engaging with protest music in clamped down societies allows for people to be affected upon by the heavily laden emotions present the music of protest songs, while simultaneously given insight into societal issues. In this study, I explore a listener’s musical experience with 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. In doing this, five different affective-discursive practices were uncovered in the album’s music: threatening, immersing, memorializing, calling out, 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 approach are also discussed, along with methodological implications on how to treat music as a data source within this lens.

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