Authentic Though Not Exotic: Essays on Filipino Identity

This collection of essays offers another way to look at the encounter between the Western and the indigenous. It suggests that through a dialectical process, this encounter has generated a broader sense of community that has transcended the kin. Local genius transformed Spanish influences, even as it was itself transformed by the latter, resulting in a new culture. Finally, “Southeast Asia” is a recent construct that should be redefined to reflect the diversity of cultures present in it.

• Fernando Nakpil Zialcita, Author

  Fernando Nakpil Zialcita is a philosopher (MA Ateneo de Manila University) and a cultural anthropologist (MA, PhD University of Hawai’i) by training, he has batted for the conservation of heritage, particularly in architecture. With Martin I. Tinio Jr., he wrote Philippine Ancestral Houses (1980) to highlight the significance of our traditional urban houses as uniquely Filipino; he assembled essays by various scholars into Quiapo: Heart of Manila (2006) to reveal the diversity of the district’s heritage; he wrote Authentic Though Not Exotic: Essays on Filipino Identity (2005) to highlight the dynamism of Filipino culture. He has worked with advocacy groups, both national and local, in campaigns to conserve urban ensembles like Vigan. He is connected with the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Sociology and Anthropology where he set up the Cultural Heritage Studies Program.