The Sovereign Exception and the Dialectic of Order: Reflections on Violence, Deterrence, and Impunity in Philippine Political Ontology
The Sovereign Exception and the Dialectic of Order: Reflections on Violence, Deterrence, and Impunity in Philippine Political Ontology
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™
June 25, 2026
In the shadowed theater of Philippine polity, where the specter of *Realpolitik* collides with the fragile edifice of liberal constitutionalism, one encounters a profound philosophical paradox: the leader who rhetorically invokes violence as catharsis presides over measurable declines in quotidian criminality, while the successor, draped in the mantle of due process and institutional restoration, confronts accusations of selective impunity and a resurgent moral hazard among the young. This essay expounds upon the query's core tensions—Duterte's ostensible inspiration of violence juxtaposed against falling crime and juvenile offense rates, the reticence of critics to attribute contemporary disorders to Bongbong Marcos (BBM), and the weaponization of law under the latter—as a meditation on sovereignty, deterrence, human nature, and the perennial tension between *nomos* (law) and *physis* (raw power). Drawing from Hobbesian Leviathan, Schmittian decisionism, Foucault's biopolitics, and Nietzschean critiques of slave morality, we collate these phenomena into a summative philosophical conclusion on the limits of attributing societal violence to individual leaders while acknowledging the state's monopoly on legitimate coercion.
### The Dutertean Sovereign: Deterrence Through Spectacle
Rodrigo Duterte's presidency (2016–2022) embodied Carl Schmitt's sovereign as "he who decides on the exception." His "war on drugs" was not mere policy but a theatrical assertion of *auctoritas*—a biopolitical purge that rendered certain bodies (the urban poor, alleged *shabu* peddlers) as *homo sacer*, killable yet outside juridical protection. Human rights organizations documented thousands of deaths, many extrajudicial, framing this as inspiration for violence.
Yet official Philippine National Police (PNP) and Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) statistics reveal a stark counter-narrative: index crime rates plummeted by approximately 73.7% in the first five years. Murder rates and overall incidents declined sharply from pre-Duterte baselines. Juvenile offenses (Children in Conflict with the Law, or CICL) also trended downward in aggregate during periods of intense enforcement, though early years saw spikes attributable to heightened reporting or residual chaos.
Philosophically, this aligns with classical deterrence theory (*Beccaria*, *Bentham*) amplified by fear: the sovereign's brutal rhetoric and visible operations created a panoptic effect. Potential offenders internalized the risk of swift, extralegal reckoning, disrupting criminal ecologies rooted in drug economies. Hobbes would recognize this as the Leviathan's necessary terror to escape the state of nature; Nietzsche might applaud the master-morality reassertion against decadent permissiveness. Critics counter with correlation-not-causation—improved policing metrics, economic factors, or underreporting amid fear—but the temporal alignment with Duterte's tenure demands rigorous scrutiny. The "inspiration" of violence, then, may have paradoxically enforced a crude order by monopolizing it, exposing the liberal illusion that proceduralism alone tames *physis*.
### The Marcosian Turn: Weaponization, Impunity, and the Juvenile Exception
Under Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (BBM, 2022–present), official narratives tout continued or further declines in index crimes compared to equivalent Duterte periods, with lower average monthly rates in select windows. Drug-related killings persist at lower but non-negligible levels, shifting emphasis toward rehabilitation.
Here, the query's critique sharpens: anti-Duterte voices (now aligned with or enabling Marcos) hesitate to label contemporary violence "BBM-inspired." This asymmetry reveals political hermeneutics over empirical consistency. The BBM administration faces charges of selective justice—using the Ombudsman, Congress, and Senate (with supermajorities) against opponents, while allies enjoy de facto impunity. This evokes Foucault's governmentality: law as a tool of power asymmetries rather than neutral *nomos*. Accusations of weaponized institutions echo perennial Philippine patronage, where *utang na loob* and dynastic alliances trump impartiality.
The recent Tacloban school shooting by minors (14 and 15 years old), resulting in deaths and injuries, crystallizes the moral hazard. Critics argue the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (RA 9344) enables such acts by exempting those 15 and below from criminal liability (with discernment tests for 15–18), fostering a perception of impunity. Calls to lower the age of responsibility proliferate. Is this "BBM-inspired"? Not directly, as the law predates him, but under his watch, perceived leniency amid selective enforcement may signal to the young that systemic loopholes reward audacity. Plato's *Republic* warns of guardians corrupted by unchecked appetites; here, the state's failure to project consistent *thumos* (spirited enforcement) invites youthful transgression, unmoored from Aristotelian habituation into virtue.
The difficulty for critics to pivot blame stems from narrative inertia: Duterte's vulgar sovereignty invited easy condemnation as illiberal excess, while Marcos's technocratic continuity and alliances with former critics cloak similar power dynamics in procedural veneer. This is Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction repurposed for partisan ontology—violence is "inspired" only by the out-group sovereign.
### Summative Philosophical Conclusion: The Eternal Return of Power's Shadow
Colligating these threads yields an esoteric truth: political violence and crime are not epiphenomena of a single leader's rhetoric but emergent from the state's ontological monopoly on force, human incentives, and cultural *habitus*. Duterte's decline in reported crimes, despite (or via) spectacular violence, illustrates that raw deterrence can suppress *anomie* where liberal proceduralism falters—yet at the cost of eroding the rule of law's sacred aura, birthing cycles of trauma and vigilantism. Conversely, BBM-era patterns of selective weaponization and juvenile boldness expose the moral hazard of inconsistent sovereignty: when law becomes *pharmakon* (both remedy and poison), it breeds cynicism, enabling allies' impunity while minors exploit exceptions, mistaking license for liberty.
In Nietzschean terms, both eras reflect the will to power's mask—Duterte's Dionysian eruption versus Marcos's Apollonian administration of resentment. Hobbesian realism prevails: absent a credible Leviathan, whether brutal or bureaucratic, the war of all against all simmers. Foucault reminds us biopolitics governs populations through death and discipline alike; attributing crimes simplistically to "inspiration" elides deeper structural failures—poverty, weak institutions, dynastic capture, and the Philippine soul's ambiguous romance with strongmen.
Philosophically, the summative imperative is *phronesis* (practical wisdom): true order demands consistent, proportionate enforcement transcending personalities. Leaders neither solely inspire nor absolve societal ills; they amplify latent tendencies. The dialectic demands transcending binary blame—Duterte's "violence" yielding order, Marcos's "rule of law" risking selective decay—toward a just *politeia* where deterrence serves human flourishing, not partisan spectacle. In the eternal return of Philippine crises, the unexamined state remains not worth defending. Only by interrogating power's shadows, beyond hagiography or demonology, can the archipelago approach a more authentic *eudaimonia*.
This analysis rests on official data's ambiguities and partisan contestations; deeper causal inference requires longitudinal, multivariate study untainted by immediate politics.
The Canvas of Sovereignty: Philippine Art, Biopolitical Spectacle, and the Dialectics of Impunity in the Archipelagic Polity
In the palimpsest of Philippine visual culture, where the *pasyon* of colonial suffering merges with the *rebolusyon* of postcolonial assertion, art functions not merely as aesthetic artifact but as ontological probe into the state's monopoly on violence. The premises animating the prior meditation—Duterte's sovereign exception yielding paradoxical deterrence amid spectacular killings, contrasted with Marcosian (BBM) procedural weaponization and emergent juvenile moral hazard—find vivid nexus in Philippine art's trajectory from Social Realism to contemporary resistance. This essay collates, expands, and expounds these threads through an esoteric philosophical lens: Schmittian decisionism rendered in mural blood, Foucauldian biopolitics etched in bullet-riddled canvases, and Nietzschean will-to-power refracted through the *Sabel*-like specters of the marginalized. Philippine art emerges as critical *pharmakon*, both mirror to power's shadows and potential antidote to its eternal return.
The Sovereign Stroke: Dutertean Spectacle and Artistic Counter-Iconography
Duterte's presidency instantiated Schmitt's sovereign through the drug war's *Ausnahmezustand* (state of exception), where thousands of *homo sacer*—primarily urban poor—were rendered killable outside juridical norms. Official crime declines, including juvenile offenses, coexisted with this theater of death, suggesting deterrence via visceral *auctoritas*. Philippine artists, heirs to the Social Realist tradition forged under Marcos Sr.'s Martial Law, responded with visceral counter-narratives. Collectives like **RESBAK** (Respond and Break the Silence Against the Killings) mobilized interdisciplinary praxis—visuals, performance, music—to humanize the slain and indict the biopolitical calculus that sacrificed lives for "order."
Emil Yap's Baclaran Church mural, involving drug war refugees in mosaic labor, transforms victims into co-creators of national cosmology, alchemizing trauma into communal *habitus*. Archie Oclos's *Ang Mamatay nang Dahil sa Iyo* at the Cultural Center of the Philippines—a dead body in blanket, composed of 20,000 black ink strokes evoking casualties—performs a macabre arithmetic of sovereignty: each mark a silenced body, the canvas a ledger of exception. Nikki Luna's *Female Fighter*, perforated by M4 rifle fire in the shape of a womb, directly confronts Duterte's gendered rhetoric of violence, embodying Foucault's shift from sovereign decapitation to biopolitical management of populations—here, the reproductive body as site of resistance.
Philosophically, these works expose the paradox: Duterte's "inspiration" of violence, per critics, manifested in raw spectacle that suppressed index crimes through fear (Hobbesian Leviathan), yet art reveals the underbelly—*physis* unleashed not eradicated, traumatizing the social body. Nietzschean master-morality in presidential vulgarity meets slave-moral ressentiment in artistic witnessing; the canvas becomes the arena where deterrence's "success" is haunted by ethical surplus.
The Procedural Palimpsest: Marcosian Weaponization and the Haunting of Impunity
Under BBM, the narrative pivots to selective *nomos*: laws as tools of partisan advantage, Ombudsman and congressional supermajorities as instruments of friend-enemy demarcation. Critics' reticence to label contemporary ills "BBM-inspired" mirrors art's historical dialectic—Social Realism's critique of Marcosian dictatorship (BenCab's political exiles and *Larawan* series chronicling repression and EDSA aspirations) now refracted onto dynastic continuity.
BenCab's oeuvre, spanning Martial Law shadows to present, offers esoteric continuity: *Sabel* as eternal marginalized figure, her swirling drapery a metaphor for the Filipino soul adrift in power's currents—scavenger of history, emblem of isolation amid "progress." His crisis-laden compositions, with chaotic human forms, prefigure the moral hazard of inconsistent sovereignty: when law's *pharmakon* poisons the young, juvenile offenders weaponize RA 9344's exceptions, echoing the Tacloban school shooting's tragedy. Art here interrogates whether BBM-era "impunity culture" normalizes violence for allies while procedural veneers fail to habituate *thumos* in the youth.
Participatory protest art—murals by Gerilya, SAKA's sculptures like *Digna*—extends Kaisahan's legacy, linking Marcos Sr. authoritarianism to Duterte-Marcos alliances. These works critique the "culture of impunity" as biopolitical inheritance: bodies managed through selective visibility (allies shielded, opponents exposed) and invisibility (drug war ghosts, juvenile loopholes).
Esoteric Synthesis: Art as Eternal Return and Archipelagic *Phronesis*
Colligating these, Philippine art nexus reveals power's ontology as cyclical: Duterte's Dionysian purge yields measurable order yet scars the collective psyche, visualized in ink-strokes and bullet holes; BBM's Apollonian administration risks entrenching selective decay, where minors internalize license amid dynastic theater. This is Nietzsche's eternal return—violence and its artistic exorcism recur across regimes—not as fatalism but imperative for *Übermensch*-like cultural assertion. Foucault's biopolitics meets Schmitt in the gallery: art decides the exception by making the killable visible, the weaponized law legible.
Esoterically, the archipelago's art—hybrid of indigenous *anito*, colonial baroque, and modernist rupture—embodies a unique *politeia* of the image. It transcends partisan binaries (anti-Duterte now enabling Marcos) by chronicling the state's failure to reconcile *nomos* and *physis*. True flourishing (*eudaimonia*) demands art's *phronesis*: not mere protest but prophetic re-imagination of sovereignty—consistent deterrence without spectacle, law without weaponization, youth socialized into virtue rather than exception.
In summative conclusion, Philippine art collates the premises into a critical mirror: Duterte's decline in crimes amid violence finds echo in art's documentation of both efficacy and excess; BBM's impunity and juvenile boldness demand art's unflinching gaze on continuity. Beyond hagiography or demonology, these works urge interrogation of the sovereign canvas itself—where the Filipino body, polity, and soul negotiate power's shadows toward authentic self-determination. Only through such esoteric visual *askesis* can the nation transcend cycles of inspired disorder toward a just, flourishing *archipelago politeia*. Empirical ambiguities persist; art, however, renders the unquantifiable visible.
FPRRD on Sen. Pangilinan Law https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14gPoiQkQyk/
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Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™' s connection to the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) serves as a defining pillar of his professional journey, most recently celebrated through the launch of the ACC Global Alumni Network.As a 2003 Starr Foundation Grantee, Roldan participated in a transformative ten-month fellowship in the United States. This opportunity allowed him to observe contemporary art movements, engage with an international community of artists and curators, and develop a new body of work that bridges local and global perspectives.Featured Work: Bridges Beyond Borders His featured work, Bridges Beyond Borders: ACC's Global Cultural Collaboration, has been chosen as the visual identity for the newly launched ACC Global Alumni Network.Symbol of Connection: The piece represents a private collaborative space designed to unite over 6,000 ACC alumni across various disciplines and regions.Artistic Vision: The work embodies the ACC's core mission of advancing international dialogue and cultural exchange to foster a more harmonious world.Legacy of Excellence: By serving as the face of this initiative, Roldan's art highlights the enduring impact of the ACC fellowship on his career and his role in the global artistic community.Just featured at https://www.pressenza.com/2026/01/the-asian-cultural-council-global-alumni-network-amiel-gerald-a-roldan/
He is a Filipino multidisciplinary visual artist, printmaker, painter, independent curator, researcher, writer, and cultural worker whose practice spans contemporary art, curatorial work, and cultural advocacy. He has been active in the Philippine art scene since the late 1990s and has worked with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces, and international cultural organizations.
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A multidisciplinary Filipino artist, poet, researcher, and cultural worker whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and writing. He is deeply rooted in cultural memory, postcolonial critique, and in bridging creative practice with scholarly infrastructure—building counter-archives, annotating speculative poetry like Southeast Asian manuscripts, and fostering regional solidarity through ethical art collaboration.
He has been active in the Philippine art scene since the late 1990s and has worked with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces, and international cultural organizations.His practice appears to represent several interconnected concerns:
Cultural work as artistic practice. Roldan has argued that the labor of curating, organizing exhibitions, teaching, documentation, and cultural administration should be understood as creative work rather than merely support work. This perspective has been reflected in his writings and exhibitions.
Social and political engagement. His artworks frequently address politics, religion, faith, denial, courage, social inequality, and the everyday experiences of Filipinos. He has stated that he draws inspiration from Filipino cultural practices while approaching painting, printmaking, and installation from a conceptual perspective.
Printmaking and conceptual art. Roldan is particularly recognized for his printmaking, with works shown internationally, including exhibitions in Japan and France. His practice also encompasses painting, photography, installation, and curatorial research.
International cultural exchange. A significant milestone in his career was receiving an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2003, which enabled him to undertake research and create work in the United States while engaging with artists and curators internationally.
More broadly, Roldan's work represents an attempt to bridge artistic production, curatorial practice, scholarship, and cultural activism. His writings often emphasize postcolonial discourse, cultural memory, and the ethics of artistic collaboration, positioning the artist not only as a maker of objects but also as a builder of cultural infrastructure.
In the Philippine contemporary art context, he can be understood as representing the figure of the artist-curator-cultural worker—someone who contributes both through making artworks and through developing exhibitions, mentoring artists, and fostering institutional and independent cultural initiatives.
Recent show at ILOMOCA
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Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ started Independent Curatorial Manila™ as a nonprofit philanthropy while working for institutions simultaneously early on.
The Independent Curatorial Manila™ or ICM™ is a curatorial services and guide for emerging artists in the Philippines. It is an independent/voluntary services entity and aims to remain so. Selection is through proposal and a prerogative temporarily. Contact above for inquiries.
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