The Dialectics of Labeling: Red-Tagging, Sovereign Power, and the Ontological Erasure of Dissent in Contemporary Philippine Polity
The Dialectics of Labeling: Red-Tagging, Sovereign Power, and the Ontological Erasure of Dissent in Contemporary Philippine Polity
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™
July 11, 2026
In the perennial theater of Philippine politics, where the specters of colonial legacies, martial authoritarianism, and insurgent dialectics converge, the figure of Rep. Leila de Lima emerges as a palimpsest of contested narratives. As congresswoman for the *Mamamayang Liberal* party-list, de Lima—drawing upon her earlier Senate Bill 2121 from the 18th Congress—seeks to define and penalize *red-tagging*: the discursive act of affixing to individuals or collectives the labels of “state enemies,” “communists,” or “terrorists,” particularly those allegedly linked to the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Critics, exemplified by commentator Hiro (CJ Hirro) in the referenced social media discourse, caution that such legislation risks foreclosing legitimate scrutiny of subversive networks, while gesturing toward de Lima’s own political biography—her clashes with military establishments, her tenure as Justice Secretary under the Aquino administration, and her protracted detention under Duterte—as indices of deeper, perhaps self-interested, motivations. Yet these surface polemics belie a profound philosophical substrate: red-tagging as a biopolitical technology of *sovereign exception*, wherein the state’s imperative to secure itself engenders the ontological precarity of the dissident subject.
### The Phenomenology of the Tag: From Schmitt to Foucault
Philosophically, red-tagging operates as a modern instantiation of Carl Schmitt’s *friend-enemy distinction*, the constitutive political act whereby the sovereign demarcates the *jus publicum Europaeum*’s boundaries. In the Philippine context, the “red” signifier—evoking Cold War binaries, Maoist insurgency, and the longue durée of Hukbalahap resistance—functions not merely as descriptive but as *performative*. It interpolates the tagged subject into a state of exception (Agamben), stripping them of the full protections of citizenship and rendering them *homo sacer*: lives that may be exposed to violence with impunity. De Lima’s proposed definition crystallizes this: labeling as “state enemies” or NPA affiliates transforms civic discourse into existential threat, often precipitating extrajudicial consequences. Critics rightly note the hindrance to counter-insurgency discourse; the NPA remains an active armed group with a history of atrocities. Yet the counterpoint reveals a deeper aporia: when the state’s security apparatus monopolizes the power to name the enemy, it risks conflating *legitimate critique* with *subversion*, echoing Foucault’s *discourse of power* wherein truth is an effect of regimes of veridiction.
Esoterically, this evokes Heidegger’s *Gestell*—the enframing that reduces beings to standing-reserve. The red-tagged activist, journalist, Indigenous leader, or human rights defender is no longer encountered in their existential authenticity but as a resource within the counter-insurgency calculus: a potential threat to be neutralized. De Lima’s legislative intervention, rooted in her own experience of prolonged detention on charges widely decried as politically motivated, gestures toward a Levinasian ethics of the Other: an attempt to safeguard the face of the vulnerable from the totalizing gaze of the state. Yet Hiro’s skepticism—pointing to de Lima’s “political history, connections, and past clashes with military officials”—invites a Nietzschean genealogy. Is this advocacy a will to power masked as justice? Or a dialectical return, wherein the former prisoner of conscience reclaims agency within the very apparatus that once sought her erasure?
### The Hermeneutics of Suspicion and the Beyond of Human Rights
The implications, as Hiro astutely observes, “go beyond human rights.” Here, we enter esoteric terrain. Red-tagging instantiates what Slavoj Žižek might term *ideological cynicism*: the state knows full well that many tagged individuals are not literal bomb-throwers, yet the spectral threat of communism sustains the libidinal economy of authoritarian populism. In the Philippines, this practice traces to the Marcos era and intensified under Duterte’s NTF-ELCAC framework, persisting into the Marcos Jr. administration. It functions as a *parapolitical* mechanism, blurring lines between law and extralegality. De Lima’s bill seeks to reassert the *nomos*—the normative order—against this anomie, criminalizing the tag itself. But philosophically, this raises Kantian antinomies: Can the state legislate against its own sovereign prerogative to name threats without undermining the very security that legitimates it? Does criminalizing red-tagging risk a *tyranny of the minority*, shielding genuine subversives under the cloak of free expression?
From a Hegelian perspective, Philippine politics embodies the master-slave dialectic writ large. The state (master) requires the insurgent Other (slave) to constitute its identity; red-tagging externalizes this tension, projecting internal contradictions—poverty, inequality, historical injustice—onto the communist specter. De Lima, having traversed the abyss of incarceration, embodies a sublated consciousness: the slave who has stared into the void and returns to legislate recognition. Yet her motivations remain “unclear,” as the post notes—a deliberate ambiguity that invites psychoanalytic reading. Is it *repetition compulsion*, working through trauma? Or *sublimation*, channeling personal grievance into universalist human rights praxis?
### Toward a Summative Philosophical Conclusion
In summation, Rep. de Lima’s renewed crusade against red-tagging—via the *Mamamayang Liberal* platform and echoing Senate Bill 2121—represents far more than partisan legislation or personal redemption. It is a metaphysical intervention into the *polis*: an attempt to delimit the sovereign’s arbitrary power to designate bare life, to restore the *demos* to deliberative agency, and to affirm the irreducible plurality of voices against monological security narratives. Critics like Hiro perform a necessary *hermeneutics of suspicion*, reminding us that every emancipatory gesture risks instrumentalization, that political history colors intent, and that the NPA’s shadow demands vigilant realism lest anti-tagging become a shield for actual subversion.
Yet the deeper truth lies in the *aporetic tension* itself. A polity that cannot distinguish between dissent and treason devolves into Schmittian decisionism, where exception becomes the rule. Conversely, a polity that refuses to confront existential threats to its order courts dissolution. De Lima’s project, philosophically construed, urges a dialectical synthesis: robust counter-insurgency *coupled with* juridical safeguards against discursive violence. This requires not mere policy, but an *ontological shift*—from a politics of enmity to one of agonistic pluralism (Mouffe), wherein adversaries are engaged as legitimate interlocutors rather than existential foes to be tagged and erased.
Ultimately, in the esoteric register, red-tagging reveals the fragility of the social contract in post-colonial democracies haunted by insurgency. De Lima’s advocacy, whatever its biographical wellsprings, calls the body politic to confront its own *thanatopolitical* tendencies—the administration of death through language. To move beyond requires a philosophical maturity: acknowledging security’s imperatives while sacralizing the right to question power. Only thus can the Philippines transcend the eternal return of red and blue binaries toward a more just, if perpetually contested, *eudaimonia*. The tag must not define the tagged; the sovereign must not become the sole author of truth. In this liminal space between security and liberty lies the ethical task of our age.
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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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