Norma Absing Respicio’s ‘Journey of a Thousand Shuttles’

Knowledge on the production relations, sourcing of materials, computation of the total value of the creative work, including labor cost, and the means or ways of distribution, dissemination or marketing can enrich textile studies and uncover all the details about weaving societies,” explains Norma Absing Respicio

It is in the thick of these details in the foregoing quotation from the book, Journey of a Thousand Shuttles: The Philippine Weave, that the author explores the multitude energies and knowledge necessary in apprehending the many forces (and interests) at work in the seemingly pacific terrain of textile production in the country. In the section “Cotton,” Norma Absing Respicio stresses the role of cultivation and flue curing of Virginia tobacco leaves (the essential ingredient in commercially available cigarettes) in the dwindling and, now, almost inevitable terminus of cotton production in Northern Luzon, formerly “the (country’s) bastion of cotton harvest.”

This encroachment of tobacco as flashpoint is mentioned in other chapters of the book in relation to various facets of textile production.  In “Material Evidence of Practice,” the author recounts the introduction of cash crops in the 1950s which led to the drastic depletion of traditional yarn materials. In “The Fibers: The Asian Connection” (one of the several interspersed sections that highlight the constant flux of fabrics, ideas and technologies across Asia) the role of China as emerging economic superpower is underscored. Responsible for massive yields brought about by US-made, bioengineered cottonseeds, it is now the biggest exporter of cotton to the biggest importer of the material: the Southeast Asian region.

The section on “Ikat” discusses the dislodging of cotton cultivation with tobacco in Ilocos, Pangasinan and parts of Northwestern Luzon. This was a critical factor in the death of a particular Ilocos ikat design technique called “rinimasan,” a once popular streaked pattern of either warp or weft tie-dye in these provinces. Finally, in the chapter “Patterns of Culture,” Respicio correlates the imposition of tobacco and yellow corn as cash crops after World War II with the infiltration of extractive industries responsible for violently displacing weaving communities and permanently shifting “whole system(s) of living.”

That tobacco and textile should have such virulent links is something that the book recovers from current research on traditional weaving and clothing. It is production relations that the author is most concerned with — an angle almost always glossed over in traditional textile scholarship. Implicated within these relations is, of course, the stuff of cloth. Matter as catalyst towards exploring textile practice is evident in the way the content has been organized: in the very beginning of the volume is a map of the archipelago that identifies the fiber, dyestuff, loom and design techniques in each ethno-linguistic group’s province where a traditional weaving community resides. These material indices are the headings for each of the succeeding sections together with chapters on weaving implements, profiles of the 26 traditional textile communities in the country, and a discussion on the associative properties of cloth with festival and ritual that make it a fundamental part of cultural life. The latter, of course, is imbricated with the sexualized and politicized nature of textile work as creative labor and expression.

Respicio reminds us that while it is vital that we are cognizant of textile’s intricate role in circumscribing relationships across a stratified society (where rank and wealth are manifest in the fabrics one owns), there is also the often-overlooked commercial-capitalist relationship extant in several popular weaving centers that are symptomatic of manipulative and unjust working “arrangements” between the weavers and the market. This problematic relationship is succinctly described in the chapter, “The Weavers.” Here the author narrates how weaver-turned-laborers (most notably in Visayas) work eight-hour jobs together with other wage earners engaged in the extraction and processing of raw materials to produce natural fibers. These workers are vulnerable to the dictates of the “capitalist-owner-designers” of factory-like weaving houses who are wont to treat creative production as purely skilled labor.

In certain textile areas in Luzon, pre-colored and preset yarns with specific designs are given to weavers who are paid by piece or length at inequitable rates. To counter such abusive dealings between individual weavers and suspiciously enterprising parties, weavers in Mindanao organize themselves into small cooperatives.

Respicio gives due attention to the processes of production as well, citing past and current techniques of extracting fiber from plants, for instance, or the necessary rituals involved in cooking yarns in mud dye. The main act of weaving is diligently documented through careful identification of procedure and material. These details are described with sensitivity to the devotional practice of the weavers themselves — inarguably the people who take the biggest risks in a project like this by disclosing their traditions to a public — and are accompanied by recent photographs of the actual fabrics, tools and environs of the production process.

Primary and secondary sources underpin the author’s observations from working in the field while archival images establish the interfacing of histories — that of textile tradition and researches in the field of textile tradition. It is worth noting that the book is accompanied by a “Field Notebook,” which encourages the reader to go out and engage in research themselves, offering space, for example, to “list stories, epic chants or songs associated with the design motif.”

In a recent conversation with Dr. Respicio, she recalls how she witnessed the gradual, catastrophic effect of Virginia tobacco on textile traditions in Northern Luzon. It is difficult to grasp just how much the local industry has lost to poor economic policy when one considers the unrealized potential of Philippine cotton which, the author reveals, is comparable to the Egyptian variant. These fragments of fact demonstrate a crucial awareness of the dynamics in textile production that inform more extensive social concerns. Rich in data, documentation and illustrations, the book is marked by such an awareness providing us with a wealth of well-construed and bold insights on repeatedly unevaluated, because circumvented, narratives of cloth and making.