Tying the Space Yet to Come:
Transing the Bangâ toward the Bukág (Basket)
(This piece was written as a germ for an idea for a more expanded theoretical provocation and creative research. It was presented at the 2026 Philippine Queer Studies Conference: Mobilizing Methodologies of Movements, between April 24 to 26, 2026, at University of the Philippines, Diliman.)
What lies between the loob and labas? In this provocation, I am positing a developing philosophy of Filipino/a/x trans-genre thinking by decentering and transing Prospero Covar’s configuration of the Filipino consciousness as a bangâ (clay jar) by exploding its dichotomized architecture towards the porosity of the canistrumological. Here, the labas (exteriority) and loob (interiority) binary is challenged, proposing a framework of permeability, imbricated in the metabolic relationship with the environment, mediated by the social. Through indigenous craft practice, I am metaphoring the figure of bukág (Binisaya term for basket) as a woven rattan vessel characterized by buhu-buhû (perforations) through which the budhi-diwa (conscientized consciousness) and the environment are entwined in a constant state of flux.
The ancestor of the dwelling is the basket, a practice that predates pottery. This is proven by the discovery of basketry and rope-making tools in Tabon Caves from 39,000 to 33,000 years ago. Weaving techniques in basket-making are also employed in architecture, which is still visible in the amakan or woven split-bamboo walls of nipa huts to this day. Transitioning Covar’s conception of the Filipino mind as a banga, the body of the vessel shatters, transforming into a bukág whose woven walls are punctuated with buhu-buhû, blurring the distinction between the interior and the exterior. The basis of this claim is the continuing practice of basketry among crafting communities in provinces such as Palawan, Bicol, and Bohol, in which the environment serves as their material base and design inspiration.
Additionally, I traced from the relational expansion of the loob by Alejo and Riddle. In their articulation of the unity of body and mind, they claim that intentionality does not end in the confines of the interior but gradates through the “body that is in this world, bound to the grasp of place and time.” Further, they argued that the katawan (body) is a pangangatawan (embodiment) of the loob where spatio-temporal worlds intersect. In my assertion, the katawan is not simply an embodied soul but a shifting pagitan (in-between) or lagusan (crossing), a permeable basket that mediates external encounters. It blurs, gathers, and assembles objects and phenomena that transform into a world of potentialities: transiting from pangangatawan (embodiment) towards nagbabagong-anyo (shape shifting, becoming). In this schema, the budhi-diwa does not transform independently but is simultaneously becoming with affective subjects and objects within a constellation of material dependencies. It echoes the transecological idea rooted in Haraway’s “natureculture” in which beings and materials lie somewhere between likas (natural, biological) and likha (artificial, man-made): a hybrid ontology like the basket woven from natural materials, mediated by techne and the social world.