Moving beyond the ‘magulo’ narrative in the Middle East
It has become instinctive in Filipino conversations here and abroad to describe the Middle East as “magulo,” a word that suggests disorder, inevitability, and unpredictability. Yet, like many labels we repeat often enough, it obscures more than it reveals. To call that region “magulo” is to silently absolve ourselves from the responsibility of understanding it.
This is, in a sense, is what historical theorist Hayden White warned against in the latter part of his work. Moving beyond his earlier concern with the structure of historical writing, he turned to the “practical past,” which is the way narratives are mobilized to serve present purposes. From this followed his “ethics of narrative”: how we frame events conditions not only how they are understood, but what responses to them appear justified.
White illustrates this in the so-called War on Drugs of the 1970s. Framed as a moral crusade, it could just be read, he suggests, as a campaign “against youth, against pleasure,” and in favor of an expanding military-police apparatus already taking shape in the shadow of the Vietnam War.
The “war” narrative did not only describe a “problem” (see Randy David’s “America’s war, everyone’s problem,” 4/12/26), but also reorganized political life around it, legitimizing a broader “war machine’s expanding investment in military adventures.”
The resonance with more recent experience like the antidrug campaign under former President Rodrigo Duterte, is hard to ignore.
But war offers no such space. Once it starts, there is no editing its consequences; only the irreversible unfolding of events that extend far beyond their point of origin.
The Iraq and Syrian wars illustrate how local dynamics become entangled with the strategic interests of global powers the United States, Russia, and Iran.
To limit all this to “magulo” is not only analytically thin but also ethically fraught. Such language flattens complexity and, in doing so, risks normalizing intervention. It invites the view that disorder is inherent; therefore, that external force is necessary and justified. In an interconnected world, the consequences of these framings travel widely. Disruptions in critical chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz reverberate across economies, raising fuel prices and straining everyday life in places far removed from the conflict itself, including our country, ironically.
As David observes, the decisions that trigger these cascading effects remain concentrated in the hands of a few. If mediated discourse once allowed for editing and for the careful shaping of meaning, global politics today often unfolds in a space where action precedes reflection and narratives follow decisions.
Moving beyond “magulo” is about accountability in narration, not language precision: every description carries an orientation, highlighting certain causes, obscuring others, and slowly but surely and silently distributing responsibility.
White and David recognize that narratives do not simply mirror the world: they authorize action and render violence thinkable. The question is not only how we understand the Middle East, but how the way we tell its story shape the future we are willing to accept.
Dr. Domar Cabanatan Alviar
National University, Manila
For letters to the editor and contributed articles, email to opinion@inquirer.net
