Why Are We Still Afraid of Divorce?: Marriage and the Traces of Neocolonial Control in the Philippines

Jhon Martin Carlos

The title’s question is raised on behalf of the Filipino people and calls for the Philippines’s critical self-reflection as to why the country’s current sociopolitical climate remains in opposition to a divorce law. To truly understand the fear of a divorce law, one would have to look into the very institution that created the need for a divorce law in the first place: marriage. Across different cultures, Stephanie Coontz (2005) identifies two commonalities to the institution of marriage: (1) marriage is a universal institution, and (2) marriage is always subject to some set of rules. Taken together, these two characteristics imply the idea that marriage has the potential to impose a certain type of power and control over the people who engage in it. With that said, this paper aims to explore a critical theory of marriage in the Philippines as a site of neocolonial power and control by examining how marriage reproduces and enforces certain conditions of neocolonial control. This paper begins with a brief account of marriage as an institution and how the history of colonization in the Philippines has led to the modern version of Philippine marriage we have today. As a product of colonization, this paper argues that the current state of Philippine marriage reproduces the conditions of two (2) neocolonial systems of control upon Filipinos: (1) Capitalism and (2) Patriarchy. Examining this particular perspective on marriage, as we will see, will also unlock a new understanding of the significance of divorce.