Reflexive Performance in Digital Spaces as Cultural Agency Among the Manobo-Pulanguiyen

What constitutes a reflexive performance? Does reflexive performance embody cultural indigeneity in everyday life, particularly in the digital space? This chapter elaborates on what constitutes a reflexive performance from the lived experiences of the Manobo-Pulanguiyen, an Indigenous ethnolinguistic group in the province of Bukidnon, Southern Philippines. Drawing on performance anthropology and various ethnographic methods, such as in-depth interviews, photo-video documentation, participant observation, and the creative voice method, I discuss the contexts and mechanisms of what counts as reflexive performances in the everyday life of the Manobo-Pulanguiyen in the digital space. My ethnographic material reveals that Manobos, especially the youth, have engaged in social media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok, to magnify their political voices and showcase various Indigenous traditional and cultural performances. My interlocutors perceive social media as a platform to articulate Indigenous creativity, reflexivity, and necessity as a counternarrative to the changing landscapes, socio-political and cultural ruptures, and negative stereotypes originating from colonialism, development aggression, and capitalist regimes. Overall, I argue that using social media as a space for cultural performances encapsulates the following: (a) creative resistance in everyday life and (b) cultural continuity and reflexivity in times of ecological changes and social ruptures (open moments).