[Free to Disagree] Rhizomatic politics: In praise of disunity

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

There has been some amount of buzz about unity recently.  This has been the result of the two rallies against corruption, one in Luneta and one at the People Power Monument, happening on the same day, November 30, 2025. The discussions about unity have been fueled further by the speech of Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David made at the Trillion Peso March rally at the People Power Monument in EDSA, as to why we could not unite with the people in Luneta.

To be  transparent,  I am a member of the committee that organized the rally in EDSA because I work with SIKLAB, the biggest civil society formation among the organizers which includes my group, Tindig Pilipinas.

There are two levels of my explanation as to  why I disagree with those calling for unity. One has to do with the particulars of the two groups who organized the two rallies. However, I find myself in a position I am not comfortable with these days when people want to know the ins-and-outs of why the merging of the rallies did not occur. For one thing, there is an ethical line that one cannot cross in discussing internal matters.

For another, the people I am talking to either have a deep appreciation of the long standing ideological differences and deep personal hurts that divide sections of the Philippine left, while some do not. Strangely enough those who know of that history and those who do not,  are divided about whether unity could have been achieved and whether unity was desirable.

Unity isn’t my thing

I am one of those who believes it could not have been achieved. And I will go further by saying I do not find this disunity detrimental to the purported minimal unified goal of the current protests — accountability for those who plundered government funds meant for fund control projects.

Rather, let me put myself on record by saying that long before this current controversy, I have been dissatisfied with our political discourse around unity. Referring again to my group, Tindig Pilipinas, years ago  I wrote for us an internal document on unity and organizing. This was during those miserable times when we were one of the very few groups, and perhaps the biggest political bloc, that was in opposition to the Duterte administration and its genocidal drug war. In that paper, I unpacked concepts of unity in the light of a coalitional ethics committed to human rights, justice and transformation.

In this thought piece therefore, I have no intention of rehashing debates about the Philippine left and its disarray except where it might illustrate my point about why I have come to believe that unity is a millstone that we should no longer hang around our progressive necks.

Current disunities

I will start off with current events however. In many of the interviews I have undertaken in traditional and new media, the issue of unity with the Luneta group has often been asked. My “aha” moment came when I realized that none of the media ever asked me about why our rally had no intention of supporting or uniting with the rally of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), which had similarly announced a big rally for democracy and transparency in the light of the corruption crisis.

I am not being disingenuous. I agree with the implied analysis of that non-question, that those of us who had chosen to ally with the Catholic Church and some evangelical churches had very little in common with the INC rally. The non-question correctly assumes that even if the slogans and calls seemed the same, there is no basis for unity.

This question of who my current allies are among the religious formations is one that is pertinent to me especially — a lifelong agnostic who was a long time opponent  of the Philippine Catholic hierarchy during the long struggle for the passage of the reproductive health law. Indeed during those days, we were  allied with the INC who had taken a more progressive position on the reproductive health bill and the use of contraceptives.

There is therefore an implied analysis underpinning the call for the factions that organized the two separate rallies on November 30 to unite. The analysis implies that our differences could not be as fundamental as those we had with the INC rallies.

I will add that the public pronouncements of those who went to Luneta seem to accept this call for unity as they expressed hurt, dismay or were downright critical of Cardinal David’s  words that it was “not yet” time to unite.

Which brings us to the unfortunate impasse brought about by our understanding of the political positions and situational analyses of the two groups — it is either you believe we must unite, or you believe we must not. A  “no we can’t versus yes we can” situation or, if you wish to blame the EDSA side for the problem,  a “no we can’t, yes you can” debate.

Rhizomatic politics

This rather long introduction isn’t meant to obfuscate despite its attempt at reductive simplicity. It is an attempt rather to get to my main point about how the pursuit of unity comes from an understanding of politics I no longer believe in.

Rather I will draw on an expanding body of literature of political philosophers like Gauttari and Deleuze who in their work Capitalism and Schizophrenia talked about a different way of viewing resistance. Their view is that resistance takes place at different times, in different places, and in non-linear ways. This is a viewpoint called “rhizomatic politics’. “Rhizomatic” derives from the metaphor of the root system of rhizomes.

An easily grasped example is the ginger plant, our plain, everyday “luya.” Their proposition is that social movement expansion happens without any noticeable center or rather has numerous centers or nodes. It is also a network that though interconnected has numerous connections that are not always top to bottom nor one where smaller roots connect only to equally small ones, before they connect together into a bigger root.

This view of power and resistance makes distinctions between peripheries and centers less distinguishable, and makes hierarchies of issues unimportant. For me the theory also captures the dynamic nature of coalitions and alliances, something any long-term activist has come to accept as reality. The roots of the luya plant connect but not in any hierarchical and linear way.

I am aware that this is a thought piece not a long  and well-argued contribution to an academic publication. So I shall attempt to get back to the question of  unity by asking a question of my own: how does one balance the call of unity with the acceptance of diversity? Or better yet: how does one view unity within a project of democratic resistance?

We have very often said we value diversity in the social movements while at the same time promoting unity. And yet, there is less discussion about how these two disparate entities can be bridged. My answer is that they cannot be bridged, at least not permanently, and I don’t think there is strength in flattening and thinning out the rhizomatic network of resistances for the sake of order.

It is because the people, not in the sense that a nation has a people or a leadership must serve the people, but in the sense that philosophers like Hardt and Negri call them “the multitude.” will always be heterogenous. We are divided by place, time, desires, race, nationality, class, gender, caste, class, religions, abilities, inclinations and so on. It is in fact this heterogeneity from which all creativity springs. A politics that does not seek unity but only temporary alliance best reflects this heterogeneity. I would add that I no longer take a prescriptive approach as to who should connect and on what issue but an empirical one: “oh, that alliance happened now let’s see why in order to plan our next steps”.

Opposed to this radically democratic view of the diversity of the multitudes is our current conception of “unity”. The idea that if we must,  as conscious actors,  find ways to unite so that we can achieve our aims in the quickest possible way. My cynicism  over unity, used in this sense,  derives from my experience as a feminist of my  generation. In the 1980s and 1990s men of all stripes of the left accused those of us bringing in an analysis of patriarchy to  enrich class analysis as being “divisive.” That struggle by the way, though less intense, has not been won. But as I am aware that those whose interest in this issue has sustained them to read this far are sick of left bickering, I might point out that every fascist including former president Rodrigo Duterte has relied on calls of unity to justify their persecution or even murder of those defined as outside the united body politic.

Knowing that unity is “received knowledge” for myself and others who grew up believing themselves to be progressive, I must make the disclaimer that I am not saying that those calling for unity are fascist. I will make the appeal however for a different understanding that creates room because we no longer have to expend so much energy worrying about our differences.

The dynamism of flows

Difficult as this proposition of rhizomatic politics might seem, it actually coheres with my experience of lifelong activism first during the anti-dictatorship struggles of the Marcos years and up to today. There has never been a left unity. A very large section of the left was not at EDSA 1 even if their sacrifices were so much a part of what made the 1986 revolution possible.

The national democratic forces who boycotted EDSA I  have long  admitted that error.  But let me add that as one who argued within the Communist Party of the Philippines for participation at that time, I now believe that our mistake was that we thought that we could  predict and actualize when that historical moment of the dictatorship’s downfall would arrive through our own programmatic efforts and that therefore, it  would happen according to our parameters.

The ebb and flow of energy within the rhizomatic network is unpredictable and no one person or group can tell which particular node will gain prominence, enlarge and come to ripeness. This is not to negate human agency but to put it also in its place. We must struggle as we must, attending to the ground which we meet whether barren or fertile. But only the whole network, the masses in their multitude, determines the when and where of what connects and what ground is transformed and how wide is that transformation. In short, transformation is always happening, conjunctures and dysjunctures are always happening, and all of us wait in good faith for those moments in history when large transformations happen.

I measure progress (or the lack of it) not just in the dead and decaying center of the system that has brought us this plunder but in the poor communities of reached by my organization Likhaan, where there are less unplanned pregnancies and higher levels of met contraceptive demand for hundreds of thousands of women. The transformation happening in these communities remains a node that is markedly energetic and healthy but one that does not contribute all its force to the current movement for accountability. And that, in my mind, is a virtuous disunity.

Passive, defeatist 

There is of course much more to discuss. I leave for example the question of whether rhizomatic politics is essentially passive and defeatist. A conception of resistance that promises only isolated silos of very small importance. One that rejects metanarratives of progressive change.

But that is a discussion for yet another day. I can answer for the moment, based on what I have said so far, that my political ethics encourages me to follow my political passions because they arise from that part of the ground–my  part of the “commons”, to introduce yet another term used by these theorists of rhizomatic politics. It then demands that I see difference and diversity as people reacting to their ground. I seek constant conversations and debates,  knowing that consensus will reach only what it can, and it will always be temporary. Unities are always already present as much as there are breaks.

What is important is not just what struggle we choose but how we choose to struggle. In the light of diversity, respectful dialogue and ethical coalitional practice are the tools by which we create temporary though meaningful alliances that nonetheless result in progress.

I will end with a quotation from the philosopher Michelle Foucault from his book, The Birth of Biopolitics:  “A logic of strategy does not stress contradictory terms within a homogeneity that promises their resolution in a unity. The function of strategic logic is to establish the possible connections between disparate terms which remain disparate. The logic of strategy is the logic of connections between the heterogeneous and not the logic of the homogenization of the contradictory.” – Rappler.com

Sylvia Estrada Claudio is professor emerita of the Department of Women and Development Studies, College of Social Work and Community Development, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is also co-founder and Chair of the Board of Likhaan, a sexual and reproductive health organization delivering services through organizing women in poor communities.