Gémino H Abad's Native Clearing

As Imagined, As Lived: Sense for Language, Sense of Country (2008) by Gémino H Abad:

If we ask why the system of education in any country includes its literature as a required subject, the answer is pretty obvious: because a country's literature is its own image, that is to say, its imagination of how its people think and feel about their world and so, justify the way they live. In short, its literature is its lived ideology. In that light, our country's literature is 'our native clearing' within the language that has been forged and adopted for the artistic mimesis. Now, one's country is basically how one imagines her. Note the poetical gender: Inang Bayan. For one's sense of country is essentially a poetic sense: an imaginative perception of our day-to-day living in the very element of our history and culture.