a clock in a different time zone

Professor Alarilla, my teacher in EEE 10, told us a while ago that the clock at the back of our classroom was in a different time zone. After discussing the Meralco bill to us, he looked at the large round metal clock and found that the two stubborn hands were still determinedly pointing at number 12 and number 3 instead of at number 4. Our class was from 2:30pm up to 4:00pm.
A woman had come in earlier to give us evaluation sheets to answer, and we checked boxes and encircled SA, A, D, SD's for about 30 minutes. I had come in late. I left the dorm at 2:40pm, having failed to check my clock (err... I forgot that I didn't have a clock for a week... another story). I had overslept once more and had failed to eat lunch. (Narcoleptic mode. I'd been oscillating from narcoleptic to insomniac mode for the past few days.) I arrived in EEE at around 2:50pm.

The professor started discussing the rudiments of power systems at around 3:15 by my classmate's watch. Based on experience, he just lectured for about 30 minutes, which was why it came as a surprise to me also when he mentioned that confused clock and I looked at it and also saw 3:00pm on its white indifferent face.

***

Anyway, in an earlier class, CL 142 or South Asian Literatures II, three Marxist classmates discussed a certain Thai poem entitled "Scum of the Earth." The poem is actually a song which enumerated and described who were these scum of the earth--those who betrayed their fellow Thais, those who pretended to be Thais but who wouldn't hesitate to kill their countrymen, those who were in power and robbed people, etc. The poem was intended to expose the social realities at the time. One of the Marxists mentioned the lack in the poem of a concrete solution to counter these forms of oppression. There was a debate about the morality behind any revolution, etc. I stuttered a few comments of my own. Stuttered because I admittedly didn't know what I was pointing at. Haha! I couldn't collect my thoughts.

But what I was pointing at was that we were looking at the poem from our perspective as 'intellectuals' (although I shudder to call myself that) and that we were actually speaking for the peasants. One of my classmates mentioned that the peasants (the proletariat) have actually spoken for themselves and declared revolution. But I recalled my father, who worked in the Department of Agrarian Reform, telling me that the peasants were actually reluctant to take lands because of a sense of 'utang na loob' to the land owners. Now, the Marxist argument for this would be that they'd been immersed in the 'symbolic order,' that is, they had been made to think of their position as lower and to have that sense of 'utang na loob' because of what is called 'ideology.' But if the Marxists had erased their 'blindness' caused by this 'ideology,' isn't it only fair to say that the Marxists themselves have also given them a 'new sight'? (I'm sorry for using 'Marxist' in a rather loose way.)

After being labeled 'Spivakan' (pertaining to Gayatri Spivak and her theory on representations) when I stuttered my arguments, I said, "I didn't mean to contradict any of your arguments, but perhaps you could sense my confusion. My main question is, how are we, as people who are in the position to speak for them, speak for them? And is revolution the only way?"

Hmmm... I must also be a clock from a different time zone. After all, Marxism doesn't believe in eternity.