Filipinos Writing in English / Through English: Reconaissance and Revaluation
Given the rise of “englisches” in the shadow of Global/World English, is it possible to draw up a provisional account of Filipino writing in English from the orthodox formalistic and aestheticist point-of-view without self-incrimination? It surely is possible, but whether it is intelligible or useful for whatever reason, remains to be seen.
Given the commodification of postmodernist and post-structuralist dogmas, we cannot engage in this task by invoking universalist paradigms and meta-narratives without provoking the high priests of sikolohiyang pantayo (“psychology for us,” an academic style of doing local psychology), the pasyon/sinakulo historicism of would-be populist academics, and the gatekeepers of assorted prizes, awards, and official honors that have made writing in English in the Philippines not only an elite luxury but ultimately a self-congratulating hedonistic orgy of nullity and irrelevance in Manila and isolated academic circles elsewhere (for an earlier diagnosis, see my “Decline of Philippine Writing”).
Despite this, I offer the following sketch indeed as a mode of provocation in the hope of initiating a new inventory of the collective “self” that (as Antonio Gramsci advised) is needed to launch any counter-hegemonic struggle to construct the foundations for socialist democracy and genuine national independence. We re-visit the old inquiry into what does writing signify, for whom does one write, why write at all, and so on.
Exploding the Canon
A dialogic or polyphonic approach might be heuristic at the outset. Mikhail Bakhtin’s central insight that complex political, ideological, and social conflicts in any society permeate and constitute the play of language and discourse in and between societies offers a heuristic point of departure for “postcolonial” inquiry into the field of world literature written in English, or “englishes.” It has become academic consensus by now that the canonical language of Shakespeare and Milton and its literary conventions cannot be imposed as a universal standard for appraising the value of writing in ex-colonized formations (for instance, Australia, Canada, India, among others) without resurrecting the specter of imperial domination and racial subordination. Notwithstanding the notion of “American exceptionalism,” this applies also to the American English of Hawthorne, Whitman, and Henry James as the canonical standard for judging and evaluating the works of the racialized “minorities” in North America: African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders in the United States.
In 1898, the Philippines became U.S. territory open for the “tutelage” of its self-appointed civilizing mission. Among other ideological apparatuses, the English language and American literary texts, as well as the pedagogical agencies for propagating and teaching them, were mobilized to constitute the natives of the Philippine archipelago as subjects of the U.S. nation-state.The natives eventually became neocolonized subalterns without any distinct sovereignty. In sum, then, American English was used by the colonial authorities when the United States military suppressed the Filipino revolutionary forces and its Republic while waging war against the moribund Spanish empire. Language became an adjunct of the imperial machinery of conquest and subjugation.
Other articles by E San Juan Jr
- Overseas Filipino Workers: The Emergence of an Asian-Pacific Diaspora - November 10, 2009
- Jose Rizal Traversing the United States of America - February 27, 2009
- Jose Garcia Villa, Filipino Poet in the "New World" - February 27, 2009
- Returning from the Diaspora, Re-discovering the Homeland - December 10, 2008
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