Announcements
• W 1/30: Samantha Santiago, Diana Tran, Bryant Lim, & Tabah Syed
• Midterm – Mon 2/4!
•
Closed-note, closed-book, bluebook exam designed for full 80 minutes
•
4 possible short essay questions – only first 3 will be graded. All questions
based on the first 4 weeks of readings
•
•
Allan Isaac
•
Ileto, Lumbera, Constantino
•
Lumbera and Spanish revolutionary texts
•
Filipino women’s writing in English
Best way to study  review lectures, notes and presentations; determine
main themes and questions of readings
Inang Bayan
Gender, Language and Nationalism
Las Filipinas/Filipinas
 Woman and land
 Gendering of power
hierarchies  mutually
reinforcing systems of
colonialism and patriarchy
 Constituting nation and family
 Feelings of nationalism
inspired by familial tropes
 The (false) dichotomy between
public and private or domestic
and national
Rizal

Spanish as realm of ilustrado learning and
language of reform

Mestizo appropriation of Spanish to imagine new
concept of the Filipino


Filipino – Spanish creole; Spaniard born in
Philippines

Filipino – Hispanicized or Latinized
mestizos
Philippines imagined as the object of love of the
new Filipino

Concept of the new Filipino inextricable
from love of land – evoking patriotism and
nationalism through romantic imagery
Bonifacio & Jacinto
 Tagalog vs Spanish
 Rejection of colonizer’s
language
 Positions lowland Tagalogs
as leaders of the revolution
 Philippine nation 
enlightened Tagalog vision
Two Visions of Progress
Glorious
pre-colonial
period
Philippine
nation
REASON
&
REVOLUTION
Philippine
nation
REASON
&
US TUTELAGE
Darkness of
Spanish rule
Darkness of
Spanish rule
Motherhood/Victimhood
 Constituting nation and family
relegates women to two roles:

Mothers – either good or bad

Victims – violation of woman’s body
as trope and consequence of
colonialism
 Women closely linked to affect rather
than reason

Affect – emotion or desire, esp that
which influences action
 Mother’s duty = to train sons to love
nation

Women as reproducers of nation
rather than subjects of nation
English Paradoxes
 English as colonizing language
 Force and consent
 Unification of Philippines through
English
 English as equalizing language?
 Spanish education = mestizo, upper
class males
 Public universal education in
Philippines
“Dead Stars”
 Paz Marquez Benitez – author of first Philippine short story in
Eng
 Using English to describe upper-class Hispanicized household
@ moment of transition to US occupation
 How is Alfredo as an upper-class Hispanicized Filipino
depicted?
 What is his relationship with Esperanza like? Why is he
attracted to Julia?
 What is the symbolism of the “dead stars”?
“Desire”
 How can this story be read
as an allegory?
 Unnamed main character
 The white man
 How is the story working in
“claiming the self, writing
the body”?
“A Son is Born”
 Manuel Arguilla – conscious attempt to capture in English
“authentic” native scenes of the Philippines
 Intimacies of village life = authentic Filipino character?
 Language and Authenticity
 Can the idea of what it means to be Filipino be expressed in a nonFilipino language?
 “They took away the language of my blood, / giving me one ‘more
widely understood.’ / More widely understood! Now Lips can never /
Never with the Soul-in-me commune” (Zapanta-Manlapaz 68)
 Is there even a way of defining or determining what counts as being
authentically Filipino?