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
•
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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?
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