Friday, October 02, 2020

6:06 PM | White American Academic Calls a Vast Swath of Literature from a Country His Own Country Once Colonized as "Small"

That essay currently circulating around [no links, ewww] rankles because it asserts something about my Silliman writerly education that is untrue, and negates the effort of my mentors.

Can you imagine Timothy Montes, Marjorie Evasco, Merlie Alunan, Leoncio Deriada, Grace Monte de Ramos, Nino de Veyra, Ceres Pioquinto, Elsa Coscolluela, Cesar Aquino, Erlinda Alburo, Anthony Tan, Jaime An Lim, Eva Rose Repollo, and others -- the so-called "Tiempo set" -- being "apolitical, de-historicized, assimilationist, and anti-nationalist"? Like whaaaat? That is not what I was taught. These people went beyond New Criticism, and also argued with each other, especially during workshop [the fun part of SUNWW is the panelists arguing] -- and most of them became pioneers in the cultivation of regional language literature and in the process helped bring about an understanding of local poetics/aesthetics. [They made me start writing and valuing Binisaya literature, for one thing.]

I didn't get taught a monolithic, America-aping idea of literary writing, like we were whores of formalism.

The Tiempos, too, grappled with the issue of language in so many articles, grappled with national issues [you'd know if you actually read their poems and stories], and also fought the Marcos dictatorship in their speeches and writings [EK Tiempo's SEAWrite acceptance speech is a prime example; also Silliman was one of the "notorious five," the last five schools/universities permitted to reopen during Martial Law].

I gather that Doc Ed had very specific views of fiction, for example, but his voice was only one workshop voice, albeit authoritative-sounding and colored in baritone; he is not a synechdoche to understand the fullness of the workshop, and often he was fiercely in loggerheads with Edith over the merits of a poem or story. [In that battleground of ideas, from Aristotle to Derrida, from Marx to Anzaldua, is where I learned literature.]

To quote Alana Narciso's forthcoming essay on the matter: "To claim too that the Tiempos were mere receptacles of English colonial education, mindlessly parroting American standards is to reduce the complex issue of language and the intricate processes of cultural transformations even in post-colonialism into a discourse that is limiting in its simplism."

There's so much more to reveal actually -- especially the assertions about current organizers of the workshop, and our so-called lack of reckoning with our history. WTF. If you only knew...


POSTSCRIPT:

The more I think about it, the more offensive it becomes: a white American academic diagnosing as "small" a vast swath of literature written by writers in a foreign country his own country had colonized. Offensive, and insulting. The empire striking back once more, and making generalizations over a literature he has probably have not read.

Labels: criticism, dumaguete writers workshop, philippine literature, writers, writing

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