Debt or Subsidy? Social Relations in Philippine Postwar Novels

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Debt or Subsidy? Social Relations of Literary Labor in Philippine Postwar Novels

Lecture by
Chaired by

Philippine literary criticism since Resil Mojares has rendered all but absolute a tension between an anglophone, “aesthetic” novel and a vernacular, “empirical” one. Despite drawing our attention to the literary education anglophone authors received while on Ford and Rockefeller fellowships in the United States, which created a demand for successful aesthetic form, Mojares implies that generic differences in the Philippine novel originate in their language of composition—and more worryingly, that all Philippine anglophone writing is condemned by its colonial relationship of inferiority to the US. Comparing one English novel, A Season of Grace (1956) by N.V.M. Gonzalez, with Edgardo M. Reyes’s 1986 Tagalog novel Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (In the Claws of Light), this talk attempts to show how the differences between anglophone and Tagalog novels have more to do with different social relations of literary labor. Despite grappling with his own conscription as a neocolonial cultural ambassador, Gonzalez seeks to establish and maintain aesthetic autonomy in spite of his privatized funding. On the other hand, Reyes—among other Tagalog authors in the 1960s and 70s—was more interested in literary naturalism as a way to address the increasing proletarianization of the Manila urban workforce in the Marcos era.

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The Society of Fellows hosts the Thursday Lecture Series (TLS), which runs regularly throughout the academic year. During the Fall Semester TLS, our Fellows present their own work, chaired by Columbia faculty.

Host or Publisher The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities