عنوان

The insolence of the Filipinas: Mothering nationalism, globalization, and literature

Country Code

IR

Number

192T

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Country of publication

IR

Title Proper

The insolence of the Filipinas: Mothering nationalism, globalization, and literature

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

;supervisor Ferguson, Roderick A.

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Minnesota: United States -- Minnesota

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

: 2010

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

243 pages

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

, University of Minnesota: United States -- Minnesota

Text of Note

My dissertation reads diasporic Filipina/o literatures that destabilize the dominant representations which position Filipinas as "mothers" in and of the global economy and Philippine nationalism. The project is situated after the moment of US imperialism, as attempts to deliver a materially prosperous and psychologically uplifting national identity coincided with the rise of post-fordist global economic strategies. As the nation struggled to assert itself under poor and corrupt leaders, as the social unrest of anti-imperialist organizing did not wane but transformed into anti-capitalist critiques, establishing a formal global visibility for Filipina/o workers became imperative to assuage political, economic, and cultural uncertainties. The turmoil would culminate in the 1974 Presidential Decree 442, which authorized and institutionalized overseas employment as a state-managed program.The role diasporic Filipina/os play in the global economy--participating in older, traditional industries such as logging, manufacturing, and shipping, to newer service industries such as nursing, domestic help, and call centers--has been well-documented in recent scholarship, identifying the national service being performed. As numerous reports indicate, Filipina/os send more than ten billion dollars in remittances not just to families, but also to the nation. My dissertation contends that in order to disrupt the authority of nationalism and globalization, which despite their differences collude to represent and employ Filipinas, one must destabilize those racialized, gendered, and sexualized representations. My dissertation thus seeks to bring to crisis the transparent and empiricist epistemologies that underwrite nationalism and globalization, outlining the ways that diasporic Filipina/o literatures critique these state-sanctioned ways of knowing and being.My first chapter, "Mother, Navel, Nation: Disseminating the Dictionary of Philippine Heteronationalist Globalization," lays out the theoretico-political scope of the project by reading Nick Joaquin's short story, "The Woman Who Had Two Navels." The story represents the postwar Philippines as a gendered landscape, newly independent and luring Filipino men who have left for other shores to return--only to offend and threaten them, driving them back overseas. While it explicitly negates the role of Filipina mothers, I draw on certain moments that reveal a more complex theorization of gender and sexuality for both nationalism and global capitalism. This reading contributes to the genealogy of hetero-masculinist nationalism I trace within the chapter. Building on postcolonial feminist critiques of nationalism as well as recent conceptualizations of the rhizomatic, biopolitical field of global empire, the chapter critiques nationalism not only for its unexamined heteropatriarchy, but also its potential obsolescence given the complicity of revolutionary and liberal Philippine nationalisms with global capital.My second chapter, "Letting the Cat(achresis) Out of the Bag: Transnational Filipina Motherhood," reads two texts that represent motherhood in two distinct ways. In Eleanor Coppola's published diary of the filming of Apocalypse Now , the narrator aspires to overcome the inequality between her and her husband's professional work by conceptualizing an ambitious marriage dependent on imperialist strategies and settings. Her writings probe the assertion of an empowered identity that, strikingly, only seeks that liberation in the Philippines; when returning to the national-domestic space, she appears content to return to her own national-domestic-maternal duties. Rizalina, the young Filipina mother of Jessica Hagedorn's novel Dream Jungle , the second half of which fictionalizes the Apocalypse Now film production, distances herself from maternal, nationalist, and imperialist norms. In this way, she resists being recodified into a visible, legible, rational representation that reproduces either Coppola's imperialist feminism or an equally unexamined nationalist feminism.My third chapter, "Carlos in Medford and Gabe in Meridan: Attempted Erasures of the Filipina Mother for Hetero/Homonational Masculinity," examines two novels, Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart and Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son , to consider how multiple efforts to represent freedom and agency draw from and reproduce imperialist and heteronormative authority. Even as Roley's novel stages an unannounced but noticeable homonationalism--which can be understood as a contemporary revision of the heteronationalism of Bulosan's novel--it is quickly rescinded back into a heteropatriarchal space. Neither narrator can liberate themselves on the grounds of masculinist identifications, whether heteronational or homonational. Whereas the masculine characters of both texts thus struggle in the attempt to speak for themselves, the mother in the second text recognizes the dilemmas representational strategies pose.The fourth and final chapter, "Learning to Listen: Nation, Film, and Children in Kidlat Tahimik's Mababangong Bangungot ," reads the eponymous film, which demands critical audiences who listen as well as they watch. I argue that listening to a film is just as significant as watching it; in spite of what seems like a formalist argument, I examine in what ways such an approach intervenes in the production of Philippine history and Filipina/o bodies. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Comparative literature

Asian American Studies

Gender studies

Hispanic American studies

Film studies

Subject Term

Gender

Subject Term

Globalization

Subject Term

Labor

Subject Term

Literature

Subject Term

Nationalism

Subject Term

Philippines

Subject Term

Filipinas

Suarez, Harrod J.

Country

ایران

Agency

National Center for Globalization Studies

old catalog

TL

1

a

Y