The Politics and Poetics of Philippine Festival in Ninotchka Rosca's State of War
2002; International Fiction Association; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0315-4149
Autores Tópico(s)Philippine History and Culture
ResumoBoth social function and symbolic meaning of are closely related to series of overt values that community recognizes as essential to its ideology and worldview, to its social identity, its historical continuity, and to its physical survival, which is ultimately what celebrates. --Alessandro Falassi (1) Festivals serve to regenerate and unify community; they recount neverending story that, like all narrative, is both product and producer of culture. But tells potentially subversive tale that fosters communal solidarity and purpose, rekindling vital energies that can form basis of collective resistance. Throughout more than seven thousand one hundred islands comprising Philippine archipelago, hundreds of festivals are celebrated annually. They dramatize conflicting histories, influences, and myths that have shaped Filipino identity: Spanish Catholicism and indigenous religions claim their authority through rituals and ceremonies; rhythms of tribal drums and American pop music assert precolonial and neocolonial influences; and street spectacles showcase cultural icons and symbols. Engaging nearly all aspects of Filipino cultural identity from religion to language, folklore to politics, these festivals constitute, symbolically, way of recalling mythical and historical origins of community. They offer respite from oppressive structures, an exuberant affirmation of collective freedom. In this essay, I will examine as literary strategy of resistance in Ninotchka Rosca's State of War. (2) Praised as one of finest novels of 1988, (3) Rosca's debut novel is set in Philippines during similar to annual Mardi Gras celebration on Panay Island. The narrative traces rise and fall of contemporary dictatorship (modeled after that of Ferdinand Marcos but never naming him directly). Through her protagonists' personal Rosca recalls events leading to current predicament: an ongoing state of war that never actually erupts into outright revolution. The festival, which sets stage for an antigovernment display of force, establishes context, frames action, and informs novel's revolutionary theme. Rosca's serves as symbolic and literal site of transgression. Variously referred to as festival of memories, and a singular evocation of victory in country of too many defeats, establishes novel's connection to Filipino tradition and identity. Like her text, Rosca's is celebration born of rebellion and bequeathed through language and memory. It is locus where anything is possible--where peasant farmers transform into ancient warriors in tribal costumes, guerilla fighters and dance with enemy soldiers while transvestites parade through streets with sawed-off shotguns under their skirts. At this site of radical possibilities, symbolic dissolution of boundaries hints at prospect of revolution. Linked to cultural ethos of self-determination (Mikhail Bakhtin's feast of becoming), novel represents, in Robert Stain's suggestive description of carnival, the oppositional culture of oppressed, countermodel of cultural production and desire. (4) Exiled during Marcos years because of her controversial writing, Rosca maintains that the written has an authority so vast that dangerous status has often been conferred upon writers. (5) This heightened sense of value of word defines Filipino subjectivity. In Rosca's view, commingling of precolonial and modern history, as well as tension between colonial and neocolonial languages, shapes personal identity that shares in all of contradictoriness of national self (Myth 242). It also informs tradition of adversarial writing: Filipino literature reflects the pride, commitment to independence, that saw Lapu-Lapu skewering Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 for his crime of intervention in domestic affairs. …
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