The “Filipino” in Philippine Speculative Fiction, and More Quotation Marks
I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while now, but I’ve managed to put it off spectacularly. Tin wrote a post on the Read or Die blog detailing the literary events booked for the rest of September. There are still quite a few exciting activities up, so do take a look!
In the meantime, wow – so many new posts about Philippine spec fic! But well, we’re in that phase where we could always use more, I think. Off to update the list!
I’ve wanted to write a follow-up to my post, but it wasn’t until I read Sean’s post that the words came to me.When I was younger, I resented being told what I had to write. Come to think of it, I still do :D But after getting used to writing on demand, I’ve come to appreciate the need to adhere to certain conventions. If you’re out to write something in particular, respect the rules and respect your audience. If you aren’t out to write something in particular, then don’t force the rules to conform to your output, saying your work falls under a certain category when it doesn’t. Above all else, I’ve come to appreciate the need to take responsibility for what I write.
Just to emphasize: I’m not telling anybody to write – or NOT to write – anything in particular. I’m just asking people to not call what they write “Filipino” if it so obviously isn’t.
…Unless, of course, their definition of a “Filipino story” is similar to how it could be easily defined by an editor or a publisher – anything written by someone who positively identifies him/herself as a Filipino, whether or not s/he lives on Philippine soil. Then I’d rather they said that, instead of try to defend their right to write whatever they wanted. As a writer myself, I am certainly not arguing that point.
To be honest, I personally don’t write a lot of fiction that I’d call “Filipino.” I mostly write in English, and I mostly write non-Filipino stories. Even when a story occurs to me in Filipino, I’m tempted to write it in English – and I admit, it’s because my audience speaks and writes English. I estimate that 90% of the people I know online are native English speakers, and/or are multilingual or at least bilingual.
When I read the work of the writers I admire online, I realize they don’t write with any reference to their nationality as authors, and that lack of concern is what influences me. It’s easier and more in my nature not to consider ethnicity relevant when I write. I don’t apologize for that, and I don’t expect anyone to.
Also, I reserve the right to write in Filipino, or to write speculative fiction relevant to the Philippines, if I wish. When I write in Filipino, I have to be prepared not to be read, and that’s fine – if a story comes to me as Filipino, I can’t be bothered to translate it into English just for the sake of social responsibility or whatnot.
However, I would be uncomfortable with anyone attaching the term “Filipino” to all the things I write, just because I am a Filipino writer. Everyone else is free to do so if they wish, of course, but I wouldn’t support it.
I am proud of my fellow Filipinos when they accomplish things, but if they themselves do not wish for their stories to be identified with the Filipino culture, then it’s fine! I’m not invoking the age-old social realist guilt trip that says everything you do or say has to have Filipino references.
But there is a need to define what Filipino speculative fiction is, and that’s what I responded to. I’m not saying I don’t think you are Filipino; I’m just saying I don’t think your story is.
I imagine publishers and writers would have their own concerns about how to label something “Filipino.” As for myself, I realize that running a blog called Philippine Speculative Fiction, it may seem like I have double standards for what I would call a “Filipino spec fic.” However, when I’m promoting on this blog, I mean to say “this is the fiction that Filipinos write.” I don’t mean to say “all this fiction is Filipino in nature.”
I encourage any and all fiction written by Filipinos, even those who aren’t keen on identifying themselves as “Filipino writers.” This is still my stance as a writer and as someone who maintains a blog about Philippine speculative fiction.
You know what, I’m finding it interesting that this discussion is bringing some things to light. Apparently, there are some Filipino writers who believe that speculative fiction is a refuge from any sort of pressure – that speculative fiction shouldn’t be restrained by sub-classifications. It just seems kind of moot to me, since most spec fic writers define their own works by genre or subgenre – saying things like “well, this is an interstitial story” or “I was shooting for a bit of detective noir relayed with a Japanese minimalistic touch.”And there are those who believe that people should set aside nationality when they’re writing speculative fiction. I find that especially intriguing. So does this mean you believe that the “speculative fiction” genre discourages ethnicity? Or that works that have ethnic flavor are automatically inferior to those that don’t? Does including Filipino elements in a story automatically limit your imagination?
Do you think “Filipino speculative fiction” is an invalid classification? Doesn’t it deserve to exist? Or would you have other ways to define it? I’d like to know.
Hmmm… can we define what American or British or Japanese speculative fiction is? Aside from, well, spelling, are there themes that they touch on that identify them as part of a certain country’s literary tradition? Or is it just a case of there being a specific sub genre (say, mecha) that one nationality (ie. Japanese) are especially fond of?
the wild west and the north-south civil war are pretty american themes, aren’t they? the british have their monarchies, and the japanese have their own monarchies, feudal systems and warring states.
the latin americans have pretty much cornered the magic realism subgenre, even if (as dean had said in the spec fic talk at the manila international book fair) we filipinos have been writing about magic realism even before they popularized it. filipinos can have their pick of themes, i think, if really looked for it – pre-spanish era governments, age-old clan wars, regional folklore, and some such. we are not lacking in unique themes, if that’s all we need.
Do you think “Filipino speculative fiction†is an invalid classification? Doesn’t it deserve to exist? Or would you have other ways to define it? I’d like to know.
I don’t know. Maybe defining it isn’t really called for at this point, when defining it seems to mean limiting it. The experience of being “Filipino” is different for everyone and it even differs for each person at different stages in time, so before any group can say a work is Filipino or a work isn’t Filipino, there has to be something quantifiable about it. You can’t just say:
I’m just asking people to not call what they write “Filipino†if it so obviously isn’t.
because what’s obvious to one person isn’t necessarily obvious to another. And it’s not because somebody’s pov is the right or wrong one, it’s just that we’ve all experienced being Filipino differently from each other. And so the works that we write which we feel are Filipino might not always feel Filipino to others, or might not even correspond with others’ perceptions of what might be inspired by being Filipino, but we can always still say that they are Filipino, if we want to.
thanks for dropping by, noel. incidentally, i saw your comment on charles’ blog just the other day and followed the link to your blog. i had a great time reading your fiction :)
i’ve been meaning to ask if it’s ok to link to you? but if you’re not ok with it, i’ll understand of course.
now… i believe that what i said in my last post was pretty quantifiable – theme and language as primary criteria for defining if a work is “filipino” or not. some have called it “prescriptive,” but truth be told, i’m still trying to wrap my brain around that.
what you said about conflicting author and reader povs applies exactly to what i think about jessica hagedorn’s dogeaters. it would seem that quite a few philippines-based readers (like myself) did not feel that this particular novel was “filipino,” but rather “filipino-american” in treatment – even if the story is set in the philippines, and even if most of the characters are filipino.
but to people who are NOT in the philippines – as well as miss hagedorn herself – it is a definitive portrayal of martial law-era philippine society, from the eyes of a native filipino who actually lived in it. this is how it’s being marketed internationally (even here!), so this is how it’s being accepted internationally.
miss hagedorn may FEEL that it’s a fully filipino work, but quite a few of her readers disagree. does that mean the work is still filipino? i say it tried to be, but it ultimately fell short. i say the author was too concerned with self-expression to feel responsible for the outcome of her work, and as a result it wound up as a filipino-american story. perhaps the story underwent its most major changes during the editing and publishing process, but i highly doubt it – a piece of fiction that is being built up as a representative of an entire era of an entire country would normally be preserved as much as possible.
of course it may not matter to the writer – as i’ve said in my previous post, no one can tell you that your work is “not filipino enough” if you strongly feel that it is.
but going back to spec fic: there are some pretty solid elements that i think capture the shared filipino experience – familiar themes, folkloric icons, landmarks, historical events, customs, attitudes, languages – and without these, a story becomes difficult to identify as “filipino” both by the reader and the writer. without these it’s just speculative fiction. it may be good, it may be written by a filipino, but it clearly makes no effort to be a filipino piece.
i’ve been meaning to ask if it’s ok to link to you? but if you’re not ok with it, i’ll understand of course.
Hey, that’d be cool. :)
now… i believe that what i said in my last post was pretty quantifiable – theme and language as primary criteria for defining if a work is “filipino†or not. some have called it “prescriptive,†but truth be told, i’m still trying to wrap my brain around that.
I’m still in the process of determining my personal criteria in determing if a work is “filipino” or not, myself. Mostly, it’s just gut feel, but I sort of like it that way. I could set up certain criteria to logically determine whether a certain work isn’t really “Filipino,” like the way some writers have mentioned Azerbaijani harpies or something, but with each case, I think there are ways of writing something like that would make it still feel “Filipino,” at least for me, when I read it.
but going back to spec fic: there are some pretty solid elements that i think capture the shared filipino experience
I think someone can write about the “non-shared” filipino experience and still call his work Filipino. I mean, It could be something that only a certain subgroup could identify with, or even something only one person can identify with, but it would still be based on the filipino experience of that group, or that person, so won’t works borne from that person’s experience be automatically Filipino, if that group or person would claim it as such?
familiar themes, folkloric icons, landmarks, historical events, customs, attitudes, languages – and without these, a story becomes difficult to identify as “filipino†both by the reader and the writer.
Just a new thought that popped up, might not be that much related to this whole discussion, but would it be possible to use all of these themes, icons, landmarks, events, customs, etc. and still not come up with a work that can be identified as Filipino? I don’t know, I just got curious about it. Like, some sort of Pierre Menard’s Don Quixote.
Anyways, maybe with the themes, icons, landmarks, events, customs, attitudes, languages, etc. what we could say is that these had been used in the past and we could still use them, but they’re not necessarily the only ones someone could use to make a work feel Filipino. They’re sort of an early part of the pattern, and will still be used, but they’re not necessarily the pattern itself. (Nor am I claiming that that’s what you were saying, I’m just thinking some of these through right now.)
The important thing to consider is the term “speculative.†To speculate means “to think over possibilities.†If there are no constraints to these possibilities, then speculative fiction can refer to any type of fiction. In which case, any debate on the meaning of speculative fiction is meaningless, never mind Philippine speculative fiction.
If these possibilities are constrained to historical realities that may have taken place (e.g., Britain stays on in the Philippines and the Spaniards never return) then one can call this genre “alternate history.†If one imagines ancient gods taking control of the region, then that’s fantasy. If one imagines the Philippines not giving in to IMF-WB restrictions and eventually becomes a superpower nation, and from which we develop a space age consisting of Filipino space explorers, then that’s alternate history and science fiction. If one imagines a small Filipino barrio where it rains flowers everyday, then that’s marvelous realism. In which case, given different possibilities and constraints, the term “speculative fiction†is meaningless.
What about “Philippine� In literary studies, the label is usually applied to literary works where a Philippine local language is used or the author is generally recognized as a Filipino, whether through his citizenship or ancestry. Thus, Jessica Hagedorn’s novel is part of Philippine literature.
What, then, is Philippine speculative fiction? If there is no agreement on constraints to possibilities mentioned earlier, then it refers to any fictional work written by authors recognized as Filipinos or written in a Philippine local language.
thanks for dropping by, anton. i was hoping for input from someone in literary studies (although i may have missed it in earlier discussions)…
it’s been a while since i last took any literary criticism classes, so i’m really not confident that i can use the terms properly. but i believe i was thinking of how to approach “filipino” fiction in terms of postcolonial criticism – what i mean to say is, i wanted to bring back into focus the search for a national identity in fiction.
there ARE some speculative stories out there that do put an emphasis on the filipino experience, and are written by filipinos in a language recognized within the country. i was hoping to put some sort of focus on these stories, in order to identify exactly what any filipino author can offer the global literary environment that is inherently unique in some way, even if the choice of theme, language use and storytelling style all explicitly show foreign influence.
then again, if we’re going by what you say and any discussion on “speculative fiction” is invalid, there’s nothing to argue. indeed, there’s no need to create further subclassifications, like subgenres or even ethnic boundaries. i think this is the most popular standpoint as of yet.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article , but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
good morning! Interesting discussion (and quite timely in my case, since I’ve been trying to look for material concerning ‘Philippine’ speculative fiction). On one hand, I like the idea of getting rid of restrictions for speculative fiction, since it may turn out to be oxymoronic after all. On the other hand, I believe that no matter what any writer does, the output is consciously or unconsciously determined by outside factors – in this case, Philippine history and culture. We may simplify things by removing ethnic bounds, but it may be interesting to probe why the writer chose to write about that specific topic. I think I am quite partial to approaching this matter using postcolonial studies.
hello there erika! i’m glad you found this discussion interesting. i don’t think it’s been resolved yet, if it will ever be resolved at all, but it’s always good to air out our thoughts.