Feudal Letters on Philippine Shores

This is literary fascism in its most aggressive and destructive form: creating rifts between groups of writers in the name of capital. This cannot be denied in any form or fashion.

Marius Carlos, Jr.
Nov 4 · 4 min read

On November 4, 2019, Filipino writer Krip Yuson wrote in the article Filipino — Foreign writers: on the way to dominance?:

“For memorable output abroad, the only ones I can cite are Vicente Rafael, Benjamin Pimentel, Nerissa Balce, and Sheila Coronel. It stands to reason that Fil-foreigners, especially Fil-Ams, would eventually outnumber home-based Pinoys in terms of English-language authorship. In creative writing, over-all quality might also be robust, especially among the younger ones.”

“They employ their speaking and dreaming language, after all. And the training they get in their adopted environment competing with the native, is like what provides Fil-Alm basketball players an edge when they’re invited to join Manila’s collegiate and professional leagues.”

To read such a write-up in 2019 proves two things at once: one, that the process of decolonization is still in its infancy, and literary production in the Philippines continues to be bogged down by inequality and the shenanigans of ivory tower intellectuals hell-bent on placing their neoliberal, literary cliques at the center, while ignoring that the country has a population of more than 100 million, and that in the end, their cliques are but a tiny and largely unknown portion of the entirety of the writing population, and second, that the notion of “value” in writing has everything to do with who you know, what awards you’ve won, and whether or not you have sufficient capital to associate with universities, journals, and publishing houses abroad.

That we have reached this deplorable, rock bottom state in literary production in our country, and that virtually nothing has changed of this system since the time of the Tiempos is indeed a most unfortunate state of affairs for anyone who is sincerely engaged to the practice of letters.

There is also no sense in stating that the quality of Philippine writing is measurable mainly through the production of authors who have won the Palanca award, or any other literary award from any institution in the country for that matter. These writers belong to their chosen causes and cultural commitments, and not to the Palanca. It has always been that way. More than anything, the validation that awards give is temporary and is actually misleading in many ways. Does having one or two awards guarantee quality literary production in the future? And more importantly, do these awards guarantee a sound political mind and commitment to liberation, which are central to nationalist imaginings, and the general, revolutionary nature of literature in the Third World?

More than anything, our institutions should have been built up to assist the throng of writers who struggle daily to find a platform for their voices. Or are we too afraid of what we’ll find? If these institutions are to be of any use to the process of decolonization of Philippine letters, then those in the ivory tower must acknowledge that literary production is continuous and involves more than those who are academically affiliated, or have the badges of workshops and awards.

They must also acknowledge that the feudal value system that puts awards, peer-reviewed manuscripts, and conventionally-published books on top, and self-published works at the level of dirt must be abolished. These institutions created the rift, and so they must be the first to accept their fatal miscalculations, and rectify the same. Should we not commence the necessary rectifications even if this means swallowing our pride and acknowledging that good writing occurs well beyond the ambit of seminars and other assemblies for ivory tower intellectuals? And being in a country in perpetual crisis, wouldn’t it have made more sense to establish and encourage kinship between Fil-Am writers and Filipino writers at home instead of pitting them against each other under the guise of linguistic or cultural appreciation? As if we have learned nothing from Filipino-American scholarship or postcolonial discourse in general. That at the very heart of migrant writing and discourse of hybrid identities is the longing for home, or the homeland.

There is so much symbolic violence involved in this that people may have not realized it, yet. This is literary fascism in its most aggressive and destructive form: creating rifts between groups of writers in the name of capital. This cannot be denied in any form or fashion.

Mr. Yuson, why do you speak ill of the literary production in the homeland and its writers who write in English without acknowledging the proliferation of zines, chapbooks, books, and anthologies being published yearly without the help of a single university press? Are you aware that students now organize small book fairs where they sell self-published works? Are you aware of small writing organizations operating on-campus and online? Where do you situate them, us, who focus on getting the word out instead of trying to win the approval of the likes of you? And what of migrant writing that does not fall into your mold of fine letters? How would you spin their writing?

Written by

Author, editor, advocate of causes. Senior journalist at Breaking Asia. 1/4 of indie publishing house Rebo Press.

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