History, Arts, Society: The Politics of Literature in Modern Times

Given the reality of our neocolonial situation, the discipline of literary study fulfills its received pedagogical function of converting reason-bearing individuals into obedient subjects. This normative ideology represses criticism, concealing the lived experience of exploitation and class conficts. The concept of ideology itself is suppressed, replaced with accepted terms and approved habits of interpretation. Meanings of art-works are identified with the single author's identity, thus ignoring or excluding their enabling contexts and institutional practices. Using a symptomatic, historicist reading of Lualhati Bautista's novel as an example, this essay argues that the ideology of texts differs from that of the author owing to diverse mediating factors. Current forces of alienation and reification intervene. Through their own mechanisms of interpellation, texts transform readers into subjects who attempt to imaginarily resolve real social contradictions. Given our multilingual and multiethnic audience, the choice of language for literary expression becomes crucial in the process of articulating textual meanings as multifaceted, dynamic reflections of specific conjunctures in Philippine history.