Alternative Canons
It is easy, and perhaps even convenient, to dismiss Philippine literature as minor or juvenile, especially when viewed against dominant literary traditions of the West, whose cultural capital remain undisputable even in a post-imperial world. The development of the Philippine literary tradition has always been chronotopically postcolonial, that is, it is a tradition that has always reflected the constant tension, negotiation, and struggle against superimposed structures of its time, which in this case would be the colonialism and cultural domination of the West. In a very real sense, the colonial struggle now extends in world literature as a West-vs.-Other divide. In her book Other Asias, Gayatri Spivak talks about the need to pluralize this notion of
Following Spivak’s critique of a singularized view of Asia, perhaps it would be profitable to view these multiple canons of literature and identity as also being
