Vicente Sotto Lecture 2022 November

“WRITING ‘ARKIPELAGO’: A novel’s claim at complexity”
Januar Yap

ABSTRACT:
Philippine literary canon had for the most part insufficiently if not misrepresented a highly archipelagic nation of over 7,100 islands by its “landlocked” and centripetal imaginaries. The islands and their complex connectivities should have been the rule rather than the exception. Deeply embedded in Philippine culture is its seafaring nature. Its smallest political unit is called the “barangay,” from the word “balanghai,” a pre-colonial boat used by the natives. A present-day barangay leader is called “kapitan,” or captain. A multitude of the archipelago’s narratives has been missed out in the imagination through a hegemonic choice of “canonical writers.” There is a need to reterritorialize the nation’s literary imagination away from the center and into the islands, between and among islands and the seas between. This is the Arkipelago novel project, an attempt to explore this archipelagic poetics that is informed by how the supposed “peripheries” imagine themselves as part of a nation, an archipelagic community.

Date: November 12, 2022

Category: Vicente Sotto Lecture Series