Political Remembrance and Montage of Filipino Ideological Formation in Gina Apostol’s Historiographic Metafiction Gun Dealers’ Daughter

Author: Daniela Julia Dalumpines (De La Salle University, The Philippines)
Speaker: Daniela Julia Dalumpines
Topic: Textualization, Contextualization, Entextualization
The (SCOPUS / ISI) SOAS GLOCAL CALA 2020 General Session

Abstract

Literary works arise out of social consciousness and behavior and it was the way they are linked to society (Forgacs 184). Texts reflect ideology that presents the collective consciousness of the society where language serves as an instrument of identity that carries cultural meanings of a certain community.

This study deals with the exploration of the intertextuality of ideology, politics, and history in Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealers’ Daughter. Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealers’ Daughter is a montage of memory set during the Marcos-era Philippines. Through the use of socio-historical framework, this study will highlight the significant task of memory, as exposed by the novel in determining political and historical remembrance as integral factors that color the literary work. The main concern of this paper deals with the exposition and exploration of the presence of language as a “material medium in which people interact and see ideology as made of language” in society (Forgacs 191). This paper will also direct how this novel works as a marker of national identity wherein it illuminates prevalent truths about the Marcos-era Philippines that will bring forth essential perspective in the process of determining how historicity influenced Filipino ideologies during such significant era in the landscape of Philippine history. Furthermore, the work must be grasped through its cultural specificity towards looking in to its internal unity in its relation between the whole and its parts (Goldmann 157).

This paper aims to establish the eye on literature as a vehicle in expressing reality that exists on the surface with distinct collective representation of ideas and experience.

References

Apostol, Gina. Gun Dealers’ Daughter: A Novel. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2012. Print.

Goldmann, Lucien. Towards a Sociology of the Novel. London: Tavistock Publications, 1975. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic metafiction.” The Cambridge History of Postmodern Literature (n.d.): 293-307. Print.
Steiner, Uwe. Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. Print.
Neocleous, Mark. “From Martial Law to the War on Terror.” New Criminal Law Review10.4 (2007): 489-513. Print.
Noble, Lela G. “Chapter IV. Politics in the Marcos Era.” Crisis in the Philippines (n.d.): n. pag. Print.
Nowak, Thomas C. “The Philippines before Martial Law: A Study in Politics and Administration.” The American Political Science Review 71.2 (1977): 522. Print.
 

Keywords: Memory, national identity, historical remembrance, intertextuality, Filipino ideology, Language ideology