필리핀 이산문학에 나타난 기억의 정치학

Abstract

This essay examines the novels State of War by Ninotchka Rosca and Awaiting Trespass by Linda Ty-Casper in terms of memory. The two diasporic writers self-exiled in the United States when the Philippines was under the Marcos dictatorship attempt to look back at their mother country. It might be regarded as “a nostalgic attempt” to go back to a lost paradise, but their focuses imply a more complex meaning including the treatment of the past from the perspective of the present. Set in Marcos’ regime the two works put emphasis on counter-memory, which is contrasted with official memory. Counter-memory produces heterogeneous and disharmonious views and perspectives against the dominant ideology and discourse of the country. Witnessing and being involving in the resistant actions, the characters in the two novels believe that storytelling, which is alternative history, will empower people to look at the truth and to end the continuity and cycling of violence rooted in colonial a past.