Inverted Odysseys: Adventure and homecoming in the global subrogation of women’s care work in Jose Y. Dalisay’s Soledad’s Sister

Abstract

Many Filipina care workers are subrogated to the position of mothers in the more affluent states of Asia. As a consequence, they oftentimes play as the unofficial teachers of the children. In this article, I analyse the process of global subrogation, which often end in what I call an inverted odyssey of the Filipina domestic helper. Using the concept of invertedness in commodity fetishism, this article reads Jose Dalisay’s Soledad’s Sister as an inverted odyssey which views the migration of Filipina care workers as an adventure but without the heroic homecoming. The novel represents the adventure as a dialectic of systems of carelessness and selfcare that is symbolically resolved within the narrative through the recurring image of the ‘woman in the box’. Thus, the article argues that unlike Odysseus’ triumphant nostos (homecoming), the heroine of this inverted odyssey falls victim to her own erotic drives, drowns in a far-flung kingdom, returns home in a box, and drowns again in the hands of thieves. The novel weaves a counter-narrative on the Filipina care worker that challenges prevailing Philippine state discourses on its overseas work force, thereby problematizing both the limitations of the heroine’s selfcare and the systemic carelessness of the states that make the subrogation possible. Ultimately, the inverted Odyssey as symbolized by the novel’s central image of ‘the woman in the box’ shatters appearances and unveils the tragic position of the unrecognized ‘teachers’ in the global feminization and commodification of care work.