Abstract
Merlinda Bobis is a bilingual writer who was born in the Philippines but now lives in Australia, which turns her into an in-between, a woman who has been carried across different cultures and cannot therefore be defined by making exclusive reference to any of them. The aim of this paper will be to show her two poem-plays Promenade and Cantata of the Warrior Woman, not as isolated phenomena, but as part of a rich tradition of (diasporic) Filipino poets and activist playwrights. Moreover, this paper will study these works from the perspective of a postmodern post-foundational ethics, since they are mainly concerned with writing as a means, not only to do away with fixed and rigid national/ cultural/ social/ gender/ ethnic categories, but also of liberation and celebration of a shared experience among the oppressed, especially women who have been suppressed by the combined oppression of nationalism, patriarchy and colonialism. By putting forward a quest for national, collective and individual identity through reconstructing the lost voices of women both in the pre-and post-contact periods, these poem-plays emphasize the importance of communication between self and other as the only way to give tolerance and peace a chance.
Highlights
The work of Filipino Australian Merlinda Bobis deserves critical and academic assessment as an example of contemporary creative writing by women that defies longestablished notions and classifications and recasts traditional myths and genres from a feminist and multi/ transcultural perspective
Women’s moral judgements are, on the whole, not normative, but contextual and narrative. In her more recent work (1995, 121-26), Gilligan establishes a clear distinction between a feminine ethic and a feminist ethic of care
The women’s contributions so far mentioned were not an isolated phenomenon,. They should be regarded as part of a much wider critical trend, namely, ethical criticism
Summary
The work of Filipino Australian Merlinda Bobis deserves critical and academic assessment as an example of contemporary creative writing by women that defies longestablished notions and classifications and recasts traditional myths and genres from a feminist and multi/ transcultural perspective. For many Asian-Australian women artists, and Merlinda Bobis is no exception, looking/sounding too Australian, that is, too assimilated, often leads to accusations of having betrayed her people and abandoned her roots.6 On the other hand, attempting to keep the links with the original community, cultural history, and ethnic customs, may lead others to deny the Asian-Australian woman the right to claim an ‘Australian’ identity.7
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