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Cultural politics as emancipatory engagement through heroic poetics of Diaspora effect
a paradigm shift in re-visioning the literary practices of José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines
Camilo Collantes Antonio
Art der Arbeit
Dissertation
Universität
Universität Wien
Fakultät
Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften
Studiumsbezeichnung bzw. Universitätlehrgang (ULG)
Dr.-Studium der Philosophie Politikwissenschaft
Betreuer*in
Johann Dvorák
URN
urn:nbn:at:at-ubw:1-13168.93230.825369-5
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Abstracts
Abstract
(Deutsch)
nicht angegeben
Abstract
(Englisch)
This dissertation shifts paradigmatic perspectives on the nationalist patriotic discourse over the Philippine national hero José Rizal. It proposes that Rizal’s works produced in Europe during the last quarter of the 19th century be examined as heroic poetics of diaspora effect or matters of ‘cultural politics’: as forms of reflective resistance to challenge hegemonic ideologies and discursive power relations. It explores alternative ways of understanding ‘heroism’ and thus establishes Rizal’s lineage and linkage with other writers who wrote from the perspective of exile or as ‘outsiders’ looking in. From the perspective of ‘diasporic consciousness’ it suggests models for reading Rizal’s works in new ways.
The methodology posits that a ‘diasporic reading’ of Rizal’s literary practice enables focusing on him as a ‘cultural hero’ in contrast to the usual studies that highlight ‘the political hero’. Applying the perspective of culture and the prism of the diaspora as ‘different lights’, this novel approach breaks away from myopic ‘political perspectives’ applied in postcolonial nationalist studies. The dissertation uses primary source materials to develop its theoretical frames and conceptual bases. Rizal’s works reveal anti-hegemonic concerns: a ‘cultural’ perspective is contrasted to ‘the political’ because Rizal’s emancipatory engagement was not immediately directed towards Philippine independence and sovereignty from Spain. This critical-analytical approach develops conceptual models and frames: for ‘reading texts’ from distanced and fragmented ‘cultural mindsets’ to re-collect observations/experience for resisting discriminated ‘Otherness’ and renegotiating constructs of hegemony. This research project argues that from his earliest writings up to his famous poem, My Last Farewell, Rizal’s literary practice entailed a politics of memory for cultural identity whereby he articulated and compared the contexts of freedom and equality that he observed in Spain with the oppressive colonial governance in the Philippines. Rizal held his texts up in the public domain to mirror awareness-raising images that would move others to action. It was precisely in mobilizing the collective that Rizal’s heroism and leadership was put to the test. Central to Rizal’s concern were problems of equality and equity as integral to human dignity. Rizal demonstrated that he was able to speak in his own voice, thus claiming equality with Spaniards as an autonomous sovereign subject, thus projecting his own yearning for ‘freedoms’ as part of a much bigger ‘collective’.
The nature of Rizal’s ‘heroic spirit’ is analysed by considering his stances on three cultural themes that formed the Spanish imperialist ideology – reason, religion and racism. As a subtext, the dissertation posits: while unbinding chains of ‘cultural imperialism’ and imbibing ‘enlightenment values’, Rizal developed a diasporic consciousness with which he engaged the public domain of envisioning ‘the elsewhere’ in transnationalist terms. The dissertation proposes a re-visioning of Rizal: as a way of reclaiming those aspects of his ‘heroic legacy’ that may have been short-changed by those who used his ideas on culture in the discursive construction of identity. Also, demystifying Rizal’s politics could lend fresh insights and perspectives as to how Rizal’s ‘revolutionary spirit’ may be working in the collective psyche of Filipinos today to support or subvert hegemonies, ideologies and structures.
Schlagwörter
Schlagwörter
(Englisch)
Rizal cultural politics heroic poetics Diaspora heroism emancipation national hero
Schlagwörter
(Deutsch)
Rizal Kulturpolitik heroïsche Poetik Diaspora Heldentum emanzipatorisches Engagement Nationalheld
Autor*innen
Camilo Collantes Antonio
Haupttitel (Englisch)
Cultural politics as emancipatory engagement through heroic poetics of Diaspora effect
Hauptuntertitel (Englisch)
a paradigm shift in re-visioning the literary practices of José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines
Publikationsjahr
2017
Umfangsangabe
250 Seiten
Sprache
Englisch
Beurteiler*innen
Johann Dvorák ,
Gernot Stimmer
AC Nummer
AC14508740
Utheses ID
44438
Studienkennzahl
UA | 092 | 300 | |