UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Haunting the Metropole: Return Effects, Screen Memories, and Figures of Exile in 20th Century Filipino American Literature Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/637649wt Author Pangilinan, Mark Phillip Acutina Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Haunting the Metropole: Return Effects, Screen Memories, and Figures of Exile in 20th Century Filipino American Literature DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Comparative Literature by Mark Phillip Acutina Pangilinan Dissertation Committee: Assistant Professor Adriana Michele Campos Johnson, Chair Professor Jane O. Newman Assistant Professor Christine Bacareza Balance 2014 © 2014 Mark Phillip Acutina Pangilinan DEDICATION To: my mother, Jennifer Acutina Yatco, who waited and my father, Alberto Torrelino Pangilinan, who marched on Mendiola In Memoriam: my stepfather, Antonio Nicolas Lim Yatco 1960 - 2009 and my mentor, Tracey Teets Schwarze 1961 - 2010 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv CURRICULUM VITAE vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION viii INTRODUCTION: 1 “All things that ghost our time”: Recalcitrant Memory, Troubled Time, and Subversive Life in the Philippine-American Context CHAPTER 1: 23 Haunted “Nevertheless—”: Unstable Origins, Figures of Exile, and the Poetics of Persistence in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle CHAPTER 2: 58 “The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga”: Balikbayan Tourism, Cinematic Memory, and the Politics of the Postnational in R. Zamora Linmark’s Leche CHAPTER 3: 111 “Panahon ng Digma”: Grief, Revolt, and (Life)Times of War in Joi Barrios’ Bulaklak Sa Tubig AFTERWORD: 154 “Hindi ka nag-iisa. You are not alone”: Noynoy Aquino’s inherited revolution and the dream of the national BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 REFERENCES (OR BIBLIOGRAPHY) 240 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful and deeply humbled by the mentors, colleagues, friends, and family that have seen me through my graduate student career and the completion of this project. The generosity of time, patience, warmth, and spirit that I have been afforded over the course of this work make any attempt to adequately express my gratitude seem pale and wanting, but I extend my thanks anyway. I am indebted to my advisor and chair, Adriana Michele Campos Johnson for the support and mentorship she provided me from my first year at UC Irvine through to today. As my research and methodological interests changed over the course of my graduate career, and especially during the writing of my dissertation, she remained patient and encouraging, even while pushing me further than I thought I could go. She has been a source of intellectual and pedagogical inspiration, and I am grateful that she stood by me. The other members of my committee also offered me invaluable encouragement and support, both intellectually and psychically. Jane O. Newman consistently and punctually gave me enough feedback to keep me reading, thinking, and writing for years to come, and I thank her also for all of her translation workshop facilitating and professionalization workshop organizing. Jane knows how to get things done, and her example provides fantastic inspiration as much as formidable challenge. Christine Bacareza Balance has been a principal influence in my movements towards involvement in and literacy of Asian American Studies discourse and thinking, and the experiences I have had with her in seminar and at colloquia have been indelibly formative. I thank her also for her warmth, good humor, and pragmatic approach to thinking academy and life. I would also like to extend my thanks to Gabriele Schwab, for the inspiration and encouragement that she provided me early on in my time at Irvine, especially in two seminars that will stay with me for some time. After hearing that I had told a new recruit at a department party that I thought that she must have discovered the secret to happiness, she returned the compliment to me, which was both wry and warm—a way of speaking simultaneous kindness and wit that I have yet to fully master. I would, of course, be remiss if I neglected to thank department administrator Bindya Baliga. Bindya has kept this entire machine running smoothly for some time, and for that, I’m sure I am not the only one entirely grateful. Beyond the department, funding provided by the UC Irvine Humanities Collective and the School of Humanities were integral to my completing archival research in the service of this project. In this endeavor, I thank Patricio Abinales at the Center for Philippine Studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, for hours of conversation and enough source material to help me towards a post-dissertation project. Many colleagues in several departments at UCI have also been essential to the management of my productivity, health, and day-to-day life in Irvine. Victoria Hsieh, the thanks you extend to iv me are too generous; you were and are a force, and I miss you terribly. Rachel Mykkanen, Dan Costello, Thomas Elliott, Matt Rafalow, and Alice Motes—you gave me life and levity. My love to you all. I thank Sally Terrefe and Tia Peterson Gilchrist for offering me asylum on their respective couches during the writing of my qualifying exams and beyond. You are both in my work more than you know. Outside of UCI, I also found profound intellectual stimulation, community, and lasting friendship with the Filipino Studies Reading and Writing Group. James Zarsadiaz, Mark John Sanchez, Precious Singson, Joe Bernardo, and especially Nic Ramos and Emily Raymundo— thank you for helping to make chapters 1 and 2 work, for fantastic discussions at AAAS and beyond, and for being some of the best colleagues and friends I never thought I’d find. And, of course, out here, in the world, I cannot begin to thank the ones closest to me for picking me up, dusting me off, and keeping me writing (or not writing, as some times called for). Charlene Engle, my best friend, you are joy and rigor and life and love. I can’t even without you. Love isn’t even the word. Ryan Burke, Charlie Castillo, Marc Aquino, and Marcus Cortez, you all believed I would finish even when I didn’t. Thank you for that. And for many things. And lastly, my love and gratitude to my family, especially my parents: Jennifer Yatco, Alberto Pangilinan, and Antonio Yatco. v CURRICULUM VITAE Mark Phillip Acutina Pangilinan 2006 B.A. in English (with minor in Spanish) Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia 2009 M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine 2014 Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine FIELDS OF STUDY Translation Theory and Practice, Asian American Studies, 20th Century Filipino American Literature Postcolonial and Transnational Theory and Literature PUBLICATIONS Barrios, Joi. Bulaklak sa Tubig: Mga Tula sa Pag-ibig at Himagsik. Flowers in Water: Poems on Love and Revolt. Trans. Mark Pangilinan. Anvil Publishing: Manila, 2010. 232 pages. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE University of California, Irvine: Teaching Associate, Humanities Core Course, 2011 – 2013 (5 Quarters). Teaching Assistant, Asian American Studies, Fall 2012 (1 Quarter, 2 Sections) Teaching Assistant, Writing 39 Series, 2008 – 2011 (11 Quarters) Christopher Newport University: Student Director, Alice Randall Writing Center, 2004 - 2006 Writing Consultant, Alice Randall Writing Center, 2004 – 2006 vi CONFERENCES AND COLLOQUIA “The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga: Balikbayan Tourism, Cinematic Memory, and the Politics of the Postnational in R. Zamora Linmark’s Leche.” Presented at the 2013 Asian American Studies Conference: The Afterlives of Empire, Seattle “Haunted ‘Nevertheless’: Figures of Exile in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle.” Presented at the 2012 Asian American Studies Conference: Expanding the Political, Washington D.C. “A Poet and Her Translator: Joi Barrios and Mark Pangilinan.” 2011 Roundtable Workshop presented by the Department of Comparative Literature, U. California, Irvine “Translating Babel: Reading Sur-vival in Borges’s ‘La Biblioteca de Babel’.” Presented in 2009 at the Politics and Ethics of Translation Workshop, U. California, Irvine “Icarian Games in Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home and James Joyce’s Ulysses.” Presented at the 2009 Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, Louisville FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, & HONORS Summer Dissertation Fellowship, 2013, School of Humanities, U. California, Irvine UCI Humanities Collective Research Grant, 2012, Humanities Center, U. California, Irvine Gintong Aklat Award (2012 National Golden Book Award) for translation of Joi Barrios, National Book Development Board, Manila Regents Fellowship, 2006 – 2007, U. California, Irvine SERVICE Colloquium Co-Organizer, UCI English and Comparative Literature Graduate Dissertation Colloquium, 2012 – 2013, U. California, Irvine Graduate Mentor, Undergraduate Conference in Critical Theory, May 2011, U. California, Irvine Comparative Literature Graduate Committee Representative, CLCWEGSA, U. California, Irvine Conference Co-Organizer, “The Politics of Crisis: 4th Annual Comparative Literature Graduate Conference, U. California, Irvine vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Haunting the Metropole: Return Effects, Screen Memories, and Figures of Exile in 20th Century Filipino American Literature By Peter Mark Pangilinan Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University