Namaste Readers,
So, I'm enjoying my literature class in Philippine-English and Filipino American Literary Postcoloniality, in other words lots of postcolonial theories. It's been 3 classes so far, and it's surreal.
I'm sitting in class; the Literary Fanatics throw around [postcolonial] literary terms: subject positioning, imperialism, symbolism, problematizing, themes, foils, formalism, textual, structural, literacy, epistolary form, sub altern, allusion, representation, plot, resolution, psychoanalysis, historical, sociological, aesthetics, poetics, major, incidentals, irony, and many more. I follow along using context.
I'm thinking about my childhood and growing up. The thoughts I tried aritculating are somehow articulated through the use of abstraction ( in theories ). Or are the literary terms (maybe) the closest way to translate the inarticulate? ( Maybe this subject is too close for comfort [subjectivity subjugating objectivity?] ).
We talk about the "inarticulate." I participate; the general ideas that I share fall on deaf ears ( appearance wise? ). A classmate participates condensing an idea into a term, and murmurs of agreement are made audible. At times the situation seems ironic. We talk about heirarchy and hegemony et. al.; I'll share a thought, which usually receives no responses ( or very subtle responses ).
On the other hand, the professor will say exactly the same thing I say, verbatim, BUT he gets heard. Because of his status, his voice is important enough that it garners the attention of students' ears ( we're not conversing WITH each other; we're talking TO the professor, so in a way that we're critiquing the system, we're also enforcing it ).
Sometimes it's disappointing because the inquiry seems pointless ( as if questioning only happens in a classroom space full of hypotheses and theories ). Maybe silence makes more sense.
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