I have just discovered (it is March 20, 2024) that my writing, especially in Spanish, qualifies as resistance literature, and as a writer I can be described with the adjective "rebel".
Resistance in literature
https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/564447-resistance-literature
Here are quotes from the above article that I came across this morning, that especially resonate with me:
"Conformist writers stand with representatives of repressive or ideological state apparatuses while rebels stand with the victims of actual or ideological repression. Conformists have implicit love for power, awards, and honorariums. Rebels have explicit, selfless love and sympathy for the down-trodden segments of society. Conformists work for the continuity of a system which bestows upon them all sorts of comforts and rewards. Rebels labour for rapid, plausible change in the political and social system."
A writer cannot stay neutral:
Writers have to, willingly or otherwise, stand with or against or question the existential basis of dominant perceptions, narratives, discourses or ideologies of their times. They cannot stay neutral. If they decide to stay silent where they should speak, they implicitly endorse the course of events. As the words of a poet have different connotations and metaphorical dimensions which remain repressed or absent in daily use of language, his or her silence too signifies differently.
Resistance literature is long-term in its mission and effects:
Contrary to socially active rebels, writers engaged in critical and interrogative types of resistance aim at slow yet essential change in intellectual and imaginative realms. Socially active writers hit at the ‘super structure’ of society while the other two kinds of resistance batter the very ‘base’ of society. One’s life is shorter, the other longer.
Literature per se is not activism, but the writer cannot but infuse his/her writing with his/her existential, philosophical, psychological position and ethos. Political, physical activism is suppressed on the streets, in the social milieu. Resistance writers, resistance literature is counteracted through boycotting by institutions that promote the writers of acceptable, polite, harmless, unthreatening resistance, e.g., that which emanates from academe and its external clients, the publishing houses:
Socially active writers resist what is desired, demanded or dictated by power centres. Repressive State Apparatus (army, police, and judiciary) resorts to brutal use of power to silence activists, public intellectuals and writers, while Ideological State Apparatus (educational, religious institute and family) draws on inducements and lures to tame them.
A fantastic article. The term is said to have been coined by Barbara Harlow (1987). Ghassan Kanafani is also cited.
Translator's Note: Published in 1968, Ghassan Kanafani's book on Palestinian resistance literature explores the literary production of Palestinians within Historic Palestine, living under Israeli military rule since the Nakba of 1948.
Returning to the article "Resistance in Literature":
The term ‘resistance’ was first applied in the description of Palestinian literature in 1966 by the Palestinian writer and critic Ghassan Kanafani in his study Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948-1966. Resistance literature is an expression of rebellion. The two poles of resistance literature are resistance and oppression. Oppression breeds resistance which means that resistance is a logical reaction to oppression. Resistance is central to the larger unit in that it is the essence of the African American experience in the United States.
So, how does my writing fall under the category of resistance literature?
Simply, Hispanic-Filipino resistance literature began with Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo. It reached an apex in the journalism of the Spanish-language Filipino newspapers under the American regime (1901-1925?), the poetry, short stories and novels of Balmori, Fernando Ma. Guerrero, Adelina Gurrea, other writers and poets of that generation who slowly aged and had died by the 1970s.
There was a continuation through the younger generation who grew up during the U.S. regime, politicians like Claro M. Recto and authors Nicodemus Joaquín, Antonio Mercado Abad, Guillermo Gómez Rivera. We can also include Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino
Today, who are the Filipinos writing in Spanish? There are many poets especially, such as Marra Lanot. There are academics and religious. But are they writing resistance literature? Well, simply to write in Spanish is already to resist. However, I personally have not read hard-core resistance literature apart from the lifelong productions of don Guillermo Gómez-Rivera, and my papers/essays, especially "Hispanic-Filipino Identity: Loss and Recovery", which is a reasoned analysis of the flip-flop in our history, in our identity, that is squarely ascribable to the process of growing and inevitable moral and cosmological chaos that followed the U.S. invasion and dismantling of the Malolos Republic.
Finally, my invisibilization by the mainstream Filipino publishers and institutions, which has continued through 27 years (since 1997-98) even by academics presumably championing the vindication of Hispanic-Filipino culture and literature past and present, is clearly indicative that my essays and 1997 manuscript Thru the Lens are subversive and, therefore, must be carefully marginalized.
But I can't point the finger of blame at anyone, not even at my own infinitesimal capability to promote my work.
The first ones who arrive at the scene mark out their territory, draw their public writs of ownership, stamp and legalize them, and the newcomers who do not bow their heads and jump the hoops, shall be the eternal outsiders. Until time has done its work.
Who will be remembered in 50 years' time? Who will be forgotten?
As the Eagles song goes: "Who is gonna make it / We'll find out / In the long run".
It is what it is; one does what one can without expectation of reward or recognition. One acts and does, not from ego, not from the will to destroy what came before, but to imprint a new vision that actually was birthed by what came before.
For this very reason, I, Elizabeth Medina Seno, am unimportant, I am merely a servant of a Greater Will, a Major Process. To serve that Greater Will is all the honor and blessing to which I aspire.
So then, quite simply:
Que conste: For the record---
I take a stand, I am not neutral, I am subversive. It's all in the public record. I haven't died yet, so literary resistance à la Medina will continue to flame.
Like these California Poppies (dedales de oro, golden thimbles) carpeting the Andean hills.
