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Villa with American and British writers
What better way, I thought, to make Creative Writing students locate themselves in Philippine literature than to choose a side in the Villa-Lopez controversy.

The exercise was basically to make the students recall what they had read and discussed in CL 150 (The Literature of the Philippines in English I) last semester. By asking students to take a side in the Villa-Lopez debate, perhaps the students would also recall the developments in Philippine writing from the pre-Spanish to the Spanish eras and up to the 1940s.

So before the class would engage itself this semester in discussions on Philippine literature in English from the 1940s to the present, I thought it would be enlightening to see how students saw themselves in either the tradition of Villa's aesthetic formulation or in the tradition of Lopez and other socially-committed writers.

And what a discussion it turned out to be, with more questions being asked than answered. Implicated in the exchange were such issues as:
  • the preeminence of artistic production over social responsibility
  • the writer as visionary
  • the writer as revolutionary
  • the idea of a "universal" literature
  • the discourse of art vs. propaganda
  • the colonialist project
  • the nationalist project
And so many other questions we hope to answer in a semester of CL 151 (The Literature of the Philippines in English II).

 


Comments

Chaque
14/11/2009 11:28am

Oh, yes, I was there.

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kiday
14/11/2009 9:33pm

dili jud ni mamatay ba nga dispute. in fact, kung makabasa ko ug articles nga ang title ingun ani or likewise'can art separate itself from context?', muhunahuna dayun ko asa gani nako to nako nabasahan ang essay ni lopez?

Reply
nino
15/11/2009 10:20am

that's true. seems like that debate will continue for as long as the market remains small. which raises the question, will writers listen to their readers then?

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