Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques

Just how do the dominant theories of poetry in the Philippines address the “postcolonial” questions of identity, hybridity, universality, the imagination, and difference itself? In his critiques, Garcia thereby confronts the issue of Filipino nationalism a problematic discourse that seeks to accomplish what can be described as fundamentally “contradictory” tasks: sameness and otherness.

On the other hand, the different essays here undertake a separate, expressivist project: not so much to spell out a “personal poetics” that will champion the author’s own poems in light of a clearly delineated theory or discourse, as to reflect upon and elaborate on some of their occasions, aspects, influences, intentions, and themes. In the end, in relation to the author’s own creative work, what these critiques of Filipino poetics might offer is a kind of context not of its writing, but rather, for its eventual and prospective, postcolonial reading.