E. San Juan’s Creative Oppositional Criticism
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
This paper traces San Juan’s keynote lecture, “Nick Joaquin’s Apocalypse: Women and the Tragi-comedy of the ‘Unhappy Consciousness,’” from his two earlier works: “Dialectics of Transcendence” (1984, written in 1967) and Subversions of Desire (1988). In doing so, the paper highlights San Juan’s reading of Joaquin that follows a dialectic of the critic’s own theoretical and intellectual development. It also explains Hegel’s historical dialectics and notion of the “Unhappy Consciousness” and how these are applied in San Juan’s re/interpretation of Joaquin. This paper highlights what criticism has learned from Hegel: difference and opposition are fundamentally productive. Indeed, in San Juan, in Joaquinian scholarship, and in Philippine literary criticism at large, dialectics is truly at work.
Recommended Citation
Sollano, F.C. (2018). E. San Juan’s Creative Oppositional Criticism, Unitas, 91 (2), 82-101.
