SPRING 2016 VISITING WRITER: CONCHITINA CRUZ
THE FILIPINO AUTHOR AS PRODUCER:
POSTCOLONIAL POETRY, POSITIONALITY, POLITICS
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Lecture & Reading, ​Followed by Author Conversation
7pm in the KBR | Monday, April 11
THE FILIPINO AUTHOR AS PRODUCER: POSTCOLONIAL POETRY, POSITIONALITY, POLITICS
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Conchitina Cruz, a poet who makes a living as a teacher of creative writing in Manila, examines the contradictions of her position as an author when regarded simultaneously in the contexts of global and local literary arenas. As a Filipino writer, she belongs to the literary periphery of the “world republic of letters,” where literature from the Philippines remains barely visible. As a Filipino writer in English, however, she contributes to literary production in what continues to be the language of the educated and the elite in postcolonial Philippines. By unpacking the privileges encoded in the language she uses to write, even as she writes from a nation whose literature is still largely unrecognized by a global audience, Cruz accounts for her reservations about thematizing national identity in her work and interrogates her capacity as a poet to contribute to the struggle for representation. An advocate of independent publishing in the Philippines, Cruz asserts that the Filipino writer’s critique of institutions of literature is a necessary component of her investment in the politics of recognition and redistribution. What constitutes the labor of a Filipino author, she contends, goes beyond expression to include intervention in the material conditions that define the production and circulation of literature, as well as the demystification of the specialist and professionalized status of the author. 

Poems collected in Professor Cruz's bilingual chapbook Two or Three Things About Desire (Chinese University Press, 2013) are available at the links below at Diagram and The Offending Adam.

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