Abstract
The twenty-first century has witnessed a remarkable popularity of feminist ideals both in literature and in film as much as it hosted the blossoming of more contemporary fiction genres, noir fiction being one of the most evident examples. In the Philippines, the noir genre is slowly taking root, most especially because it offers a certain familiarity on issues of crime, corruption, and abuse that currently beset the country in light of political divisiveness and the government’s ongoing war on drugs. Edited by Jessica Hagedorn and published in 2013, Manila Noir anthologizes contemporary Philippine noir short stories set in the gritty, busy, bustling city of Manila. Analyzing five of the short stories included in this collection—F. H. Batacan’s Comforter of the Afflicted, R. Zamora Linmark’s Cariño Brutal, Eric Gamalinda’s Darling, Count Me In, Jose Dalisay’s The Professor’s Wife, and Jonas Vitman’s From Norman to Norma—this paper studies how the female person is portrayed in Philippine noir fiction through the examination of the female gender identification indicated by performativity and body politics, specifically through the Foucauldian and Butler lenses on gender. It also examines the texts as representatives of an emerging genre of excess by employing Mikhail Bakhtin’s categories of carnivalesque and carnivalesque theory. In doing so, the study aims to put female-centered noir fiction at the forefront of contemporary Philippine literature that mirrors and, ultimately, responds to the Philippine society’s pressing “noir” issues today.
Digital Media
This presenter hasn’t added media.
Request media and follow this presentation.
