FRANCIS C. MACANSANTOS
Reviews
SISA’S
VENGEANCE: A Radical Interpretation of Jose Rizal by E. San
Juan, Jr.
(Philippines Cultural Studies Center, Connecticut,
2014)
[First published in SISA’S VENGEANCE]
RIZAL THE
FEMINIST:
A Book Review of Sisa’s Vengeance
E. San Juan, Jr. was one
illustrious young poet of the sixties, showing mastery of the medium in both
Filipino and English. He has since reinvented himself as scholar of literature
and culture, in America where he is based. With a Ph.D. from Harvard and
professorships emeritus from several universities in the U.S., he is
deemed an intellect of the first rank in literary and philosophical circles abroad.
But just like Rizal, our first intellectual, San Juan is an exile, opting
though to return to his country in the form of the books and articles he has
written elsewhere, scholarly vessels that contain riches of insight on his
motherland’s history, culture, and politics. Some who admire his poetry would
prefer verse, but from his published offerings it seems as though he has hung
up his lyre.
In prose, however, the
rapport he has kept up with his motherland has been fervidly dynamic. Her
freedom from post-colonial chains is the constant poem in this scholar’s heart.
He reminds us of that other illustrious viajero, the controversial
novelist, Dr. Jose Rizal.
And it is obvious that
like most Filipino intellectuals, San Juan can never drop the subject of Rizal
or his continuing relevance to the idea of liberation. What he does reject is
the notion that we need to choose between Bonifacio and Rizal, one against and
excluding the other. Indeed, he even sets aside discussion (postponed for
another book, perhaps?) on Rizal’s refusal to join the revolution, preferring
instead to emphasize the hero’s achievement in conceptualizing an authentic
ideological guide to freedom.
In Sisa’s Vengeance,
San Juan takes up and evaluates the views of practically all the major Rizal
biographers and commentators, pointing out their shortcomings. He takes special
exception to Under Three Flags by Benedict Anderson, whose assessment of
Rizal lowers his stature as political thinker to that of a “mere moralist and
novelist.” On good authority (of Jim Richardson who exposes Anderson’s numerous
errors) he attacks Anderson’s “ignorance” and lack of conceptual rigor.
But it is only towards
the later chapters of Sisa’s Vengeance that San Juan fully discloses his
main theme (and to most of his macho countrymen a startling one): that the
proof of his authenticity as revolutionary is his principled belief in and his
fervent advocacy of women’s rights.
It comes to light in the book’s
latter chapters that for San Juan, the cause of women’s liberation is the sine
qua non to any authentic movement for human liberation. An authentic
vision of social change requires a profound understanding and staunch espousal
of the cause for women’s rights.
Media has tended to
present Rizal as a fickle playboy with a girl in every port. Such popular
representations flatter the self-image of Filipino machos. But San Juan’s
sensitively scrupulous view yields to us a more respectful, even at times
diffident man in love—often a victim of heartbreak, all despite Maximo Viola’s
account of Rizal’s presumed encounter with a Viennese woman of the
streets.(Rizal, in fact, was actively involved in the rehabilitation of sex
workers.)
Rizal idolized his mother
who was an exceptionally gifted and cultured person, and he was made aware by
his studies in London of Morga’s Sucesos ,of the high social status of
women of the Philippine islands before the Spanish conquest. It was in London
in the midst of his research on Morga that he wrote—upon the request of M.H.
del Pilar—his rightly famous letter (written in Tagalog) to the women of
Malolos proclaiming their right to education and their duty transmit their
learning to their children.
Apart from these women,
his mother, and those whom he was linked with amorously, Rizal had other—albeit
imaginary—women: Maria Clara, Sisa, Juli, Doña Consolacion, Salome, and
others—the women of his novels. Sisa, especially, is central to San Juan’s
meditation on Rizal’s character, as it is she who embodies the victimization of
women and of the motherland. After establishing the necessary link between the
patriarchal system and all oppressive (because profit-oriented) systems, San
Juan adroitly transforms Rizal’s arguably feminist position into a fulcrum to
elevate and authenticate his revolutionary status.
Indeed, San Juan’s
readings of Rizal’s literary works recommend themselves directly to students
and scholars of literature. Sisa’s Vengeance provides a plethora of
insights into Rizalian texts that are a fitting reward for any reader who has
plowed through the rather difficult--often specialized—prose. Such oases, or epiphanies
(pun intended) are surely traces of a poetic sensibility.
*****
Francis
C. Macansantos is a Baguio-based writer,who writes poetry, essays and fiction
in English and Chabacano, his native language. He is a Palanca award winner and
an NCCA Writers Prize awardee. His book, Balsa: Poemas Chabacano, was launched
at Ateneo de Zamboanga, where he received the Most Outstanding Alumnus of the
Year award in December 2011.
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