Writing and national liberation: Essays in critical practice

The essays in this volume attempt to contribute to a dialogue on theoretical practice, a discussion of concepts, paradigms, methodologies needed to elucidate and evaluate cultural production in our society. While they are concerned mainly with literary criticism and analysis (textual hermeneutics, symptomatic reading), attention has been given to the political tensions inscribed in film and music.
Written over the last decade, these essays represent San Juan's responses to a whole range of popular democratic initiatives in the cultural struggle during the period that witnessed the rapid decline of Marcos' "New Society" to the brief "springtime" of ceasefire talks between the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the Aquino government and finally to the return of neocolonial democracy and the reign of the vigilantes. Like his books Crisis in the Philippines, Subversions of Desire, Only by Struggle, and From People to Nation, this volume should be read in the context of the occasions when they were written, and judged in terms of the orientation they provide and the concrete mediations they afford for the collective project of constructing a Filipino nation armed for the unpredictable challenges of the 21st century.