Disembodied generation: Jessica Zafra's Manananggal Terrorizes Manila and other stories in the light of Jean Baudrillard's postmodernist theory of simulation

• Main Author: Garcia, Elaine Angeles
• Format: text
• Language: Others
• Published: Animo Repository 1999
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/1696
• Institution: De La Salle University

Abstract. Jessica Zafra is probably the most popular writer among the Generation X in the Philippines. She used to be a columnist in the newspaper TODAY and a three-time Palanca Awardee. Her books Twisted and Twisted II have been best sellers. She is one of the hosts of the TV talk show Points of View and hosts a chat show in an FM radio station. In her book Manananggal Terrorizes Manila she writes about characters that share similar characteristics with Generation X. Generation X is defined as those born between 1964 and 1979, mostly the offsprings of the Baby Boomers who were born between 1946-1963. They are often described as cynical, angst-ridden and verbally cruel. And philosophical trend of postmodernism is said to have shifted the Xers' way of thinking from a linear and logical to a more chaotic and mosaic type. Since there are discernible similarities between the characters in the stories of Zafra and the members of Gen X, I have come to believe and actually claim that her text is a simulation of the reality of how Xers think, act, speak and behave in general, in terms of Jean Baudrillard's theory of Simulacra. Manananggal Terrorizes Manila and other stories is a text which contains descriptions of the concept of Gen. Xers exhibited by the characters in the stories. The characters may have been drawn out from real people, some of which may be Jessica Zafra's friends or acquaintance in simulated absurd situation, for with the way she portrays them she seems to be actually talking about existing people. And in proving that the text simulates the supposed reality of the X generations, I am using the Postmodern Theory of Jean Baudrillard where he proposes a loss of reality, having been replaced by simulations. In this reality, images has suffocated the 'real world' and so the 'unreal' could no longer be distinguished from the 'real' there is no more reality but only appearance. The seeming absurdity of Zafra's stories are no less real than the reality we, the X Generation faces.