The improvisation of power in Eric Gamalinda's Empire of Memory

• Main Author: Tanael, Criselda A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2002
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/1805
• Institution: De La Salle University

Empire of Memory was originally written by Eric Gamalinda as The Empire of Memory in 1992 and was later revised in 2000. The novel is about the journey of a man named Al Diaz during the dictatorial government of President Ferdinand Marcos. The aim of this paper is to study how the text portrays the wielding of power by the Marcoses during their reign in the dictatorial government. A New Historicist reading was done using Stephen Greenblatt's Improvisation of Power. The improvisational process of 'empathy in operation,' 'role-playing or disguising,' and 'narrative self-fashioning' was used in identifying the (1) power relations represented by the Marcoses in the text and (2) how the Filipino people yielded/accepted the handling of power by the Marcoses. The improvisational process of 'empathy in operation' was successful in how the Marcoses use their power by implying to the Filipino people that they have the same motives in running the government. The second improvisational process of 'role-playing' or 'disguising' showed how the Marcoses once again maintain their control of power by convincing the people, especially through media, that they have good intentions for the Filipinos and the nation. The third improvisational method of 'displacement and absorption' revealed how the Marcoses tried to persuade the consciousness of the Filipino by rewriting history to show that President Marcos was destined to rule the country. Once again, the Marcoses, by creating a text that would alter facts in history, try to maintain their power by convincing the Filipinos their legitimacy to rule. The last improvisational process of 'narrative self-fashioning' showed how the Marcoses and other officials in the government persuade the Filipino people by their use of language. The manipulation of language is a powerful tool, shown in the text, in identifying how the Marcoses and other government officials maintain their power and most especially, their innocence in some instances. Overall, the four improvisational processes as presented by Greenblatt in his essay is a reliable source in extracting how the Marcoses used 'power' in Empire of Memory. It is also a source in the New Historicist reading of the text.