Narrativizing marginality and hope: Testimonial narratives of students in a night school

• Main Author: Moratilla, Noel Christian A.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Subjects: Evening and continuation school students—Philippines—Social conditions; Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/9148
• Institution: De La Salle University

This exploratory paper suggests a critical reading of students' personal narratives and letters as testimonial narratives or testimonios. As a genre, testimonies are transgressive of canonical literary and literacy practices while giving voice to traditionally marginalized groups. Testimonios, in this regard, always implicate an "absent polyphony of voices," and the imbrication of the private/personal and public/political spheres. Using the letters written by 20 working class students of a night secondary schools in Metro Manila, I did a textual analysis of the materials according to the dominant themes. The paper discusses how the letters and narratives written by students constitute counter representations of working class youth vis-a-vis hegemonic assumptions and representations, such as those propagated and sustained by and within dominant social dispositifs. Furthermore, the paper suggests how these "little narratives" may be deployed as a praxis-oriented pedagogical praxis that subverts the supposed neutrality of classroom discourse and foregrounds lived experiences of subalternity and exclusion.