E. San Juan’s Creative Oppositional Criticism

• Main Author: Sollano, Francis C
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2018
• Subjects: E. San Juan; Hegelian dialectics; Nick Joaquin; metacriticism; Philippine literary criticism
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/english-faculty-pubs/30; http://unitasust.net/volumes/volume-91/
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This paper traces San Juan’s keynote lecture, “Nick Joaquin’s Apocalypse: Women and the Tragi-comedy of the ‘Unhappy Consciousness,’” from his two earlier works: “Dialectics of Transcendence” (1984, written in 1967) and Subversions of Desire (1988). In doing so, the paper highlights San Juan’s reading of Joaquin that follows a dialectic of the critic’s own theoretical and intellectual development. It also explains Hegel’s historical dialectics and notion of the “Unhappy Consciousness” and how these are applied in San Juan’s re/interpretation of Joaquin. This paper highlights what criticism has learned from Hegel: difference and opposition are fundamentally productive. Indeed, in San Juan, in Joaquinian scholarship, and in Philippine literary criticism at large, dialectics is truly at work.