The Habit of Streets: Fragments of Encounters and Modes of Walking in Philippine Poetry in English

• Main Author: Borras, Marie Franchesca
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2019
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/theses-dissertations/363
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Evoked by questions collected in between travels and meanderings, this study attempts to articulate moments of flâneuserie in selected Philippine Poetry in English and highlight different modes of walking by way of autoethnography as a method of analysis and as a phenomenon of the contact zone. In addressing the main proposition, the following supporting inquiries will help illuminate the argument of this research: How do instances of flâneuserie validate the concept of the street as a site of the contact zone? In line with this, how do these modes of walking operate as autoethnographic technique in this study, literally and phenomenologically? Lastly, as a way of highlighting the gendered walk in this study, how does a woman negotiate the streets and challenge its dominantly patriarchal culture? This study mainly uses autoethnography as a method in critically analysing and intervening in the texts. As a research method, autoethnography involves critical analysis of personal accounts, that of the researcher’s, vis-à-vis cultural contexts. Instead of merely reading the poets as walkers, the researcher transfigures her way of reading in a manner that involves her personal accounts of her walk in specific loci. The fragments in this study, despite its non-linearity, attempt to present a digressive approach both in literary and cultural studies through moments of flâneuserie articulated both in selected Philippine Poetry in English and in the walks of the researcher by way of an autoethnographic method. Walking, in this study, allows critical intervention through series of inquiries derived from the flâneuse’s encounters in certain loci.