Special FORUM KRITIKA topic in the journal Kritika Kultura

Past writings on the Chinese in the Philippines, influenced by nation-based perspectives, often examine the history of the Chinese diaspora in the Philippines within the territorial boundaries of the Philippine nation-state. Such works also tend to adopt earlier sociological paradigms in the study of identities, casting the ethnic identities of these diasporic subjects in binarist terms and pandering (sometimes unwittingly) to the metanarratives of national histories. Recent works on the Chinese diaspora in the Philippines have begun to utilize a more transnational approach that, apart from focusing on the interconnections between China and the Philippines, demonstrate how ethnic categorizations are contested and negotiated. However, the emphasis on the bilateral relationship between the two countries also is unidirectional, mainly dealing with the cultural and economic influence from China to the Philippines. The utilization of an expanded form of transnationalism, in both the geographical and theoretical sense, can lead to studies that not only portray the rich, multivalent, and variegated life experiences of these historical actors but also enrich our knowledge of their history and that of the Philippines writ large.

Special FORUM KRITIKA topic in the journal Kritika Kultura

To the rare extent to which Philippine literature in Spanish is recognized to exist, the tradition is almost entirely identified with the life and oeuvre of José Rizal, the late-19^th century author of the novels Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo and the poem “Miúltimoadiós.”The appearance of Filipino fiction and poetry in Spanish precedes Rizal, however, and creative publications in other genres as well thrived in diverse and continuous ways for many decades thereafter.

In the past century, a scattering of published surveys and graduate theses has sought to describe the key authors and texts of Philippine literature in Spanish, but virtually no sustained analytical scholarship on particular literary works, outside those by Rizal, has been produced.  The object of this Forum Kritika is to encourage the creation of such a critical corpus and thereby initiate long-lasting investigations into the tradition, perhaps the most unknown in the Spanish-speaking world and among all Asian literatures in Western languages.

Special FORUM KRITIKA topic in the journal Kritika Kultura

Manila by Night was an event movie that made waves in several ways. Completed in 1979 but released a year later because of a ban by the martial-law censors board, the movie was accepted for competition at the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlin International Film Festival), where it was widely expected to win the top prize. Because of the ban, the movie’s Berlinale exhibition had to be canceled, with festival director Moritz de Hadeln criticizing the Marcos regime for its repression. The movie was eventually approved for local exhibition, but with a record number of cuts and deletions. It won the critics’ award for film (Regal Films), screenplay (for director-writer Ishmael Bernal), male performance (Bernardo Bernardo), and production design (Peque Gallaga). It has ranked no. 1 in an extensive survey of critics and practitioners conducted by National Midweek, and is regarded as influential in popularizing the multiple-character genre in Philippine cinema.

The forum invites critics and practitioners to provide appraisals of Manila by Night as filmic, industrial, and socio-cultural product. (A DVD version has been released by Cinefilipino, available at <http://www.cinefilipino.com>.) Paper proposals should be submitted electronically to the Forum Kritika guest editor, Joel David, at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, no later than June 30, 2011. Any contribution will be acknowledged within 48 hours of receipt. Authors whose proposals are accepted should finalize their articles (6,000 to 10,000 words, observing the sixth edition of the Modern Language Association handbook) on or before March 31, 2012. These articles will then undergo the standard process of blind peer review for academic journals.

The Department of English of the Ateneo de Manila University, especially since the resurgence of nationalism in the 1960s, has more sharply viewed its role as inextricably linked not only to the development of what had generally been called "English Studies" in literature and language scholarship but as helping contribute to the understanding of the relationship of culture and society as well.

Kritika Kultura addresses issues relevant to the 21st century: language, literature and cultural policy, cultural politics of representation, the political economy of language, literature and culture, pedagogy, language teaching and learning, critical citizenship, the production of cultural texts, audience reception, systems of representation, effects of texts on concrete readers and audiences, the history and dynamics of canon formation, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, diaspora, nationalism and nationhood, national liberation movements, identity politics, feminism, women’s liberation movements, and postcolonialism.