More Issues Raised

The discussions on the links mentioned here and here have lengthened, so you guys might want to head on over to read.

In addition, some new posts I stumbled upon address speculative fiction in the Philippines.

From Abo Sa Dila (Mikael Co): in the middle of speechwriting i write a post about this thing called "speculative fiction"; and the art of eating biscochos, or, sucking adam's c**k.

From Oh, So Virile! (Adam David): "Speculative Fiction" and the Delicate Art of Legitimization and Furthering Agendas with much Honesty and Clarity and Humility and Earnestness

An excerpt from Abo Sa Dila:

Really: I don't understand the term "speculative" fiction. But from what I do understand, I can say this-- and this has been mentioned by others before: All fiction, by definition, is speculative. Even realist fiction-- this sphere that the discourse on "speculative" fiction wishes to set itself apart from-- is speculative. Realist fiction is speculative fiction, because it speculates on what might, or could be, or should be, or actually is (albeit sometimes with the author unconscious of this is-ness) within the bounds of reality. (You see, even that is problematic: what is real, really?)


Now I do know what "speculative" fictionists purport their works to be, or under what genres these fall in. But still. To use the term "speculative fiction" as an umbrella term for genres whose only thread is-- well, what exactly? A willing and presupposed suspension of disbelief? Di ba lahat ng fiction ganu'n din?-- to use it as merely a term, without a clear delineation in form or even intention from the rest of other fictions-- seems, to me, moot.


Moot, because, because, because: nauuwi sa problematic ng publication ang usapan. Just another way to sell books. Which could be problematic, really, since it inserts the market into a discourse of form. When readers look for only those books which fall under "speculative" fiction, when shelves in bookstores are dedicated to this hodgepodge of genres and marketed with posters that say "come, buy me, speculative ako!"-- fiction, as a form, as a plurality, suffers. Because when market forces are put into the equation, and writers begin to fall into the trap of writing just to get published.... You get what I mean.


Thing is, I don't really care if a group of writers who are passionate about their work band together and push for this "movement." Go go go. Gawin ang lahat nang kayang gawin sa pinakamahusay na paraang kayang gawin. This is all well and good.


Except that unintentionally (I guess,) it pigeonholes all the other forms that don't fall inside that umbrella term. The problematic, to me, lies in "speculative" fiction's exclusivity. If a decent argument can be made, though, regarding "speculative" fiction's (exclusive) speculativeness-- or, at least, if it can delineate itself as a form in itself, then, ayun. I will say sorry and go back to eating biscochos.


An excerpt from Oh, So Virile!:


I first had issue with “speculative fiction” when Alfar first used it as a label to what were initially science fiction and fantasy stories as how Pinoys distinctly wrote them, which had more magical realism chromosomes in their DNA than science fiction and fantasy, but enough to be actually especially idiosyncratic that it maybe seemed to Alfar – who also wrote, and still writes, the magical-realism-science-fiction-fantasy sort of writing - that the stories needed a more accurate term for purposes that seemed to me at that time to be more dictated by the selfishy business side of things than the critical, this notion based on his throbbing purple prosy intro for his first antho that came off to me as a celebration of a genre that hasn’t yet proven its worth, that hasn’t yet yielded the gems that Alfar seemed to be seeing in the odd-dozen or so stories he had in his first antho, and I was a bit turned-off by Alfar’s car-salesmannish crossed with messiah/pariah tones as he championed a genre that seemed to me to have been manufactured around his own bibliography. I read the intro and I read the pieces and to be curt about it: I was not impressed.

I ignored Alfar’s second antho as I assumed it only had more of the same and pretty much skimmed through articles written by/about him and his campaign for the legitimization of “speculative fiction” because (1) I felt the term was genteel and unnecessary (I feel the same way about Milflores’ “creative nonfiction”) and (2) it seemed to me that what it was actually fighting for was for a seat in the house of Literary History, which seemed to me to be half-assed in light of the actual history of the genres sheltered under what was increasingly becoming an umbrella term for pretty much any writing which isn’t “realist”.

I suppose it is easy to forget the transgressive politics of popular fiction seeing as most of them are actually the dreck of the dreck, but no reader or writer of genre fiction worth their salt should forget or ignore genre fiction’s history of transgression, seeing as to how transgression was what fueled the initial salvo of these things, and still continue to fuel the better of these things as the genre fiction locomotive goes locomotioning on towards the horizon. To forget or ignore that simply reeks of laziness and/or a denial of the writer’s/artist’s role in shaping society and culture.

And that was what I felt – and still feel – was wrong with Alfar’s “speculative fiction”: 90% of it is meandering navel-gazing literary bull**it absent of any real politics whatsoever. It’s meandering navel-gazing literary bullshit absent of any real politics whatsoever because most of the initial writers who provided us with examples and blueprints to work off of were meandering navel-gazing literary writers who have no real politics whatsoever. They are writers who write for the sake of writing, which shouldn’t be seen as bad, really, but when you’re pushing an agenda and your only politic is the ethereal notion that it’s weirder than your usual story, and what you’re actually doing to legitimize it is to infect it with literariness, well, then, we have a problem.

All the genres under “speculative fiction” pretty much have been living and breathing and jumping and running and somersaulting in the sky for about a couple of hundred years outside of the Academe, and they’ll still be living and breathing and jumping and running and somersaulting in the sky for about a couple of hundred years more outside of the Academe. It doesn’t need the Academe to legitimize it. It should legitimize itself.

Click the links above to read the entire posts.