Toward a people's literature : essays in the dialecties of praxis and contradiction in Philippine writing / E. San Juan.

for democracy freedom, and justice-a struggle whose anguished ordeals and hope-filled ultimate victory this work celebrates.

Initiating a precedent by his previous books-Carlos Bulosan and the imagination of the class struggle, The radical tradition in Philippine Literature, and Balagtas : Art and Revolution-E. San Juan, indisputably the most addacious and inventive Filipino critical intelligence today, aims to unfold a two-sided project in this collection : to explore the possibility of a materialist analysis of key texts in Philippine writing, and to establish the site for a deconstruction/reconstitution of the canon of our national literary heritage. Both spring from the fundamental premise that literature as an ideological form/process cannot be conceived that define any social formation. While the early essays like the explication of Balagtas' poem and the commentaries on specific novels betray the dialectical matrix they share with the theorizing of Lukacs and Sartre, the historical chapters and the assessment of Bulosan reflect a post-Althusserian and post-structuralist problematic aimed at interrogating the crisis of imperialist liberalism in the Philippine today. This is the first time in the Philippine scene that a rigorous avant-garde critical theorizing and materialist reading of texts as ideological practices inscribed in historical-political contradictions, has been attempted. In the future, San Juan hopes to advance his critique into the realm of cultural discourses/practices foregrounding sexuality, the family, the state, the educational apparatus, theater and media. Itself a product of contradictory processes, San Juan's ongoing project (of which this book is an instance) hopes to contribute to the Filipino people's struggle against imperialist hegemony and fascist oppression