More rumination on the current debate(s) on what Philippine Fiction / Philippine Speculative Fiction is, was, will be, will have to be, would have to have been, happily ever after, amen -
- has made me think that perhaps we're trying to cram two different things under the same label. What are these two things?
(1) Philippine Fiction as a body of work from a "defined" set of authors
(2) Philippine Fiction as a body of work under a "defined" genre
Philippine Fiction: the work of Philippine authors
Madali lang ito. Is the author a Filipino (natural born or naturalized)? Then his fiction work is Philippine Fiction. Easy.
Wala namang mga honorary Pinoys di ba? Wag na, that complicates things. Kung ganoon, honorary Philippine Fiction din ang fiction niya.
Philippine Fiction: the genre
Under here, we call upon set theory! If a piece of fiction matches certain criteria that we define, then it can be classified Philippine Fiction, in addition to all the other genres (horror, drama, melodrama, crime, mystery, comedy, accidental comedy, science fiction, fantasy, etc.).
This appoach is interesting because it doesn't REQUIRE someone to be a Filipino. ANYONE can write Philippine Fiction, provided you utilize some or all the genre conventions which are...
... er, well that's another debate / argument / rumble for another day.
And that's okay. After all, even current genres suffer the problem of variance or contradiction or further subcategorization in genre definition: Is this story Science Fiction or Science Fantasy or Space Opera or Baroque Space Opera? Is this story a mystery story or a crime story or a psychological thriller or a horror story? Is this story a romance or a love story or a chic lit story?
 | I think both exist, but we need to create better terms to define the two.
For example, American Fiction is fiction by American authors. But when the fiction points more to American culture, we tend to definite it more appropriately such as Western, for example, or Southern. Maybe Work of fiction defined based on genre that is Filipino is better defined with more accurate words. Western, for example, would be seen as fiction from the west and not attributed to cowboys and such until usage defined it as such. We should create new terms to reflect kinds of writing that use the Philippines as genre and setting. |
 | And perhaps even the terms created will be insufficient to define them. After all, even to this day, people argue over the definition of something as "old" as "Science Fiction". |
| But at least they're a starting point of commonality.
For example, when someone says, "Oh a Western.." it helps give an idea what's he's talking about kaagad. |
| True enough, but even now we get discussions like "but isn't it really a western"? I remember the original Star Trek series being criticized for being a "Western in Space" because westerns were more well known than science fiction at the time and there were some "shared tropes".
Not to say there is no use for genre (which I think is your point, Tobs). During a litcritter seminar on creative writing, we tackled the usefulness (and inherent limitations) of genres in selecting anthologies and novels to read. We also tackled the benefits and drawbacks of genres when writing, which I think would warrant another blog post. |
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