Her (Sub)version of History: The Works of Carmen Guerrero Nakpil

Abstract

This study examines Carmen Guerrero Nakpil’s autobiographical novel, Myself, Elsewhere (2006), in order to show how she 1) establishes herself as a patriotic intellectual who possesses the authority to provide an alternate history of the Philippines under Spanish and American colonial rule; 2) portrays the historical area of Ermita as an exceptional ‘space’ within which Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, ambivalence, and Third Space are manifest to an intense degree; and 3) deconstructs and critiques both forms of Western imperialism, while demonstrating how women’s writing acts as a subversive tool by which to destabilize dominant discourse in the domain of colonial history.