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The Fictions of Necessity

Charlie Samuya Veric

Abstract

Nationalism’s great success as well as its great failure comes from the fact that it is an artefact of the mind that strives to imagine a closed society. In Charlie Samuya Veric’s review of Necessary Fictions, he lays bare the implications of Caroline S. Hau’s uncovering of the narratives of exclusion in the ways the nation is conceived in key Filipino literary texts. As Hau inquires into the problematic authorships of the fictions of nation, Veric, meanwhile, returns the problem of Hau’s criticism of the idea of nationalism as a necessary fiction. Necessary, Veric asks, for whom? For what purpose?

Keywords

Caroline Hau, literature and nationalism, Necessary Fictions, Philippine literary criticism

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13185/1588