Temporality in Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels

Abstract

Nick Joaquin has been read as nostalgic of Filipino Hispanic culture. While it’s true that most of Joaquin’s works deal with the country’s Hispanic past, his works account for more than just nostalgia. A lot of studies that make use of postcolonial theory show how this Filipino Hispanic culture as depicted in Joaquin’s works can be construed as a form of resistance against US neocolonialism, on one hand, and nativist nationalism, on another. Using postcolonial and narrative theories, this paper argues that Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels should also be read as a strategy for resisting US neocolonialism and a critical view of nativism, shedding light on the disjunction among history, culture, and literary consciousness.