The Author as Reader: Gina Apostol and the Third World Metropolitan Intellectual

Drawing from Neil Larsen’s ideological critique of the poststructuralist turn in postcolonial criticism, Revathi Krishnaswamy’s interrogation of the practices of the Third World metropolitan intellectual in relation to the de-materialized conceptualization of migrancy, and Radhakrishnan’s analysis of the relevance of postructuralist avantgarde theories to postcoloniality, this article examines the postmodern politico-aesthetic of Gina Apostol’s writings. Apostol is a well-received author in the Philippines and in the U.S. insofar as her fiction and essays purportedly engage Philippine history from a revisionist, quotidian perspective. This essay posits that Apostol’s appropriation of meta-fiction and other postmodern devices ultimately fail to propose any alternative mode of historical agency and instead, merely provides a narcissistic overlay for the author’s readerly self. The essay further argues that Apostol’s success in the U.S. is symptomatic of her complicity with the First World academe’s homogenization of Third World migrant experience which suppresses hierarchies of social class and gender.