Figuring Resistance The Revolution in Film and Literature in the Philippines

This book examines how fiction films and novels represent the communist-led national democratic (NatDem) revolution in the Philippines. Produced aboveground decades after the Philippines’ historic transition from dictatorship to elite democracy, these NatDem fictions depict how the communist movement in the Philippines confronted various national and global changes, tracking revolutionary experiences amidst the ascendancy of neoliberalism, the continuation of counterinsurgency and the emergence of non-Marxist social movements and discourses.

Figuring Resistance studies how fictions portray the tenacity of political commitment among revolutionaries engaged in the revolution's manifold history of crises, setbacks, and persistence. It illuminates the crucial role played by cultural work in creating and nourishing an oppositional public sphere, where the experiential makings of the liberation struggle in the Third World can be imagined.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Imagined gendered memories.- Chapter 3: Pedagogies of errorsChapter.- 4: Left melancholia.- Chapter.- 5: Specters of revolutionary nationalism.- Chapter 6: Conclusion.

Laurence Marvin S. Castillo is an associate professor at the Department of Humanities, University of the Philippines Los Baños. He holds a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Melbourne. He is the author of the Digmaan ng mga Alaala: Rebolusyon at Pagkakamali sa mga Talang-Gunita (War of Memories: Revolution and Error in Memoirs, University of the Philippines Press, 2021), finalist for the Philippine National Book Award for Literary Criticism and Cultural Studies, and co-editor of Hindi Nangyari Dahil Wala sa Social Media (Did Not Happen Because Not On Social Media, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2021), winner of the Philippine National Book Award for Media Studies.