âWhy is it that a writer from Southeast Asia must position herself in relation to the political as well as the aesthetic? âThis is an issue not because it is untrue of my workâI absolutely agree⊠. My novels are written to be inextricably political art-novelsâI am clear about both my novelsâ didactic aims as well as the power of that didactic function in my aesthetic play. âFor me the most creative art structures occur from grappling with polemical desire. ⊠"This assumption that art should not be âdidactic.â Yes, it can, and to be honest, it can be in very artful ways. I think the question in workshops should always include: e.g., what is your subject-position in this story about slumming in the malls or being a tourist in Ghana, etc etc? Who are you centering and whyâwhat is your gaze forâall of these political questions would make anyoneâs art better, whether we are writing about our cats or our catastrophes. ⊠"I think our position here as writers of Southeast Asia in a setting such as this, the Associated Writing Programs conference on writing, already sets us up for some form of innovative dread. I mean, we can choose to see ourselves as little puppets of a neo-colonizing, hemi-semi-demi-imperialist-hegemonic-meaning-making writing machine that is the American creative writing programs actually-also-quite- parochial globe-sphere, hashtag AWP19! "On the other hand, we can also see ourselves as agents of our own desire and writers / resisters of an implacable, intractable history, of a vertiginous, complex story that includes not just Asia but the world that has violently and blithely and at times contritely but not always completely impinged, letâs say, upon Southeast Asia, so our gaze is all too often a doubling and troublingâa multitudinous, multifariousâgazeâa gaze Western and Southeast Asian and Asian and all of the above, all mixed and messed upâthat recognizes the blindness of others, the colonizers and the powersâand therefore cannot also fall into blindness upon our many selves, our islands and our tongues and our faithsâand this of course we prefer to do. "We prefer to address here our agency, our desire, our forms of artâwhich is as it should be. So I will. ⊠"I will say that if any innovation happens in my fiction, it is because I am very attentive to my problematic position in our un-fictional times. "Iâm aware of my class, the languages I speak and fail to speak, Iâm very aware of the absurdity of being a writer, Iâm aware of my outrage and yet the stasis of my sense of injustice. "Iâm not a freedom fighter. Iâm just a writer. This subject-position has always been my problem. "And yet I remain true to my earliest sense as a child that reading, that writing, that art, is a way to take on power.â
â Gina Apostol, âA Doubling, Troubling Gaze,â talk presented at the Association of Writing Programs Conference, Portland, Oregon, 2019.
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