Abstract
In the last half of the twentieth century, Southeast Asia was controlled by authoritarian leaders despite independence and democratic goals. Regimentation was the means towards faster national development. Political stability due to the quelling of unrest allowed the state to pursue its goals. Although female presence seemed to have been excluded in the process of nation-building, women nonetheless persisted in their efforts and contributions. This study will examine the complex representations of contestation and resistance in four short stories written by women writers from Singapore and the Philippines, two Southeast Asian countries that experienced authoritarian rule, albeit differently. The short stories written by Singaporean women writers, Denyse Tessensohn and Catherine Lim, show women engaging a state that excludes them and invades their reproductive bodies in the state’s pursuit of economic nationalism . The other two stories by Filipina women writers, Ninotchka Rosca and Merlinda Bobis , provide a visceral resistance against the Martial Law regime and its oppressive apparatuses . All four stories interrogate, problematise, and confront the performance of the nation as a gendered entity in a patriarchically constructed authoritarian state.
Part of this chapter is published under: Tope, Lily Rose. December 2007. State of engagement: Filipino and Singaporean women writers in English engage the state. Asiatic 1 (1): 1–15. http://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/AJELL/article/view/437/.
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Tope, L.R. (2018). Women and the Authoritarian State: The Southeast Asian Experience. In: Chin, G., Mohd Daud, K. (eds) The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back. Asia in Transition, vol 6. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7065-5_5
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