May Buhay Sa Looban Analysis

Prosperity and Devolution in Space and Place: Forces of Ascendancy and Dissension in

Pedro S. Dandan’s May Buhay sa Looban

Iain Chambers (1994) in his book “Migrancy, Culture, Identity” said that the city, the contemporary metropolis, is for the many the chosen metaphor for the very existence of the modern world. In its everyday details, its mixed histories, subjectivities, languages, and cultures, its elaborate evidence of global tendencies, and local distinctions, the very figure of the city, viewed as both an actual and sometimes an imaginary place, significantly and apparently provides a ready map for reading interpretations and comprehension (64). It is from such a framework whereby the myriad meshing of the strains of ascendancy and

Dandan’s “May Buhay sa Looban” markedly concretizes such forces -- conscriptions and tensions that lead to the experiences of dislocation within the very contexts of development and expansion, conflicting values and senses of spatial belonging, irreconcilable differences of ideologies as projected by characterization, the clash of backward locality and the promise of ascendancy in a larger citified dimension, and lastly, the very act of coming to terms with one’s own space and the acceptance of a host space.

This critical endeavor attempts to view Pedro S. Dandan’s “May Buhay sa Looban” from the standpoints of regionalism and local color touches as the springboards for underscoring the notions of space and place being a zone of various factions, centers, and peripheries, dichotomy in attitudes, and the very narrativization of the aforementioned forces of ascendancy, impedance and resistance juxtaposed to the concepts of city, place, and space. This paper takes its cue from the critical concepts expounded by Michel de Certeau, Petr Chaluspky, Malcolm Bradbury, and Anne

His father, a writer, wants to move to Dampalit so as to obtain the proper dispensation and support that a writer needs for the actualization of his writings and desires. His father also wants to compete in the annual Commonwealth Literary Contest. The problem concretizes as Popoy dejects his father’s plan of moving to Dampalit for the reason that his heart is in the Looban and he is known as the “walang gulat na hari ng looban”. As for the point of view of his father, the Looban is a dull place, devoid of inspiration, beauty, and awe, threatening their safeguard and the literature of his father. Despite his father’s decision, Popoy remains intransigent and uncompromising in staying in his miniature Circus