Defamiliarization and disruption in the legendizings of J. Neil C. Garcia: Readings for change, against humanism, and against sexism

This study analyzes J. Neil C. Garcia\u27s legendizings from the poetry collection, Our Lady of the Carnival, published in 1996, and the corresponding myths as found in Damiana L. Eugenio\u27s anthology of folklore, Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths, published in 2001, using the concepts of defamiliarization, ideology, and the positionality of gender, in the interest of emphasizing that meaning is socially produced, as well as challenging the commonsensical, or humanist and sexist assumptions that underlie the strategies with which Philippine myths continue to be studied. Three readings are carried out here, such being drawn chiefly from the writings of Viktor Shklovsky, Louis Althusser, and Julia Kristeva: the first is comparative, in the interest of determining the differences between each legendizing and the corresponding myth, primarily in terms of the devices of point-of-view, character, plot, and tone perform the function of defamiliarization the second reading is against humanism particularly with regard to the assumptions that the human subject is the center around which the world revolves, that the individual is the source and controller of meaning, and that the value of a literary text lies in its ability to reflect an unmediated reality the third reading is against sexism, and confronts the venerated-Madonna, earth-mother, and sex-object subject-positions that women are made to occupy within a patriarchal social formation, as well as the binarization of gender that women are made to occupy within a patriarchal social formation, as well as the binarization of gender that is based on biological essentialism. It must be noted that the anti-humanist and anti-sexist procedures do not necessarily have similar results--a legendizing may be determined to be anti-humanist, but sexist, and vice-versa