The Politics of Silence: Battered Men in the Philippine Literary Selections

摘要

Grounded in Alan Fiske’s Relational Models Theory, this paper sought to explore the echoing culture of silence concerning abused men refined in literature from the colonial period until the postmodern Philippine society. Further, the exploration focused on the battered Filipinoliterary characters’ psychological, emotional, and social perspectives. In doing so, it led to tracing back the English writings of canon Filipino authors such as Nick Joaquin, Jose P. Rizal, and Ronnie V. Diaz. Specifically, it sought to achieve the following objectives: (1) Explainthe relations of the battered Filipino men to other characters through Fiske Relation Model Theory’s categories namely, Communal Sharing, Equality Matching, and Authority Ranking; (2) Describe the personalities of the battered literary characters namely, Don Paeng, Don Tiburcio Espadana,and Eddie, through Cooley’s Looking Glass Self Theory. The findings revealed that male characters were subject to silencing and battering. Apart from the use of theories employed in this paper, the researchers also endorsed the use of set criteria established in this paper in terms ofselecting literary texts that can be analyzed in literary research.