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Each society, group or tribe is exclusive with its id. Myriad of things make up the multifaceted floor and endodermis of a group. Norms, morals, tradition, historical past, financial system, hegemony and other people, women and men alike push and pull in affecting one another. Often, the individuals who create and perpetuate the risky norms, morals, tradition and hegemony might emancipate or incarcerate the individuals who formulate the exact same edict. Resistance to it or extrication from it might imply an ostracism or foul name-calling. Anyone who goes towards the present turns into a sufferer of a tyrannical tradition. Hence, tradition turns into bipolar. It nurtures but additionally creates sutures of ache. People are left both to subserviently comply with to belong or to excruciatingly battle towards to endure. Or let’s consider, a rebelling individual in an oppressive tradition faces what Helen Cixous calls “castration or decapitation” for not supporting the dominant tradition.
One of the most typical loathsome social constructions is human id. Elsewhere on the earth, individuals are divided, labelled, judged and anticipated in accordance with their anatomy, intercourse and norm. The challenge of male versus feminine. Each intercourse is stereotyped based on social expectation. Males are figured to be robust, rational, logical, clever, supplier, masters, straight, brawny whereas females are weak, irrational, illogical, moron, receivers, slaves, sexual objects, emotional and even worse, abused, silenced and made evil in several media and literatures.
But what if an individual is neither a male nor a feminine. What if an individual opposes all of the anticipated position or id based mostly from normativity and performativity as dictated by society. Then we think about the worst. The sufferer turns into weak of the criticisms of society the place she or he is rushly and harshly judged evil, irregular, odd, impure, immoral or “queer”. This is the place the author positions his paper in absolutely understanding the very vibrant, introvert lifetime of Edith Tiempo’s controversial character Tio Teban within the brief story “The Chambers of the Sea” (Tiempo, 2009).
More typically than not, queer is outlined as something that’s irregular, odd, weird or something that defies or questions a dominant tradition, norm or conduct. In the Philippines, to be queer is tantamount to being weak, smooth, totally different, unusual and even speedy conclusions to being gay or a gay.
Many students believed that society’s notion about intercourse is deeply inculcated on the minds of the individuals perpetrated and perpetuated by social establishments corresponding to faculty, church, household and others. Queer principle challenges this social formulations to know and tolerate sexual or gender identities past the misconstrued-passed-on beliefs on sexual categorization.
The principle and apply of queer criticism is predicated on interrogating or difficult, debunking the categorization of intercourse and gender resulting in a person’s id. Identity can’t be fastened and isn’t fastened. Issues of performativity and normativity in relation to intercourse and gender, resistance and energy relations are additionally tried.
In the Philippines, the household, the varsity and the church are actively collaborating in creating, categorizing and fixing gender and sexuality. Choice of colours for the youngsters’s garments would imply sexuality. Blue for the boys and pink for the women. A mismatched of colours would imply malicious interpretations resulting in labelling similar to gay or lesbian, as if colours and youngsters are synonymous with their sexuality. When they develop, youngsters are informed that enjoying dolls are for women and soldier toys are for the boys. Boys don’t cry, fathers would say to their younger boys. Implicitly, they are saying that solely women cry. And these are transferred from era to era. There is all the time a robust categorization within the Philippines filled with do’s and don’ts for the girls and boys as they’re sure in line with social categorization, sexuality and their performativity. Anyone who fails to uphold, anybody who deviates, anybody who doesn’t help the dominant tradition of the males is labelled gay or gay with Filipino types of bakla, bading, badaf, shoke, Darna and different denigrating names.
The story Chambers of the Sea by Edith Tiempo sublty and delicately depicts a person named Teban Ferrer or Tio Teban (Uncle Teban), as addressed by the narrator who grows from Bangan and his diaspora to Dumaguete, whose rising up and eventual maturity is put right into a check, interrogation, scrutiny and suspicion based mostly from his sexuality or normativity and performativity. Hence, the haunting query whether or not Tio Teban is gay, gay or queer is concentrated within the lens of queer principle and evaluation.
Tio Teban is within the midst of robust binary opposites the place characters are anticipated in response to performativity and heteronormativity. His household from Bangan, with its large land, on the left drive and his newfound household together with his cousin in Dumaguete on the suitable. His household consists of robust males: his father who hates Tio Teban’s womanish behaviour, Antero, his brother-in-law who bodily tills the land of the complete household and his sister Quirina who needs him to proceed his father’s legacy of the land. The social expectation of Tio Teban’s household is excessive based mostly from his supposed efficiency as male and heterosexuality.
In Dumaguete, with its boundless sea, Tio Teban has extra solace with the softer, weaker setting. His cousin Amalia is a typical housewife who performs social position based on her sexuality, a mom to 4 youngsters. More typically than not, Amalia’s roles are prolonged to Tio Teban when the previous runs for household errands. His spouse’s husband is a passive male who by no means questions his behaviour for he reveals a quiet male who supplies.
Amalia’s honest-to-goodness rowdy youngsters interrogate and criticize Tio Teban’s totally different behaviour. Their ill-humoured laughter is like Tio Teban’s speedy household who harshly condemns his queerness. Because he doesn’t carry out and he’s towards the norm of a typical male, as anticipated he was minuscule to a weak, sluggish and odd man. Mentally, they’re lashing him out for his queerness. His father, who is meant to know him for who he’s, is the primary to ostracize him. His judgement is predicated from Tio Teban’s “womanish disposition” and couldn’t forgive his solely son for turning out to be so like him in seems to be however fairly in contrast to him in his methods (p. 103). Tio Teban’s father has contempt on his inclination to cultivating a rose backyard, drawing and portray utilizing watercolours, his strolling within the countryside, his perpetual studying of literatures, his stature and squinting in his eyes. All these are past his father’s acceptance.
But above all these artefacts, can we see him retaliate towards his household even when they offend, hate and even denounce him for being totally different for failing to “satisfy their selfish desire” of wanting him to be that he’s not. He felt violated and uncovered. From a dilemma between “fight or flight”, he chooses a quiet, resolute determination of leaving his household within the pursuit of graduate research in Dumaguete the place he efficiently completed a Master’s diploma in Political Science. It may be gleaned from a psychological viewpoint that he displaced his silent rebel towards his household into scholastic pursuit the place his household couldn’t attain him within the psychological and mental aircraft. He chooses his battle with an mental magnificence towards the tough furrows of the land. His id, although totally different, irregular and queer from the judgement of his household and the youngsters of Amalia, Tio Teban is proud of himself. His id for himself is just not a problem, not a query, not an issue however slightly a selection. His stature solely turns into beleaguered when individuals as soon as once more interrogate and gauge him in line with his intercourse and position. In this textual content, Tio Teban turns into a task mannequin of a positivist existentialist who finds happiness within the midst of individuals’s an excessive amount of preoccupation of his id. He chooses as he pleases with out private qualms. He has no id disaster in distinction with the favored notion. Their notion can also be affected, influenced and enveloped as nicely by socially constructed formulated criticisms towards not-so-typical male like Tio Teban. The query on what he’s doing in his room in Dumaguete is extra of a private introspection when it comes to economics. He, with an MA diploma, stays docile in his cousin’s home. He is once more pressured by society to work in line with his heterosexuality. The selection is his.
Suspicion of his id versus his private selection versus the social expectation and labelling of his besmirched gender id is subjected to a check ending in a crystal clear dramatic shut of the story. He acquired a letter on the demise of his father. Tio Teban turned a persona with two faces as he runs to the ocean. He summons his grief but finds happiness on considering on the dying of a father who’s significantly prejudiced towards him. Without his father, there’s extra of himself, liberty. The hegemony of energy wielded and created by his household solely oppresses him. Thus, together with his father’s dying there’s extra private emancipation from the obtrusive household and social expectation fairly than lamentation. The queer turns into clear. He rejoices on his true self. He is neither a person nor a lady; neither a legendary merman nor a mermaid however an individual. He is glad of what he’s and not using a label. His queerness, from the individuals’s notion, is just a fable. All the world is a stage, and other people have totally different roles to play. A person must be joyful whether or not with a minor or a serious position on this huge world of identities solely constructed by women and men. As the narrator clinches it “At least Tio Teban knew one thing for himself as he turned and walked rapidly away.” Tio Teban is “He is what he is” a hierros gamos, a union of male and a feminine; not gay neither gay however an individual with an appointed nook within the sky, with a distinct segment within the land and has his personal “chamber in the sea”…
REFERENCES:
Con Davis, Robert and Ronald Scheliefer. (1989). Contemporary Literary Theory: Literature and Cultural Studies. New York: Longman, Inc.
Tiempo, Edith (2009). “The Chambers of the Sea”. Montage: Anthology in Philippine Literature in English Manila: PNU Press.
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Source by Wilfredo M. Valois