Papers on Cecilia Brainard’s Novel Magdalena by Rhodora G. Magan

“The first one, enti­tled Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s Ori­en­tal Ori­en­tal ” Mag­dale­na” : A Lin­guis­tic Rein­ven­tion, was pub­lished in GSTF Jour­nal of Law and Social Sci­ence (JLSS) Vol. 4 No. 2, Octo­ber 2015 — see abstract and excerpts below.

The sec­ond is enti­tled “Eve and Her Beings: A Chopin-Brainard Sim­u­la­tion” deliv­ered at the Asian Con­fer­ence on Lit­er­a­ture & Librar­i­an­ship, April 2–5, 2015 in Osa­ka, Japan .

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Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s Ori­en­tal Ori­en­tal “Mag­dale­na”: A Lin­guis­tic Reivention

Abstract— Crit­i­cal at this point in the post­mod­ern soci­ety is ‘an idea’ nuanced in myr­i­ad voic­es. This paper con­tends that in the Philip­pine con­text there may be very lit­tle room for this type of lin­guis­tic explo­ration but is enough to exhib­it the exist­ing engage­ment of writ­ers with the nev­er-end­ing phe­nom­e­non of inter­pre­ta­tion, that is, a par­tic­u­lar mean­ing is con­tin­gent to one’s “sit­u­a­tion­al frame”. Sim­ply put, two sim­i­lar structures/codes/words are asso­ci­at­ed with mul­ti­ple mean­ings. More so, these modes of inter­pre­ta­tion will even­tu­al­ly affect one’s capac­i­ty to assign an array of codes to build upon the very image one intends to cre­ate. In this paper Mag­dale­na in Cecil­ia Manguerra-Brainard’s Mag­dale­na is thought to be the embod­i­ment of the Bib­li­cal Mag­dale­na sought to be deter­mined by lin­guis­tic lim­i­ta­tions in the con­text of the author her­self. She is exact­ly the very image of a woman that the author, in her capac­i­ty, would wish to cre­ate giv­en her own sit­u­a­tion­al frame—-her milieu. Like­wise, as the read­er engages him­self with the text, anoth­er frame is recre­at­ed so that the mean­ing becomes ulti­mate­ly unsta­ble in a con­tin­u­ous regres­sion. Mean­ing-mak­ing inci­dence is pri­mor­dial­ly seen in this study as the crux of the mat­ter by which dif­fer­ent ‘sit­u­a­tion­al frames’ can be under­stood as such. The char­ac­ter, Mag­dale­na, is seen in that respect as it large­ly depends on how such rela­tions are cre­at­ed between the sig­ni­fi­er and the sig­ni­fied. Dwelling much on Saussure’s per­spec­tive, the mean­ing that is evi­dent­ly explored which gives Mag­dale­na ‘the iden­ti­ty’ is not only drawn from the char­ac­ter­is­tics nor from her inner sen­si­bil­i­ty as a per­son but from the intri­cate con­nec­tions that sur­round the per­ceived object of woman through which bina­ry oppo­si­tions are thought to emerge…”

…

(Excerpt 1) In Cecil­ia Manguerra-Brainard’s nov­el, the lan­guage proves Bakhtin’s the­o­ry of dial­o­gism in the narrative’s por­tray­al of women whose descrip­tions are the results of the author’s per­cep­tions found­ed on the expe­ri­ences from years passed. This ele­ment of nar­ra­tiv­i­ty allows her to uncov­er the intri­cate events that con­nect three pow­er­ful women in this war nov­el such that it can be observed the dis­play of prowess in wield­ing lan­guage of inde­pen­dence and con­tro­ver­sy in dif­fer­ent milieus. The vary­ing tones and degrees of their expe­ri­ences are all weaved into a dis­tinc­tive fab­ric that rede­fines woman such that from the bib­li­cal arche­type it pro­ceeds to have tak­en the role of a char­ac­ter acces­sorized by the whims of anoth­er civilization.

In the light of the above cre­ativ­i­ty, the cred­it goes to the proces­sur­al nature of simeo­sis which Par­men­tier (27) suc­cinct­ly believes to have implied:

an inher­ent asym­me­try in what can be termed the lev­el of simeo­sis between the vec­tor of deter­mi­na­tion and the vec­tor of representation.

The con­cept high­lights the capa­bil­i­ty of the

‘rep­re­sen­ta­men’ to cor­re­spond to the object (orig­i­nal) in many ways. This opens doors for inno­va­tions thus oblit­er­at­ing the con­cept of mere repli­ca­tion which is only con­fined to the known char­ac­ter­is­tics of a cer­tain thing that serve as pat­tern. Apro­pos the nec­es­sary alter­ations of per­cep­tions which bring out this prin­ci­ple of asym­me­try, Bau­drillard (6) asserts that such prac­tice lends sta­bil­i­ty to the con­cept called “hyper­re­al­i­ty” which by def­i­n­i­tion is brought about by infi­nite regress, that being main­ly char­ac­ter­ized by a lack of fixed point of reference.

…

(Excerpt 2) Toward the end, Brainard choos­es to fur­ther her case with jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of cer­tain issues involv­ing women. Her choice of end­ing the nar­ra­tive in a way that one can least sus­pect par­al­lels that with the new con­text (lib­er­al) that she designs for her char­ac­ters to oper­ate upon. With an unpre­dictable end­ing, one is led to ask­ing the intent of the author in not reveal­ing the key to Juana’s father’s happiness:

“For a moment I was tempt­ed to con­fess to him that Mag­dale­na was his daugh­ter, but there was too much ground to cov­er, too many lives that would be upturned; and so I remained qui­et, as I had these past twen­ty-sev­en years.”

The impli­ca­tions of her lan­guage at the end are clear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tions of an eru­dite writer who cre­ates room for her read­ers to appro­pri­ate­ly end it the way they ought to. A mono­logue at the end is a sign that before one returns the nov­el back to the shelf, at least, he is giv­en access to the mind of one of the char­ac­ters. No third-per­son “objec­tive” nar­ra­tor can influ­ence any judg­ment one has for the nov­el in that every­one is free to inter­pret what­ev­er he thinks about with respect to his expe­ri­ences, beliefs and culture.

Like­wise, select images embell­ish the whole text as if in a nut­shell every­thing can be thor­ough­ly explained (but will still depend on how each one views them). The nov­el with its unique plot encour­ages read­ers to go back and forth as flash­backs become so fre­quent that no present event is inde­pen­dent at all. Iron­i­cal­ly, whichev­er chap­ter one begins to read there is that ele­ment of iso­la­tion that enables a par­tic­u­lar chap­ter to stand on its own. This ulti­mate­ly char­ac­ter­izes Brainard’s style of offer­ing cross-sec­tions of life to exam­ine its com­plex­i­ty. This tech­nique man­i­fests the case of lan­guage which can be set apart from the rest, yet still promi­nent in its own dimension.

Brainard exhibits the unique crafts­man­ship that endows the text’s musi­cal­i­ty inher­ent in poet­ry. The style can be hint­ed at the very basic inter­pos­ing of words whose mean­ings reside beyond the lit­er­al lev­el and whose sounds cre­ate rhythm beyond the monot­o­ny of dai­ly dis­course. Such lines are tes­ta­ments of her ingenuity:

“She was bits and frag­ments of words and paper and cellulose—ethereal, a ghost ….”

“The sea beyond had set­tled into gen­tle lap­ping … and rib­bons of gray smoke trickled ….”

“She feared the sen­sa­tion of los­ing touch with real­i­ty, of dis­ap­pear­ing into the heav­ens, of being one with Victor.”

“…was anoth­er stroke in the deb­it side of Fermin’s bal­ance sheet in her heart.”

“He tastes of the sea this man. He is like a god risen from the sea.”

Fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage such as con­so­nance, per­son­i­fi­ca­tion, hyper­bole, zeug­ma and sim­i­le enhances the way words are grouped togeth­er. There is more to each arrange­ment than meets the eye because the dynamism of mean­ings spring from it and myr­i­ad inter­pre­ta­tions emanate from its vibrant tex­ture. On the sur­face glare the words that con­sti­tute a sto­ry after anoth­er sto­ry whose plots are gov­erned by the point of views of the first­per­son and third-per­son narrators:

First person—“When I felt life with­in me, I felt it was time to turn their secrets into stories.”

“My grand­moth­er lived to see me married—

hap­pi­ly, I might add.”

and

Third Person—“Luisa, invit­ed Mag­dale­na to lunch and spelled out some new details about Vic­tor: he had a mis­tress; in fact they lived togeth­er in Mandawe….”

One voice in the pro­logue and epi­logue sets the tone of inde­ci­sion and deci­sion. In between is anoth­er voice of an observ­er who appar­ent­ly wants to enlight­en “the per­ceivers” about the issues that build on one after anoth­er. This observ­er pre­vails in all of the chap­ters except in two accounts which means that the author suc­cumbs to the objec­tive retelling of events rather than what one par­tic­i­pant might just feel through­out the time frame. Yet the fact that it is not a pure­ly objec­tive fic­tion­al con­struct does imply that one per­spec­tive is not enough.

This, too, is an indi­ca­tion of the lack of the fixed point of ref­er­ence which gives way to the inno­v­a­tive rein­ven­tion of a con­text that tran­scends the orig­i­nal. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mul­ti­ple points of view con­tributes to the phe­nom­e­non of onto­log­i­cal uncer­tain­ty for hav­ing cap­i­tal­ized on the irreg­u­lar flow or the destruc­tion of the com­pla­cent per­spec­tive of order Pre­dictable out­comes become a less like­ly occur­rence once plot struc­ture is dis­in­te­grat­ed so that there arrives a “plot­less” pre­sen­ta­tion of exis­ten­tial time. Erick­son (103) pur­ports that one dimen­sion of this expe­ri­ence of time is “exis­ten­tial time”. It is ingre­di­ent both in expe­ri­enc­ing of time and in time as it is expe­ri­enced. To explore time is to look at it pri­or to an instance which is impos­si­ble if one says ‘time began’ because it can nev­er have a beginning.

Design­ing the whole nov­el like a set of sto­ries (not even a series of short sto­ries), time appears to be dis­lodged from a spe­cif­ic point. The indis­pens­abil­i­ty of the idea that time is inde­pen­dent her­alds the uncon­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive that goes beyond real­i­ty. Brainard’s style is one of unusu­al inde­ter­mi­na­tion of what comes next along with lan­guage struc­tures’ inevitabil­i­ty to take new forms over time. The ori­en­tal atti­tudes take on the form of vary­ing tones of struc­ture that sur­round the con­cept of woman rep­re­sent­ed by Magdalena…

(Excerpt 3) CONCLUSION: Mag­dale­na is the prod­uct of the “unsta­ble sig­ni­fied” that asserts author­i­ty over the sim­u­lacrum that it has cre­at­ed. The sim­u­lacrum in turn asserts the same lin­guis­tic char­ac­ter­is­tic that assumes more pow­er than the pre­de­ces­sor. The qual­i­ty gov­ern­ing its exis­tence is high­ly depen­dent upon the

“sit­u­a­tion­al frame” of the author and even­tu­al­ly upon that of the reader’s, which Rim­mon-Kenan (qtd. in Hoff­mann 122) under­stands as a frame to “reduce inde­ter­mi­na­cies” of the world by giv­ing them “form”. Con­se­quent­ly, the more it reduces such the more that these propen­si­ties flour­ish to estab­lish anoth­er taste, fla­vor, desire, behav­ior, and ulti­mate char­ac­ter­is­tics that define anoth­er cre­ation pro­pelled by the deter­mi­na­tion of lan­guage to innovate.

The read­er (which includes the author her­self being the first-hand read­er) does not react pas­sive­ly to the nar­ra­tive but acti­vates his own poten­tial to inno­vate the “form”. With more than just repli­ca­tion, “the per­ceiv­er” exer­cis­es and strength­ens his exclu­sive or con­tex­tu­al treat­ment of a text. This gives him pow­er to either give jus­tice to cer­tain issues in the text or con­demn any ele­ment in it.

From the afore­said per­spec­tives on the func­tion­al­i­ty of lan­guage, Mag­dale­na is most prob­a­bly under­stood as belong­ing to the Bib­li­cal domain giv­en the con­text that basi­cal­ly draws many of its prac­tices from the Bible. The Philip­pines as a reli­gious nation, there­fore, cre­ates dif­fer­ent lev­els of con­cep­tion. The union of inter­ac­tion, con­text, per­for­mance, and cul­ture con­clude this under­stand­ing of lan­guage pow­er (Duran­ti and Good­win 1992).

Mag­dale­na has been exist­ing in mil­lions of ori­en­tal dis­cours­es that fos­ter clar­i­ty as to her real pur­pose in the soci­ety. The term “Mag­dale­na” per se sig­nals for bal­lis­tic tar­gets direct­ly to the minds of indi­vid­ual mem­bers of the group that now reflects the Fil­ipino psyche—-the pre­vail­ing thought towards Fil­ipino women who despite being inde­ci­sive con­tin­ues to take con­trol of what is left in her pos­ses­sion. The ori­en­tal side elides the fear and lack of deter­mi­na­tion. Soci­ety then engulfs the new thought as lan­guage deems it to be as dra­mat­ic as pos­si­ble when it comes to shap­ing the uni­ver­sal consciousness.

Wield­ing pow­er also comes with sym­bol and style which in this study lend grav­i­ty to the effect the text intends to cre­ate. The rela­tion­ship with which these two are drawn is expli­cat­ed in a way that the devel­op­ment of the lat­ter depends heav­i­ly on the dynamism of the for­mer. Both are gleaned from the sur­face as chimeras that cast light on the ulte­ri­or direc­tion of the text– the “Mag­dale­na” under­goes a trans­for­ma­tion with respect to its new sit­u­a­tion­al frames (the author’s and the reader’s).

Bio of Rhodo­ra G. Magan:

Rhodo­ra G. Mag­an, DAL­it­com, has been a res­i­dent lan­guage, lit­er­a­ture, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions instruc­tor at the Cebu Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Cebu City Cam­pus since 2010 and a lec­tur­er in the Grad­u­ate School three years hence. Along with the respon­si­bil­i­ty to impart knowl­edge to stu­dents is her great inter­est in sev­er­al local, nation­al and paper pre­sen­ta­tions that build her the habit of access­ing a reper­toire of lit­er­ary expres­sions and per­spec­tives. From being a pro­lif­ic researcher she takes on the iden­ti­ty of a writer. Despite the ris­ing tech­niques in the post­mod­ern era they nev­er impede The Cot­tage, the entry sub­mit­ted to an inter­na­tion­al body, to be appre­ci­at­ed as it bears exu­ber­ance of local col­or weaved in a sig­nif­i­cant way. Her deter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed in dif­fer­ent fields is recent­ly proven in her first author­ship along with three oth­ers in the uni­ver­si­ty. The pub­li­ca­tion of New Lit­er­a­tures: New Texts, New Voic­es, New Per­spec­tives speaks of her ded­i­ca­tion to edu­cate learn­ers on the thriv­ing lit­er­ary texts across time­lines. Rhodo­ra Mag­an is an edu­ca­tor, a researcher and a fictionist.