Women and National Identity in South Asia

In attempting to circumscribe the feminist and even ideological contributions which women in South and Southeastern Asia have made to their respective countries, there will first need to be an overview of the concept of nation itself. Even the common phrase "love of country" underscores a concept of "eroticized nationalism" (Parker in Anderson 12). What analysis of the feminine within cultural space will assist in revealing is the high degree of contradictory status which nations, especially those of South and Southeast Asia, impose upon their female citizens. Emphasis in this research will be given to tracing out this split of contradictory status opened up by a conjoined feminist and ideological/cultural analysis of women's status as it is displayed in South and Southeast Asia. Stylistic differences between the positions adopted by feminist rhetoric and women's fiction will also be explored.

Eve Sedgwick observes that the concept of nation varies depending upon which nation is trying to define itself. Sedgwick contends that relations between modern nations has become both ragged and irrational. She charts the variable factors which now must be factored into defining nationhood by saying:

The "other" of the nation in a given political or historical setting may be the pre-national monarchy, the local ethnicity, the diaspora, the trans-national corporate, ideological, religious or ethnic unit; the sub-national local vis a vis

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ament and crisis of dislocation, fragmentation, uprooting, loss of traditions, exclusion, and alienation" as well as "tremendous physical and spiritual ordeals" (Aguilar 207). Feminist scholars would suggest that this condition of alienation as post-colonial subject who relocates to the US is intensified for women. In Philippine woman in America Cecilia Manguerra Brainard collects her own thoughts as a Filipino immigrant in the US. In her collection of essays Brainard focuses on how the Filipinos have been stripped of their freedom since 1972, how they are attacked by Americans for having no culture, how the first Filipinos settled in the bayous of Louisiana in the eighteenth century, and the poverty embedded in Imelda's soul (Brainard 25, 27, 52, 26). Brainard writes not from the position of a radical feminist but as a woman who has married a non-Filipino and is seeking to acclimate to her new country. Nevertheless, a great deal of the poignancy of her writing happens when she is willing to reveal her anger about American prejudice or political injustice in the Philipines. She is a woman in exile who sometimes feels most secure when she can name her nostalgia as a longing for "achara, nata de pina" and Philipine periodicals
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Divakaruni Anderson, Azarcon Anderson, Guerrero-Nakpil Anderson, Manguerra Brainard, Southeast Asia, Sedgewick Anderson, Eve Sedgwick, Beyette E1, Southeastern Asia, Banerjee Divakaruni, divakaruni anderson, azarcon anderson, beyette e1, guerrero-nakpil anderson, anderson 117, guerrero-nakpil anderson 117, filipino women, south southeast asia, meena affair, sex scene, azarcon indicates, popular culture, azarcon anderson 91, 206 san juan, filipino popular culture,
Approximate Word count = 2725
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)