The Project (fiction, an excerpt)

The concept
The concept is very rich. It is hardly new, not exactly groundbreaking, but it promises many possible subject positions, ideological standpoints, from which we readers can view and assess the subject matter being tackled by this project being presented before us.

This so-called “middle class, urban, self-involved, ultra aware, highly emotional, at turns petty, pretentious, confused, languageless, hungry, empty, and ultimately at a loss,” Philippine human scribbler of the 21st century is a peculiar subject. Indeed it is. A peculiar subject, and therefore a worthy matter that, I am more than convinced, merits our attention and investment.

Apart from offering various standpoints, what the project also seems to be proposing is for these locations being made available to the readers, to become locations of self-slash-selves or inter-subjectivity-slash-subjectivities. This is an outdated idea, for sure, but it is in its very suggestion – and not suggestiveness –, that the quaintness – a quaintness we can easily repackage and sell – lies.

On the matter of quaintness, I presume we are all in agreement, and so I will no longer go into a discussion, of its economic and political significance.

We then move to the next criteria, the execution.