Left melancholia
摘要
This chapter examines literary and filmic fictions that portray Martial Law-era revolutionaries as they struggle with Left melancholia, a political affect of disillusionment and disenchantment with the struggle. It focuses on the Filipino-language novel Desaparesidos [The Disappeared] (2007) and the independent film Sigwa [Rage] (2009). Both fictions use the narrative trope of the search for the lost daughter in dramatizing how former revolutionaries reflect on the meaning and legacies of their struggle. In these literary and filmic fictions, former revolutionaries revisit the memory of their political involvement during the Martial Law years, and struggle with the question of the revolution’s significance as a transgenerational political legacy, and a living project that addresses the persistence of social injustice and violence under democracy.