ABSTRACT
This chapter explores four metaphors of self-translation as a heuristic device derived from a contemporary theorization of archipelagic thinking. Archipelagic thinking proposes that a set of islands (real or metaphorical) enacts an epistemology away from continental thinking and into a trope of more accommodation: liminality, ruptures, (re)configuration, ambiguity, and the like. Initially forwarded by Édouard Glissant (1981) as fluid cultural processes, archipelagos are sites of abstract and material relations of rest and movement, depending on changing conditions and articulations and connection, apparently isolated from above but connected deeply from below. In Glissant’s view, this is what translation does, an art that approaches differences but does not negate the irreducible alterity of the other, like a sea of islands. The metaphors explored here compare Philippine self-translated protest poetry as archipelagic because they act as: (1) spaces of repetition and amplification (Benítez-Rojo, 1996), (2) places of sanctuary, or safe harbor, (3) sites of equity-marking in the asymmetry of Glissant’s “creolized” languages and cultures, and (4) time-space encapsulations of greater aesthetic freedom, much like archipelagos throughout history. The protests refer to the repressive regimes of Ferdinand Marcos (r. 1965–1986) and Rodrigo Duterte (r. 2016–2022).
