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Two decades now since its first publication, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters(1990) continues to maintain eminence in ethnic studies for the author’s bold exploration of the different classes of Filipino society that are informed by the complexly interwoven local and global socio-political histories. As suggested in Hagedorn’s somewhat daring selection of the her title as “dogeaters” at the risk of charges against misrepresentation or ethnic betrayal, Hagedorn’s novel is almost shameless in its delineation of lives overwritten by the everyday realities of colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, and dictatorship, and corresponding social ills--manifested more particularly as state repression, corruption, underdevelopment, and extreme poverty. As much as the novel is a stunningly candid portrayal of the national bourgeoisie and the Filipino upper-class, it is also a keen depiction of the painful reality faced by subjects excluded from access to social, familial, and material opportunities for basic human rights and existence. In addition, Hagedorn’s achievement lies in the mutually embeddedness of her thematic intent and her distinct postmodern narrative stylistics. This paper seeks to understand the connection between Hagedorn’s experimental stylistics and her critical intent, specifically by concentrating on the figure of Joey Sands, the half-black, nightclub disc-jockey, who prostitutes with white foreign males. While Joey’s life becomes the site of Hagedorn’s most vocal critique of political and socio-economic violence that assume appalling dimensions and manifestations, he is also the site for the inscription of resistant subjectivity. While not proposing some naively hopeful resolution to social inequality and suffering, Hagedorn fictionalizes empowering moments of dissent and conflict, which emerges through a reconception and redrawing of oneself and one’s relationship to others. My interest lies in illustrating how instances of rebellious affirmation are informed by the element of “performance,” or counterperformance, to the existent “performatives” of Western centered social constructs, such as on sexuality, race, and ethnicity.
