Counter-Producing National Narratives Filipina Diasporic Artists Challenge the Global Health Care System

Abstract

The Philippine nation-state relies on the production and circulation of hegemonic narratives that represent overseas Filipino workers as flexible laborers to generate profit through remittances. In this article, I analyze Lizza May David and Claudia Liebelt’s documentary Cycles of Care (2011) and Jenifer Wofford’s paintings and illustrations Point of Departure (2007) and Flor 1973-78 (2008) to demonstrate that these works of art counter national narratives by portraying Filipinos in non-capitalizable, non-laboring moments, thereby disrupting the mechanisms of global capitalism. I argue that Filipino artists employ what I call counter-production, an artistic practice that represents the fragmented experiences of displacement, critiques official nationalisms, and reconstructs care worker subjectivities that cannot be incorporated into the national project.

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Keywords

care worker, diaspora, Filipino contemporary art, global capitalism, overseas Filipino workers