Semiosis of the Third Space through Narrative Perspective in Michelle T.

Tans Seek
and You Will Find
There are configurations of narrative perpsective in Michelle T. Tans Seek and You
Will Find that continuously implicate the reader, narrator, and main character in the
socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions of the system of existence of urban Metro
Manila, in all its dehumanizations. At once adopting the third-person omniscient figure as
almost god-like, then drastically shifting to self-referentiality that is metafictional in slant, all
the while in an assertion that the sprawl of its language laden with sociopolitical commentary
on the big, dirty city of Manila is that of the main charactera print office employee by day
and pickpocketer by night, Alexander F. Narcisothese shifts are not merely tonal or
stylistic; they are configurations and reconfigurations of the narrative perspective that form
the system of the language of the storys own unfolding, each in tension with one another in a
behavior of once signifying then being signified. This conversation of structural tensions in
narrative perspective are thus propelled in an activity of signification through, for instance,
attitudes of self-revision in a line of analogy of the linguistic analysis of Ferdinand de
Saussure, as well as positing the voice of Homi Bhabhas third space as an area of
interfection registered in generic discordance, unexpected juxtaposition, [and] the
semiautomization of reality. (Bhabha 217)
In Tans work, the configurations of narrative perspective are political in nature
because they aim to press on the parties of its reality of existence as textthus not only the
narrator and main character but the reader as wellas sociopolitical actors in its immediately
sociopolitical realm, assisted by the conceit of its language to unfold like political
commentary. In the beginning of the story, a definite narrative perspective seems apparent as
omniscient third-person: Tan goes through elaborate descriptions of the congestion of
commuters on the day of the annual feast of the Black Nazarene that, if it had continued in
this absolutist point-of-view, would have elucidated the goal of the text as unforgivingly
polemical, in adopting what largely registers as a theological conception of power relations in
the texts assertion of immense relational distance between the narrator and the scenario. This
narrative perspectiveboth initially exacerbated and complicated by the statement in the
third paragraph, We must resist easy judgment, for these citizens are no less faithful than
those currently awaiting the Black Nazarene, only more committed to earthly employments
and less confident in the security provided by Manila policeseems almost divine, whose
objective would be to provide a complete or wholly represented illustration of reality.

When the clarity of the narrative perspective eventually collapses and is actualized by
a near-drastic shift to self-referentiality, which is characteristically metafictional behavior
(In the spirit of piety, we must confess that the above sentiments do not belong entirely to
this narrator, but are the jumbled thoughts of a man sitting by the entrance of the jeepney.), it
is this metafictional configuration in narrative perspective that mimics or reflects in the story
Bhabhas entrance of the third space in postmodern politics: Because the third space
embodies a (cultural) difference in the totality of discourse, the intersection of a general
omniscience (the narrator) and a specific omniscience (the reader), mediated by the frame of
the narrator, develops a plurality of Tans text by infusing within its discourse a different
conception of narrative perspective. In fact, the reader becomes both the signifier for a new
perspective and the signified for a larger discourse or commentary. Here, the voice of
thirdness opens up as a possibility to supplement the discourse of the text, which is largely
uncertain, but expands the realm of the story itself by re-making, in contingency, the borders
of its narrative perspective.
This delay of self-referentiality is rendered as self-correction or self-revision (we
must confess [they] do not belong) and significantly diffuses a prior theological register in
its disposition of mere judgment by implicating every party as caught within the texts
sociopolitical realm. The configurations of narrative perspective in Tans work further tense
the conditions of Metro Manilathe reality concernedby implicating a wider scope of who
could be involved in its own commentary as in a recognition of the interstitial, disjunctive
spaces and signs (Bhabha 217). This not only expands the borders of its reality but also
simultaneously and subversively legitimizes the rest of the text and its generous polemical
inflections (for instance, When they pass Our Lady of Lourdes Parish Church, he kisses the
wooden cross hanging around his neck, for what blessing he doesnt know, force of habit, he
would say if pressed, over the years he has become, like all Filipinos, expert at navigating the
line between prayer and practice.); indeed, as if to ascertain its relevance, the text demanded
a containment of this disjunctive social time that is, in this case, the disjunctions of
narrative perspective (Bhabha 217).
Hence, by reconfiguration, the narrative perspective also in large part signifies an
uncertain discoursein other words, the signified commentary of the commentary already
therewhich the text, however, never clearly reveals. In the structuralist conception,
Saussure posits the sign as the unit of the language, which is composed of two parts: a
mental image or concept (the signified), and a phonic or graphic vehicle (the signifier).
Using this terminology in linguistic analysis, Saussure conceives of language as a system of

relations among signs that situates the construction of meaning differentially, and notions of
identityindividual units of language as independently meaningfulare deferred to these
synchronic relations. (Johnson 40-41) The resistance of Tans work to idealize the signified in
fact reflects the theory, by analogy, that there is a dialectical tension between the idealism of
the signified as the bourgeois oppressors, which gazes upon material conditions for
production, and the need of signifiers liberation from it, economically as well as politically.
The insistence of Tans work on an uncertain narrative perspective thus ultimately forms the
system of the storys language in an accumulation of conversations among the dialectical
tensions between the signifier and the signified, in its conception of an other voice of the
third space.
Carissa Bernadette A. Pobre
103008
Word Count: 1004

Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi. How Newness Enters the World. The Location of Culture. London:
Routledge, 1994. Print.
Johnson, Barbara. Writing. Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd ed. Frank Leutricchia and
Thomas McLaughin, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Print.
Tan, Michelle. Seek and You Will Find. Kritika Kultura 21-22 (2013): 662-672. Web.