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lingering in the core of her becoming-Filipina. When Maya revisits
the scenario of her shame through her contact with another body,
one that reverberates with the untainted body of her youth, her
affective experience of shame is restructured. Shame, as is hinted
by Deleuze and expounded by Elspeth Probyn, consists of a
mind-body split, with the mind watching in alertness what the
body is going through, the former therefore experiences not only
the affects of the body, but the critical judgment when it hovers
above the body.
7
In Deleuze’s original observation, this mind-body
split is characteristic of a victim of abuse, rape or torture. By
annexing the body of the woman of shame to another woman,
Rosca manages to realign the structure of shame, rendering shame
a transmitted affect between different social bodies. In her original
transformation to become the Virgin Mary, Maya’s body
experiences feelings of shame, while her mind hovers overhead,
judging her shame, moving her to become violent. In her proximity
with Mayang, however, Mayang takes over the role of the mind
and the voyeur, supervising, criticizing, and judging Maya, who is
now nothing but the feelings of shame which are so disgusting that
her memories cannot bear to contain them: “Her memories vomit
her shame.” Yet Mayang is not only the witness, she is also affected,
therefore her judgment has an additional power of empathy.
Indeed one can argue that young Mayang is placed in the position
of performing the role of the Babaylan priestess, who helps purge
the feeling of shame by providing an outlet, becoming a secret
sharer of the unarticulated and unspeakable feelings of shame.
8
At
7
With regard to the mind-body structure of the affect of shame, Deleuze
observes: “The mind begins by coldly and curiously regarding what the body
does, it is first of all a witness; then it is affected, it becomes an impassioned
witness, that is, it experiences for itself affects that are not simply effects of
the body, but veritable critical
entities
that hover over the body and judging
it” (as cited in Probyn, 2010: 80).
8
According to Leny Mendoza Strobel: “The Babaylan in Filipino indigenous
tradition is a person who is gifted to heal the spirit and the body; the one
who serves the community through her role as a folk therapist,