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20

E

UR

A

MERICA

Admitting shame as part of the foundational making of the colonial

society, Rosca manages to mobilize it as a means of subject-shaping

and community-building.

III. History, Repetition, and Affect

State of War

’s exploration of affect and colonial history also

points to the repetitive haunting of such negative feelings as shame,

betrayal, fear and the sensation of impending crisis induced by

historical change. The repetition of similar affects across

generations serves to indicate or symbolize the difficulty of

breaking the repetitive cycle of colonial rules. As a double of Maya,

Mayang is doomed to reenact Maya’s sexual conduct by falling

madly in love with the German chemist Hans Zangroniz, who was

invited by her husband, Carlos Lucas Villaverde, to work in their

brewery. The outcome of that affair is Luis Carlos, the favorite

child of Mayang, and Carlos Lucas’s only heir. Paralleling the

country’s colonial history, which repeats itself time and again, the

intimate history of the family is caught in a similar loop

a cycle of

shame that produces still more shame in the act of redemption.

Fathered by the Capuchin monk, Carlos Lucas is anguished by the

Otherness that is at the core of his being. His shame in his birth is

revealed most tellingly after a visit by two Capuchin monks

inquiring into the possibility of holding shares in his brewery.

Carlos Lucas responds with great agitation: “‘They will not buy

into

my

business. They will not come near me again.’ The

again

slipped out before he could be aware of it. Enraged by his own

indiscretion, he knocked down her St. Anthony statue” (Rosca,

1988:

170). A Freudian slip, the

again

reveals Carlos Lucas’s

suppressed anguish over his birth, when the Capuchin monk was

“near” him for the first time. He seeks to purge the shame of his

birth by inviting Hans to be his business partner, hoping that with

Han’s doctorate from famous university in Europe, he is able to

exorcize the ghost of the Capuchin friar in his blood and his family,