In the Womb of the Global Economy: Anak and the Construction of Transnational Imaginaries

This article intervenes into the connections between Philippine cinema’s construction of transnational imaginaries and the post-Marcos era when neoliberal policies such as the export of feminized labor to developed countries by so-called “third world” countries like the Philippines have produced not only cultural values that are attuned to the culture of diasporic labor but also economic value in the form of spectatorship constantly mined by capital for its continued stability. To illustrate these connections, this study focuses on the discourses of narrative imperialism, national fantasy, and infantilized citizenship as ideological tropes that resolve the film’s representation of prescribed feminine virtue, anxiety, melancholy, and maternal sacrifice. These discourses are constitutive of an invaginated visual economy that derives its conditions of possibility from the feminization of migrant labor in global capitalism. The invaginated visual economy inserts itself in the womb of the global economy through the production of transnational imaginaries, which in turn contradict not only the actual experience of warm-body export but also the worldwide solidarity movement among overseas Filipino workers who, beyond cinematic mediation, are beginning to fight back.