Lacuna, Isabella

Abstract

To speak of the Philippines in terms adapted from Takeuchi Yoshimi’s “island as method” is to consider the different kinds of relationalities that might be extent between the Philippine archipelago and other communities not often considered as related to its “national” development. In this paper, I argue for such an alterity through a reconsideration of the common tropological references to climate, weather, and anthropocentric catastrophe in the anthology, Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories at the Edge of the Climate Crisis (Padmapani et al, 2021). This is possibly one of the earliest anthologies that thoughtfully mingles literatures from different communities around the world (spanning Latin America, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa) with a strategic intention to focus on climate change and its effects across marginalized communities. Harvest Moon is significant for the ways it attempts to describe that global togetherness we cannot deny in the face of atmospheric disaster, and provides a foundation by which we might deeply consider climatic concerns as a productive and necessary element in the overall multivalence inherent in the idea of “island as method.”