I found Julia’s entry on the “invisible subject” thought-provoking, and her notion of a liminal or “invisible” subject in Panlilio’s text brought to mind Ambo, the protagonist of Santos’ “So Many Things.” While Julia convincingly suggests that Panlilio locates a certain degree of power in her mother’s status as an “invisible subject”---“the narrator subverts the government’s power to define its subjects as legal or illegal, alien or citizen, by transferring such power to the mother” (Julia)---Santos’ short story seems to chronicle the “disappearance” and disempowerment of a Filipino subject. Santos presents a series of moments in which the protagonist becomes acutely and painfully aware of his “invisibility.”
Throughout his short stories, Santos frequently describes Filipino’s as “sickly” or dirty, and repeatedly describes white Americans as “neat” and especially as “clean” or “clean-looking” (149-50). I think these descriptions map interestingly onto categories of visible and invisible in “So Many Things.” Santos offers two contrasting images of “white” and “brown” in the views that characterize Ambo’s room:
“There were two small framed pictures on the walls, one over the dresser---a colored picture of the Tidal Basin, with the cherry trees around in bloom, and in the background, the Washington monument; and the other over the foot of the bed, which he saw upon arising…a cottage in a snow-bound lake, and footprints on the snow leading nowhere. The dresser stood near the window facing Fourth Street. When he sat in front of the mirror, he saw the dirty brown building across the parking area and the lugubrious figures carved on the stone. He had often wondered what they meant, if they meant anything at all” (145).
Ambo seems to possess two different “portraits” of white America in his room: one, an idealized and “blooming” vision of American beauty, with “the Washington monument” in the background. But the other vision of “whiteness”---the one that Ambo actually “sees” everyday upon “arising”---is a vision of sterility and isolation: “a snow-bound lake.” Most tellingly, this portrait features “footprints leading nowhere,” suggesting Ambo’s invisibility within this white environment; the subject of the picture has disappeared, leaving faint traces in his wake.
Santos’ pairing of these pictures suggests both the idealized vision of possibility in America and the reality of Ambo’s invisibility within the dominant white society. When Ambo does look “in the mirror,” what he sees is a “dirty brown building” and “lugubrious figures.” What I think is most interesting about this passage is that Ambo does not identify with these “brown” figures. These figures are visible but “unreadable” to Ambo: “He had often wondered what they meant, if they meant anything at all.” If we read the “brown building” as a metaphor for the Philippines or Filipino society, then Ambo is just as alienated from that culture as he is from white America (an alienation Santos reinforces through Ambo’s interactions with the Filipino daughter and nurse). These three views create a sense of Ambo’s alienation from both American and Filipino cultures, a liminal state that Santos portrays as characterized by invisibility and incomprehension.
In this way, the title of the short story (“So Many Things”) proves ironic on several levels. We learn that, in fact, Ambo has very few possessions. At the same time, these material objects are all that “testify” to his actual presence in America---only his possessions are truly “visible.” These “things” actually point us toward his lack of recognition as a subject, suggesting vacancy rather than plentitude (the “so many”). And even as Ambo’s “things” are all that remains as a record of his life in America, they are perceived as a burdensome “inheritance” within the Filipino community; the daughter is anxious for Ambo to move his things “out” of their house.
Ambo’s position reminds me of the fate of older bachelors rendered invisible by “modern” housing developments in Chinatown. Here, Santos seems to portray the condition of the “invisible subject” in similarly negative terms, associating this liminal status with dirt, sickness, decline, and disappearance.
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