Communal Homes and Heterotopic Contagion in Trese
Abstract
Metro Manila, in the comics series Trese, is a mega city inscribed by hybridity and cultural simultaneity. The stories that assemble there are built from a specific cultural base: local lore, urban legend, and the mundane features of Philippine city life. This paper investigates, through Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, three ‘living spaces’—the cemetery, the dormitory, and the exclusive subdivision—that take the place of the traditional home, highlighting how communal and multivalent such spaces are, and how narratological strategies in comics allow that heterotopic quality to surface.
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References
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