Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:23:29.475Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Colonialism with benefits? Singaporean peoplehood and colonial contradiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Philip Holden
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Most of the research presented in this special issue questions the notion of a singular Singaporean story, and yet this narrative persists as a form of Gramscian common sense for most Singaporeans, whether young or old, and also for recent immigrants and international commentators. To understand the reasons for this persistence, I turn to American political scientist Rogers M. Smith's concept of narratives of peoplehood, and in particular his notion of ethically constitutive stories that are central to individual subject formation. The role of the colonial past in such stories of Singapore is contradictory, in that the relationship between colonialism and the nation-state is seen simultaneously in terms of rupture and continuity, and this conceals a further contradiction in terms of the relationship between individual and the collective. In exploring these contradictions, and in tracing reparative possibilities for new stories of peoplehood, I will, in conclusion, turn to recent literary narratives, and in particular recent historical speculative fiction that revisions the colonial past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 632 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Ho Chi Tim for his comments on this paper, and Dayaneetha De Silva for her careful and thoughtful editing.

References

1 Gilley, Bruce, ‘The case for colonialism’, Third World Quarterly 38 (2017): 1Google Scholar; http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1369037.

2 Taylor & Francis Online, ‘Withdrawal notice’, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2017.1369037.

3 Nigel Biggar, ‘Don't feel guilty about our colonial history’, Times, 30 Nov. 2007, p. 36.

4 Gilley, ‘The case for colonialism’, p. 1.

5 Jeevan Vasagar, ‘Can colonialism have benefits? Look at Singapore’, Guardian, 4 Jan. 2018; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/colonialism-work-singapore-postcolonial-british-empire.

6 Rajaratnam, S., ‘Adaptive reuse of history’, in S. Rajaratnam on Singapore: From ideas to reality, ed. Chong, Kwa Guan (Singapore: World Scientific, 2006), pp. 252–3Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 251.

8 George Yeo Yong-Boon, ‘Speech by BG (Res) George Yeo, Minister for Information and the Arts, and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, at the official opening of St Gabriel's Secondary School’, Press Release no. 47/Aug 03B-1/93/08/21 (Ministry of Information and the Arts, Singapore, Aug. 3, 1993), p. 1.

9 Alun Munslow, Narrative and history (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 6.

10 Rogers M. Smith, Stories of peoplehood: The politics and morals of political membership (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 45.

11 Ho Li-Ching, ‘“Freedom can only exist in an ordered state”: Harmony and civic education in Singapore’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 49, 4 (2017): 478.

12 Smith, Stories of peoplehood, p. 20.

13 Ibid., p. 43.

14 Ibid., p. 60.

15 Ibid., p. 62.

16 Ibid., p. 64.

17 Ibid., p. 15.

18 Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (London: Nelson, 1957), p. 192.

19 Ibid., p. 198.

20 Jawaharlal Nehru, The discovery of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 36–7.

21 Manuel L. Quezon, ‘Speech of President Quezon on civil liberties, December 9, 1939’, Official Gazette, https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1939/12/09/speech-of-president-quezon-on-civil-liberties-december-9-1939/.

22 See Katja Michalak, ‘Schema’, in The international encyclopedia of political science, ed. Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Leonardo Morlino (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011), p. 2363.

23 Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 267.

24 See, for example, Peter Borschberg, ‘Singapore in the cycles of the longue durée’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 90, 1 (2017): 29–60; John Miksic, Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013); Derek Heng, Kwa Chong Guan and Tan Tai Yong, Singapore, A 700-year history from early emporium to world city (Singapore: National Archives of Singapore, 2009).

25 Ministry of Education, Singapore, History syllabus, lower secondary: Express course, Normal (Academic) course (Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, 2016), p. 11.

26 Ibid., p. 11.

27 Ministry of Education, Singapore, Character and citizenship education syllabus, primary (Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, 2012), pp. 26, 12.

28 Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan, ‘State fatherhood: The politics of nationalism, sexuality and race in Singapore’, in Nationalisms and sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaeger (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 343–4.

29 Kwa Chong Guan, ‘Writing Singapore's history: From city-state to global city’, in S. Rajaratnam on Singapore, pp. 176–7.

30 S. Rajaratnam, ‘Speech by Mr S. Rajaratnam, Second Deputy Prime Minister (Foreign Affairs), at the official opening of the regional workshop on the roles and functions of the senior citizens’ clubs of the community centres’, Press Release no. 41/July 09-1/84/07/22 (Ministry of Culture, Singapore, 22 July 1984), p. 7.

31 People's Action Party, The tasks ahead: P.A.P.'s five-year plan, 1959–64 (Singapore: Petir, 1959).

32 Augustine H.H. Tan, ‘Reply to the President's address’, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Singapore, 2nd Parl., 2nd sess., vol. 31, sitting 2, 30 July 1971; https://www.parliament.gov.sg/parliamentary-business/official-reports-(parl-debates), col. 85.

33 Sonny Liew, The art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Singapore: Epigram, 2015), p. 3.

34 Ng Kim Chew, Slow boats to China and other stories, ed. and trans. Carlos Rojas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 151.

35 John Rieder, ‘On defining SF, or not: Genre theory, SF, and history’, Science Fiction Studies 37, 2 (2010): 203.

36 Munslow, Narrative and history, p. 6.

37 Hills, Matt, ‘Time, possible worlds and counterfactuals’, in The Routledge companion to science fiction, ed. Bould, Mark, Butler, Andrew M., Roberts, Adam and Vint, Sherryl (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 433–41Google Scholar.

38 Suvin, Darko, ‘On the poetics of the science fiction genre’, College English 34, 3 (1972): 372CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Hills, ‘Time, possible worlds and counterfactuals’, p. 435.

40 Wolfe, Gary K., ‘Babylon revisited: Alternate cosmologies from Farmer to Chiang’, in Parabolas of science fiction, ed. Attebery, Brian and Hollinger, Veronica (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013), p. 230Google Scholar.

41 Kevin Martens Wong, Altered Straits (Singapore: Epigram, 2017), p. 96.

42 Nuraliah Norasid, The gatekeeper (Singapore: Epigram, 2017), p. 4.

43 Ibid., p. 4.

44 Ibid., p. 68.

45 Ibid., pp. 54–5.

46 Ibid., pp. 294.