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Giorgio Agamben, J. G. Farrell’s The Singapore Grip, and the Colonial Dispositif

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2016

Victor Li
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Abstract

In his Afterword to The Singapore Grip, J. G. Farrell thanks Giorgio and Ginevra Agamben for suggesting the phrase that became the title of his novel. What can we make of this surprising and unexpected connection between an Anglo-Irish author’s novel about colonial Singapore on the eve of its fall to the Japanese army during World War II and Agamben’s writings on biopolitics? Despite the serendipitous nature of the encounter between the two writers and the lack of any causal relation between their works, my paper argues that there is an unacknowledged affinity that allows us to open them up to what Agamben calls their Entwicklungsfähigkeit, “the locus and the moment wherein they are susceptible to development,” thereby bringing out the biopolitical elements in Farrell’s novel and turning Agamben’s insights into dispositifs or biopolitical apparatuses in the direction of the analysis of colonial rule.

Keywords

Giorgio AgambenJ. G. FarrellThe Singapore GripcolonialismbiopoliticsdispositifdeactivationEntwicklungsfähigkeit
Type
General Article
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 3 , Special Issue 3: Special Issue: African Science Fiction , September 2016 , pp. 361 - 378
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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