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Colonialism with benefits? Singaporean peoplehood and colonial contradiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Philip Holden
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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

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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

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44 Ibid., p. 68.

45 Ibid., pp. 54–5.

46 Ibid., pp. 294.